Yet another awful Hollywoodized piece of BS in the vein of Pearl Harbor w/c actually gets more things right than this does. This is more than just a work of pure fiction, it basically takes - I should say exploits - the name Shaka Zulu but the story itself has nothing to do with the Napoleon of Africa. It's a typical white guilt story filled with events that are pure invention. The sets and costumes are ludicrous, the acting is uninspired but frankly even Sir Laurence Olivier or Sir Alec Guiness couldn't have made a silk purse out of this sow's ear.
The story makes it appear that Shaka was making a bid to take over all of Africa and indeed the sets and some characters are more appropriate for the Berber tribes of North Africa than the peoples of the South. Do the idiots writing this thing know how BIG Africa is?? Shaka fought all his life to control Zululand and the surrounding area but was never able to blitz through Africa. What happened instead was a domino effect - his conquest and defeat of the large African tribes in his vicinity would force them to leave and they would defeat other tribes as they fled from him. Some went as far as East Africa (the region around Kenya) but thats about it.
Speaking of East Africa, why the devil would they set it in EAST Africa - Shaka's Zulu Kingdom was in SOUTH Africa, near Natal. It gets worse.
With the Hoff as the action hero, Karen Allen as the damsel in distress I was getting a distinctly Indiana Jones vibe about this mess. Then they had the whole slavery story w/c is pure BS. I would seriously DARE a slaver, white or otherwise to try and make slaves of the Zulu of the period. That would have been funny to watch. In any case the slave trade was concentrated mainly around western equatorial Africa and eastern equatorial Africa. Arab slavers would take the ones from the east to Arabia and White and African slavers would raid and sell their prisoners to the whites on the west coast.
If they wanted to make a story about slavery and have the Hoff there, for pitys sake why not make a story about John Newton, the slaver who would later become a bitter opponent of slavery and write the famous song AMAZING GRACE? Whatever you do, just PASS on this piece of tripe. Get the original miniseries or find Michael Caine's debut film instead. They're a lot more fun and closer to history than this can ever hope to be.
The story makes it appear that Shaka was making a bid to take over all of Africa and indeed the sets and some characters are more appropriate for the Berber tribes of North Africa than the peoples of the South. Do the idiots writing this thing know how BIG Africa is?? Shaka fought all his life to control Zululand and the surrounding area but was never able to blitz through Africa. What happened instead was a domino effect - his conquest and defeat of the large African tribes in his vicinity would force them to leave and they would defeat other tribes as they fled from him. Some went as far as East Africa (the region around Kenya) but thats about it.
Speaking of East Africa, why the devil would they set it in EAST Africa - Shaka's Zulu Kingdom was in SOUTH Africa, near Natal. It gets worse.
With the Hoff as the action hero, Karen Allen as the damsel in distress I was getting a distinctly Indiana Jones vibe about this mess. Then they had the whole slavery story w/c is pure BS. I would seriously DARE a slaver, white or otherwise to try and make slaves of the Zulu of the period. That would have been funny to watch. In any case the slave trade was concentrated mainly around western equatorial Africa and eastern equatorial Africa. Arab slavers would take the ones from the east to Arabia and White and African slavers would raid and sell their prisoners to the whites on the west coast.
If they wanted to make a story about slavery and have the Hoff there, for pitys sake why not make a story about John Newton, the slaver who would later become a bitter opponent of slavery and write the famous song AMAZING GRACE? Whatever you do, just PASS on this piece of tripe. Get the original miniseries or find Michael Caine's debut film instead. They're a lot more fun and closer to history than this can ever hope to be.