Shepherds and Butchers

Name: Shepherds and Butchers
Genre: Drama
Released: January 31, 2017
Duration: 106 min
Rating: 42
Cast: Andrea Riseborough, Brett Williams, Carel Nel, Deon Lotz, Garion Dowds

2017

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Mixed or average reviews based on 5 Critic Reviews

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Generally favorable reviews based on 4 Ratings

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6.5	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 4 Ratings

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Movie Details & Credits

Twentieth Century Fox | Release Date (Streaming): January 31, 2017 | R

Starring: Andrea Riseborough, Brett Williams, Carel Nel, Deon Lotz, Garion Dowds, Inge Beckmann, Mbulelo Grootboom, Robert Hobbs, Siya Mayola, Steve Coogan

Summary: A lawyer takes on a case of a prison guard in South Africa who is traumatized by the executions he's witnessed.

Director: Oliver Schmitz

Genre(s): Drama

Rating: R

Runtime: 106 min

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Critic Reviews

Movie Nation Roger Moore

Feb 22, 2021

I found the picture moving in spite of its seeming unwillingness to wholly grapple with race and Coogan’s unwillingness to master the Afrikaner accent. He’s a gifted mimic, and Riseborough manages it. What gives? But what it does wrestle with is profound, and profoundly disturbing. Read full review

Jordan Mintzer

Feb 22, 2021

This well-intentioned if somewhat heavy-handed historical affair is anchored by Coogan’s solid lead turn, with support from Andrea Riseborough as a hard-hitting state prosecutor and promising newcomer Garion Dowds as an executioner who could wind up facing the gallows. Read full review

Guy Lodge

Feb 23, 2021

Dowds’ harrowed, haunted performance as a boy overwhelmed not just by the wolves to which he has been thrown, but the ones he claims have unconsciously emerged within him, gives the film its anxious emotional center. Read full review

The Guardian Henry Barnes

Feb 22, 2021

Shepherds and Butchers doesn’t know which it is: the twisty legal drama that’s going to herd us through the issue or the ferocious expose, laying out the quotidian grimness of systemic death. It’s better at the latter. Even though much of the action is penned in the courtroom, the horror – and the interest – are played out in the past. Read full review

Lee Marshall

Feb 23, 2021

What stands out in relief from the film’s flat characters and pedestrian storytelling is its dramatic core: the killing machine that death row had become in South Africa by the end of the 1980s, with 164 executions taking place in Pretoria Central Prison in the year in which Shepherds And Butchers is set, 1987. Read full review

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User Reviews

risonyeong

May 25, 2021

wow not sure why this movie got such a beating from the critics???
we really enjoyed the different genre and different storyline from the usual boring drugs, sex and shootings. is it because the critics could not dissociate steve coogan from comedies. he was quite respectable in this seriouswow not sure why this movie got such a beating from the critics???
we really enjoyed the different genre and different storyline from the usual boring drugs, sex and shootings. is it because the critics could not dissociate steve coogan from comedies. he was quite respectable in this serious court outing. his pronounced british diction was credible as a law orator. anyway we found the movie refreshing and thought provoking, especially the disgusting apatheid hanging of the white south africa. true tragic era of colonialism for such a beautiful african country. pls watch it so history don't repeat itself......… Expand

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