Idris Elba makes a ‘Long Walk to Freedom’

In the push for holiday entertainment, moviegoers may be ignoring one of the better films playing in theaters right now. Not that I can criticize anyone who would rather not be reminded of such things as racism, institutional injustice and violence during a time we like to reserve for gift-giving and family togetherness. That said, the film “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom” is worth a view.

The main reason is obvious: Nelson Mandela, more so than most other political leaders I can name, ended up turning away from violence and opting for a policy of forgiveness aimed at the very people who had virtually enslaved his people and made him a criminal. Yet to portray Mandela as a perfect human being would be no only dishonest but wrong, and the film avoids that trap: Just 18 minutes in, “Long Walk to Freedom” shows the man breaking some fairly basic vows. The movie had me from that point on because I was fairly certain it was going to temper reverence with at least a version of the truth.

Overall, “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom” works best because of the performance by Idris Elba . Famous for playing both Stringer Bell in the HBO miniseries “The Wire” and DCI John Luther in the BBC miniseries “Luther,” Elba — though not a physical match for the man he portrays — manages to capture the speech patterns and the contrasting emotions facing a man who ends up losing 27 years of his life in prison yet ends up freeing his people.

“Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom” is a holiday film in the best meaning of that term.