Shaka Zulu: The Last Great Warrior (2001)
Drama

Based On The True Story Of The Legendary African Leader.

Shaka Zulu: The Last Great Warrior is the true story of the legendary African warrior and his struggle to unite his people against the largest empire in the world. As England expands its colonies to Africa, a new nation is forming around the strength of Skaka Zulu's rise to power through bloody civil wars. His fight for freedom is full of thunderous action, heroism and heart. From the creator of the original epic mini-series.

User Comment: faced (face@sjemail.com) from philly, 27 May 2005 • The heading that I chose is dubious by design. I am sure that there are equal numbers of people who will rip and debase this film for its assertions of Mandigo black and white fascination with each other as well as the ever reoccurring themes of white Emperialism / superiority and the tribes of humbled Black Africans. On the flip side, others will exalt the way in which Shaka can be likened to a Shaft of the 18th century, taking on the establishment almost single handedly and winning. Grace Jones disappears after the first quarter of the film and I was disappointed that the 6 foot Amazon never quite developed into the warrior that I had predicted. All in all I think most will be pleasantly surprised about the subtle twists, adequate acting and better than low budget cinematography.

Summary: Exploitative and as fun as fake wrestling.

User Comment: *** This review may contain spoilers *** dbborroughs from Glen Cove, New York, 1 July 2005 • Love for the original 1980's miniseries and an interest in the Zulu wars caused me to pick up the American DVD. I'm not sure if that was a good thing or bad since apparently this release, subtitled The Last Warrior, is actually a shortened version of a recent (2001) miniseries, I had thought it was simply a 90 minute movie.

Purely a work of fiction this film tells a story thats too big for 90 minutes. Shaka, king of the Zulu's wants to control all of Africa. He makes unsuccessful war on a rival king and ends up on a slave ship. He escapes and then vows revenge on the white race. It all comes to ahead when he threatens to lay siege to a small town. Complicating matters is the fact that there are several white men from England with Shaka. They aid him in his war and later try to free him from the slavers. Additionally, one of the men's daughter, played by Karen Allen, comes to Africa to find her "lost" father and ends up booking passage on a slave ship run by David Hasslehoff, which by chance is the ship carrying Shaka. And it gets even more complicated from there. Its a huge knot of plot that makes only fleeting sense in the "half off" version available here in the US.

I can't say I hated nor liked the short version of the movie. Its not awful but it certainly suffers from massive cuts that cause people to disappear or die after being elaborately introduced as an important character, while others become important for no clear reason. Plot holes abound and there are times when its not clear what is going on for several minutes. For example the plot to make Shaka a slave is told in such away as to make you think that he was already a slave, when in the next scene he is clearly not. Certainly this would be so much better in a longer telling of the story.

Clearly this was shot for TV. Its incredibly cheap at times, with some sets looking like the cardboard and plywood they were fashioned from, a castle hit by a cannon blast is revealed to be shoddily built. The action is low brow and just passable. The DVD carries an R rating but aside from the killing of a cow and rape there is almost no reason for it.

I do have to say that the scenes between James Fox and Henry Cele are excellent and lead me to believe that there is a better version of this out there than the 90 minute mess currently available. There are other moments that are good but Fox and Cele are the reasons that this is still watchable.

Is it worth seeing? I don't know. I know that if I could see the full version of Shaka Zulu: The Citadel I certainly would give it a shot. Would I re-watch the bastardized Shaka Zulu: The Last Warrior, as the 90 minute version is called? If there wasn't anything better on. If you're not too picky this might be worth trying if you can't find anything else to rent, its not time ill spent but there are better things to watch.

Summary: The US DVD is half the length of the full mini and ends up very confused.

[CSW] -3- I did not watch it because it didn't have English Subtitles as advertised. I gave it a neutral rating so that it wouldn't pull the overall rating down and called Netflix to ask them to change their listing to reflect that there were no subtitles available.

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