Gunga-Din Review

Gunga-Din... what an interesting movie! It was definitely entertaining and I was glad I saw it. I tended to get lost in the movie and forgot what I had to pay attention to: to analize it for class.. But now I took a step back and thought more about it.

This is not a historically accurate film, no matter how much the movie tries to tell us it was. The main characters were no Gunga-Din himself but three British soliders who were portrayed as supermen. Gunga-Din, in turn, was merely a sidekick character, stereotypically played by another white actor with make-up. Deep inside, Gunga-Din wanted the respect of the white men of the west, portraying the western culture as the good and civilized one.

The bad guys where Indian nationalists, worshippers of Kali. For being the world's "best mountain fighters", they were portrayed as cowards, except for the leader, whom I thought was pretty well played and gave the Kali worshippers a smart leader to follow. Of course, he dies.

But, it was still an entertaining movie. I would watch it again! For such an old film it was well made, the battle scenes were well coreographed for the time (yeah, the punches looked fake. But that shouldn;t take away from the film.)

Good times, old chap.