The movie opens with a tense sequence featuring Jenkin and Lee on a crowded street planting what look like bombs, but turn out to be something closer to jack-in-the-boxes –designed to disperse leaflets with a literal bang, sending them flying all over the street (but not harming anyone). That\u2019s enough to get the two incarcerated by a legal system designed to protect apartheid, and when they arrive at Pretoria, they\u2019re surrounded by other political prisoners, including Denis Goldberg (Ian Hart), who was arrested alongside Nelson Mandela. Mandela, of course, is in a different prison miles away, because black and white prisoners are held separately. When Jenkin first arrives, one guard refers to him derisively as \u201cthe white Nelson Mandela,\u201d and the character\u2019s opening narration describes how he and Lee could not stand to participate in an oppressive system.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But otherwise their privilege as white South Africans isn\u2019t a major plot point in the movie. Mandela has been represented onscreen many times, so it\u2019s not like his contributions to the movement have been erased, and Jenkin and Lee aren\u2019t held up as anything like white saviors. Once they get into their daily prison routine, Escape <\/em>drops most of its political elements and more closely resembles The Shawshank Redemption<\/em>, Escape From Alcatraz,<\/em> or Papillon <\/em>(whose source novel supposedly inspired the real-life Jenkin to plan his escape), focusing on the careful planning required to pull off the complex breakout. As Jenkin crafts more than a dozen keys out of nothing but wood from the prison wood shop (and his own photographic memory from staring at guards\u2019 key rings), Annan effectively builds anticipation and dread for what\u2019s to come, even if the true-story disclaimer at the beginning offers reasonable assurance of a happy ending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Annan (who co-wrote the screenplay with L.H. Adams) offers almost no background details on any of the characters aside from their involvement with the ANC. Where they came from isn\u2019t nearly as important as where they are now — and where they are headed. Jenkin and Lee team up with French prisoner Leonard Fontaine (Mark Leonard Winter), who is more concerned about seeing his young son than about any political activities, and Goldberg initially opposes their efforts (fearing it will hurt the movement if they get caught) before eventually offering his support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Escape <\/em>doesn\u2019t really have anything to say about South African politics (the requisite title cards at the end of the movie take care of the entire end of apartheid in a few sentences), but it\u2019s still an engrossing prison-break thriller, with intense moments of danger that hinge on a piece of gum or a paper clip. Radcliffe\u2019s South African accent is a bit shaky at times, but he conveys the righteous fury that drove Jenkin, who promised to break out even before arriving at Pretoria. Lee barely registers as a character, and the efforts at humanizing Fontaine (a fictionalized version of the real third escapee) are superfluous, but Webber and Winter both provide the grit required to sell the inmates\u2019 need to escape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The climactic breakout sequence is expertly staged, even as it makes use of familiar elements from decades of prison-break movies. The real-life story of Jenkin and Lee as activists extends far beyond Pretoria, but viewers of this movie will have to pick up Jenkin\u2019s book (or go online) to hear more. Escape From Pretoria<\/em> is about nothing more than the escape from Pretoria, and it fulfills those modest B-movie ambitions. “Escape from Pretoria” is out Friday in limited release and on VOD.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The inmates who break out of Pretoria Central Prison are imprisoned for their political activities, but the context is mostly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":539,"featured_media":13564,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[340,1381],"tags":[1098,162],"class_list":["post-13563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-movies","tag-movie-review","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/539"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22890,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13563\/revisions\/22890"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/escapefrompretoria_2.jpg\")
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nB<\/h1>\n\n\n\n