Catch a Fire
Studio: Focus Features, Universal Pictures International
Rated: PG-13
Release Date: 2006-10-27
Cast: Tim Robbins, Derek Luke, Bonnie Henna, Mncedisi Shabangu, Terry Pheto
Director: Phillip Noyce
WorkNameSort: Catch a Fire
Our Rating: 3.50
Under the guise of a South African apartheid-era thriller about a wronged black man who sets out to strike back at the country’s oppressive white government by blowing up the refinery he works in, Catch a Fire joins a recent spate of Hollywood projects, including V for Vendetta, Paradise Now and Syriana, that seek to explore and even sympathize with the terrorist. The choice to dramatize the life of Catch a Fire‘s Patrick Chamusso, a man with a comfortable life who had no interest in politics until he and his wife were tortured for a crime he didn’t commit, just to find out if he might be guilty, is the right one; the narrative resists the grandiosity of Vendetta and the self-righteousness of Syriana. However, the movie never quite gets past the disconnection between Chamusso’s deeply personal story and the undefined enormity and tragedy of the apartheid government that tried to destroy him.
This article appears in Oct 25-31, 2006.