Zulu

MICHAEL Caine is the iconic cockney of the 20th century, but the actor made his starring debut playing a toff, with co-star Stanley Baker the more modest everyman thrust into command in this based-on-fact epic. Baker’s Lieutenant Chard simply came to the mission station of Rourke’s Drift “to build a bridge”, but ends up fighting off more than 4,000 Zulus with only a hundred men. Eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded after the battle – the most to a single regiment in a single action – and the film somehow manages to be both heroically rousing and yet clear-eyed about the costs of conflict. Baker and Caine are both brilliant, but it’s the scale of the scraps that most impresses – and the mounting sense of dread within the camp. Along with Gunga Din, perhaps the best film about the military exploits of the British Empire at its peak.