大象传媒

In the street language of Johannesburg, Tsotsi means a street thug or gang member - an appropriate moniker for the main character (Presley Chweneyagae) in this brutal, gripping drama. Tsotsi's mean life of thievery and murder is thrown when a carjacking episode leaves him caring for a young baby. Repressed memories of his own wretched childhood surface and watching the realisation of what he's become dawn on him is powerful stuff. Comparisons with City Of God are not undeserved.

Director Gavin Hood throws up a township filled with breeze blocks and corrugated iron and, although the lens filters are on the heavy side, he paints a real gulf between the gated world of the baby's affluent parents and Tsotsi's polluted, impoverished domain. Saddled with junior but unable to give him up, Tsotsi is forced to think about someone else for the first time in his life. So the baby spends long indignant periods hidden in a paper shopping bag as Tsotsi ferries him to the young mother (Terry Pheto) he press gangs into wet nursing.

"A CAULDRON OF SIMMERING RAGE"

While the childhood roots of Tsotsi's criminal behaviour are made a little too obvious, Hood infuses his work with such passion it's something that's easily overlooked. Filmed almost entirely in Tsotsi-Taal, the street patois spoken in the townships, it thrums to a pulsating soundtrack of bass-heavy kwaito music. Through all this, babyface Chweneyagae skulks with awesome menace, a cauldron of simmering rage and frustration and a performance of real skill, carrying the film effortlessly through to the nail-shredding conclusion.

In Afrikaans and Tsotsi-Taal with English subtitles.