Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining and exciting derring-do for the Empire, 14 Aug 2007
The Drum came out the year before The Four Feathers; it's fun but not as good. The time is the years before World War I. Sabu plays Prince Azim, a young princeling from a British protectorate up near the Khyber pass. His uncle, Prince Ghul, killed Sabu's father, the rightful ruler, and chased Sabu out. Prince Ghul is played by Raymond Massey with sneering lips, bulging eyes and dark makeup. After several adventures as Prince Azim tries to escape Prince Ghul's assassins, young Azim contacts Captain Carruthers (Roger Livesey), whom he had met earlier. Carruthers and a small contingent of British troops set out for the principality to inforce a peace treaty, not knowing that Ghul is organizing the mountain tribes in a revolt against the British. Will Prince Azim be believed when he tries to tell the British governor of the plot? Will Carruthers, his wife and his troops be betrayed at a great dinner by hidden machine guns? Will Prince Azim, who has sneaked back into the principality to save Carruthers, be able to warn them by beating the huge holy drum?
Even though all the natives are either childlike or evil, the last half of the movie picks up a lot of steam. And it's always reassuring to witness the unflappable, exquisite manners of the British ruling class in movies of this period. Dinner in the residency, for instance, is interrupted when something is thrown through a window. Carruthers starts forward, which will expose himself to whomever is outside. His wife, clutching her throat, says, "Darling, not you." "Darling," Carruthers says, "Of course me." He strides forward and finds a bloody...well, you need to see the movie.
Sabu was just 14 when he made this movie, his second. He handles himself well and has a good deal of natural charm. He was a very likeable actor whose career petered out as he grew older. Roger Livesey, with his inimitable, husky voice was a first-rate actor. In this movie, he's mainly the derring-do, upper-class British officer. To see just how good he was, watch him in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and I Know Where I'm Going.
As usual with the Kordas, there is magnificent scenery and first-class sets, and in this case lots of marching troops with bagpipes playing.
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