Endgame

*** - Starring the black guy with the upper class English accent that played that bad-ass bad guy in “Serenity”, this 2009 film set in mid-80s South Africa is kind of neat despite the fact that it is extraordinarily slow moving and has no real action or tension of any kind. It is kind of like an extended version of one of the dramatizations from “Unsolved Mysteries” minus the ghosts, UFOs and/or murder. What makes this political drama neat is that everything about it seems to indicate that it was purposefully made to feel like it was filmed contemporaneously. The film stock was a little grainy, the camera was kind of shaky (but more in a sloppy 80s TV show kind of way than in a purposeful edgy steady-cam kind of way) and the score was full of the meaty synth lines and ambient electronic noodling that was so prominent in the early to mid 80s. I can’t say for certain that this was a result that was intended by the filmmakers, or if it – being a relatively low budget made for British TV movie – is just all they had to work with. Because it starred two of my favorite actors (the afore-mentioned black guy and the always outstanding Mark Strong) I choose to believe that it was a choice of the filmmakers. That alone makes it worth a few stars.