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List Price: $14.98Amazon.com's Price: $13.49 You Save: $1.49 (10%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
EAN: 9781404997103
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 1404997105
Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code: 1
Release Date: November 08, 2005
Running Time: 97 minutes
Sales Rank: 31970
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Theatrical Release Date: September 20, 1989
Editorial Review:
Description:
Schoolteacher Ben du Toit (Donald Sutherland) has been insulated all his life from the horrors of apartheid in his native South Africa. Perhaps he really didn't want to know. When the son of his black gardener is arrested and beaten as a result of a schoolboy protest in Soweto, at first he imagines the police must have had their reasons. However, the boy is picked up again, and this time he doesn't come back. Ben promises his servant that he will look into the incident, and discovers that the boy was killed simply to gratify the violent urges of Captain Stolz (Jurgen Prochnow), a 'special branch' policeman. At long last he has gotten a glimpse into the truly arbitrary and violent nature of the system he has so long benefited from, and he hires Ian Mackenzie (Marlon Brando) to prosecute the killer. It is a foregone conclusion that Stolz will not be punished, but Mackenzie rises to new heights of withering sarcasm and irony in the courtroom. This situation turns Ben into a radical firebrand, which alienates him from his white friends and neighbors, as well as members of his family.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Brilliant example of living history
The world now knows how the bigger part of this story played out. Nelson Mandela was freed, the ANC voted into power, and the Apartheid system dismantled. This made the sacrifices portrayed in this wonderful film all the more poignant. Donald Sutherland gave a great performance as the central hero, and the wonderful Marlon Brando, a whimsical, but impressive representation of the human rights lawyer, jaded by his past jousting with blind justice, but incapable of turning his back on the evils ... Read More
Rating:  - and we're lost out here in the stars, little stars, big stars ...
almost an artifact today, as this pseudo costa-gavras take on south africas apartheid system is a bit heavy handed, but the power of donald sutherlands performance as a naive afrikaaners school teacher who awakens to the horrors of his comfortable sheltered life when a loyal family retainer is abducted and murdered by the police cannot be denied. while the character is a bit too naive to be credible, the impact of how he is betrayed by his friends and his own family (save for his young son, who ... Read More
Rating:  - Welcome to South Africa, Benjamin Du Toit.
Susan Surandon's cynical remark to Donald Sutherland, indicating that although he's lived all his life in South Africa, he was oblivoius to the brutality surrounding his normal family life. Schoolteacher Meneer Du Toit literally loses everything in his struggle to bring justice to those responsible for the deaths of his gardener and his gardener's son. Feeling guilty after taking his gardener's son's death a little too lightly, he is immediately swept up in the chaotic world of corruption and bloody ... Read More
Rating: - Outstanding, powerful and moving
Ben du Toit is a schoolteacher who always has considered himself a man of caring and justice, at least on the individual level. When his gardener's son is brutally beaten up by the police at a demonstration by black school children, he gradually begins to realize his society is built on a pillar of injustice and exploitation.
This incredibly powerful film deals intelligently with the devastatingly brutal tensions surrounding the explosive issues within assumed class tiers and the racially incongruous ... Read More
Rating: - Powerful and Moving
This film is beautiful and disturbing. I watched this originally as a junior in high school, 15 years ago; it's message has never left me. I give it extremely high accolades.
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