Born to Win (*)
Directed by: Frans Cronje
Starring: Greg Kriek, Leoné Pienaar,
Marié Cronjé, Cobus Venter, Merlin Balie, Nadia Beukes, Dorette Potgieter,
Anrich Herbst, James Reardon, Sylvia Mdunyelwa-Kobus, David Osbourne, Tim
Theron, Lizaan Raath, Bennie Fourie, Llewelyn van den Berg
Seen: August 22nd 2014
* Out of ****
I walked into Born to Win, from the
producers of the South African religious hit movie Faith Like Potatoes, with a heap
of apprehension. Faith Like Potatoes had an inspirational story which, coupled
with the great work Angus Buchan (Faith’s main character) has done since, has
given it a certain credence. The problem was that Faith Like Potatoes was a
terrible movie, it’s only redeeming quality its good story. Born to Win duplicates
this, with some of the worst acting, dialogue, and story progression I’ve seen in
a long time, but Born to Win’s worst problem however is that while the story is
inspirational, it is nowhere near what Faith offered, and it’s absolutely not
worth enduring the movie for. I firmly believe that movies like this do
more damage to the world’s view of Christianity than any good.
Born to Win starts with a young Leon
Terblanche (Reardon) and his mom (Potgieter) fleeing from his abusive stepfather
to stay with his real father (Herbst). Leon’s dad wants them back, but only if
the stepfather is completely gone. Leon’s mom decides to go back to the man
without taking Leon along, and Leon’s father disappears, not willing to raise Leon
alone. Mama (Mdunyelwa-Kobus), a worker at the hotel where Leon stayed with his
parents before they left, takes Leon in – and as narrator, Leon refers to his
time living with Mama and her son Outjie in the townships as his fondest (and
possibly only good) childhood memories. But it doesn’t take the SA Police long
to remove the white kid from the black township and Leon is back with his mom
and abusive stepfather soon enough.
Leon grows up into a cynical man
(played by Kriek), vowing to never become the same as his stepfather, and for a
while things look good as he achieves some form of success. He goes through hard
times, working on a steam train to get himself through college. He becomes a
confident young man and meets the love of his life Elmarie (Pienaar) because of
his cocky attitude. They’re married and have a daughter together, Briggitte
(Cronjé). He becomes a teacher at a school for the physically disabled, where
he becomes an inspirational leader for the children, many of whom are severely
disabled (Deonette (Raath) has no legs, Henry (Fourie) is paralysed with
limited use of one hand, and Mick (van den Berg) has advanced muscular dystrophy).
Leon however has a demon plaguing him in his continued belief that he is not
good enough, that life has been unfair to him, and that everything is against
him. It takes hard introspection and an invitation from Briggitte to join them
at church to start a turnaround for Leon, but just as things start looking up,
even more tragedy strikes and Leon has to find out how to interact with God
based on his understanding of what God is, through lenses coloured by a less
than desirable life, to eventually find out how we are all Born to Win, which
becomes one of his main messages once he answers the calling to become a
pastor.
As mentioned earlier, the movie
features some shockingly pedestrian acting and story progression; it felt like
a series of vignettes from a single life cut together, supposed to form a
coherent story which it only does because it all happens to one person. The
inspirational story only kicks in around the hour mark of this 104 minute
movie, which makes the first hour hard labour, with the last 45 minutes only a
marginal improvement. Earlier this year I gave Pompeii a similar rating to what
I am giving Born to Win, stating that the one star is for it being a movie, and
the half star for some small elements that didn’t completely suck. The same
holds for Born to Win, but I would rather re-watch Pompeii than this 100 times
out of 100.
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