“You alone are small.  Your people are mighty.”

There’s no doubt that Nelson Mandela’s life was large enough to put up on the big screen.  But Mandela: The Long Walk To Freedom (based on Mandela’s memoir of the same name) feels more like a Greatest Hits album instead of a solid hit song.  There’s a whole lot to love in this film, with many top-notch performances.  But the story shoots by at light speed, stopping on nothing long enough to truly get an in-depth look at the man.  That said, it gets bonus points for not skipping over the parts of his life that were less than heroic, like his womanizing.  Mandela: The Long Walk To Freedom may not give viewers deeper insight into the man that delivered South Africa from Apartheid, but it is an extensive and fascinating look at his life, and the events that swirled around him.

For those that only know Apartheid as a word in the dictionary, Mandela is an eye-opener.  Director Justin Chadwick (The Other Boleyn Girl, Bleak House) takes the ugly bits of South Africa’s past and puts them up on screen.  There’s some bright, happy times too; black areas of Johannesburg are shown filled with good people, good music and at first the idea of separation seems like nothing more than an inconvenience for Mandela and the rest of black South Africa.  Then the reality kicks in, as a man is mercilessly beaten to death in the street.  His crime?  Being black and a little bit tipsy.  Not bellierent, not loud, not even unkempt.  Just a man that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  (Which was the way it was for any black person in South Africa at that time.)  The scene is shocking and jolts you out of the pleasant earlier scenes, where Mandela the ladykiller tries — and succeeds — in wooing a woman on the dance floor.  Idris Elba (Luther, Thor) is able to shift from charming cad to heartbroken, angry friend, all the while taking you with him in every twist and turn of the world he had to navigate.