Silverton Siege

2022
TV-MA
1h 40m

IMDb RATING

6.3/10

4.6K

YOUR RATING

Noxolo Dlamini, Thabo Rametsi, and Stefan Erasmus in Silverton Siege (2022)

After a failed sabotage mission, a trio of anti-apartheid freedom fighters ends up in a tense bank hostage situation. Based on a true story.

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Docudrama Heist True Crime Action Crime Drama Thriller

Follows three young freedom fighters who seek refuge in a South African bank in Silverton, and take the bank and its customers hostage and would only release them in exchange for the release... Read allFollows three young freedom fighters who seek refuge in a South African bank in Silverton, and take the bank and its customers hostage and would only release them in exchange for the release of Nelson Mandela.Follows three young freedom fighters who seek refuge in a South African bank in Silverton, and take the bank and its customers hostage and would only release them in exchange for the release of Nelson Mandela.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.3/10

4.6K

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 6 wins & 15 nominations

Trivia
The movie is inspired by true events; the director's goal was not total accuracy. As quoted in an interview on Netflix.com, director Mandla Dube said: "We don't have a character who has albinism in the real story and the three guys that were in the bank were all males, and I took the liberty to just say, "I want to make one of them female," because I had worked with Noxolo Dlamini on the Netflix series Jiva! Then, obviously, we didn't use the real character names. Once that happened, I said to myself, "Let's have fun. We're not doing a documentary. We're doing a thriller," and all the gloves were off, and we just went to battle to find these characters and to build them and to mold them and shape them into what you see as a final product on the screen"

Goofs
The bank where the siege occurred is in the Pretoria East suburb of Silverton, however the action depicted in the film is shown to take place in and around the historic Church Square in the same city. This is a location far removed from where the event happened.

Quotes
Rachel Paige: In Zulu: translated as "We are only human though other human beings."

User reviews54

Review

Featured review

6/10

Interesting

This film might have been better if it were made into a limited series instead of a film. Perhaps a 3 or 4 episode show. I say this because it needed more main character and situation development for those like myself who are not knowledgeable about the details of South Africa in this time period. Perhaps more time to dive into each character a little more? The film assumes the audience knows what is going on and perhaps this film was originally made for internal consumption in SA. But for a global audience, it makes our head scratch with some confusion.

The beginning of the film is pretty good. I liked the car chases and the fire fights. The acting was excellent. The actors that played Calvin and Terra were very good.

Once the trio reach the bank, the story slows down. So now the viewer has couch adrenaline and no way to dissipate it. The side characters were interesting, comical and cringy. I wonder if there really was an Afro-American boxing promotor with a suitcase with the letters USA written boldly on it like it was on the film or was that improvised? Probably doesn't matter in the overall context of the film.

It's not a bad film. It just needed some touch ups. It leaves global audiences with more questions than answers.