Bluebell Alcock Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

keeper275 "Australia will be there" that song made for one of many,many fine scenes in an excellent film. I loved Anthony Andrews character : The British Intel Officer with a German name and his scene out birdwatching with the Aussie Sgt where he deliberately drops the satchel containing a forged "loveletter". I,also, loved the the previous scene where the nurse helped him in "creating" the letter.The look of satisfaction on the Intel officers faces when they knew they'd fooled the Turks was great.The ending charge was highlighted (for me) when the Brit General said " Their under the Guns". Pure movie magic !!! Lastly, as a former infantry soldier (US Army 11-H), it looked and felt believable...to me.Can someone please tell me the origon and meaning of "Pommy" .

penguin-60 I just love this film, everything about it carries one forward to its inevitable last battle. The casting, acting and filming is very Australian in its personality and universally excellent. The real stars to me however were the large number of wonderful horses and their individual riders, who together with the South Australian scenery, where it was shot, and which does wonderfully to replicate the Middle East bring this epic battle back to life. Sadly it has been very poorly served on video. The best release was a laser disc in the US and later a crappy DVD was released in Australia but this had the aspect ratio cut from 2.35 to 1.78 and is an insult to this great film. I have both and still watch my LD, one of my few remaining LDs that have yet to get a decent legal DVD transfer. If you can get and play the LD release do not hesitate otherwise just wait and hope.

ptb-8 This colossal 1987 production - believe it or not - from RKO PICTURES is an Australian film closely resembling LAWRENCE OF ARABIA in its intent and rightly compared to ZULU. With a huge cast of Oz actors and directed by PHAR LAP (look it up) warhorse Simon Wincer it is basically about the last massive charge in the Middle East desert during World War One....an event still on the yearly Australian military forces roster of "Anzac" celebrations. Many other comments on this site will give you details of the history of the event and rightly applaud this lavish spectacular film. RKO Pictures had reformed with some co financing in the 80s and this is one of their few productions. BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE and THE BORDER are two others that spring to mind produced with Universal Pictures. With a $7 million budget and all of it on screen THE LIGHTHORSE became the last of the truly international films from Australia in the 80s. Others of this time are GALLIPOLI and CAREFUL HE MIGHT HEAR YOU and THE MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER and WE OF THE NEVER NEVER...each are films made with a lavish widescreen cinema release in mind and each huge Oz successes. THE LIGHTHORSEMEN is well worth the 140 minutes or so of carefully paced storytelling, all laced with Aussie humor and superb design and photography. The charge in the last two reels is truly breathtaking and on a cinema screen was particularly overwhelming, rivaling the battle charge in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA for sheer thrilling visuals. No CGI in this film... it is all real and scary and played and filmed for keeps. One thrill for cinema owners of the day was to have the film commence with the original cinema scope RKO logo...beeping away from the tower on top of the world. Wonderful!

Varlaam A First World War Australian cavalry -- sorry, mounted infantry -- film set in the Holy Land, that's not something one tends to see every day. So, for me, the fact that, yes, the characters and situations can be a little clichéd at times is far outweighed by the novelty of the whole scenario. Quibbles are easy to put to one side.The cavalry distinction is important. Cavalry would be armed with carbines and sabres. Mounted infantry have rifles and dismount in order to fight. This subtlety plays a part in the outcome.A series of small skirmishes heightens tension within the film until the exciting finale, when there is a fantastic, large scale, cav ... mounted infantry charge which got my pulse racing. You'll recall something similar in David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia". This set piece is bigger. Johnny Turk was the villain that time too.This being an Australian Imperial Force meets the British Army sort of film, there is bound to be a little Pommy-bashing going 'round. When I lived briefly in Australia a decade ago, I found Pommy-bashing to be the single unattractive facet to the Australian national character. (The Kiwis don't do it. We like Poms here too. Pity the Dominions can't agree on that one.) So while some of the Poms in this film might be a few sheep short of a paddock, still there *is* balance, with one Pom who is much cleverer than the average. Bashing even works its way into the plot, a nice touch that.The film does not use an excessive amount of Strine lingo -- billy, tucker -- so very little acclimatization is necessary for the uninitiated.I can't vouch for the overall authenticity of this film. But I did notice that campaign map in the Turkish commander's office. It's labelled in Arabic only. Egypt is identified as "Misr". Geez, that is the correct Arabic name. And the Ottomans were still using the Arabic alphabet at the time. (It's Atatürk after the war who switched Turkish over to the Roman alphabet.) The thing's fair dinkum, mate. If they cared enough to get details like that right, then I'm sure that says a lot about the effort put into the film as a whole.There is an earlier Australian film about the Light Horse I'd like to see, "Forty Thousand Horsemen" from 1940 or '41 (sources differ). Finding a copy of that film in this hemisphere though would be extraordinary, a bit like finding a North American who likes Vegemite.