An average movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it was starring Pierce Brosnan, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, to be honest, I thought it was rather difficult to judge this movie after all. The first thing that annoyed me was that, in my opinion, they chose the wrong vintage point to tell this story. Indeed, I think the story actually had some potential. However, even though the main character was a Nigerian man, his story was obviously not told from his own point of view, but from the point of view of the White audience which was seriously annoying. Of course, you might argue that it was adapted from a book and that it was probably how this book was written but this perspective really annoyed me. On top of that, they also went for some light tone, basically, constantly making fun of the main character which was obviously so misguided and, to be honest, I thought it was borderline offensive. And, yet, as the situation of Mister Johnson who apparently never had a first name kept deteriorating in spite this misguided cheerful tone, it became obvious that it might be a rather complex drama after all. I wish the story started earlier, that we saw how Mister Johnson became entangled between these 2 cultures and why he decided to fully embrace the British culture in such a drastic way. It could have been so interesting to dive into the messed up psyche of such a complex and confused character. Eventually, even though the White colonialists were supposedly bringing civilization to the African continent, as displayed in this movie, albeit in a really awkward way, it was actually much more complex than that after all. So, I have to admit that this movie was actually dealing with something quite fascinating, it’s just too bad that their approach was so misguided though. Concerning Pierce Brosnan, he was still fairly unknown at the time (he would get his breakthrough as James Bond 5 years later) and he was not bad but, like the rest of the movie, his character was rather poorly developed after all. Anyway, to conclude, even though this movie really rubbed me in the wrong way, I have to admit that it was actually intriguing after all.