Well, my knowledge of Apartheid is limited to my knowledge of a personality called Nelson Mandela and that he led a non-violent struggle for equality. That's about it. So, when I saw this title and the good reviews that it had received - I decided to try it out.
Unfortunately for me, I was thrown into South African history (this was expected) and I was surrounded with over 20 character (this was not expected). Botha, Thabo, Mbeki, Alie Sachs, Wille Esterhuyse, some gold consolidations organization, a PR agent - within the first twenty minutes, my head was spinning. And thus, whenever a new character came on screen, I had to press the pause button and look up Wikipedia. That is how I watched this movie.
So, for the first 35 minutes or so, I spent an equal amount of time reading Wikipedia (which was not bad, I got a lot of info) but what this means is that Endgame is not meant for the viewer who is not ready to break a sweat. Unless your knowledge of South African apartheid is not up to scratch, Endgame will make little sense by itself.
However, once you know the characters and their motives the movie turns into an extremely compelling drama and a case study of how negations are done. This would make a terrific add-on to a history course. It is a very educational movie and the acting by William Hurt and Chiwetel Ejiofor was excellent and very convincing. The direction was also very well done and the script writing was very effective (considering the nature of the subject).
In the end, this should have been a 3-4 hour miniseries. The treatment of Apartheid with proper introduction to the major characters ought to get that much time. Unfortunately Endgame is all that we get. Go ahead and watch it - it is worth the effort.
