There was a great film to be made about Steve Biko. Sadly this wasn't it. Denzel Washington - never the most flexible of actors - is totally unable to convey the great charisma that Biko had. Attenborough's big crowd scenes are laughable. The Soweto massacre wasn't like this, three neat lines of children ( some doing cartwheels!) marching happily into the guns of the soldiers. With Biko dead the film rapidly descends into farce. If the struggle against Apartheid was anything it was a black people's struggle yet somehow we are all supposed to be gripped by the escape of a white man and his family. I'm sure Donald Woods was a decent man and he would be the first to say that Biko was important while he wasn't. Penelope Wilton's accent is pure Hampshire and she seems completely unaware that she is in South Africa at all. at all. The Wood's family dog gets more lines than the black maid. As the family make their escape one the women I saw the film with - incidentally one of only about a dozen black people in a large, full cinema - whispered "This is like the sound of music." She had a point.

Overall this is a film by a well-intentioned if somewhat inept white liberal about a radical black people's struggle. And really South Africa needs well-intentioned white liberals like it needs a hole in the head.

Is the sentiment of this review positive or negative?
OPT: [I] negative; [II] positive;
[I]