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LONDON -- "Tsotsi" means "thug" in the patois of South Africa's townships, and it also is the name of the title character in writer-director Gavin Hood's tough-minded film about a young man fighting against his own history of violence. Brutal but believable, the film in some ways harks back to early Hollywood, when Jimmy Cagney or Richard Widmark played callow villains out of their depth in everyday life. With its highly original setting, "Tsotsi" will appeal to fans of thoughtful crime pictures beyond the festival and art house circuits. The movie screened in London and was shown at the Edinburgh Film Festival. It also will screen at the Toronto International Film Festival. Seldom has the desperate poverty of the shantytowns that sprawl beside cities such as Johannesburg been shown so vividly as in Hood's fast-moving story about a fearsome gang leader (Presley Chweneyagae) who unexpectedly discovers a kind of life different from one of violent crime. Tsotsi leads a gang of vicious petty thieves but is frustrated by their pointless existence, and one day his anger explodes; he turns on one of them and beats him to a pulp. Horrified by his own behavior, Tsotsi flees until he finds himself in a wealthy part of the city. In pouring rain, he spots a woman pulling up to her garage door. Almost without thinking, he does what comes naturally and steals the car at gunpoint, wounding the woman in the process. Racing away, Tsotsi hears a baby crying in the back seat and totals the car. The young criminal's reaction when he finds himself taking care of the infant after the crash and the impact it has on his violent life makes for a winning tale. When he encounters a young mother (Terry Pheto) in the ghetto and she responds to his plight, the story becomes both darker and more absorbing. Hood's filmmaking is accomplished, Lance Gewer's cinematography exceptional and there are fine performances throughout, especially by Chweneyagae as the memorably tortured young Tsotsi. |
