Movie Reviews
By Kam Williams
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The Last King Of Scotland
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Forest Whitaker Delivers Oscar-Quality Performance In Implausible Portrait Of Ugandan Dictator
Was Uganda’s Idi Amin (1924-2003) merely a monomaniacal  misanthrope as suggested by the generally-accepted myth, or was he a diabolical despot with more of a method to his madness? The conventional caricature created over the course of his eight-year reign of terror dismissed the sadistic strongman as a laughingstock among world leaders. This was based on an array of increasingly bizarre, mostly unsubstantiated rumors circulated in the Western press depicting him as a depraved character indulging in erratic behavior ranging from a childlike narcissism to outright cannibalism.
Conveniently overlooked in the rush to dismiss Amin simply as a paranoid lunatic who had senselessly slaughtered 300,000 of his own people without rhyme or reason, was the fact that he was a Muslim and that much of the sectarian violence which erupted in the wake of his 1971 coup had been along religious rather than tribal lines. For example, soon after assuming power, not only did he create death squads comprised primarily of trusted Nubian and Sudanese from the Islam-dominated north, but he also broke off diplomatic relations with Israel, while cultivating closer ties with Arab countries.
This explains why, in 1976, the pro-PLO Amin allowed Palestinian terrorists to land a hijacked airliner at Uganda’s International Airport at Entebbe; and why, when he was ultimately exiled in 1979, he was granted asylum by Saudi Arabia. So, given the recent rise of radical Islam, one might expect a new bio-pic revisiting the life of the despicable dictator to take a fresh look at his motivations as possibly one of the early proponents of an emerging ideology.
Unfortunately, The Last King of Scotland presents Amin as essentially that creepy, cartoonish persona we’re already familiar with, rather than a more complicated portrayal. The problem undoubtedly emanates from the source material, since the picture is based on the historical novel of the same name written by Giles Foden, a Scotsman who was a child at the time his subject was in power.
The book explores similar themes as Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, sharing that literary classic’s inclination to paint Africa as a frightening, godforsaken land of unimaginable bloodlust. The novel is narrated by a fictitious character purely a creation of Foden’s imagination, a naive Scottish doctor with an uncanny, Forrest Gump-like knack for appearing at memorable moments in Ugandan history.
This fairly-faithful adaptation of the best seller was directed by another Scotsman, Kevin MacDonald, who coaxes an Oscar-quality performance out of Forest Whitaker, though sadly in service of a mediocre melodrama. For while Whitaker’s interpretation of Amin is admittedly mesmerizing, what’s nevertheless disappointing is the script’s reluctance to humanize its antagonist, settling instead to portray him as that stereotypical mental patient (ala Hannibal Lector) who alternates unpredictably between the polar opposites of a refined charm and sheer brutality.
The picture co-stars James McAvoy as Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, a recent med school grad who arrives in the country planning to practice among the poor. However, after being recruited as the head-of-state personal physician, he soon finds himself at the beck-and-call of Amin, serving also as a confidante, sidekick and stand-in at the presidential palace.
Enjoying the Mercedes convertible and other considerable perks of his plumb position, Garrigan initially has no problem with his job. But as evidence of the wholesale ethnic cleansing unfolding across the countryside is gradually revealed, he becomes acutely aware of his boss’ penchant for cruelty and of his own implied complicity as a medical mercenary.
Then, when members of the cabinet start disappearing too, the doctor suddenly has a reason to fear for his own safety, since he’s become infatuated with one of Amin’s neglected wives (Kerry Washington). Though no longer able to feign ignorance, he inexplicably chooses to remain in Uganda, with dire consequences.
The Last King of Scotland is likely to be worthwhile if approached not as an historical epic, but as an unlikely-buddy flick about a carefree adventurer completely compromised and corrupted by the embodiment of evil. Recommended for the work of Forest Whitaker alone, even if the gifted actor was restricted by a screenplay which squandered a golden opportunity to imbue his character with a complex range of motivations and emotions.
Rated: R for sex, expletives, male and female frontal nudity, graphic violence and gruesome images.
Running time: 121 minutes
Studio: Fox Searchlight Pictures
The Departed
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Hong Kong Crime Caper Adapted Into Quintessential Scorcese Saga
Massachusetts State Trooper Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) is masquerading as an ex-con in order to infiltrate a ruthless, South Boston crime family run by a mercurial mobster named Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Meanwhile, Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), a Costello mole, has penetrated the police department, quietly climbing the ranks until he became privy to the plans of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), thus enabling his boss to keep a step ahead of the law.
