Product Description

Captivating audiences worldwide, this compelling story of crime and redemption has earned countless awards around the globe. On the edges of Johannesburg, Tsotsi's life has no meaning beyond survival. One night, in desperation, Tsotsi steals a woman's car. But as he is driving off, he makes a shocking discovery in the backseat. In one moment his life takes a sharp turn and leads him down an unexpected path to redemption ... giving him hope for a future he never could have imagined. TSOTSI is an extraordinary portrait of the choices that are made in life and how compassion can endure in the human heart. From Miramax Films, the studio that brings you the best in world cinema (CITY OF GOD, AMÉLIE, THE CHORUS).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13691 in DVD
• Brand: Buena Vista Home Video
• Released on: 2006-07-18
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: Afrikaans, English, Xhosa, Zulu
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 94 minutes

From The New Yorker
In Gavin Hood's South African drama (an Oscar nominee for best foreign film), the nonactor Presley Chweneyagae plays Tsotsi, a hooded, toughened gang leader in a Johannesburg shantytown who kills for money and beats his friend for challenging his dignity. When Tsotsi shoots a woman for her car and finds that he has unwittingly absconded with her baby, he is struck with a dilemma: what to do with the baby? This would be interesting if Tsotsi's choice were not immediately clear. In a film depicting a seemingly lawless society, where women are decent and men are helpless or derelict without them, Tsotsi's painful attempts to care for an infant seem not revelatory but calculated. Curiously styled, with rap-video camera moves giving way to sensitive closeups, this reductive story of redemption milks the sentimentality, rather than the profundity, born of an extreme change of heart. In Zulu, Xhosa, and Afrikaans.
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

A manipulative, calculated and inaccurate mess...
One of those films that everyone seems to admire, `Tsotsi' is a film that I can't rally behind. I have to speak my piece here and contribute an opinion that differs from the masses that seem to have nothing but praise and admiration for this film. Gavin Hood's film is stylishly directed and shot, and it is pretty well acted; but the script is a very, very week point that brings the film down to a mediocre level, diminishing the very moral that Hood was trying to bring to the light.

It somewhat contradicts itself.

This may contain some SPOILERS so be forewarned.

In `Tsotsi', Hood tells us the story of David, a thug who enforces his status by killing mercilessly and even going as far as to beat his friends if he feels his dignity is in question. He has apparently no morals whatsoever so when we see him pull out a gun and shoot a woman for her car, it doesn't faze us because we expect this from him. What happens next is a tad unexpected. David realizes that there is a baby in the backseat.

Now, I'm not trying to judge because, well, I don't like to do that, but Hood creates a monster in David that he seems quick to try and dispel. David immediately decides to care for this child. This didn't make much sense to me, since David's personality was not of the nurturing kind, and all too often we read of actually people of this persuasion who would kill a child as apposed to care for it; so his decision makes little sense, especially in the immediacy of it all. What happens next though is an even bigger question mark. It's apparent that Hood has now changed our central character from a merciless killer to a nurturing would-be-father who apparently cares for the boy, but he then depicts David breaking into the home of the parents in order to rob them for necessary items to care for the boy. This is another headscratcher. So he starts off a monster, then he suddenly shifts into a caring person but then, in order to be `caring' he pains the same family he's already nearly destroyed by robbing them at gunpoint. It was at that point in the film that I lost any and all respect for the story. I was finally starting to wrap my head around the idea of this young man maybe being more conflicted than evil, more conditioned than anything else, and that maybe this young baby brought another side of him to light; but the decision to rob the boy's parents of all people was one that I could never understand. Then he pulls yet another one-eighty and delivers the baby to the parents. It's almost as if Hood wasn't sure what kind of person David really was.

He's a menace, but he's sentimental, but he evil, yet he's moral, but he corrupt yet he does the right thing...

Hmmmm.

Then, on top of it all, the final confrontation with the cops and the parents and David is presented in a way where we feel almost manipulated to actually feel sorry for David. This was a sick joke in my book, for if Hood actually thinks that this character is a representation of purity in a maniacal environment then he is sadly mistaken. Hood presents David's eventual decision as if it were the eraser taken to his actions, as if he was redeeming himself by presenting this baby to his parents. If he had never entered the families home with gun in hand in order to steal their child's belongings I would walk away feeling that maybe this young mans full-circle transformation was genuine, but actions speak louder than words, and Hood should have known that.

That said, Presley Chweneyagae does a fine job portraying David, and he shifts through the range of emotions (as unstable and uneven as they are) with ease, so I cannot knock him. He actually brings more to the table than the script called for, and so I actually praise him for his efforts. It's a shame that the script was not up to this young mans potential.

