It shows what can go wrong when a good-intentioned filmmaker mixes historical tragedy with Hollywood banality.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 9, 2005

There is great material here and ample food for thought, but the presentation is lacking.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 23, 2005

Ostensibly about the aftermath of apartheid, but the pain of a people serves only as a backdrop for the most contrived of love stories.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 22, 2005

Is it a docudrama about South Africa's post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings? Or is it love story? The problem with In My Country is that it tries to be both.

| Original Score: C- | Apr 14, 2005

Black, white and clunky.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 11, 2005

Need[s] to be seen, as essential history and as demonstration of a form of social reckoning where compassion triumphs over passion, and the olive branch over the gun.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 8, 2005

An academic dis-cussion punctuated by shots of magnificent countryside harboring unspeakable grief.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 2, 2005

A series of brief, appallingly simplistic vignettes that, rather than conveying the depth and complexity of South Africa's history and culture, distill it to the point of distortion.

| Apr 1, 2005

Watching it is like drinking a glass of Alka-Seltzer before the tablet is dissolved. Afterward, you're glad you drank it -- it wasn't that hard to swallow -- but you would've preferred a nice chardonnay.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 1, 2005

There is something not quite right about the film itself.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 1, 2005

What do you say about a dramatically woeful movie whose heart and politics are in the right place? Well, you sigh as you turn your thumb downward.

| Mar 31, 2005

A stirring, large-souled movie about an event that was both an exposure of horror and a celebration of forgiveness.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 31, 2005

The film, an international co-production about the aftermath of South African apartheid, has won peace awards and comes with a thumbs up from Nelson Mandela himself, none of which make its contrivances easier to swallow.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 18, 2005

While applauding Boorman's efforts, it's hard to applaud his movie.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 18, 2005

Noble intentions, some fantastic photography some good performances but I have to give it thumbs down because of all the melodrama.

Full Review | Mar 14, 2005

See In My Country anyway, because it's doubtful we'll get another movie too soon that raises the issue of vengeance versus forgiveness -- and endorses the latter in the name of a nation's spiritual well-being.

Full Review | Mar 11, 2005

The picture hums with a falsely optimistic Kumbaya vibe, such that its mildness is almost an affront.

| Mar 11, 2005

The film is thoughtful entertainment, not medicine.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 11, 2005

Because Ann Peacock's pedestrian script couldn't make any movie come to life, our interest in these two characters is nil.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 10, 2005

Unfortunately more didactic than dramatic, and although surprises emerge right up to the end, there's precious little suspense, mystery or uncertainty.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 10, 2005