Tsotsi: Movie Review, DVD Review (2006)

(Originally published 2006)

Written and directed by Gavin Hood, based on the novel by Athol Fugard, 94 minutes, rated R.

Gavin Hood's Academy Award-winning film, "Tsotsi," is based on the novel by Athol Fugard, and while it isn't as good as the movie that should have won 2005’s Best Foreign Film--Hany Abu-Assad's "Paradise Now"--it is memorable, with a terrific performance by Presley Chweneyagae as Tsotsi that burns in its contained rage.

Set in the South African township of Soweto, where “tsotsi” is slang for “thug,” the film wastes no time in revealing that Tsotsi assumed his nickname for good reason. He is indeed a thug, hardcore to the core, with one look into his unblinking eyes suggesting that he would shoot you dead if he thought for a minute that you'd rise up against him.

He's a young man unhinged, so seemingly lacking in humanity, there is little question that for him, life is without meaning--and not just his own life. For the unfortunate few he meets early in the movie, they understand firsthand what a monster he can be. This is particularly true for the wealthy woman whose car Tsotsi hijacks. When she decides to fight back, he busts a bullet in her gut and then steals her car, only to find out later that in the back seat is her infant child.

So, what is Tsotsi to do? Leave the baby behind? Kill it? Perhaps a kidnapping is in order?

He's capable of all of it. Whatever he has in mind, into a shopping bag the baby goes, with Tsotsi fleeing to his little shanty shack, where he tucks the bag beneath his bed only to awaken the next morning to find that inside, the baby is reeking of feces and covered in flies.

It's this image that creates the shift in Tsotsi that alters the film. Shocked by what he sees, he's suddenly moved to act, which for Tsotsi means helping the child by the only means he knows--violence.

In town, he finds a woman (Terry Pheto) with a young child and orders her at gunpoint to breast feed the child he stole. From this, their tense relationship is born, lives are changed and as the movie unfolds, so do flashes of Tsotsi’s past--we glimpse his mother, who died of AIDS; we meet his violent father, who crippled the family dog with a vicious kick; we witness Tsotsi running away from it all to live in a cement pipe on the outskirts of Soweto, where other orphans lived.

As the stumbling blocks of his life fall into place, the human being beneath the criminal takes shape. Now a story about redemption, "Tsotsi" could have gone one of two ways--it could have become a heartwarming little tear jerker in which we were meant to thrill at Tsotsi's sudden transformation from creep to citizen, or it could have stayed true to life and realized that change is more subtle than that, particularly since the easier impulse is to resist it. Director Hood goes for the latter, and as such, his movie has a power it otherwise might have lacked.

Grade: B+

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