I cannot recommend this film, for to me it is an inaccurate depiction of a tragedy and it attempts to rationalize in a way that is nearly offensive. To sympathize with David, after all that he has done, is a crime in many ways for the script never allows us to truly invest in his transformation. He doesn't prove his heart to us, but Hood makes sure that we see his faux variation of change in those last few frames. If you are easily persuaded by manipulated expressions of redemption then you may very well flock to David's defense; but hopefully you're smart enough to see that Hood wasn't smart enough to make this work.

Glimmer of Hope
"Tsotsi" came onto my radar screen because of its' 2005 Oscar for Best Foreign-Language films. I have come to appreciate that the five films nominated in that category are often better, overall, than the five films nominated in any other category that year. "Tsotsi" reaffirms that appreciation. This is a movie that grabs your attention right from the beginning. We are quickly made aware of just how bad a person this Tsotsi is. He's so bad, even one of his comrades in crime admonishes him for his lack of decency. With this brief yet telling portait of evil, the movie is able to quickly grab hold of the essential plot.

Tsotsi shoots a woman as part of a car-jacking. After driving off in the stolen car, he becomes aware that there is a baby in the back seat. This challenges him to make a decision. Perhaps that earlier admonition by his partner in crime stirred something inside him. The decision that Tsotsi makes is somewhat incomplete but it is a step towards humanity. We see if evolve in a rather morally clumsy manner yet this enables the viewer to be more accepting of the change. Without any spark of spiritual conversion, the evolution from evil to good requires patience. We are drawn towards Tsotsi's redemption but many of us retain a focus on the victims; past and present. The ending is very well done. We sense that Tsotsi has regained that turning point in his youth that led him down the wrong path. This time he seems ready to try a different direction. There is a common sense of redemption as well as justice.

What impressed me the most about "Tsotsi" is how it said so much in such a short time. I believe that this film lasts less than 90 minutes yet I did not feel that I was short-changed as a viewer. The acting is good and the setting is in a world we see little of on the Silver Screen. This movie reminded me of "City of God" but with a happier ending. I waivered between 4 and 5 "stars" in my rating. I guess I was thinking I've been over-rating a few too many books and movies lately. Perhaps I'm guilty of under-rating "Tsotsi"

Hardcore Realism and Poetic Grace Make TSOTSI a Cinematic Masterpiece

It takes a masterful touch to achieve in a film gripping unsympathetic realism and inspiring poetic surrealism but that's exactly what director Gavin Hood does in TSOTSI. As we watch the title character (performed with amazing complexity by Presley Chweneyagae) and his friends head out for an evening of juvenile mayhem at this movie's beginning, we understand immediately the brutal hardcore conditions that rule their lives and possibly drive them to commit the horrors they do.

Despite that, it seems impossible to show them any compassion when we witness how brazenly they murder a man for his wallet on a crowded subway and how Tsotsi shoots a woman in front of her home then drives off in her car. The key word in that last sentence is "seems" because this intricately written and beautifully photographed movie is filled with more than a few twists in plot, fate, and emotion.

In the world of Tsotsi and his friends, the word "decency" is considered a fancy intellectual term that has neither meaning nor relevance. And the name "Tsotsi" is really not a name at all but a term describing a street thug or criminal. Nothing about the Tsotsi we first meet leads us to believe he would care about discovering an infant in the back seat of the car he has stolen. It would appear more in character if he simply left the child for the police to find. He instead does the unthinkable and takes it with him. The scenes that follow are often as laugh-out-loud comical as they are heartbreakingly tragic.

One can't help pitying him when Tsotsi uses an old newspaper in his attempt to change the baby's diaper and then detest him again when he forces a woman named Miriam (acted with convincing sensitivity by Terry Pheto) at gunpoint to breastfeed the child. It is, however, through the infant and Miriam that Tsotsi begins to reconnect with a healing sense of his own humanity and to reclaim the innocence lost to him as a child who ran away to escape his mother's illness and his father's cruelty. His extraordinary transformation from nightmare hellion to angelic thug unfolds through a series of strange encounters, shocking events, and surprising revelations. The question is whether or not the healing comes too late.

Tsotsi is based on the 1980 novel by Athol Fugard, the South African author most noted for such plays as "Blood Knot" and "Master Harold...and the Boys," which scrutinize the dehumanizing impact of apartheid segregation. Director Gavin Hood moves the book's storyline up to modern times and gives his audience a cinematic interpretation filled with the energetic hip hop music known as "kwaito" and the vibrant colors of South African urban life. The end result is a work of hardcore realism and poetic grace that serves as a compelling portrait not only of the extreme challenges facing many in South Africa's cities but of those facing people in many urban environments throughout the world in 2008.

by Author-Poet Aberjhani
author of The American Poet Who Went Home Again
and co-author of ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love