Burn Details

Even at the height of his stardom, Marlon Brando was prepared to take chances by accepting challenging roles. In this attack on colonial manipulation — a period swashbuckler with attitude — he plays a cynical British secret agent who ignites a Caribbean island revolution against the ruling Portuguese, who are using slave labour on a sugar-cane plantation. It's clumsily handled at times by Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo, who made the remarkable documentary-style epic The Battle of Algiers, but it still has scenes of enormous visual power. Brando is, as they used to say, magnificent, and also a lot slimmer than he is today!