Tsotsi

Tsotsi is a film by South African director Gavin Hood. The film is based on a novel by Athol Fugard. The movie is about a boy, Tsotsi, who is very troubled and lives his life as a thug. He steals and kills just to survive and sometimes for not reason at all. When you see his actions, it is very hard to see how this character can have any good in him.

One day he shoots a woman trying to get inside her house and steals her car. In the process of stealing her car, he finds out that she has a baby. Instead of leaving the car and the baby all together, he decides to take the baby for himself. It is very hard to imagine someone so violent take care of a baby. Since the beginning of the movie he has done nothing but beat and kill people. But from the looks of it, this may be his once chance for salvation.

We find out that he had father issues in a dream sequence. His real name is David, and his mother was very ill. He cares much for her but his father did not want him near her. His father felt that he would get sick too. A dog can be heard barking in the background, and the father breaks it’s back so he runs away from home. He tries to take care of the baby but needs a mother to give him milk. So he hold a new mother hostage until she breast feeds him. He become friends with the lady and wants to take care of him at first but will not let her.

The lady he shot is not dead and the cops are looking for David. Flyers are put around the town and people realize it is David. David and other friends go to the rich part of town and back to the house were the baby belongs. The husband is at the house as the rob it but things go wrong and David has to shoot his friend. David realizes he cannot keep the baby so he decides to return him. He gives the baby back to the mother and is arrested.
There is a lot going on in the movie and it was hard at first to even care for the protagonist because he was so evil. But as the film progressed we see another side of him, a side that shows the good in him. He loved his mother but his father kept him away from her. The movie really show how important a mother is to a child. Overall this was a great film that I will watch again.