Zardoz Movie Review

Thanks to more than a decade of witless Road Warrior retreads, John Boorman's controversial parable of the far future has never looked better. In 2293 Earth society is broken into strict and segregated classes: a society of bored, detached intellectuals burdened with eternal life; a horde of primitives who have the privilege of breeding as long as they're slain regularly; and an elite unit of killers who do the job. Sean Connery (in a role first offered to Burt Reynolds) is one of the latter, a clever barbarian who destroys the old order of things by stowing away in the floating monolithic head of the god Zardoz (as in Wizard of Oz) to penetrate the im1mortals’ stronghold. Pretentious it may be, but you could do a lot worse than Boorman's splendid visuals and weighty metaphysical meditations.

1973 105m/C Sean Connery, Charlotte Rampling, John Alderton, Sara Kestelman, Sally Anne Newton, Niall Buggy; D: John Boorman; W: John Boorman; C: Geoffrey Unsworth. VHS, Beta, LV FOX