roblaingjoeblog

I just finished watching my first Bollywood movie via Netflix, and think it's the best movie I've ever watched. Partly because it really resonated with my own life story as someone forced to do engineering because of family tradition, and then much to the chagrin of both my grandfathers and father, ditched my job in an engineering multinational to work for a newspaper.

Sad thing is, my father and grandfathers were all frustrated journalists.

Something this movie makes explicit is many people sign up for engineering because they are creative, and unfortunately any creativity is killed by rote learning.

I sat all through all six episodes of Justice Served since I'm a proponent of local content (though preferably not government enforced).

Is it as bad as the 3.9/10 stars on imdb? Unfortunately yes.

I watched this soon after Silverton Siege, which made the series worse since there seems to have been a plot heist -- exactly the same ideas of a hostage drama with a "good cop" getting over-ridden by a politically appointed boss gets regurgitated here.

Whereas Silverton Siege played a little bit with Pretoria geography, Jusice Served is utterly confusing to a South African audience since it uses the very familiar Cape Town parliament as a setting, and one has to figure out the building is supposed to be a high court in Hillbrow.

The screen writers had some interesting ideas on contemporary South Africa and the general malaise of government corruption etc. The fictional freedom fighters use some of Julius's actual quotes, such as calling a journalist a "bloody agent".

But ultimately, this seems to be the product of a committee where whatever individual good ideas were originally thought up got completely garbled along the way.

This movie lends itself to a lot of criticism about historical accuracy. It doesn't claim to be journalism, and it catches the "vibe" of the times very well.