Initially unaware of each other’s existence, Costigan and Sullivan, both native sons of South Boston, operate inside some of the same circles, frequently coming close to, if not literally, crossing paths. The tension mounts as the police and the crooks gradually become aware that their every movement is being telegraphed to the other side by a saboteur. Thus, with discovery meaning almost certain death, Costigan and Sullivan find themselves caught in a high-stakes race to expose and eliminate the other first.
They even unknowingly share a romantic interest in Madolyn (Vera Farmiga), a shrink who specializes in counseling cops. She’s dating Colin, ignorant of his allegiance to the Irish Mafia, and originally seeing Billy as a patient, keeping his confidences as he vents about the rigors of leading a double life among such unsavory characters.
This raw-edged game of cops and mobsters is the raison d’etre for The Departed, a pressure-cooked crime caper directed by Martin Scorcese. Over-plotted and touching on every classic theme imaginable, the grisly gangster flick is actually a remake of Infernal Affairs (2002), the first in a graphic trilogy created by Hong Kong’s Siu Fai Mak.
Interpreted here as a quintessential Scorcese saga of Shakespearean proportions, this multi-layered mystery features a plethora of peripheral characters lurking in the shadows. For instance, there’s Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Sergeant Dignam (Mark Wahlberg), Costigan’s only contacts in the Department; and then there’s Chief Ellerby (Alec Baldwin), Sullivan’s suspicious boss at SIU, and his doubting colleague, Officer Brown (Anthony Anderson). Over in the mob milieu, we find a motley mix of disposable mugs, most notably, Mr. French (Ray Winstone), Costello’s loyal henchman.
Relying on an intricate, absorbing script which cleverly conceals its increasingly lurid twists, The Departed unfolds at a breakaway pace which never pauses to take a breath once it builds up a head of steam. Tautly-edited to maximize tension and thereby keep an audience on edge, this movie might be considered a cinematic masterpiece, were it not for the emotionally-numbing bloodbath it unfortunately spirals into. Despite the Damon-DiCaprio cat-and-mouse maneuvers, it is Jack Nicholson’s jaunty Costello who steals the show, humoring the room one minute, exacting retribution the next. DiCaprio fares second best, delivering the most spellbinding performance of his career as a terribly tormented soul who has all but lost his sense of self.
A masterpiece marred unnecessarily by gratuitous gore.
Rated: R for pervasive profanity, ethnic slurs, drug use, frank sexuality, and gruesome, gratuitous violence.
Running time: 149 minutes
Studio: Warner Brothers
SoulMate
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Successful, Single & Satisfied Sisters Reflect On Their State In Spiritually-Oriented Documentary 
Everybody is well aware of the dire statistics. Black women are 5 times as likely to never marry as white women. Seventy percent of new AIDS cases in this country are among African-American females in America, and the disease is the leading killer of black women between the ages of 25 and 34. Over 40 percent of Black women have never been married, and the more money they make, the less likely they are to tie the knot or procreate.
All of the above might lead one to wonder how sisters are coping in the face of such insurmountable odds. Fortunately, some rather revealing answers have arrived in SoulMate a moving documentary in which some very intelligent, educated, attractive, successful and spiritual Black women open up to share their heartfelt feelings about their predicament.
Directed by veteran TV producer Andrea Wiley (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air), the picture features testimonials from subjects so ostensibly desirable it is mind-boggling to believe it when they speak of their loneliness and how badly they’d like to share their abundance with a brother ready to settle down and start a family. But whether a businesswoman, a model, a doctor, a company president, a shrink, a sales exec, a minister, an actress, or in another walk-of-life, they all recite a similar refrain, namely, that they have long since made peace with the distinct possibility of growing old alone.
Why is marriage so elusive for accomplished Black women, the most unpartnered segment of the U.S. population? The participants cite the skyrocketing Black male incarceration rate, the down-low phenomenon, and brothers dating women of other colors as all contributing factors.
One sees the problem as more deep-seeded, surmising that “the institution of slavery systematically tore our families apart, and some of the process that began then, continues now… And since the Sixties, our ability to partner has deteriorated considerably.”
