In 1884, bible-reading, brandy guzzling, slavery-busting, misogynist soldier General Charles Gordon (Charlton Heston) is sent to the Sudan by Prime Minister Gladstone (Ralph Richardson) to save an Egyptian army that has been trapped in the city by 100,000 dervishes led by zealous Muslim, The Mahdi (Laurence Olivier).
Despite his warnings to the clownish British authorities (including Michael Hordern as Lord Granville and Hugh Williams as Lord Hartington) of the political damage that The Mahdi could inflict, Gordon was sent packing with precisely one man - his aide, Col J. D. H. Stewart (Richard Johnson) to accompany him. And yet he managed to organise his Egyptian charges sufficiently to hold off The Mahdi for an astonishing 317 days before he was finally killed and Khartoum fell.
According to The Times critic, the film, "Not only has some of the most striking and imaginatively staged spectacle for a long time, but one of the most intelligent and absorbing screenplays... making all the participants what they were; articulate, complex characters."
"It just goes to show," ran The Guardian, "what a literate and intelligent script, competent direction and a first-rate performance by Charlton Heston as Gordon, can do."
Khartoum is a Film programme that first aired in 1966 and has been classified a PG certificate.
