Cry Freedom (1987)

 This film contains Kevin Kline's best performance, far better here than he was in A Fish Called Wanda which would win him an Oscar.

Here, he's liberal newspaper editor Donald Woods in 1975 South Africa, a country still filled with wretched racism and oppression. Donald may not be a big fan of Steve Biko (the brilliant Denzel Washington) but at least he is for progression, wishing for better integration. However, he befriends Steve Biko who is just trying to make lives better for Black South Africans, starting a medical center and community center for them though everything is shot to hell when the police attack it, leaving Donald pleading for an investigation only to have him charged for not naming the witness. 

And then Steve dies in police custody as he was traveling outside of his allowed area so he was arrested and dies, by either hunger strike or suicide by hanging on September 12, 1977 (my dad's twenty-fifth birthday, by reference) but we know they had him killed. Donald then tries to get a book published on Steve's life but then he is censured so the bulk of the film is about him escaping to Lesotho so he can seek alyssum and be free to live and speak out for those who did not have the same rights as he. It is a harrowing, thrilling bit of cinema and both Kline and Penelope Wilton (pre-Downton Abbey days, shining as Donald's loyal wife, Wendy) deliver great performances, portraying inner strength as characters fighting for their lives, escaping with little more than the clothing on their backs. 

Now, while the film is great, though the massacre at the end is both brilliantly shot, devastating and a bit out of place, given the majority of the film is about Donald escaping, it is also mainly about Donald Woods, the white hero of the story and not Biko, who should be the hero of the story but instead, he's killed only about a third of the way through the film. Still, the film tells two stories that need to be told and two names I hadn't heard of before, which is a shame given that my minor in college was history. Please go see this film now. Grade: A-

Side Notes:

-The best scene was when the police, watching the Woods house, hear that he escaped on the radio. That was utterly hilarious.

-The end credits play all the names of the victims who died in police custody after they were arrested without cause or without an official investigation into their deaths.

-Mandela's name is mentioned and this was filmed long before he was released from prison and elected president of the nation, no longer a nation of apartheid. 

-Poor Charlie, getting left behind, like that. But it was the best thing for them to do. Charlie's the family dog, for the record.

-It is only after the Woods children receive pro-Biko t-shirts with some sort of poison on them which causes burns and a rash on the littlest one's face that inspires her to flee the country with Donald. That is low, going after the children like that.