Synopsis
A lawyer takes on a case of a prison guard in South Africa who is traumatized by the executions he's witnessed.
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Cast
- Steve CooganJohn Weber
- Andrea RiseboroughKathleen Marais
- Garion DowdsLeon Labuschagne
- Marcel Van HeerdenJustice J. P. van Zyl
- Deon LotzWarrant Officer Rautenbach
- Eduan van JaarsveldtPedrie Wierda
- Lauren SteynLiesl Weber
- Robert HobbsPierre De Villiers
- Inge BeckmannJohn's Sister
- Brett WilliamsTennis partner
Recommendations
- 63
Movie Nation
I found the picture moving in spite of its seeming unwillingness to wholly grapple with race and Coogan’s unwillingness to master the Afrikaner accent. He’s a gifted mimic, and Riseborough manages it. What gives? But what it does wrestle with is profound, and profoundly disturbing. - 50
The Hollywood Reporter
This well-intentioned if somewhat heavy-handed historical affair is anchored by Coogan’s solid lead turn, with support from Andrea Riseborough as a hard-hitting state prosecutor and promising newcomer Garion Dowds as an executioner who could wind up facing the gallows. - 50
Variety
Dowds’ harrowed, haunted performance as a boy overwhelmed not just by the wolves to which he has been thrown, but the ones he claims have unconsciously emerged within him, gives the film its anxious emotional center. - 40
The Guardian
Shepherds and Butchers doesn’t know which it is: the twisty legal drama that’s going to herd us through the issue or the ferocious expose, laying out the quotidian grimness of systemic death. It’s better at the latter. Even though much of the action is penned in the courtroom, the horror – and the interest – are played out in the past. - 40
Screen Daily
What stands out in relief from the film’s flat characters and pedestrian storytelling is its dramatic core: the killing machine that death row had become in South Africa by the end of the 1980s, with 164 executions taking place in Pretoria Central Prison in the year in which Shepherds And Butchers is set, 1987.
