So much average

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Powerful

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Lumumba is a well-made, well-acted story of a man with a dream for his people, for his (newly independent) country.The man - Patrice Emery Lumumba. The country - the Congo.I will not comment on hypothesizing, supposing what was in people's minds at that time - as I don't know.And hindsight is... well, just that.What Lumumba is, is a story of a man who - while he had the love of his people, was not as adept at the shadowy game of politics.It cost Mr. Lumumba his life.It cost the Congo so much - for so long afterwords.This story is done beautifully chiefly on one man's shoulders - Mr. Erie Ebouaney.He magnificently portrays Mr. Lumumba.As this is a story we (sadly) know the outcome to - Alex Descas as Joseph Mobuto is wonderful as almost a 'non-person.' Until - one moment - of one image - Mobuto - in power - seated on a chair, wearing the leopard skin hat in which the image of Mobuto is most identified.It sent a chill through me.Terrific.

Congo is a sad country which started with massive disadvantages (King Leopold used it as his private route to personal wealth) and never recovered.The Belgians made little provision for independence, but that is not unusual in Africa and other countries have managed OK despite a bad start. Congo never did.A combination of tribal and ethnic conflicts, underhand colonial behaviour and Cold War politics meant that failure was inevitable. Lumumba was brutally murdered by his own countrymen with America and Belgium cheering from the sidelines.Lumumba never had a chance and he made it worse for himself by delivering an un-programmed and fiercely anti-colonial speech on Independence Day. This is not made too clear in the film - you have to listen really hard to know that that is what was happening. As a result of that unwise speech, he destroyed his relations with the Belgians and gave the Congolese people hopes and expectations that could never be realised.He also made an enemy of the leader of the Katanga region.He was thus regarded by his own people as having reneged on promises after an impossibly short time in Government and then, having been publicly and privately brutalised by Congolese troops, finally murdered by the Congolese leader in Katanga, who ordered two Belgian policemen to dig up and destroy the body. All true and faithfully, if gruesomely, repeated in the film.Everyone comes out badly in the film - which is only right and proper. Belgians for practising apartheid before the word was invented to cover the Boers in SA. How could anyone operate a system where, as a native, you had to be assessed to see if you had developed (`evolved' - shades of Darwin) sufficiently to be licensed to have wine in your house?The Americans come out rather lightly in the film. Maybe it was not known at the time the film was made that the CIA station chief (Devlin, not Carlucci) was sent poisoned toothpaste to introduce into Lumumba's bathroom cabinet (he didn't). By order of Eisenhower.The Congolese come out worst of all, appropriately, since in the long term they are the ones who also suffered (and continue to suffer) the most as a result of not being able to act together irrespective of tribal origin.There is still in reality no country that is Congo. It remains a collection of tribal and ethnic groupings. And therefore weak and poor and ready to be exploited. All this is accurately foreshadowed in this excellent film.A film that is horrific and unsettling, but real. Excellent.

Spoilers herein.Approaching any work, the viewer comes with certain presumptions about the compact with the artist. In the case of biographical films, that compact bears special attention.Why would someone make a film like this? Because the person in question is so compelling a being that simple exposure to that life uplifts us? Because there is a political story of injustice we (someone thinks) need to be told? Because the situation supports a drama with universal truths? Because it is a handy framework for a filmmaker to make a film?If you guess wrong you'll be disappointed, because each of these goals results in a radically different film. I believe Peck's case is a matter of the fourth choice.It is not an overly romanticized portrait of a noble man like Stone's depiction of Malcolm. It glosses over the complexities of the situation too glibly to remotely inform of the various evils and incompetences visited on that patch.No, I think it masquerades as a polemic built around a saintly figure, but really is just a handy excuse on which to build a competent film. Peck is a man already known for documentaries friendly to class struggle. But this and the others I know are substantially less articulate than Lumumba himself.This film is only two years old now, and I got more power out of knowing that as many as a third of the cast in the crowd scenes are dying of AIDS, perhaps already dead.Ted's evaluation: 2 of 4 -- Has some interesting elements.

'Lumumba' is a touching biographical movie of Patrice Lumumba, a nationalist (not a communist) who sacrificed his life for the cause of unification of his people. The movie also depicts the complex relationship between the Congo and several western countries, particularly Belgium and United States.