True story based on two books by Donald Woods, a former newspaper editor in South Africa. Woods himself is the main character, and as an "uninformed" liberal he makes a useful point of identification for much of the world's white population, specifically director Richard Attenborough and his same screenwriter from GANDHI, John Briley. Accordingly, the first half of the movie is thinly dramatized instruction -- and no bad thing, but no very creative thing either. The second half -- after the murder of black activist Stephen Biko, and after Woods himself is put under ban by the government and attempts to flee the country -- becomes a very temperate suspense drama, with periodic instructional inserts. The death-roll, at the very end, of political prisoners over the previous twenty-five years, with "official explanations," is really something to see. (Something to read, that is.) With Kevin Kline and Denzel Washington. (1987) — Duncan Shepherd
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