User Reviews

I saw this film at the 2005 Palm Springs International Film Festival. I went in with the assumption that if it stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Hilary Swank it had to be at least decent. Well, after a kind of a slow start, I was far from disappointed. In fact, I was quite pleased with the final product.

I must admit the Afrikaaner and Xhosa(?) accented English of some of the actors were kind of hard to understand but like seeing "Waking Ned Devine", "Trainspotting" or any other film with heavy-accented actors I adjusted after about 15 minutes. And I was trying to figure out why Hilary Swank was supposed to be South African and sounded like she was trying to put on an accent but sounded very American... as if she was making a weak attempt at putting on the accent. But later in the film as more is revealed about her character and how she moved to the US as a teen you begin to understand how she might have lost some or most of her accent. So it began to make sense that only certain words might have a Afrikaaner lilt to them.

I know it's a little weak for one to use film as education but one of the great things about this film is that it was interesting to see a dramatization of a Truth and Reconciliation trial. I'd heard about the T and R process in South Africa after the fall of apartheid but I didn't really know how it worked.

The final verdict is that although some of the scenes felt a little contrived, this was overall a very strong film. The closing sequence where the "truth" comes out was the strong finish every film hopes for. A definite must see for anyone who cares about what happens outside their borders.

Sarah Barcant(Hilary Swank)is a beautiful human rights lawyer in New York that returns to her childhood village in South Africa. She is returning to work on the case of Alex Mpondo(Chiwetel Ejoiofor), now a member of South African Parliment, who is bringing charges against policeman Henricks(Jamie Bartlett), who beat and tortured him in 1986, because of his political activism. Alex's best friend was arrested at the same time and suffered the same injustices, but was never seen again. Police Captain Muller(Ian Roberts)has a lot to do with what happened, but wants to be left out of the proceedings. An emotional driven story about South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commisson, that traveled the country in 2000, conducting hearings to grant amnesty for apartheid atrocities. Gripping and provocative.

"Sarafina!"

"Bopha!"

"Cry Freedom"

"A Dry White Season"

"Mandela and de Klerk"

All Apartheid based movies I watched that took place in South Africa during Apartheid. "Red Dust" is the first post-Apartheid movie I've watched, and it was just as difficult to watch as the others. Movies, such as the aforementioned, I can only watch every so often because I need time afterwards to decompress, cool down, and sort out my feelings. There's always a lot of anger, but with that anger are so many other emotions that I can't properly express how I'm feeling after watching a movie such as "Red Dust."

Apparently, after Apartheid was abolished as a system, South Africa created a Truth and Reconciliation Commission by which the white Boers could truthfully confess their crimes and get amnesty (i.e. avoid punishment for their crimes). This was done as a means for the country to move forward pass their sordid history. The amnesty claims could be refuted by witnesses or victims of the claimant's crime.

Dirk Hendricks (Jamie Bartlett) wanted amnesty, so he decided to come forward about the torture of Alex Mpondo (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Alex had no intention of confronting Hendricks or even opposing his claim except that he wanted the whereabouts of his friend Steve Sizela (Loyiso Gxwala) to be made public. Alex and Steve were tortured together, and Steve was never seen again. Whether or not Hendricks was granted amnesty, Alex wanted it to be known what happened to Steve Sizela.

Representing Alex was Sarah Barcant (Hilary Swank), a South African now living in New York. She was a lawyer who only came back at the behest of an old friend named Ben Hoffman (Marius Weyers). She and her mother were victimized by the racist Apartheid system so she fled South Africa years ago and had no intentions of ever returning.

Predictably, the movie was tense and emotional. There's just no way to lightly deal with terrible tragedies such as torture and murder, nor should it be dealt with lightly. I'd never heard about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and after watching this movie I'm not sure how I feel about it.

In the end Hendricks implicated a man named Piet Muller (Ian Roberts) as the murderer of Steve Sizela. When Piet was brought to trial for that murder, he pled not guilty while also filing for amnesty, which would allow the crime to go unpunished. The Black South Africans in the galley erupted in anger at the amnesty claim as any victim would.

I'm sharing the events of that scene as a preface for what happened a little later. After this news Sarah paid a visit to her old friend Ben to say goodbye. Ben intimated that Mullar needed amnesty to which Sarah replied, "So he can get off the hook like Hendricks?"

Ben then asked, " How will punishing Hendricks bring Sizela back?"

And that's when I wanted to vomit.

It is such lame pea-brained logic. By that logic, no one should be punished for any crime they commit because how can punishing a criminal restore a life, restore property, or remove the physical or psychological harm done to a person? Tell me. If a person rapes, tortures, or kills, how would punishing him ever erase the rape, erase the torture, or bring the killed person back to life? Of course, it can't, yet we punish wrongdoers anyway out of a sense of justice. In other words, you will not be allowed to harm others and simply say I'm sorry as a means of atonement. You will not be allowed to wrong others and say, "It's water under the bridge." There has to be punishment for the victims to feel any semblance of peace and closure. There has to be punishment to prevent people from taking matters into their own hands. So, the decrepit argument of "it won't bring them back" rings hollow to me.

Does that mean that I'm not for amnesty based upon the Truth and Reconciliation Commission? It's not my cause, it's not my fight, it's not my country. It is a way forward in which the bad actors have to publicly state to the world what they did. If the South Africans want that for their healing process, who am I to judge?