Stars:
*
Rating: R for violence
and language.
Run
Time: 1
hour, 44 minutes. In English and
Afrikaans with English subtitles.
Director
John Boorman whitewashes a crucial period in South African’s modern history with
misguided romance and heavy-handed platitudes.
South
African circa 1996 is a time of social and political healing from the wounds of
Apartheid. Up front and center are the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
hearings, wherein perpetrators of the country’s most brutal racial crimes must
confront their victims and pray for amnesty on their day of reckoning.
Two cogs in
a sticky wheel lie at opposite ends of the spectrum. Anna Malan (Juliette
Binoche) is an idealistic Afrikaans poet whose patriotic enthusiasm for the
democratic process inspires her to cover the hearings for her country’s state
radio. Langston Whitfield (Samuel L. Jackson) is a skeptical Washington Post
reporter with a chip the size of
Politics, journalistic
celebrity, racial sensibility; you name it and the pair are at odds about it. Until the truth and justice behind the
hearing’s poignant hardship stories bond them both morally and physically,
creating an interracial hornet’s nest.
In the name
of healing the wounds of apartheid the cardboard lovers spout preachy dialogue
(“My skin will never forget you”) and languish in a hopelessly torpid narrative
that’s embarrassingly clichéd. Questions
of identity and responsibility are trotted out to give heft to the ungainly agenda.
A fiendish
Brendan Gleeson chews up the scenery as the quintessential Bad Guy – a South
African cop who lives to torture and brutalize his black countrymen. Ugly secrets unfold in staccato succession with
the intent to incite but inspiring only groans.