Adapted from the autobiography, Inside Out: Escape from Pretoria Prison, Escape From Pretoria is a thriller based on the true story of Tim Jenkin (Daniel Radcliffe) and Stephen Lee (Daniel Webber), two South African political activists who were a huge part of the anti-apartheid movement. After a bombing in 1979, the two were arrested by the authorities, and sentenced to serve prison time at Pretoria Central Prison. Once there, a plan is quickly hatched with the help of other prisoners to escape the facility utilizing wooden keys that will open the various doors on their way out.
The odd thing about the film is that if you are not super familiar with the apartheid, and everything that period of South African history entails, the film only gives you the most basic information to cover the bases. An intro sequence touches on some very general things to give you the context that our characters find themselves in, but not much beyond that. It also seems like a strange choice to have a film that deals with the apartheid not have any black African characters, since it focuses exclusively on white political prisoners. Perhaps there is something deeper to the story that co-writer and director, Francis Annan, sees in the story, but it’s not made particularly clear.
The film is by-and-large a straightforward prison breakout movie, and by those standards, it’s really engaging. The performances from the cast is strong, even if some of the accent work is a touch uneven. Radcliffe and Webber work well together, and it’s easy to root for them as they try to plan out each step for their big escape. Supporting players like Ian Hart and Mark Leonard Winter bring some personality to the proceedings as fellow prisoners who help with the planning, and in the case of the latter, take part in the escape.
The pleasures of any breakout movie like this is to relish in the little details. Each minor step that is taken in putting the plan together, each setback, each moment where the characters almost caught, and the way the dynamic is built between the prisoners, as well as the guards, who you just love to hate. It hits all those familiar beats, not straying too far from the things you would expect from this style of movie, but it is still very satisfying to watch unfold nonetheless.
What Annan excels at the most here is with the suspense. It is incredibly suspenseful and tense, and even I was surprised by how invested I ended up being as the tension what cranked up as the story went along. Given how absurd the plan is, it makes the experience that much more thrilling and easy to get swept up in. The craftsmanship is slick, the editing from Nick Fenton is tight, and the cinematography from Geoffrey Hall adds to the claustrophobic thrills. It all comes together nicely, and it just goes to show just how nailing the fundamental nuts-and-bolts of certain types of stories can go far in making familiar stories still entertaining.
While I wished Escape From Pretoria dived deeper into the politics of its era and broader socio-political context that surrounds the characters and their ideology, it still delivers a rock solid prison break movie, which is something I’m perfectly willing to settle with. The craft behind it is strong, the storytelling is effortlessly gripping, the performances are top notch, and even the film is at its most familiar, it never loses touch of the humanity behind the characters, and the passion that drove the real life figures to do what they had to do to survive, which I would argue does justice to the story of these men.