Cry, the Beloved Country Reviews

Billed as the first film to originate from the newly democratic South Africa, this disappointing prestige production is a ploddingly earnest adaptation of Alan Paton's 1948 novel. Richard Harris and James Earl Jones star as stern patriarchs drawn together in the wake of a deadly tragedy involving their sons. Paton's novel was deemed revolutionary at the time of its publication, but times have changed and the material is neither as shocking nor as revelatory as it once was. Indeed, the African landscapes are so beautifully captured by director Darrell James Roodt (SARAFINA!) that this well-intentioned movie sometimes plays like a slick travelogue. We prefer the Korda brothers' 1951 version.