Forest Whitaker may still be riding high from the success of his performance in Lee Daniels’ The Butler, but it looks like he’s getting the chance to add another film to the gruffer side of his resume with Jérôme Salle’s Zulu.
In the French-subtitled (and NSFW) trailer, Whitaker and Orlando Bloom play homicide detectives in Cape Town, South Africa, where the duo deals with combating crime in a city still reeling from the after effects of apartheid. But they quickly discover the worst criminals of all are the government itself, which is working on building a chemical “race bomb,” designed to detonate and prevent an increase in the black population. The trailer contains a whole lot of gun slinging and swearing, set to a powerful Alexandre Desplat (Zero Dark Thirty) score. Check out the trailer for yourself:
It’s a compelling concept, for sure (based on the novel by Caryl Férey of the same name), and one that can hopefully give Bloom something substantial to work with outside of the Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean franchises. Though he’s not featured very heavily in this first trailer, he and Whitaker definitely have their South African accents down pretty perfectly. And isn’t it a relief to hear Whitaker say something besides “I’m Cecil Gaines” for the first time in months?
Zulu does not have a US release date at this time.
