Lambasted by almost all critics for its sentimentality, and for throwing in a love affair between Samuel Jackson and Juliette Binoche, John Boorman's In My Country is a drama about the South African Truth and Reconciliation Hearings, a unique legal process where accusers (mostly black) confront their torturers/jailors (black and white), and truth is traded for amnesty, if the defendant can prove he was only following orders.
It's not as critical as it might be about the proceedings (pretty much takes it for granted that this is an unprecedented thing that will actually work, and doesn't really look deeply into why it could), and there was an HBO documentary (Long Night's Journey Into Day) that covered these cases in more detail, but it does show things that go beyond documentary--the mindset of one of the officers responsible for the tortures, for one, memorably portrayed by Brendan Gleeson; Jackson's character, when confronted with this monster, barely holds his own, and these moments of confrontation, sometimes just silent, are perhaps the finest in Jackson's career to date.
Flawed, very, but as mentioned, there are things in it, and I do like Jackson and Binoche together--I think they have a nicely relaxed chemistry.
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