Forgiveness | Film Review | Slant Magazine

FILM MOVIE REVIEW

Forgiveness **

by Ed Gonzalez on November 29, 2006 Jump to Comments (0) or Add Your Own

Forgiveness is two films and yet none at all. A man, Tertius Coetzee (Arnold Vosloo), is greeted poorly by a family in Paternoster, a fishing town in South Africa. We learn he killed Magda (Denise Newman) and Henrik's (Zane Meas) eldest son but the context remains unknown, at least for an hour or so. Director Ian Gabriel withholds crucial information from his audience almost as if he were trying to prolong the inevitable. Oblivious to Coetzee, men have been commanded to kill him, and it becomes the sick privilege of Magda and Henrik's daughter Sannie (Quanita Adams) and son Ernest (Christo Davids) to entertain Coetzee's ambitions until the assassins arrive. As heartfelt as Catch a Fire, Forgiveness plots Coezee's quest for absolution—just as Phillip Noyce traces Patrick Chamusso's terrorist uprising—as if it were a 12-step program: he accepts he has a problem, vomits, incurs punishment, does penance, and receives forgiveness. Meanwhile on the highway toward Paternoster, the assassins will lose their cell phones and blame each other for the death of the friend they hope to avenge (one of them, we will also learn, turned the dead Grootboom boy in to the police), which conveniently buys Coetzee the time he needs for Sannie and Ernest to warm to his goodness. No one will accuse Gabriel of pushing a glossy commentary about reparations in South Africa, only a shabby melodrama. Ultimately, the film's stilted design is more transparent than clever, for which there shouldn't be any excuse.

Director(s): Ian Gabriel
Screenplay: Greg Latter
Cast: Arnold Vosloo, Zane Meas, Denise Newman, Quanita Adams, Christo Davids, Elton Landrew, Lionel Newton, Hugh Masebenza, Jeremy Crutchley
Distributor: California Newsreel
Runtime: 112 min.
Rating: NR
Year: 2004