Synopsis
After the end of Apartheid, Archbishop Desmond Tutu meets with a brutal murderer seeking redemption.
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Cast
- Forest WhitakerDesmond Tutu
- Eric BanaPiet Blomfeld
- Jeff GumFrancois Schmidt
- Debbie ShermanLinda Coetzee
- Terry NortonLavinia
- Dominika JablonskaForensic Clerk
- Rob GoughHoward Varney
- Morné VisserHansi Coetzee
- Thandi MakhubeleMrs. Morobe
- Osbert SolomonsMogomat
Recommendations
- 83
Christian Science Monitor
The most powerful scene in the movie, and the one that most fully encompasses its meaning, belongs to Mrs. Morobe (the marvelous Thandi Makhubele). - 63
Slant Magazine
Roland Joffé's film is largely successful in its attempt to grapple with the terrible truths of apartheid and its legacy. - 50
Los Angeles Times
Tutu and Blomfeld's confrontations have vigor and commitment but don't build to the requisite catharsis. - 50
The New York Times
When the movie can stay out of its own way, it delivers some powerful scenes, including one in which Blomfeld faces down a would-be assassin (Nandiphile Mbeshu, superb) in a prison shower room. But beyond that, the movie offers conventional gratifications and no surprises. - 50
The Hollywood Reporter
Featuring excellent performances by Forest Whitaker as Tutu and Eric Bana as an imprisoned racist government death-squad assassin seeking clemency, The Forgiven tackles its important political and social issues in an overly talky fashion. - 50
Screen Daily
The Forgiven is a decidedly uneven piece of work. - 40
Variety
It’s Eric Bana, cast as a fictionalized composite of various white-supremacist apartheid criminals, who comes closest to electrifying proceedings in what’s at heart a one-room two-hander, unconvincingly padded and populated for the big screen. - 30
Village Voice
Unfortunately, this movie has so many damn things percolating all through it that it ultimately seems unfocused and painfully earnest.
