Khartoum (Battle for Khartoum) (1966)

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Good direction of the masses, you feel the dessert and the camels and the weapons. Would be great to have Olivier as Gordon instead of Heston, bur star system is star system. Anyway, the siege of Khartoum and the extravagant character of Gordon is portrayed with some flair. Gladstone (always great Richardson) has great political dialogues.

After an Egyptian army, commanded by British officers, is destroyed in a battle in the Sudan in the 1880's, the British government is in a quandary. It does not want to commit a British military force to a foreign war but they have a commitment to protect the Egyptians in Khartoum. They decide to ask General Charles "Chinese" Gordon, something of a folk hero in the Sudan as he had cleared the area of the slave trade, to arrange for the evacuation. Gordon agrees but also decides to defend the city against the forces of the Mahdi - the expected one - and tries to force the British to commit troops.