Reviews

Goodbye Bafana is a touching, thought-provoking movie. Extremely well acted, I loved Joseph Fiennes (James Gregory) and Dennis Haysbert (Nelson Mandela) in their roles, and Diane Kruger (Gloria Gregory) did well, too. The movie has the slow, a bit mysterious charm in it, as August's movies usually do. The color scheme was like African dust, diluted, sometimes almost raw in the scorching sun. Music supported various scenes very well, without being too prominent.

The movie starts when a young prison warden James Gregory arrives to Robben Island 1968 and is addressed to keep an eye on Nelson Mandela, who is being imprisoned there for his political views. Gregory gets this mission, because he speaks xhosa, the local language, and therefore is able to read (and censor) the correspondence in and out of the prison, as well as understand what the prisoners talk to each other.

James Gregory is a faithful supporter of apartheid. He believes these black men are behind bars for a good reason and he supports the government politics. After he and his family witness a raid in a busy street, where black people are randomly harassed, Gregory has to answer the questions of his children - and his explanations sounded shallow even in his own ears. Very slowly, over the years, he became to see through the apartheid and change his views.

Dennis Haysbert was chosen to the role of Mandela, because of his quiet, distinctive charm and mental power. He did a great job. Joseph Fiennes was chosen because Bille August wanted an actor, who was tough and yet sensitive, someone who would be able to portray the change in the character in a period of almost thirty years. It was a very challenging role but Joe did a marvelous job.

There has been a lot of talk about his South African accent, and mostly it has been praised. I followed it very closely, and I think Joe did fine in that area, too. In some scenes the British accent is more or less audible, but most of the time he does a wonderful job.

Diane Kruger did a good job as James's wife, a mother of two, who was also raising their kids to support the apartheid. She opposed her husband being a warden for Nelson Mandela, because she could see that the close contact with the inmate made cracks to James's shield and his racistic opinions were vanishing rapidly. She tried to hold onto the apartheid views for much longer than her husband.

The movie ends to a year 1990, when Nelson Mandela is released from prison after being incarcerated for 27 years. The era of the new South Africa was to begin.

I must start by saying that I am not very well informed about the Beowulf legend, I have never studied it or read books about it, so any possible historical inaccuracies did not bother me one bit. I loved the movie and watched it twice in a row.

"I hear the Danes sleep with slaughter", and so are the warriors of Beowulf (Butler) sent to their help. There is a gigantic troll, Grendel (Sigurdsson), pestering the village of king Hrothgar (Skarsgård). The village lives in fear, able strong men are killed. Witch (Polley) who lives outside the village seems to have knowledge of the trolls whereabouts, but she has her reasons not to share her information. Are the heroic Norsemen able to help the villagers... and why are they saved, while the Danes die? It is a movie about legendary heroes, of revenge and of understanding even the most feared enemy. It is visually stunning - the magical scenery of Iceland is a true feast to the eyes! The scenery is so barren, unforgiving, deserted, yet full of life and beauty... it must be reflected in the spirits of the people living there.

Is Grendel more than a man? Is there a real thing called troll, or has a man just achieved a status larger than life? Exactly the same questions are raised about Beowulf, as well, also by the man himself. Is a hero anything more than a man, after all? When their stay in the village grows longer, Beowulf comes to notice that some things have been hidden from him. The human side, or should I say humane side, of Beowulf, surfaces after this and watch Butler do it. He is magnificent.

Gerard Butler does a stunning role here. He lives, breathes and feels his Beowulf character ---- and speaks with the thickest Scottish accent you can ever imagine. He is not even trying to hide it, which is wonderful. I think this is his most convincing role after The Phantom (note: I haven't seen Dear Frankie yet) and if this doesn't launch him to huge A-list stardom, I don't know what will. He is handsome, of course he is, but that is by no means underlined in the movie. Gerry just IS Beowulf. I'm very happy the hunky-factor was not overdone; there will be a lot of that in 300 Spartans, I think.

Stellan Skarsgård was good as Hrothgar. King Hrothgar is a man of great power, but he is lost in drunken days and fear. Good for his people that he has such a strong queen by his side to take a lead when needed. Sarah Polley is very convincing as the witch, she is very expressive. I was glad to see Tony Curran on the screen again and he had a substantial, interesting role. The rest of the cast did also very well.

The movie is a tribute to the Islandic Horse as well. Despite their small size, these small equines are indeed horses, not ponies. They are extremely tenacious and were well able to carry a warrior with his gear.

Costumes and weapons are well made, the swords were heavy and waved with both hands which is quite accurate. Music is very beautiful and mystical, cinematography uses light, colors and silhouettes very effectively. The atmosphere in the movie was magical, kind of reminded me of 13th Warrior.

