Though Forest Whitaker looks he’s headed back to the Kodak Theater with the sincere “Lee Daniels’ The Butler,” the Oscar-winning actor looks to be getting into rough-and-tumble mode with the Jérôme Salle-helmed “Zulu.” A French (and somewhat NSFW) trailer (via Shadow and Act) has arrived online for the South Africa-set crime thriller, and it looks like pretty compelling stuff. Watch it below.
The Cannes closing night film was adapted from Caryl Férey’s novel of the same name and follows Whitaker as head of the homicide branch in Cape Town and Orlando Bloom as his partner as the two struggle to combat crime in a city still dealing with the fallout of apartheid. It looks like they uncover a “Chinatown“-ish conspiracy, too, this one involving the government’s secret plans on detonating a “race bomb” that would curb the black population.
It looks like Whitaker has gotten his South African accent down to a science, and it’s nice to see Bloom do something outside of Middle Earth. Also of note is the film’s original score, by one of our favorite composers Alexadre Desplat (“Zero Dark Thirty“).
As far as trailers go, it’s pretty moody, atmospheric and action-packed. If you weren’t interested in seeing the movie (or didn’t know it existed), this should pique your interest pretty quickly. Unfortunately, all that anticipation will have to wait as the film is currently without North American distribution. Between the stars involved and the prestige of the film, it probably won’t be long until an American release date is lined up. We hope.