MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Bopha!’: Familiar Setting, Familiar Story

More than any of the world’s trouble spots, filmmakers are drawn to South Africa. Because the racial oppression has been so obvious and the oppressors so unrepentant, apartheid has a built-in emotional impact that’s had filmmakers practically lining up to take their shot at portraying its agonies on screen.

“Bopha!” (citywide) is the latest film to be set in that caldron and the fact that it is the latest robs it of a lot of its force. Despite strong and honorable performances from stars Danny Glover and Alfre Woodard and a creditable first directing job by Morgan Freeman, this film is more predictable than powerful.

Earnest and nonexploitative though it is, “Bopha!” covers ground that has just about been tilled to death. After “A Dry White Season,” “A World Apart,” “Seraphina!” (which also had African protagonists) and even “The Power of One” and “Cry Freedom” (which didn’t), there is very little we haven’t already seen about the bad old days when the apartheid system was simultaneously all-powerful and on the verge of coming apart.

And hurting “Bopha!” (rated PG-13 for language and apartheid-driven violence) is more than the fact that we know everything that’s going to happen in it from beginning to end. With the release from prison and rise to preeminence of Nelson Mandela, the government’s plans for power sharing with the black majority and an increase of fanaticism on both sides, the political situation has changed in ways that are equally dramatic but much less easy to categorize than what this film presents.

Set safely in the past, “Bopha!” (the term means both arrest and detention in the Zulu language) starts with a point of view not seen before, that of a spit-and-polish black sergeant in the township police, a man charged with defending a system many of his neighbors know from experience as repressive and evil.

And Micah Mangena (Glover) does more than defend the system. He is so passionate in his belief in it that as a taskmaster at the police academy, he teaches new recruits to think of pride, intelligence and guts whenever anyone calls them pigs. This is a formidable part for Glover (still best known to audiences for his role in the “Lethal Weapon” series despite his remarkable work in films like “To Sleep With Anger”) and he gets the maximum amount out of it.

Naturally Micah wants his teen-age son Zweli (Maynard Eziashi) to follow in his footsteps. But this is 1980, and even in quiet Moroka Township things are changing. High school students like Zweli are upset at being taught in Afrikaans not English and are increasingly willing to listen to radicals like Pule Rampa (“Out of Africa’s” Malick Bowens). Even Micah’s benign commanding officer (Marius Weyers) has to deal with two operatives from Special Forces (Malcolm McDowell and Robin Smith) who have first-degree sadism written all over them.

Adapted from the Percy Mtwa play by screenwriters Brian Bird and John Wierick, “Bopha!” inevitably heads toward a confrontation between father and son that will surprise no one, especially since the performance by Eziashi, who was effective in Bruce Beresford’s “Mr. Johnson,” never seems to get untracked. And though everyone on screen is shocked when crowds of students resist authority and begin to chant in the streets, those who’ve seen any of those previous South African films will have seen it all before.

Director Freeman, who himself starred in “The Power of One,” shows to best advantage during the wrenching scenes between Marius and his wife Rosie (the always exceptional Alfre Woodard) over their son and their future. At the other end of the spectrum are the broad and obvious performances of the Special Forces guys, who do everything but twirl nonexistent mustaches to emphasize their cruel, heartless nature. If we’d never seen another film on the horrors of apartheid, all this might have been more impressive, but we have and it isn’t.

‘Bopha!’

Danny Glover: Micah Mangena

Malcolm McDowell: De Villiers

Alfre Woodard; Rosie Mangena

Marius Weyers; Van Tonder

Maynard Eziashi; Zweli Mangena

Malick Bowens: Pule Rampa

An Arsenio Hall Communications production, in association with Taubman Entertainment Group, released by Paramount Pictures. Director Morgan Freeman. Producer Lawrence Taubman. Executive producer Arsenio Hall. Screenplay Brian Bird and John Wierick, based on the play by Percy Mtwa. Cinematographer David Watkin. Editor Neil Travis. Costumes Diana Cilliers. Music James Horner. Production design Michael Phillips. Art director Tracey Moxham. Set decorator Dankert Guillaume. Running time: 2 hours.

MPAA-rated PG-13 (language and apartheid-driven violence).