A tightly coiled political thriller about the secret talks in England held between a white professor of philosophy (William Hurt) and a black representative of the African National Congress(Chiwetel Ejiofor), which directly led to the end of apartheid and the beginning of a democratic process in South Africa. But rest assured that Endgame doesn't feel like a history lesson--or, actually, it feels like the best kind of history lesson, in which remarkably complicated circumstances are told simply and clearly, with an uncontrived sense of drama. by Ned Lannamann