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The Power of One
PK, an English orphan terrorized for his family's political beliefs in Africa, turns to his only friend, a kindly world-wise prisoner, Geel Piet. Geel teaches him how to box with the motto “fight with your fists and lead with your heart”. As he grows to manhood, PK uses these words to take on the system and the injustices he sees around him - and finds that one person really can make a difference.
1992 · Directed by John G. Avildsen · 127 min · Drama · Screenplay in the scene database · 17 frames
Tagline
An exhilarating epic of a triumph of the heart.
Plot
Born in 1930 to a recently widowed Englishwoman on a homestead in the Union of South Africa, young Peter Philip Kennith Keith (nicknamed "PK") is schooled in the ways of England by his mother and the ways of South Africa by a Zulu nanny, whose son Tonderai is also his best friend. However, their peaceful life is soon shattered when the farm's cattle are claimed by rinderpest. PK's mother succumbs to a nervous breakdown, and he is sent away to a conservative Afrikaans-language boarding school while she recovers.
Being the only Anglo-South African student at the boarding school, PK earns universal contempt from his Afrikaner fellows—particularly from Jaapie Botha, the oldest student. Their extreme bullying, which includes spitting in PK's face and urinating on him after calling him "piskop" (Afrikaans for "pisshead"), strikes PK with a severe case of bed wetting, a habit which he eventually overcomes with local sangoma Dabula Manzi. In conquering his nightmares, PK is given a chicken, whom he names Mother Courage, and which becomes his closest companion.
When the Second World War breaks out in Europe, the Afrikaner students kidnap PK and Mother Courage and has them tried before a mock Nazi court where Botha elaborates on the depth of his hatred for the British and their diaspora in South Africa, a people he collectively holds responsible for the atrocities committed by the British Army during the Second Boer War, such as the British concentration camps and the scorched-earth policy. The Afrikaner boys hang Mother Courage and Jaapie kills her with a slingshot. When PK physically retaliates against Botha, they attempt to execute him in a similar manner, but are interrupted by a teacher who later oversees Botha's expulsion.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: Robert Mark Kamen
- Cinematography: Dean Semler
- Edited by: Trevor Jolly, John G. Avildsen
- Music: Hans Zimmer
- Production design: Roger Hall
- Produced by: Arnon Milchan, Doug Seelig
Cast
- Morgan Freeman as Geel Piet
- Stephen Dorff as P.K. Age 18
- Simon Fenton as P.K. Age 12
- Guy Witcher as P.K. Age 7
- Armin Mueller-Stahl as Doc
- Alois Moyo as Gideon Duma
- Marius Weyers as Prof. Daniel Marais
- Ian Roberts as Hoppie Gruenewald
- Fay Masterson as Maria
- Winston Ntshona as Mlungisi
Production
- Country: France, United States of America
- Language: English
- Studios: Regency Enterprises, Alcor Films, Village Roadshow Pictures, Arnon Milchan Productions
- Budget: $18,000,000
- Box office: $2,827,107
- Themes: based on novel or book, africa, shower, chicken, apartheid, bullying, boxing
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