Rating: PG13
Genre:
Drama
Theatrical Release: 03/27/1992(USA)
Release Date: 06/22/1999
Dubbed: English
Run Time: 127 Minutes
Flags: Violence, Questionable for Children
Distributor/Studio: Warner Home Video
John G. Avildsen, director of
Rocky and
The Karate Kid, adapts
Bryce Courtenay's compassionate novel about the
coming of age of a white anti-apartheid activist during the years of World War II in South Africa.
Avildsen cumbersomely grafts
Courtenay's tale of fighting apartheid onto a Hollywood-style fight-for-the-championship bout. Seven-year-old
P.K. (
Guy Witcher) is a white South African raised on his family's farm by his Zulu nanny. When his mother takes ill, he is sent away to an Afrikaner boarding school, where he is picked on and nearly killed by the school bully during a pep rally for
Hitler.
P.K. survives and is sent to live with his grandfather. He befriends
Doc (
Armin Mueller-Stahl), a jailed German musician, and a black inmate (
Morgan Freeman), who teaches
P.K. how to use his fists for some quick boxing moves. At 12,
P.K. (now played by
Simon Fenton), witnesses black inmates being cruelly humiliated by their racist white jailers. Taking note of
P.K.'s fluidity for languages, his black mentor spreads the word that
P.K. is the incarnation of the mythic Rain Maker, a messianic liberator who is destined to unite all the African tribes. By the time he's 18 years old,
P.K. (now played by
Stephen Dorff) is becoming the Great White Hope for the black Africans, boxing his way into their hearts and minds. He joins up with an old boxing foe (
Alois Moyo), who is now a township activist, and takes up the apartheid struggle. But things get confusing when
P.K. falls in love with the daughter (
Fay Masterson) of an apartheid leader.
~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
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