hyped garbage

A Masterpiece!

Blistering performances.

Blistering performances.

I've seen a few films from this era focused on the topic. Few of those had the impact of this film. As well, I feel it has relevance today.The overall theme, is how do 'normal' people 'wake-up' and consider radical or revolutionary action? Where do (so called) home-grown radicals come from? If we assume babies are born more-or-less innocent(??) What happens? More to the point, in the context of this particular film; why does NOT happen? We play football, we have some drinks, dance at a wedding, etc. Life is good. And sometimes; something-happens.There's a huge ethical question too... When is it OK to be bad, to do good? Is it 'ok(??)' to be 'evil' and feel you are a hero!? You my say, 'No...'; sometimes it will depend. Sometimes history is the decision maker.Watch the movie ... Pray you don't need to make these choices.

I'm not surprised that this film lost a lot of money at the box office. It's a terribly uncomfortable film to watch because it's not fiction and it is a great tragedy.As unpleasant as it is to watch this film because of the tragedies involved, it is, nevertheless, wonderful to watch 2 superb performances. After his remarkable performance in "Antwone Fisher", I lost track of Derek Luke; just didn't appear in movies that appealed to me. Now, 9 years after this film was made, I am watching it on cable, and Derek Luke's performance here is nothing short of amazing. It's a stunning performance. Only slightly less impressive is the performance of Tim Robbins. I don't always care much for the films Robbins chooses, but every once in a while he connects with the right film and truly impresses me...as he does here. And, it's not a role that makes him the good guy, rather quite the opposite, so it took courage to accept it.As much as any film I've seen about South Africa's apartheid, this film gives one a good impression of what that era was like for Black people there. However, we all know that it was worse than this film presents.This is top notch, if unpleasant. Highly recommended.

It's often said that the difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist is the difference between who wins and who loses. Perhaps this was never as powerfully demonstrated as during the apartheid regime of South Africa, and that axiom is equally powerfully portrayed in this movie, which focuses largely on the life story of Patrick Chamusso, played by Derek Luke. Chamusso was a black worker at a white owned synthetic fuel plant in Secunda, South Africa. He stays out of politics. His life revolves around his family, his job, and the boys he coaches soccer to, but after a "terrorist" incident at the plant (which he was not connected to) he comes to the attention of the South African security forces, who are given a face in this movie by Nik Vos (Tim Robbins.) From that point on, Chamusso's life is turned upside down as he and his family are harassed repeatedly with ever increasing violence, to the point at which Chamusso chooses to join the ANC and fight for the end of apartheid by returning to South Africa as a saboteur, targeting the very plant he worked in.The story is well done. It shows a gradual and reluctant evolution of Chamusso from working man to freedom fighter, but then closes by noting his evolution backward once the apartheid era ended, and there's a brief tribute of sorts to Nelson Mandela for having taught Chamusso and others the way of forgiveness. It certainly isn't difficult to portray the apartheid regime of South Africa as an evil one. Perhaps to his credit, director Phillip Noyce doesn't really try to do that. It takes no effort. To try too hard would be to make a mockery of such a story and would create little more than a caricature of an evil system that needs no caricature to be depicted as evil. Instead, whites, blacks - they're not really depicted that differently. The main protagonists (Chamusso and Vos) are both family men who fear for their family's safety. They have a lot in common. The only difference is that Vos belongs to the powerful and oppressive race, while Chamusso is among the powerless and oppressed. An accident of birth that neither was responsible for, but that both had to accept responsibility for. That was well done, and it did avoid caricaturing either man. Both were men, with both good and bad aspects of their character. This is a very well done story; a good tribute to South Africa's freedom fighters and, briefly, to Nelson Mandela, who in the end did manage to pull off a peaceful revolution and bring about reconciliation between former enemies. In the end, when we discover Chamusso's future course, one has to admire him as well for what he committed his life to. (9/10)

In one of the many movies that were set in Africa this past year, Catch a Fire seemed the most derivative and least eventful. Based on a true story, Luke stars as Patrick Chamusso, a revolutionary in the anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa. Tim Robbins, in a convincing performance, stars as government agent Nick Vos, who seeks to interrogate Chamusso for a suspected terrorist crime. The movie focuses mainly on the transformation of Chamusso as a peaceful citizen to a government-despising terrorist, which would have been interesting if the movie hadn't left out so much. By the time the film starts to get to the heart of the story, it ends.The movie and DVD's official Website promotes the film as "an action-packed journey of sabotage, corruption, alienation and murder," but the film offers very little in the way of action -- or plot development, for that matter. Catch a Fire feels like two hours of exposition to a larger plot that is unfortunately left out.