Mister Johnson

Beresford, adapting Joyce Cary's 1939 novel, looks at the psychological relationships inherent in colonialism with some subtlety.

Beresford and writer William Boyd have delivered a film strangely devoid of emotion and lacking a clear point of view.

The film works well as far as it goes, but some of the story's emotional power is denatured or lost.

Mister Johnson is pitched somewhere between a black comedy and a tragedy, with the latter winning out in the end.