Another points to the fact that even Oprah Winfrey and Condoleezza Rice are still single as proof of how serious a situation we’re dealing with. Yet another interviewee, unwilling to be in the “freak file” in anybody’s Rolodex, says resolutely that she’d rather remain celibate till she finds a spot in the right man’s “forever file.”
Candid conversations, with Christ as the common denominator, SoulMate offers a fascinating, frank and ultimately optimistic exploration of a woefully unaddressed issue.
Unrated
Running time: 83 minutes
Studio: Clean Heart Productions
DVD Extras: Bonus footage, profile of the director, and a faith-based featurette.
To order, visit: http://www.soulmatefilm.com/thetrailer.htm.
The Bridge
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Haunting Documentary Dedicated To Golden Gate Jumpers 
If you wanted to end it all, where would you want to do it? For some reason, more people choose the Golden Gate Bridge than any other locale.
And after watching The Bridge one can easily understand the allure of that irresistible icon as a launching pad into San Francisco Bay.
Directed by Eric Steel, this fascinating film transfixes you from start to finish, focusing on the 24 individuals who chose to end their lives in 2004. One, Kevin Hines, 25, somehow survived, after being saved by a seal who kept him floating till help arrived. The others weren’t so lucky, but that doesn’t make their stories any less compelling.
What these unfortunate souls seem to have in common is a bottoming-out whether due to depression, unemployment, relationship woes, or all of the above. Shifting back and forth between shots of the majestic, rust-colored structure and wistful reminiscences by friends and family who invariably had hints as to what was coming, the clever director creates an eerie, kinetic experience for the viewer by constantly capturing plenty of tourists and pedestrians leaning over the catwalk, peering into the void from the fog-ensconced bridge.
You never know which in the throng is about to leap to his or her death, so you have to keep your eyes glued to the screen, guessing who might be next. Two dozen souls, linked by suicide as a seductive and very visible alternative to unrelenting torment and suffering.
Rated: R for profanity and for disturbing footage of actual suicides.
Running time: 93 minutes
Studio: IFC TV
Distributor: First Stripe Productions
Color Of The Cross
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Crucifixion Revisited With Black Jesus As Victim Of Bias Crime
Was Jesus a Black man? He might have been, given the features of the folks from the region of the world where he was born. He was at least more likely to look more like a brother than the generally-accepted representations of him as a fair-skinned, flaxen-haired Caucasian. Yet, Hollywood has never seen fit to make a major motion picture featuring a sepia Son of God. Till now.
Color of the Cross is the brainchild of actor/writer/director Jean-Claude LaMarre, a gifted tale-spinner who does much more here than merely revisit the life of Christ in blackface. For this controversial reinterpretation of the scriptures, which transpires during the 48 hours leading up to the Crucifixion, mixes many instantly recognizable Biblical passages with speculation about a motive for murdering Jesus which had to do with his skin color.
So, we find familiar scenes such as those taking place in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus (LaMarre) prayed to God the Father the night before he died, and where he was later betrayed by Judas (Johann John Jean) with a kiss for 30 pieces of silver. Of course, there’s The Last Supper, the last meal Christ shared with the Apostles.
Superficially, Color of the Cross reads like a Passion Play except for the
fact that Jesus is Black, and that he has been rejected by disbelieving rabbis who have a hard time swallowing the idea of a dark-skinned Messiah. In fact, they routinely refer to him as the Black Nazarene, so in this version of the New Testament not only do the Jews crucify Christ, but they’re portrayed as racists to boot.
Although this ethnic discrimination angle might be factually inaccurate, since if Jesus was a Black Jew, his accusers must’ve mostly been Black Jews, too, the best thing about Color of the Cross is that it finally furnishes us with a reason for the Crucifixion. It reminded me of the Don Rickles routine in which the comedian wondered how his people could possibly have screwed up Christmas. Now we at least have a theory.
The storyline aside, Jean-Claude LaMarre charismatic performance as Jesus is what really holds the production together. He receives considerable help in this regard from his capable supporting cast which includes Debbi Morgan as the Virgin Mary, Amanda Lewis as Leah, Akiva David as John, Jacinto Taras Riddick as Peter, and John Pierre Parent as Doubting Thomas.
Is the film blasphemous? Blasphemy is in the eye of the beholder. But it’s certainly a lot closer in tone to The Ten Commandments (1956) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) than to The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) or Andy Warhol’s Imitation of Christ (1967).
