![]() “Escape From Pretoria” starts in 1975 with an appropriately mild bang: Jenkin and Lee are caught by Cape Town police as they distribute anti-apartheid literature with homemade explosives that function like makeshift confetti cannons, only they’re spreading propagandistic literature, not confetti. Life in Pretoria doesn’t otherwise seem unbearable enough to warrant so much dramatic build-up, especially if you’ve seen other prison break movies. Adams, succeeds as a straight-up genre movie but falters whenever its characters explain that their anti-apartheid politics - and some negligibly dramatized domestic drama involving Goldberg’s young son - are the main reasons why they need to bust out of prison. This film from director Francis Annan, who co-adapted Jenkin’s memoir “Inside Out: Escape From Pretoria Prison” with L.H. Watch Video: 'Miracle Workers: Dark Ages' Teaser: Daniel Radcliffe and Steve Buscemi Go Medieval Jenkin and Lee’s politics never make sense beyond a couple of stiff and skimpy political rants and some light, exploitation-friendly scenes where prison guards yell at one (1) black prison employee and also infrequently scream at Jenkin and Lee for being “traitors to your race.” Still, it’s hard to care about what happens to Jenkin and co-conspirators Stephen Lee (Daniel Webber, “The Dirt”) and Denis Goldberg (Ian Hart), even if you do know how their story will end, and even though “Escape from Pretoria” does feature some well-paced and visually dynamic pre-breakout prep scenes.Īlmost everything that’s enjoyable about “Escape From Pretoria” is a variation on stuff you’ve probably seen in superior prison movies, though Radcliffe’s haunted performance is exceptionally compelling. That’s not really a spoiler, since “Escape From Pretoria” is based on a real-life prison break that led to a decades-long international manhunt. Now if only they’d included a line or two to explain why the climactic event seems to occur in the middle of the day, with street life in full bloom, while Pretoria Central Prison behaves like it’s 3 a.m.The slightly political prison thriller “Escape From Pretoria” works best when onscreen action is focused on Daniel Radcliffe, playing real-life South African political prisoner Tim Jenkin, as he leads a crack team of white prisoners in breaking out of Pretoria Maximum Security Prison. Adams invent clever ways to resolve them. ![]() Still, for a viewer who accepts that getting caught remains a possibility, Annan does find the usual ways to generate suspense - and once or twice, he and co-screenwriter L.H. That guard isn’t used for comic effect, really, so it’s hard to say why the pic makes him so unthreatening. Then there’s that Keystone Kop who seems to be the only lawman in the jail after lockup: He wheezes and waddles on his rounds, in no hurry to investigate noises he surely hears if he sees a clue that something’s amiss on the cell block, you can be fairly sure he’ll ignore it so he can get back to his chair and his opera records. If you can’t get to the button, you could probably just pry the chain off its gear. Security cameras would have made it impossible, for instance the highest-tech thing in the jail seems to be the big button that controls a barred door via a motor and bicycle chain. Viewers who find this quaintly low-tech will have many opportunities in the film’s second half to observe how this breakout could never have happened today. (The film mostly eliminates what must have been an agonizingly long trial-and-error phase.) Tim, who has a job in the wood shop, takes every opportunity to scrutinize the shape of guards’ cell keys, then carves little replicas to try on his own cell. (In real life, it seems Goldberg was willing to join the attempt, only backing out after practicalities interfered.) From day one, Tim is fixated on plans to escape, but Goldberg argues vehemently against it: They’re prisoners of conscience, he argues, who must play that role stoically and anyway, getting out is impossible. ![]() ![]() ![]() This is Denis Goldberg (Ian Hart), who’s serving an impossibly long term for armed support of Nelson Mandela. On the inside, the film quickly settles into a familiar mode: An older prisoner takes the men under his wing, warning them of which inmates to avoid and explaining how eager guards are to shoot if they’re given a reason. ![]()
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