Cinema-Scene.com > Volume 6 > Number 30 |
Director: Starring: Release: 6 Aug. 04
|
Stander BY: DAVID PERRY
Bronwen Hughes, the woman who had a nice idea for the ending
of Forces of Nature and then turned everything else in the film into a
disaster, now takes aim at the social standings in South Africa circa 1976
with her true-crime film Stander. Telling of the Johannesburg detective who
decided to start robbing banks because he thought he knew how to get away
with it, the film turns from its early accusations of police brutality into
a criminal adulation film. The connective wire, of course, is tenuous at
best (saying that the brutality made Andre Stander into a crook fails to
consider the thousands of other South African police in charge of violently
ending protests in the black slums), and Hughes’ attempts to play the
political reporter mostly come across as disingenuous (a final mention of
Nelson Mandela is especially sickening). |
|
©2004, David Perry, Cinema-Scene.com, 23 July 2004 |