Exberliner February 2014: Mandela, 47 Ronin

Arriving less than two months after Nelson Mandela’s death, Mancunian director Justin Chadwick’s thorough biopic is a balanced and fitting eulogy to the revolutionary ANC leader.

Based on Madiba’s autobiography and with a towering Idris Elba at its core, Chadwick’s meaty 141 minute film takes us from a young Mandela’s tribal initiation to his eventual inauguration as president of a new South Africa. The film focuses on both reluctance and resistance. A cocky young barrister at first, it takes a cracked down peaceful protest to get him involved and later, the Soweto massacre for him to take arms. He meets his wife Winnie (A fiery Noamie Harris) along the way and during his incarceration on Robben Island it’s she who takes on the struggle. He’s released 27 years later an old man but Winnie’s mentality remains on the front line. They barely recognise each other.

Such dramatic timing should set the cash registers ringing but this should prove an interesting document for other reasons. Since passing, voices have sounded from all camps as to how Mandela’s legacy should be defined and Chadwick’s film might be the most balanced offering we can hope to see. Elba’s Mandela builds bombs and cheats on his wife; he’s part saint, part sinner, but most remarkably of all, a human being like us.

Keanu Reeves takes a swipe at a comeback with this huge retelling of an 18^th century Japanese tale; Kurasawa it most certainly ain’t but as big scale actioners go it’s an awfully pretty one. That said, the thing cost a fortune to make and early reports suggest that gamble might prove a poor one. Celebrating such misfortune can prove a cruddy sort of exercise but then who knows, a backlash might just bring us closer to the day when Keanu puts down the Katana and picks up the surfboard once again.