The performances are solid, including Coogan and especially Garion Dowds as the laconic and mournful defendant. Director Oliver Schmitz gives the film a measured pace, stoking tension as the courtroom drama unfolds.

The film mostly preaches to the converted, even if it reveals with historical gravity how capital punishment was another way that apartheid severely discriminated against South Africa's black population.

Shepherds and Butchers doesn't know which it is: the twisty legal drama that's going to herd us through the issue or the ferocious expose, laying out the quotidian grimness of systemic death.

Coogan, known as a comic actor, does solid dramatic work and Garion Dowds' accused is living in a palpable living hell. He knows no one can be a shepherd and a butcher and stay sane.