Escape from Pretoria **** (2020, Daniel Radcliffe, Daniel Webber, Ian Hart, Nathan Page) – Movie Review 

Co-writer/ director Francis Annan’s real-life thriller Escape from Pretoria is a good old-fashioned prison escape story, with a commendably intense and non-starry performance by Daniel Radcliffe as a Seventies jailed ANC activist who makes a huge bunch of keys to effect a daring and ultra-risky escape from Pretoria Prison with a couple of buddies (Daniel Webber, Nathan Page).

There is a lot of suspense and tension along the way to the happy ending promised by the title. The four stars are all excellent, and the actors playing the two main prison warders – the fat guy (Stephen Hunter) and the nasty guy (Mark Leonard Winter) – deserve best supporting actors nominations.

There is a good, tidy script by Francis Annan and L H Adams, even with a spot of humour, and it is all packed in and pulled together in a neat, fast-moving hour and three quarters.

Escape from Pretoria is compelling and compact with never a dull moment, and it is surprisingly non-nasty for a jail film, though there is some violence, language and disturbing material.

Set in South Africa’s tumultuous apartheid days, it has its little political and social agenda too, well big one actually, but it keep its messages coming out from under the characters and story.

The story is the thing, and it is a pleasure to sit back and enjoy it, and find out how the heck these three men can possibly have got away.

Ian Hart has a good role as older long-term prisoner Denis Goldberg.

Radcliffe plays escapee Tim Jenkin, whose book Inside Out: Escape from Pretoria Prison inspired the film. Jenkin has a cameo in the film as a prisoner.

Set in South Africa, it was filmed in Adelaide, South Australia.

Escape from Pretoria is out in cinemas from Friday 6 March 2020.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Movie Review 

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