News culture This military expert has made his judgment: no war film is more realistic than this feature film, which was released 60 years ago!
The war film is a genre in its own right in the film industry and contains some undeniable gems. In the pile, only one is more convincingly realistic than the others… and no, it’s not the feature film you’re thinking of.
The definition of a “realistic” war film
War is an integral part of human history and inevitably, cinema has dealt with the subject more than once. You’ll surely think of a few names: Saving Private Ryan, Platoon, 1917, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Fury, Dunkirk and Black Hawk Down…there is really a lot to do.
Often these films rely on pure realism to portray the horrors of conflict: But What is a truly realistic war film? The question was asked to James D. Deverwho works as a military-technical consultant in Hollywood … and was, above all, a veteranafter retiring from the US Marine Corps in the late 1990s. And his answer on the SensaCine microphone is as follows:
The era doesn’t matter. For me, it’s the uniforms and the way the characters move and behave that make a war film real. In some of these films today, it looks like the clothes have been taken off the rack,” says Dever. “They don’t look dirty or sweaty and there’s no indication that the uniform has been worn for a while.
Back in 1964
As a result, James D. Dever also gave the example of a war film that he considers realistic according to his criteria: “Zulu”, released in 1964 and directed by Cy Endfield.
If you’ve never seen the film, you should definitely watch it. The formations are exactly right for the era, the guns, the soldiers’ behavior. It’s so real that that alone makes it a good film.
You have been warned. Zulu focuses on the Anglo-Zulu War, which took place in 1879 and pitted British forces against those of the Zulu Empire in what is now South Africa. An acclaimed feature film that achieved a score of 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and starred Michael Caine long before he became one of Christopher Nolan’s stars.
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