Winter is convincingly emotional as Leonard, though the character is more erratically written than those based directly on real people. Webber is equally strong as Lee, and Hart is magnetic as the committed, articulate Goldberg. Radcliffe, no stranger to depicting youthful idealism and fervor, is excellent as the terrified but determined Jenkin. But how can they possibly get out of this seemingly airtight prison? Goldberg thinks their plan is crazy and probably suicidal, but doesn’t go so far as to try to prevent it. Another prisoner, the hotheaded Frenchman Leonard, is more concerned about being reunited with his young son. Jenkin sees escape as another way of making a revolutionary statement, as well as a path to taking more action on the outside. Goldberg commands the respect of his fellow political prisoners, and steers Jenkin and Lee away from inmates who are in for crimes like murder. At the prison, Jenkin and Lee are befriended by legendary anti-apartheid activist Denis Goldberg (another real-life figure, played by Ian Hart), who was sentenced to four life sentences, alongside Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu (both of whom were imprisoned elsewhere). Lee makes his first escape attempt before he’s even left the courthouse. In short order, Jenkin and Lee are both sentenced to Pretoria Prison for White Males (like everything else in South Africa, the prisons are segregated), Jenkin for twelve years, Lee for eight. They decide the best thing they can do for the cause is to detonate small devices that blow hundreds of anti-apartheid leaflets into the air, which gets them dubbed “the Leaflet Bombers.” They are committed to ending apartheid and want to take decisive action to do it. Jenkin and his friend and fellow white ANC member Lee are recent college graduates who are horrified by their country’s activities. We meet Jenkin, who narrates, as a young white member of the mostly black, and banned, African National Congress. (Adelaide, Australia stands in for the location.) Apartheid, institutionalized racial segregation and abuse of non-whites, is the law of the land. We’re in Johannesburg, South Africa, in the ‘70s. Let us further state that, as these things go, ESCAPE FROM PRETORIA is good, a successful prison-break thriller that find thrills in the details. Adams, based on the book by Tim JenkinĮSCAPE FROM PRETORIA, based on the nonfiction book by Tim Jenkin, tells the fact-based story of the title action embarked on by Jenkin (played here by Daniel Radcliffe), Stephen Lee (Daniel Webber), and another compatriot (Alex Moumbaris in reality, fictionalized here as Leonard, played by Mark Leonard Winter).Īs they say in court, let us stipulate for the record that, of all the events to chronicle about resistance to apartheid in South Africa, yes, this is one about white guys. Stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Daniel Webber, Ian Hart, Mark Leonard Winter You hardly have to measure.ESCAPE FROM PRETORIA movie poster | ©2020 Momentum Pictures When you’re making it the lock is right there, you keep filing it until it fits in the holes. ‘They were very big locks so you could see the marks on the inside. ‘A lot of people can’t understand how we got the shape of the key, but if you break it down – most of the dimensions you get from the lock itself, you measure the hole,’ Jenkin explains like it’s nothing. How does one – who is an activist, not a locksmith – even begin to fashion keys with no knowledge of the mechanisms? People said “how can you make keys out of wood, they wouldn’t be strong enough”, but when we broke them up it was quite a mission, we had to use the chisel.’ No longer having any of the original keys, not even as a keepsake of another life, Jenkin says: ‘I have replicas that look like them, but not the real ones. ‘I still have it in my toolbox and still use it as a normal tool. He continued: ‘ the only thing we managed to keep we got rid of the all the keys immediately, but for some reason we kept that…probably as a weapon. Radcliffe and Daniel Webber, as Stephen Lang, measuring their plan in a scene (Picture: Signature Entertainment)
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