Bille August, director of Smilla's Feeling for Snow and A Song for Martin, takes on the story of James Gregory, one of Nelson Mandela's guards during the living legend's imprisonment. Based on the late Gregory's memoirs, the film is partly a primer on apartheid and partly an old-fashioned prison drama, but fundamentally it's a bit of a cheek.
There was a noble intention here - to show how the attitudes of some white South Africans changed over time - but the way the script contrives, often painfully, to make the audience warm to Gregory (Joseph Fiennes) tips the enterprise over into bad taste.
As we watch Gregory and his wife (Diane Kruger) make the journey from being supporters of the system to respecting Mandela (Dennis Haysbert), we are encouraged to feel sympathy for the warder as if it was him, rather than the ANC leader, who was sacrificing all for a cause. But an anonymous phone call and a bar-room taunt - a taste of the treatment the other guards dole out to Gregory after he shows kindness to Mandela - don't equate to spending half a lifetime in jail.
In his autobiography, Mandela paid tribute to Gregory's soothing presence and "essential humanity".
That would have been enough for most mortals - but not for Gregory, or the film-makers who read his book and saw the potential for a heart-warming movie. Two-plus hours of this shameless manipulation of the emotions is more likely to give you heartburn.
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