>>REVIEW
CATCH A FIRE
STARRING Robert Hobbs, Derek Luke, Bonnie Henna and Tim Robbins
DIRECTED BY Phillip Noyce
Opens Friday, October 27
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Last week, George W. Bush signed into law a long politicized terrorism bill granting the U.S. government the authority to "interpret" the laws of the Geneva Convention, laws that prohibit the use of torture tactics in interrogating war combatants (meaning it’s not torture if they say it’s not). This week, activist Tim Robbins’s latest film Catch a Fire, in which he plays an over-zealous terrorist investigator with questionable morals, opens in theatres across North America. Strategic or not, there is no denying the timeliness of this film.
Aussie filmmaker Phillip Noyce (The Quiet American, Rabbit Proof Fence) follows up the success of his previous two films with another dramatization of sordid true events of the recent past. While shifting focus from the plight of the indigenous peoples of the Australian outback to the racial segregation of apartheid-era South Africa, Noyce’s spotlight holds steadfast on the injustices wrought by colonial oppression.
His latest effort follows the true-life accounts of a once-apolitical refinery worker and devoted family man turned freedom fighter. Derek Lute (Friday Night Lights) plays Patrick Chamusso, an unassuming and peace-loving father of two, obediently living under the apartheid regime of 1980’s South Africa. Intent on providing stability for his family, he dutifully goes about his days turning his back on the growing rebellious uprising and referring to all whites as "boss." Not until he is unjustly detained as a suspect in a terror attack on the oil refinery by anti-terror czar Nic Vos (Tim Robbins) and his family is brutalized, does Patrick commit himself to the cause, eventually attempting to follow through with the very crime he was falsely accused of.
The cinematography has a rich, polished look where a grainy and over-exposed colour palette might have better serviced the tone of desperation of this harsh African climate, and there is a voice-over that, at times, feels superfluous. What does propel this film are rounded characters and Philip Miller’s impassioned score that helps drive a narrative that seamlessly shifts gears from ominous drama to political thriller. As well, true credit is reserved for the impartial gaze of the lens cast upon the central characters of this highly charged story. Just as Noyce restrains himself from overtly lionizing Patrick, so too are we offered glimpses of confliction in Robbins’s otherwise heinous character.
Cinema has a long-standing tradition of romanticizing the past in a way that often feels cheap and manipulative, but I can’t think of another story more deserving of some tactful glorification. |
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