Tsotsi

I went to Blockbuster for the first time in ages. It was between Snakes on a Train (which is really more like Trains in a Snake), I Always Know What You Did Last Summer, and Tsotsi. I ended up going with the Oscar winner, though I might have been more entertained by one of the others.

I don't really know what to say about this movie. Or maybe I just don't have that much good to say about it. First off, I should just stop reading movie jackets. It bugs me when a movie is marketed as "a story of redemption." First off, it makes the movie sound cheery, and the subject matter is anything but. Secondly, it pretty much gives away the ending, although it's a bit unfair to say that in this case. Tsotsi was a story about the path to redemption, but it didn't have quite the fairy tale ending most redeption stories do.

The basic story of Tsotsi is this: Tsotsi (which means "thug") is a gang leader in a ghetto of Johannesburg, where he likes to steal and kill (even his own friends). One night Tsotsi ends up fleeing after a confrontation with one of his friends, who he ends up beating severely. He ends up in a rich neighborhood, where he ends up carjacking and shooting an unexpecting woman. He drives away, only to discover that there is a baby in the backseat of the car. He then faces the dilemma of how to take care of the baby. He resolves this dilemma by doing what any other parent would do - force a woman to nurse the baby at gunpoint. Obviously Tsotsi's interaction with the baby (and the woman who helps him with the baby) is what spurs him on to "redemption." The rest of the movie deals with how Tsotsi decides to deal with the baby and how he decides he's going to live his life.

I was mostly underwhelmed by Tsotsi. There just really wasn't anything about Tsotsi that made me care whether or not he turned his life around. The character I sympathized with most was the woman who helps Tsotsi with the baby. Tsotsi wasn't a bad movie by any stretch, I just couldn't get invested in it. I know this comparison has been made a lot, and that the two movies don't have anything in common other than they're about life in the ghetto (on two separate continents), but I would recommend skipping Tsotsi and just watching City of God. Some would argue that City of God is too flashy and relies on fancy camerawork as opposed to Tsotsi which just relies on the story, but City of God is still a far superior movie, in my opinion.

The dvd special features include a short film by the director called The Storekeeper that I did enjoy, more than Tsotsi itself. That was worth seeing, but Tsotsi....eh, I think I would have been okay had I never seen this movie.