Sidney Poitier and Rock Hudson portray two Kenyans, raised as near brothers, who find their paths in life diverging wildly as they enter young manhood. After suffering indignity at the hands of white men and seeing his father imprisoned by the colonial authorities, Poitier's Kimani becomes a freedom fighter/terrorist within the "Mau Mau" insurgency. The film concerns the efforts of Peter (Hudson) to reach a peaceful agreement with Kimani, and with Kimani's own inner struggle with the violence of revolution.
It's a solid film, though perhaps not a "great" film for whatever reasons..... one of which is a boring and largely unnecessary romantic subplot with Hudson and the dull Dana Wynter, looking and feeling for all the world like a second-rate Liz Taylor. I thought Hudson's acting was quite powerful for the most part, especially in the scene when he first arrives home from the war. Poitier blows him off the screen, of course, and we wish that the film gave them equal time (where was the romance between Kimani and his wife?), but Hudson isn't the total loss that some of the reviewers here have made him out to be. Indeed, he could have attempted an accent, but that would have been dangerous; surely Poitier mastered his Kenyan accent because he had much more to lose, and to gain, from a film concerning political turmoil in Africa.
The film struggles to maintain some kind of balance; it depicts the Mau Mau as thoroughly "savage", yet also reveals the torture and lies of the British colonialists. There are moments of really breathtaking stylized violence that could still shock audiences. It's a difficult line to walk, and a view emerges in which basically no one, except perhaps the next generation, is the winner. It's a respectable viewpoint, considering that the conflict was still ongoing at the time of the film's production. Some parallels between the "equal rights" demanded by Kimani and the situation in America at the time must have made some distributors and audiences nervous, but the film does not try to push these parallels in any obvious way.
Before closing, mention should be made of Miklos Rozsa's extraordinary score; indeed, extraordinary even for Rozsa, as it combines the whine of the electronic theramin with "tribal" rhythms and chanting.
It's a solid film, though perhaps not a "great" film for whatever reasons..... one of which is a boring and largely unnecessary romantic subplot with Hudson and the dull Dana Wynter, looking and feeling for all the world like a second-rate Liz Taylor. I thought Hudson's acting was quite powerful for the most part, especially in the scene when he first arrives home from the war. Poitier blows him off the screen, of course, and we wish that the film gave them equal time (where was the romance between Kimani and his wife?), but Hudson isn't the total loss that some of the reviewers here have made him out to be. Indeed, he could have attempted an accent, but that would have been dangerous; surely Poitier mastered his Kenyan accent because he had much more to lose, and to gain, from a film concerning political turmoil in Africa.
The film struggles to maintain some kind of balance; it depicts the Mau Mau as thoroughly "savage", yet also reveals the torture and lies of the British colonialists. There are moments of really breathtaking stylized violence that could still shock audiences. It's a difficult line to walk, and a view emerges in which basically no one, except perhaps the next generation, is the winner. It's a respectable viewpoint, considering that the conflict was still ongoing at the time of the film's production. Some parallels between the "equal rights" demanded by Kimani and the situation in America at the time must have made some distributors and audiences nervous, but the film does not try to push these parallels in any obvious way.
Before closing, mention should be made of Miklos Rozsa's extraordinary score; indeed, extraordinary even for Rozsa, as it combines the whine of the electronic theramin with "tribal" rhythms and chanting.