Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on May 2014

Here we have a film, an adaptation of Nelson Mandela’s 1994 bestselling autobiography, that demands to be watched, especially by younger people who may be wondering what all the fuss was about when Mandela died at 95 last December (don’t tell them it’s a history lesson). The earlier scenes are fascinating, when he was a young, womanizing firebrand battling apartheid. Remember: He wasn’t jailed for his speeches, but for his bombs. Idris Elba is absolutely brilliant in the title role, and Naomie Harris, though underused, matches him as Mandela’s troubling, more radical (and egotistic) wife Winnie. Alas, nobility,especially in its purest form, rarely makes for riveting storytelling, at least cinematically. And this ends up a straightforward, dutiful, rather uninspired film on an inspirational subject. Ultimately, it falls victim to its own stubborn comprehensiveness. This man’s life journey was so amazing, his achievements so gigantic, and his capacity for forgiveness so remarkable, that even at two hours and twenty minutes, it feels bloated and has to fast forward a lot, playing sometimes like a dramatization of Mandela’s Wikipedia entry. Well worth seeing, if solely for Elba’s performance, but would have made a better mini-series. (141 min)