Regardless, if Kanye West can appear on the cover of Rolling Stone sporting a crown of thorns, then we’re probably already primed for a religious epic featuring an ebony Prince of Peace. Let the debates begin!
Rated: PG-13 for graphic crucifixion images.
Running time: 108 minutes
Studio: Nu-Lite Entertainment
Flags Of Our Fathers
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No Brothers In Fathers
On the morning of February 19, 1945, in the wake of 74 consecutive days of pounding from the air by B-29 bombers, over 100,000 U.S. soldiers mounted an amphibious assault on Iwo Jima, a tiny Far East island about a third the size of Manhattan. The Marines who landed there that fateful day encountered mines, booby traps, and much stronger resistance than they had bargained for because the bombardment had failed to soften-up the fortification as anticipated. 
The Japanese had carved a honeycomb of concrete-reinforced caves 40-feet deep into the face of Mount Suribachi, the 550-foot extinct volcano towering over the isle’s southern tip. So, armed to the teeth, the enemy patiently waited underground, afforded the early advantage offered by a maze of 1500 bunkers interconnected by 16 miles of passageways.
Further complicating the invasion was the fact that when the GIs arrived, they were unable to dig foxholes, because the shore of the hostile terrain was composed of black sulfuric ash, a loose, shifting soil virtually impossible either to walk on or to dig foxholes in. As a consequence, the Allies ended up stuck like sitting ducks on the beach, suffering more than a casualty per minute for the first 60 hours.
Though America did ultimately prevail in this pivotal battle of the Pacific Theater of Operations, victory would be prematurely celebrated back home due to a “Mission Accomplished” photo-op which transpired on the fifth day of the fighting. That’s when AP photographer Joe Rosenthal (who just died in August of this year at the age of 94) snapped the world-renowned shot of a half-dozen soldiers hoisting Old Glory high atop Suribachi which would serve as a morale booster for a populace growing weary of the war’s mounting debt and death toll.
Two days later, on February 25th, when the picture appeared in the Sunday edition of newspapers all across the country, most readers were unaware that the bloody engagement wasn’t over. It would continue for almost another month, ultimately taking a total of 6,821 Americans lives (including half the men in the famous print) as well as all but a few hundred of the 22,000 Japanese entrenched on the island.
In addition, the American public didn’t know that the too-good-to-be-true Kodak moment had been a recreation, not an authentic snapshot of the historic instant when the Stars and Stripes were first raised on the summit. When asked, Rosenthal initially acknowledged that the photo had been staged and that another flag had been planted before he arrived, but he retracted the statement when that admission ignited a nasty backlash.
Nonetheless, the photo won the Pulitzer Prize and spawned a cottage industry of reproductions of the iconic tableau including everything from posters to paperweights to billboards to a commemorative postage stamp to a silver dollar to a national monument to propaganda war newsreels.
With Flags of Our Fathers, one would hope that Clint Eastwood would have some reason to make another Iwo Jima movie besides resurrecting the same sort of patriotic claptrap already dished out ad nauseam in war flicks like John Wayne’s Sands of Iwo Jima (1949). But regrettably, Eastwood chose neither to clarify the aforementioned photo controversy, nor to edify his audience in any other meaningful way.
Perhaps the movie’s most glaring omission involves the absence of any African American soldiers. No Blacks were featured in any of the early war films from the forties and fifties, and none were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery in World War II, at least until President Clinton made an overture to correct the glaring oversight during his presidency.
So, excuse me for wondering why Eastwood would opt to perpetuate the myth of Iwo Jima as a virtually lily-white invasion in these presumably more enlightened times. Sadly, Eastwood’s not the only top director guilty as charged, since Steven Spielberg served up a similar historical distortion in Serving Private Ryan, and more recently, Oliver Stone conveniently changed the color of a Marine hero at Ground Zero from Black to white to fit his vision of 9-11 for World Trade Center.
This persisting bias has serious implications for the prospects of the already beleaguered Black male, for a fundamental function of film, ostensibly, is to convey a sense of a culture’s social structure. And when the cinematic lens is repeatedly employed to map out microcosms of society marked by African American marginalization, it is very likely to engender real-life attitudes rationalizing continued ostracism and exclusion.
Truth be told, about 1000 Black soldiers took part in the assault on Iwo Jima, including Sergeant Thomas McPhatter, whose all-Black platoon landed on the first day. McPhatter, 83, who played a critical role in the real flag-raising on Mt. Suribachi, not the re-enactment, is fed up about being ignored again by Flags of Our Fathers.
