Movie-In My Country

OK...two movies...both about post apartheid South Africa and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that was to heal the past...both release in 2004. If I was to have these two films set before me, and I was told without watching them to pick which one I thought would be the best, I would have picked In My Country. It has Samuel L Jackson as a Washington Post reporter covering the commission, and Juliet Binoche covering it also as a native Afrikaans for PBS. Red Dust stars Hilary Swank.

Boy, that would have been such a wrong pick!

Earlier I reviewed Red Dust and gave it a great review. It was amazingly good. In My Country...was really not. It went as wrong as it could in about as many areas as it could. One thing I liked about Red Dust is that it did not do the typical love story, it refrained from that Hollywood crapola. In My country did not refrain, and it hurt the movie badly. It took away from the essential story, and was a huge distraction, as the two characters are all lovey dovey as horrible stories of atrocities are being told. Both the characters are married, but no one seems to care that infidelity is happening. And it truly does not seem believable even.

But that is not even half the problem. Neither character seems believable. The whole set up seems pretty badly put together, and the film never grabs hold of me emotionally, even those this is an emotional subject.

Even the anguish seems acted. When you feel like you are watching acting, it means something is missing in the film.

So...if you want to see a film about post-apartheid South Africa and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission....really, see Red Dust. It may not sound like the better movie, just by looking at it, but it by far the superior film. Skip this one. It is eminently skipable.