Review: Tsotsi

Rated R | 94 mins

IMDB Info

Coming of age is often a glamorized transformation in the modern-day land of pseudo-sophisticated independent films, but Tsotsi suffers from no such glamour. Winner of the 2006 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and helmed by South African Director Gavin Hood, it is a stunning tale of a troubled youth’s path to redemption. In a memorizing performance, first-time actor Presley Chweneyagae plays the title-character, a thug living in a ghetto of Johannesburg who leads his own small gang. One night, he decides to conduct a solo-job by stealing a woman’s car in a nearby rich neighborhood, but gets much more than he bargains for when he finds her baby inside after crashing the vehicle while making his getaway. Tsotsi isn’t heartless enough to merely leave it to fend for its own, and finds himself facing a troubling inner-dilemma when he begins to raise the baby and comes to love it. Chweneyagae’s portrayal of the character’s fragility when he comes to understand that the baby is dependant upon him functions as a poignant representation of the failings of an unstable society and the individual’s ability to overcome them. It is impossible not to sympathize with Tsotsi, but equally as difficult to forgive his actions. Through and through, Tsotsi is an effectively thoughtful and often emotional motion picture.