"This is the last straw,” he complained. “I feel like I've been denied, I've been insulted, I've been mistreated. Of all the movies that have been made of Iwo Jima, you never see a Black face. But what can you do? We still have a strong underlying force in my country of rabid racism."
During WWII, the Department of Defense directed embedded cameramen not to film African American GIs in action. Remember, America’s Armed forces were segregated until 1948. So, any newsreel footage accidentally containing Blacks invariably ended up on the cutting room floor. But Blacks were there, and shed blood in almost every major engagement of the war.
So why the reluctance to rectify the deliberately whitewashed version of history disseminated during the shameful days of discrimination? Who knows? NYU History Professor Yvonne Latty says she even urged Eastwood before he began production to include Black soldiers in the film and sent him a copy of her book about these forever unsung heroes, but to no avail.
The upshot is that Flags of Our Fathers is a 21st Century version of the state-sanctioned, pro-war propaganda designed to instill a sense of patriotism in the Baby Boom Generation back when they were impressionable babies. The violence may no longer be sanitized, but its color-coded depictions of heroism remain unchanged.
The story revolves around a Private Ryan-like mandate to bring back to the States the soldiers who had erected the flag in the suddenly-famous photograph. Why? In order to exploit the vets sudden celebrity to sell government bonds on behalf of the war effort. This tedious timewaster’s only tension revolves around a seemingly meaningless controversy, namely, whether one of the deceased soldiers holding the pole might have been misidentified.
With Blacks invisible, Flags of Our Fathers devotes its express ethnic insensitivity in the direction of other ethnic minorities. Thus, Japanese are repeatedly referred to as “Japs,” while the token non-white GI, Ira Hayes (Adam Beach), a Native-American, is presented as an offensive combination of two stereotypes: “The Noble Savage” and “The Drunken Indian.”
When not speaking in silly non-sequiturs such as, “Because of this war, white men will understand the Indians a lot better,” Ira is portrayed as a lush who never learned how to hold his liquor. Yet, he supposedly somehow embarked by foot and by thumb on a 1300-mile journey from Oklahoma to Texas to inform a grieving mother (Judith Ivey), in person, that her late son had indeed been standing alongside him holding the pole in the famous picture, just as she suspected, as if that could in any way be a comfort for her loss.
His conscience cleansed and his duty to his great white brother honorably performed, Ira subsequently reverts to the true nature of the red man, drinking himself into a stupor till he’s found frozen to death in a ditch by the side of a road.
The movie’s underlying message, a slight variation on an age-old theme, is that wars are still fought by brave white guys for God, mom and apple pie, and that anybody who would dare to disagree must be a cut-and-run coward.
It’ll be interesting to see whether Clint tones down his ethnic animus in Letters from Iwo Jima, his upcoming companion piece purporting to present the Japanese perspective of the same battle. What’s the point of making a pair of historical epics, if both merely reflect and reinforce deep-seeded racist attitudes rather than attempt to teach tolerance, understanding and an appreciation of our cultural differences?
Rated: R for expletives, ethnic slurs, and the graphic depiction of the carnage of war.
Running time: 132 minutes
Studio: Dreamworks Pictures
Death Of A President
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Bush Bites The Dust In Assassination Docudrama
Most of the discussion surrounding this controversial docudrama  has revolved around whether it’s okay to depict the assassination of a sitting president. Now, if you believe in freedom of speech, next, you’ve got to ask yourself how you feel about specifically seeing George Bush wasted. The answer to that question is likely to depend on which side of the aisle you align yourself with, as was the case with such politically polarizing pictures as Fahrenheit 9/11 and V for Vendetta.
As a film critic, you find yourself almost in a no-win situation whenever you choose to review a movie like Death of a President, because most of the audience is predisposed to love or hate the film, and has already formed an opinion about it before entering the theater. So, I have learned to brace myself for the hate mail, which has less to do with what was onscreen than with ideological arguments.
That being said, Death of a President is actually an intelligent and fairly compelling docudrama, which opens on October 19, 2007 with Bush about to land in Chicago where he is set to deliver a patriotic speech at a Republican fundraiser in a ballroom full of supporters. Outside, however, the cops are doing their best to keep an unruly crowd of picketers at bay, irate at an array of the administration’s policies.
