Given the limited backstory filled in by Annan and L.H. Sporting a squirrelly shag wig and a valiantly attempted but wayward Cape Town accent, Radcliffe plays Jenkin, a middle-class sociology student turned underground activist for the African National Congress, with his own brand of puppyish but righteous commitment. Meanwhile, it may struggle to find much of a fanbase in its own country of setting, where audiences might reasonably wonder why at least one South African actor couldn’t have been cast in a principal role. The casting of Daniel Radcliffe as Jenkin lends it some marquee appeal, but this still feels like efficient VOD fodder, sure to age as memorably as “Stander,” that other blandly internationalized biographical romp pulled from the same passage of South African history. The last 30-odd years have seen such a wealth of diverse, resonant personal histories emerge from the ashes of apartheid - not least that of the actual, not-white Mandela - that “Escape from Pretoria” could well have missed its moment entirely.Īs it is, it’s been done cheaply and (sort of) cheerfully as an Australian production by British writer-director Francis Annan, focusing heavily on suspense mechanics as if to modestly understate its factual heft. It’s surprising that it’s taken this long to reach the screen, given how sveltely his gripping story fits into a genre-film uniform. Jenkin’s book of the same title was published in 1987, when he was still living as a fugitive from nominal justice in London.
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