The Comprehensive Review of Tsotsi Movie

Tsotsi DVD Cover

What an amazing movie that shows a ruthless young man who later gets transformed into being a better person, instead of getting worse. "Tsotsi" is a film of high emotional driven power in which a young brutal killer with cold eyes that show no emotions or any remorse. He kills mercilessly and ultimately finds himself being forced to change for better by the helplessness of a baby that he co-opted as he robbed the Mercedes Benzes from the baby`s mother  at their suburb house.

  

The story is based on a novel by the South African writer Athol Fugard, directed and written by Gavin Hood. This movie won the Oscar for best foreign film in 2006. The setting for this movie is in Soweto, the township on the southern outskirts of Johannesburg where the shabby little shacks were overcrowded. The selected setting seem to be hit by poverty and desolation, but also a hope and opportunity as Soweto is a hub of most popular politicians, entrepreneurs, artists, musicians, as well as the worst thugs.

Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae) a lead character with the true characters of being born and bred in Soweto at its best. Tsotsi`s real name is not known until later in the film as provoked by one of his gangsters demanding to know who he really is; "tsotsi" means a "thug," and of which he exactly lived most of his life as. Tsotsi lead an uncontrollable-knight gang that cruelly robbed, looted, shot and killed innocent people. Their everyday means of living was only based on forcefully taking whatever that was not legitimately theirs.

The cinematographic sentiments of this movie truly gives a real feeling of practical reality and a conducive setting for Tsotsi to demonstrate his true nature of being one. For instance, dark lighting gives an impression of knight times, again the action speed and precision of acting certain scenes conforms to that of the normal way that true thugs will normally do things on the darkness. Most importantly, the sound bits and music used fits perfectly well as it used the old Kwaito music that used “flight-tongue” which is one of the South African indigenous languages used in local townships.   

As the movie unfolds, in a crowded train, Tsotsi and his gang, clinically stabbed a man who died instantly without anyone noticing; they held his body up with their own, took his wallet, and fleet when the train doors opened. But when his gang star friend Boston (Mothusi Magano) asked him how he really felt, whether decency has ever came into him, he fought with him and walked off into the night where he operated alone for a while.

In the mist of his loitering, Tsotsi found himself in a high class suburb. Such areas in Joburg are usually gated and butler proved communities, each house is surrounded by a security wall, every gate warning with tag “armed response." Suddenly an African professional woman got out of her Mercedes to ring the buzzer on the gate, so that her husband could open the gate for her. As usual, Tsotsi shot her, stole her car and hastily drove off. In no time as he was recklessly driving a stolen car, knocking down almost everything that was nearby, he suddenly realised that he has mistakenly co-opted a helpless passenger: “an infant- a baby boy.”

Nonetheless, irrespective of cold blooded Tsotsi was, but he could not kill a baby. He decided to take a baby with him, to his shack. He thought of some options to dumb a baby at places like a church or an orphanage, but he did not have the guts to do it. He was stuck with the baby and now as his without any choice. One can guess that he decided not to abandon the boy because he too was once abandoned, and the only option was keep the baby boy with him for his own self-mercy.

As the time went on, considering the trouble of attending the needs of an infant the violence in the film decelerated. Tsotsi was now overwhelmed by a new added responsibility of nursing a baby, he used newspapers as diapers, fed the baby a condensed milk, and carried the baby around with him in a shopping bag everywhere he went to.

In desperation and failing the baby`s needs, he forces Terry Pheto (a nursing mother) at gunpoint to feed the child. She lived in a nearby shack, a clean and cheerful one. As he watched her do what he demanded, something shifted inside of him, and all of his hurt and grief were revived. However being preoccupied by the baby he simply stopped being active as an evil one and concentrated on babysitting the boy without much of the choice.

At the end, Terry Pheto who was always victimized by Tsotsi to feed, wash and change the baby, managed to touch Tsotsi`s heart by convincing him to return the baby to his biological parents, as they were desperately in need of the boy. At that time Tsotsi was so emotionally attached to the boy but he did a brave kindest thing thing of not his nature and brought back the boy to the rightful parents. For him, that was not an easy decision, to let go of his soulmate – the precious baby boy. However, through tears, and acknowledgment his failure, and desperation of the baby boy`s biological parents he surrendered the baby on police gun point; What an emotional scene that is! 

Also, the nursing mother Terry Pheto as a quiet counterpoint to his rage. She made reasonable decisions. She acted not as a heroine but as a realist who wanted to push Tsotsi in a direction that will protect her own family and this helpless baby, and then perhaps even Tsotsi against himself as well. These two performances, by Chweneyagae and Pheto, are surrounded by temptations to overact or cave in to sentimentality; they step safely past them and play the characters as they might actually live their lives.

What a simple and yet profound story this is. It does not romanticize poverty in Soweto or make Tsotsi more colorful or sympathetic than he should be; if he deserves praise, it is not for becoming a good man but for allowing himself to be distracted from the diabolic job of being an evil young blood sucker. Ultimately, this movie demonstrates how some petty things can sometimes affect and change the brutal hearts that cannot be repented by the word of God.