Afterwards, as the Secret Service escorts the President out of the hotel, he is felled by a bullet to the chest. The agents help him into his limousine and the motorcade rushes to the hospital where the mortally-wounded Bush soon expires.
In the proverbial rush to judgment, the FBI fingers a Middle Eastern man (Zahra Abi Zikri), based on shaky circumstantial evidence alone, even though there had been plenty of other suspects in the Windy City that night with a motive to murder the President. Besides Arab terrorists, it could have been the work of any number of fed up and frustrated activists from the lunatic fringe.
In fact, there were so many Bush haters out there, on both the left and the right, that the authorities received thousands of tips blaming responsibility on radicals with anti-war, pro-environment, pro-choice, even white supremacist agendas. But the government conveniently opted to ignore the possibility that the assassin could have been homegrown. Unraveling that mystery is the prevailing plotline in Death of a President.
With an innocent Muslim sitting on death row, the movie makes some very powerful statements about the Patriot Act, the erosion of our Constitutional rights, and the abuse of power, all while amply illustrating why an awful lot of red-blooded Americans feel betrayed by Dubya. Do the Feds crack the case? Yes, and the fruits of that very deliberate investigation is what ultimately make the movie worthwhile in this critic’s opinion.
Though this flashback flick contains a standard disclaimer about its being a fictional account, that must be the director’s idea of a tongue-in-cheek joke, because who else could Bush be playing except himself? And Dick Cheney deserves an Oscar-nomination for delivering such a heartfelt eulogy at his boss’ funeral after ascending to the Presidency.
Overall, Death of a President must be dubbed a technical masterpiece, as it seamlessly weaves reams of real footage in with staged events to create a not too distant future where this scenario could actually be played out. It’s also a bit anti-climactic after Bush is blown away, bogging down till we arrive at the surprising and satisfactory conclusion. And, of course, it’s ethically debatable, since we don’t want to encourage copycat killers.
Next year, beware the 19th of October.
Unrated
Running time: 93 minutes
Studio: Newmarket Films
Black Gold
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Expose’ Details Coffee Cartel’s Exploitation Of Ethiopians 
In Ethiopia, where coffee originated, over 15 million people are dependent on this aromatic bean for their very survival. In fact, the country generates about 67 percent of its total revenues via exports of this coveted commodity. So, with such multi-national corporations as Kraft, Nestle, Procter & Gamble, and Sara Lee competing in this $80 billion-dollar industry, one would think that the farmers would be able to demand a fair price for what they produce.
Tragically, this is not the case, as eloquently explained in Black Gold, a perplexing expose’ documentary directed by Nick and Marc Francis. What these brothers found was that while companies like Starbucks are reaping record profits, none of the benefits of coffee’s skyrocketing popularity has trickled down to the farmers trying to eke out a living in cash-strapped Ethiopia.
The picture points out that they are paid 23 cents a kilo for their coffee, which ultimate sells for about $230 per kilo, a figure arrived at by translating the $3/cup rate charged by the upscale retail outlets. All the profits from this tremendous mark-up benefit the aforementioned cartel which sets the international price for coffee, the world’s 2nd most actively traded commodity (behind oil), in New York and London.
Meanwhile, in Ethiopia, the average workers in the coffee industry earn 50 cents a day for their grueling work, whether in the sweltering fields or in a fetid factory. The film amply illustrates that this meager salary is barely enough to subsist on, as family providers frequently find themselves having to choose between spending money on food, clean water, shelter, clothing or education for their children.
There is a touching scene in Black Gold where we see Ethiopians earnestly engaged in a prayer ritual begging God to raise the praise of coffee. This tableau the directors cleverly offset with telling interviews in which clueless consumers living far away in the lap of luxury in la-la land acknowledge having no clue about the desperate plight of the folks who farmed the beans for the brew they’re enjoying.
The premise powerfully postulated by Black Gold is that not only Ethiopians, but millions and millions of other Africans are also suffering due to the paltry prices paid by big business for natural resources which most people from developed countries take for granted. Africa is already the only continent to grow poorer over the past 20 years, so the urgent message which must be heeded is that until the West becomes willing to pay fair prices , the rape of the continent will continue unabated, leaving vast populations in economic crisis, stranded and seemingly without recourse in increasingly dire straits.
Unrated
Running time: 78 minutes
Studio: California Newsreel
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