Week Of October 23, 2006 - TCIFF Mon / Wed / Fri

October 27, 2006

Friday, oh Friday…

Focus' awards hopeful, Catch A Fire, rolls into theaters with a massive bushel of good intentions. Unfortunately, there is a surprising lack of passion to be found in the film. This is not a characteristic you expect from a Phillip Noyce film. And in many ways, it is so disconcerting that it is hard to point to exactly where things didn't heat up. But I'll try…

The story of Catch A Fire is pretty much what they have sold. Derek Luke plays the real life Patrick Chamusso, who was a refinery worker in apartheid-laden South Africa 15 years ago, who becomes an ANC operative after being falsely accused of being one and seeing friends killed and abused.

The first part, where Chamusso is part of a fairly happy marriage with children, though there is another woman in the picture, works pretty well. But there is not a ton of passion there as the act is really about a man who doesn't realize how lacking in freedom he really is.

In the second act, direct conflict becomes a part of his life. But the white man in charge of the abuse, Nic Voc, played by Tim Robbins, is part of some terrible abuses. But Robbins plays him with great humanist sympathy. This is good for quality of acting. But the villainy of apartheid is undercut by gray. Nic Vos has real fear and real motivations. But he is part of a heinous machine. Yet the movie doesn't chase this dichotomy. So it is interesting, well made, and well acted, but still somehow not quite there.

Finally, in the third act, Chamusso is transformed into a man possessed, a true believer. There is an action element to the act and it is well done. But the place where I was feeling a need for enormous intensity was in the ANC training. This was the moment where the case for the honor of picking up arms against a tyrannical system and to kill without restraint is made. And while the training felt reasonable, the undeniability of it all was not there for me. I hate to lay it at the feet of an actor, but it was almost as though the role of the lead trainer needed to be played by someone with real movie star power.

What came to mind while watching it was Paul Schrader's Patty Hearst and the powerhouse performance of a young Ving Rhames as Cinque. He was crazy. He was powerful. And you believed that he could convince Patty Hearst to join their Symbionese Liberation Army. Of course, the cause of the ANC required no insanity to get behind. But that powerful, controlling leadership (see: Fishburne as Morpheus in The Matrix) is a dramatic need.

In any case, it is awkward to criticize a film this well intended with so much talent involved. But it is one of those clear examples of something being okay when it could be great. And perhaps it is more honest this way. I certainly believe in Phillip Noyce's talent, so I have to give him the benefit of the doubt.

But the doubt remains…

E Me.

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