It is a great performance by Danny Glover, the portrait of a proud man who discovers his pride was entrusted to the wrong things.

Bopha! is a heartfelt and anguished cry. Though moored in historic/geographic specificity, it is an easily understood and universal tale.

Freeman lays out the father-son dynamics with great skill and very little fuss. There's no hysteria in his approach; instead, he sticks to the facts, relying on his cast to provide the emotion. The result is a surprisingly powerful, insightful film. The dramatic curve of the narrative may not seem entirely fresh, and some of the characters are simplistic, but the movie still gets to you.

Bopha! is so firmly grounded in physical reality (it was shot in Zimbabwe), in the looks and passions of its characters, even in its music, that its deliberate progress from one obligatory scene to the next still carries surprising emotional weight.

There’s sorrow here to fill a thousand Hollywood movies—and in the end, it swamps the boundaries of movie convention.

Bopha!, a movie about emotional and political turbulence tearing apart the family of a black South African police officer, is good, but a little disheartening. Not because of the injustice and misery it reveals-but because you want it to be better.

For Freeman's first feature as director, the end result is enjoyable but given his strong roles over the years, somehow more was expected. The equally powerful Glover gives a memorable performance in an interesting film that will inspire and educate.

Good intentions are famous for paving the road to hell, but more often they just lead to well-meaning tedium.

Bopha!'s intentions are all good, but it preaches (and that is the operative word) to the converted.

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.