Movie: Oscar Pistorius: Blade Runner Killer
Rating: 1/5 stars
Available on: DStv Now
What we thought:
When news first broke that Lifetime would be releasing an Oscar Pistorius movie South Africans were shooketh.
And rightly so. Let's be honest it is still too soon and too raw for this story to be given the Lifetime treatment and with the network's rather controversial history of bad biopics nothing good could come of this movie.
On Saturday South Africans tuned in to watch this tragedy unfold on television - I bet largely because we were curious to see how the story would be told. Listen, we knew it was going to be shoddy but nothing quite prepared us for just how bad it would be.
First off the most distracting thing was definitely the terrible accents. It was a cross between an Australian and English accent. Secondly, it was very clear by the locations that this film wasn't shot in South Africa – there was no familiarity at all.
The plot was an absolute mess as well. The film starts off on the day of Reeva's death and then it randomly jumps between the past and the present. It focuses on how they met, their relationship, Oscar's temper and eventually the court case. The writers tried to tell the story as the details of their relationship emerged during the trial but they failed miserably to tell a cohesive story.
When it comes to the acting Andreas Damm, who played Oscar, tried really hard to create a multi-dimensional character but it came across as play acting. Toni Garrn on the other hand should rather stick to the modelling. I don’t know if this film was the right platform for the launch of her acting career.
This film once again highlights the importance of South Africans telling our own stories when we're ready to do so.
Oscar Pistorius: Blade Runner Killer is a tragic film that should never have been made.