The Power of One

Rating:
Summary: An amazing movie...
Review: This movie is an amazing piece of art. Both the book and the movie are favorites of mine. I have to disagree with ilsej. If they had read the book or watched the movie they would realize both book and movie were against afrikaaners. This movie taught me so much about the world and I would recommend it to everybody.

Rating:
Summary: Is this the same story?
Review: This is yet another one of Hollywood attempts to bring Africa to the people who don't care and don't understand its complicated nature. The book was amazing and if you loved the book, don't buy this movie. There are no words to even begin to explain everything they did wrong with this one. I can just say that I am glad that they kept PK a boxer and did not turn him into a hurdler. One of the biggest dissapointments was that they totally forgot about the guy who actually introduced him to boxing. Funny how this movie teaches you to Hate those Afrikaners! Where the book was about understanding for all. Just a thought! From a true, proud South African!

Rating:
Summary: Cinema is a different medium, damnit...
Review: ---
...and silly boogers who gripe about how a film doesn't wholly recapitulate a novel need a length of two-by-four applied briskly about the head and shoulders as a necessary distraction.

I'm also one of the folks who read *The Power of One* years before this film was made. Like most novels, it's a pretty big hunk of fiction. One of the reasons why the work of hack SF writer Phillip K. Dick gets made into so many movies (apart from the fact that he's as much the darling of the MLA as he is the object of old-line science fiction fannish contempt) is that he wrote lots of short fiction - novelettes and novellas*** -- and the average movie script really can't encompass more of characterization, detail and plot than is contained in a novelette.

If you're a screenwriter or a producer, you can't expect to pack into a two-hour movie every character and plot element of a novel exactly as written. Even the bladder-busting *Lord of the Rings* and *Harry Potter* movies don't do that.

Frankly, when I saw *The Power of One* I was disappointed to discover that the guard sergeant who murdered Geel Piet *didn't* die the slow agony of metastatic cancer (as framed in the novel) instead of enjoying the quick and relatively painless off-stage fate of simply getting found hanged by the neck in Geel Piet's cell. Shucks.

But I knew enough to live with my disappointment, and that means I can enjoy this movie *AND* the novel, each as an example of good art. If the best revenge is living better than the boob who offends you, let's take it as given that I'm enjoying perfect vengeance on the most oafish of my predecessors on this site.

Take that, you clods.

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*** SFWA defines a novelette as being between 7,500 and 17,499 words -- between short story and novella length -- while the novella is defined as running from 17,500 to 39,999 words. 40,000 words and more is by their definition a novel.

Rating:
Summary: READ THE BOOK
Review: While I know that movies are always ten times worse than the book, this one really bothered me. I have not watched it, and I don't plan to. The description was enough for me. I don't think I would mind so much if PEEKAY's (NOT PK) mother hadn't died in the film. This doesn't make sense because she has a major influence on the rest of the story. If you are going to watch this film, do me a favor, and read the amazing novel by Bryce Courtenay. His account of Peekay's journey is wonderful. Also, once you are finished reading The Power Of One, read the sequel,Tandia. In this novel, he continues his journey and his mother is part of the reason.

Rating:
Summary: Just beautiful
Review: I first saw this movie a long time ago and I loved it. It's a wonderful story. If you buy this DVD you won't be dissapointed, especially if you like to own movies that leave a good message in your heart. Enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: NOT GOOD AT ALL!
Review: I loved the book, The Power of One. It was one of the best books I have read in years. Powerful, gripping...fantastic in every way. I couldn't wait to see the movie after enjoying the book so much. What I found was a movie that (for the most part) had nothing to do with the book. Characters' names were changed, the plot modified...oh what a disappointment. My wife, having not read the book, enjoyed the movie. I couldn't sit through it. It was so modified from what I liked about the book that I left the room and went to another room to read.

Rating:
Summary: GOOD GOD!
Review: This is the worst butchering of a classic novel to a film I have ever seen. I watched this yarn a few times when I was younger and enjoyed it somewhat. But one's enjoyment of the film is severly diminished when one reads the excellent novel, which just blows it away. One wishes that a remake of "The Power of One" would be made, in which Peekay (not the obviously tailor-made for American audiences cute "P.K.") is not a two-dimensional "Rocky" type character. One wishes that a version of the film would be made that retains more of the important characters in the novel (Mevrou Hettie, Dee and Dum) and excludes characters added for commercial purposes (Maria, Tonderai) and doesn't change all those friggin' names just so they sound more palatable to ignorant American ears. For example, in the novel, the chicken is named 'Granpa Chook'. In the film, his name is Masibindi? Sounds more 'African' right? I cannot believe this film is sometimes shown to American highschool students in a sad attempt to teach them about apartheid. Teach 'em to read, then let them read the novel which is most wonderful. But I would suggest starting with "Peter, Jane and Spot".

Rating:
Summary: Power of One
Review: In the movie, Peter Phillip Kenneth Kieth is a young English boy who grows up in South Africa. When his mother gets ill, he is sent of to a bording school. With little money, P.K. is sent to an Afrikaner school, where the students learn to hate the British. He becomes a bed wetter, so his nanny calls on the medicine man to help him overcome his fears. The medicine man teaches P.K. about courage. P.K. learns that his mother had died, and he moves to live with his grandfather. In the English town, P.K. meets Doc. Doc teaches him to look at life in a new way and helps P.K. feel happy again. When Doc is sent to a prison camp, P.K. visits him after school. There he meet Geel Piet, a black man who teaches P.K. to box. "Little beat big when little smart" "First with the head, then with the heart". As P.K. gets older, he lives by those words, and helps the african tribes get along for one breif moment. The tribes see him as the rainmaker. When P.K. is in highschool, he still boxes and meets his highschool sweetheart. P.K. wants to help the african tribes read and write in English. Although Apartied disagrees, he goes against the law and does what is right. P.K. learns that one can really make a difference, but if we all come together as one, we can make the invinceble, the power of one.

Rating:
Summary: Touching Triumph over Tribulation
Review: A small English child grows up in a German (Afrikaner) occupied WWII South Africa. Financial difficulties put him into a Afrikaner boarding school, rather than an English one, where he becomes the target of the hatred of all of the Afrikaner students against the English. His mother dies. After a student attempts to kill him, he goes to live with his grandfather. He meets a German musician who teaches him about life. In a prison camp, a black South African teaches him to box, and about human equality. This is a story about the horrors of war and apartheid, and how it is possible for one person to make a difference.

Rating:
Summary: A gorey, but touching and inspiring film
Review: This film, although bloody, taught many valuable lessons of aparthied and life in South Africa.