The Power of One

The Power of One follows an English boy growing up in South Africa, where racial division and prejudice shape his life from an early age. Orphaned as a small child, P.K. is raised for a time by a Zulu nanny before being sent to an Afrikaner boarding school, where he is persecuted by classmates for his background. He later comes under the care of a German professor known as Doc, who is interned during the Second World War. Visiting him in prison, P.K. meets Geel Piet, a black inmate who teaches him to box. That training carries him through his school years, into a romance that crosses the colour line, and into a friendship with Gideon Duma, with whom he helps teach English to township residents. The film's central conflict lies in P.K.'s growing refusal to accept the injustices around him and his attempts to work against them.

John G. Avildsen directed, working from a screenplay by Robert Mark Kamen; the two had previously collaborated on the Karate Kid films, and this was Avildsen's tenth feature, arriving after Rocky V. Stephen Dorff plays the older P.K., with Simon Fenton and Guy Witcher as younger versions, while Morgan Freeman appears as Geel Piet and Armin Mueller-Stahl as Doc. On IMDb the film holds 7.1/10 from around 11,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.5/10 from a much smaller base of 156 votes. Critics were far less favourable, rating it 4.5/10 across 17 reviews. Made for 18 million dollars, it returned only 3 million worldwide.