Any disappointments? Not really, nothing. I was a bit bothered by the Norsemen wearing their iron shirts and/or body armory in the ship when sailing. Norsemen did not do this if there was not an imminent danger. They feared and respected water, and an armor which weighs dozens of kilos, would pull a strongest of the warriors to the abyss in case the ship capsized in a storm or was sunk by the enemy.

I have read critique about the strong, 20th century swearing in the movie as well, but it didn't bother me. Somebody asked with a great deal of irony if the f-word was used in 500 A.D. Well we won't know that, will we, but a sure thing is that the Norsemen did swear. Again, they feared and respected gods and evil spirits so their name is seldom used in swearing. It would be too dangerous, it was believed to call the one whose name was mentioned. On the other hand, all kinds of natural phenomena, family life and death, sex above all, was widely discussed and also used in strong language (so tells us f.ex a Finnish author, Kaari Utrio, who does extremely thorough historical investigation for her novels).

Kirikou and The Sorceress is a story of a very small but extremely brave boy, Kirikou, born in a little village somewhere in Africa. Kirikou can walk and talk already when he is born and he starts to set things right in his village. He is very determined and always finds a solution, whatever the problem is. There is an evil sorceress, Karaba, who is tormenting Kirikou's village. She has to be bribed and soothed constantly, she has dried the well and she threatened she will eat all the men from the village... and there are not many of them left. Brave warriors have vanished, possibly have been devoured by the witch, when they tried to fight him. Little Kirikou decides it is not wise to fight Karaba, but to negotiate with her. One day Kirikou walks to the hut of the sorceress...

Extremely beautiful, thrilling story, told in brilliant tones of color and folklore. Very down-to-earth and descriptive by the ways of African life: women naked above the waist, carrying water from long distances, making food, the village elders passing on the stories to the younger ones. My seven year old son, who is used to see the usual smoothed-out, big money animations, was hesitating at first when I showed him the movie. He said the cover looked "funny" and different, and it does. When the movie started, he couldn't stop watching it, he was totally captivated by the story and I enjoyed it very much as well. Excellent story, great animation, rich colors, folklore mixed with everyday life and superstition, great original music by Youssou N'Dour. Highly recommendable. Choose this over any talking funny animals-video.

For starters, the title is misleading. Nine Deaths of a Ninja? Fat chance. I hope the ninja would have used up his nine lives early on and get this movie done with. Nine deaths? Pfffft.

Okay, the plot, if there is one. A German (of course a German, and a Nazi, swastika flag and all) terrorist and his amazing bunch of henchmen and -women kidnap a bus load of tourists. They take them to a remote place in jungle and demand the release of Rahji Mohammed, some kind of fellow terrorist. The best special team, consisting of Shô Kosugi, Brent Huff who looks like he's escaped from a toothpaste ad and a gorgeous but oh-so-clever blonde Emilia Crow, is sent to take care of the problem.

The actor who plays Rahji Mohammed, Sonny Erang, sure has a challenging role to play. No one, not even the severely retarded mental patients I have seen in hospitals, laugh menacingly all the time. Rahji had two or three lines in the whole movie, the rest of the time he just laughs. Oh and he must be a really nasty guy: he takes some balloons away from children and squeezes the balloons until they pop. Terrifying. The rest of the terrorists show their bad to the core nature by stealing medication from a girl with severe heart condition.

The rest of the actors are just as wooden as Sonny Erang. Brent Huff is expressive as a brick (and I always thought Ben Affleck is wooden!) and Shô Kosugi is downright awful. The same you can say about every single soul in this pathetic excuse of a martial arts movie. Oh wait! There is someone who was relaxed and expressive: the little monkey. He was well cast.

The fight scenes are so stupid they are laughable. The bad guys stand in line and neatly wait their turn as they are being slaughtered. I wonder why this movie has been cut and given high PG, there is nothing to see here, not so gory violence and no sex, excluding a pair of titties in one scene.

Saving the hostages is forgotten for a long time while the brave men of the rescue team visit a floating whorehouse (Madame Whoopee's Floating House of Fun or something like that) where the assassin-trained whores try to kill our hero's, but one of the assassins loses her bikini top and they have to abort the mission...

The "hejsan så ska vi dansa" amazon women, lead by the queen bitch Honey Hump (!!) are maybe the most laughable element of this movie. And the Rahji's explosives in the mouth scene... how the hell can it leave the head untouched but come out of his butt???! Beats the hell out of me. But what can you expect of a movie where the best actor is a monkey in diapers.