To be honest, since it is a rather obscure feature, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since I have a weak spot for Bille August’s work, I thought I might as well give it a try. Indeed, Bille August is one of the very few directors who managed to win 2 Golden Palms at the Cannes Film festival (‘Pelle erobreren’ and ‘Den goda viljan’, in fact, I’m amazed I have still not managed to watch any of them after all these years). Unfortunately, I must say that even though all his following movies (at least, the ones I have seen so far) were usually quite interesting, none of them managed to actually reach that level again. This movie, for example, is a perfect example and it had such a potential to be great as it was dealing with a very interesting subject. Unfortunately, even though Nelson Mandela was one of the most fascinating historical figures that ever lived, this was not a great movie, I’m afraid. Above all, I thought that the story was rather weak and not really fascinating whatsoever. Still, there was a very good performance given by Dennis Haysbert though and the whole thing is still worth a look.
6/10