The real-life story of anti-apartheid activist Tim Jenkin makes for a tough, muscular drama
The rather amazing true story of the white ANC activist Tim Jenkin and his audacious escape from Pretoria
prison in apartheid-era
South Africa is told in this capable and well-carpentered movie from
British film-maker Francis Annan, adapted from Jenkin’s own book. The film has something pleasingly traditional about it, with tense nailbiting moments, slab-faced guards, and touches of The Great Escape and Papillon.
With long hair and straggly beard, Daniel Radcliffe plays Jenkin and Daniel Webber plays his fellow ANC activist Stephen Lee, imprisoned in 1978 for their “leaflet bombs” – firecracker-type devices left in the street which send blizzards of leaflets flying. Their prison is tough, but as they are white, it is not as tough it might have been. Inside, Jenkin and Lee meet another political prisoner and future escaper: Frenchman Leonard Fontaine (a slightly hammy turn from Mark Leonard Winter). He is evidently based on the Egyptian-born French national, Alex Moumbaris, with whom the men actually broke out, although it isn’t clear why his character has been fictionalised and the others not.