Any movie with Orlando Bloom in it is getting an extra star this month because he recently did what so many of us have longed to do: He took a swing at Justin Bieber. Hell, I'd give him five stars if he had landed that punch, but the Beaver was saved by his entourage before "manning up" and taking the fight to Twitter.
But I digress. "Zulu" — not to be confused with the 1964 Michael Caine classic — is a hard-boiled crime film that has Bloom and Forest Whitaker as detectives investigating a grisly series of drug-related murders in post-apartheid South Africa. Bloom is short-fused, alcoholic and sex-addicted; it's the sort of "Bad Lieutenant" role that you don't expect to see him in, but he does a decent job playing a wreck for a change.
French director Jerome Salle, best known for his film "Anthony Zimmer" (2005) — which was remade into the Johnny Depp/Angelina Jolie film "The Tourist" — works off a novel by Caryl Ferey and does a decent job of using South African specifics of location and dialect to bring a fresh feel to a well-worn genre. Unlike 2005's "Tsotsi," this film doesn't have a lot of pious liberal sympathy for criminals; instead it shows both blacks and whites affected by the gang violence.