- Also known as:
- Unknown
- Year:
- 1966
- Predominant Genre:
- Historical
- Best Performances:
- Plot:
- A military force of 8,000 is massacred during a holy war; leading to a greater confrontation.
- Themes:
- Personal change |
Self-expression | White supremacy - Similar To (in Plot, Theme & Style):
- Unknown
- Review Format:
- DVD - UK version
Jihad Made Simple
The age-old story of the clash of Christian fanatics with Muslim ones, with all the contemporary resonances you would expect. Featuring the original anti-infidel Muslim fanatic, played by Laurence OLIVIER, this is an impressive – if under-length – spectacular.
The Mahdi (a Sudanese) claims his Holy War against Egypt is divinely ordained - as Christians claim maintaining the British Empire is a matter of British honor. So the Egyptians invade Sudan with inept British assistance and suffer a devastating military defeat.
However, the over-extended British Empire cannot afford to send an army themselves to defeat the Mahdi – nor do they wish to police the world if this involves too much effort. Instead, they desperately seek to deny any and all responsibility for the catastrophe. Thus, mutually jihadist, period geopolitics is quite well sketched with intelligence and political subtlety, as: ‘Greedy businessmen, scheming generals and conniving politicians’.
The films failing is its fear of boring the audience with too much exposition that would fill out the characters more and deepen its political insight. This is exacerbated by flat, perfunctory direction and overly-emphatic music not quite in sympathy with the sophistication of the script nor of the excellence of the performances.
The casting, in general, is superb: Charlton HESTON makes a surprisingly-convincing Englishman; OLIVIER, an effective Arab. They both capture the often-conflicted nature of the great movers & shakers of history and the all-consuming vanity of men who see themselves at the center of, and in terms of, an inflated historical perspective. Both men here might be called pragmatic mystics; the paradox of such a description underlying the readily-apparent dramatic tensions.
Being an essentially martial nation, Great Britain has produced many great-souled military men with egos to match; here matching those of the stars involved. Yet, their bravery is never in doubt since history is the story of vain men whose sense of conscience overrides their common sense (along with the ability of their superiors to control them from a distance). Nevertheless, such men make history books worth reading and movies like this worth watching.
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