"Tsotsi" Blogs and Blabs

An amoral teenager develops an unexpected paternal side in this powerful drama from South Africa. Tsotsi (thug) is the street name used by a young Johannesburg delinquent who has taken to a life of crime in order to support himself. Tsotsi comes from a blighted upbringing -- his mother died slowly from AIDS-related illnesses, and his father was tortuously abusive -- and he has developed a talent for violence borne of necessity as well as taking strange pleasure in hurting other people. One evening, Tsotsi shoots a woman while stealing her car, and only later discovers that her infant son is in the back seat. Uncertain of what to do with the baby, Tsotsi takes the boy home and tries to care for it -- going so far as to force a single mother living nearby to nurse the baby. With time, Tsotsi learns the basics of child care, and the presence of the baby awakens a sense of humanity in him that life on the street had stripped away. Tsotsi was adapted from a novel by the award-winning South African writer Athol Fugard.I thought this movie was outstanding. It didn't fall into cliches, and it never succumbed to the sentimentality that some movies feel the need to portray when transforming an evil character into that of a good person with moral and ethics. As a matter of fact, Tsotsi did not easily turn around from being a thug with a superiority complex to becoming a selfless, humble individual. It wasn't until the very end of the movie that he began his transformation. The soundtrack to the film (African Kwaito music) was also outstanding, displaying the movie's rural, impoverished cities with such raw feeling that I felt like I was part of the community watching the film.The moral of this story stems from the character of Tsotsi who seems to use his amoral violence to get what he wants. He learns value, self-worth and gains a new outlook on life when he is given the opportunity to raise another life, and sees that he wants more for the baby than he does for himself.