Get all thoughts of Nicolas Cage scenery chewing out of your mind its not that Dying of the Light. Though given the extreme afterlife VHS had I wouldn't put it past someone taping this of Sky or some sort.
No the one you want is a bio pic based on the life of aid worker and teacher Sean Devereaux. And a caveat here I've not seen the whole film as some cunt taped the Princess Di confessional Panorama episode with Martin Bashir, over the beginning so what you have left is the last hour and twenty minutes of this before the tape runs out.
I'd dismissed this as another worthy programme put out by the BBC (though as there are ad breaks in this Channel 4 is my go to for actually airing this) and wanted to zip through this as quick as possible. Then the killing starts and my interest piqued settled down to watch through the rest.
It took to the end credits (cut off after main names) to get a head start on who starred in this and what this was called.
It follows Sean's career from a Liberia still under the cosh of Charles Taylor. To his ultimate demise through a lone gunman in Kismayo Somalia. There is an Australian guy (Todd Boyce) in this and what I take to be his girlfriend (Maggie O'Neill from Gorilla's in the Mist) also part of the aid team.
It also couldn't be made today. It's not racist but at the same time nearly every African on screen is shown to be either corrupt or just plain murderous. Talking to child soldiers, having their grain stolen at checkpoints and using the Bible for justify murdering whole swathes of people. He's repeatedly shown to be roughed up and thrown in jail for the crime of wanting to give one young lad a chance of a better life not being part of Taylor's child soldier corps.
This is cut with bits of him at home with his parents in Yateley, Hampshire and later on writing out an elegy in Kenya.
All in all its a good film and was Bafta nominated for an award in 1995. As for home media the page at IMDB alludes to a French dub of this with its cover, but so far I've yet to see any home release of this emerge so I'm lucky to cap what I can. Of course I'll put it up on archive.org once I've done capping the tape but this is a keeper. Shame someone put that Diana interview over the top of it.
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