‘We are going to change South Africa…’
It’s interesting how certain styles of filmmaking fall in and out of favour. The Western dominated cinema for decades before eventually falling by the wayside, same with musicals. Slasher films have died and been reborn more times than the killers and victims that make up that particular subgenre. Right now, in 2026, the historical epic has fallen out of favour. I’m not talking about fictional stuff like Gladiator II or The Odyssey but rather wide-scale, Oscar-bait biopics in the style of Darkest Hour or Lincoln. These films used to dominate award seasons year after year, but it appears that, as a society, we have moved on from them. As a result, Cry Freedom now seems remarkably old-fashioned…
Based on the non-fiction books Biko and Asking for Trouble by South African journalist and activist Donald Woods (played by Kevin Kline here), Cry Freedom is the true story of the death of influential South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko (Denzel Washington) and the subsequent fallout. The fact that this story is told almost exclusively through the eyes of Woods gives the whole thing an unfortunate white saviour feel that further cements Cry Freedom as a cinematic relic.
Reuniting the director (Richard Attenborough) and the writer (John Briley) of Gandhi, Cry Freedom aims for more of the same and mostly achieves its aims. This is certainly a competent film across the board. Kline provides perhaps the best performance of his career, perfectly portraying the conflict between protecting his family, advancing his career and wanting to change the world, while Washington is electric as Biko, so much so, however, that the film never really recovers when he departs halfway through. He was nominated for an Oscar, one of three nominations the film received, but lost out to Sean Connery for The Untouchables (which is probably fair enough). Attenborough knows how to direct scale, here flying all the way out to Zimbabwe for much of the shoot, and the score, a combined effort from George Fenton and Jonas Gwangwa, keeps things moving in the film’s more po-faced moments. The issue is that we’ve seen this kind of thing done many times before and done better.
Cry Freedom is not a bad film by any stretch of the imagination but it’s easy to see why it has been more or less forgotten. A timely reminder that not everything was better in the past.
