It’s rare to find a film that receives so much hype and lives up to the expectations it sets. “Tsotsi” had me skittish, I’ll admit. Not because it was foreign, but because I just didn’t know what to expect. Hood’s drama is about the chaotic life in the ghettos of South Africa, and we follow for a week, Tsotsi, a cold and often violent young man. He goes by the name of Tsotsi, which in English means Thug, and no one is sure of his real name. A gang member named Fela asks of Tsotsi and the friends he leads to do some jobs for him, and one night in an attempt to please him, he robs a wealthy woman outside of her house. In a fit of desperation, he shoots her, and drives off with her car, unaware that her baby boy is asleep in the back. “Tsotsi” begins as a portrait of the life of a young hood headed nowhere, who happens upon this baby who somehow inspires redemption within him.

Tsotsi is a cold individual who has no idea how to approach others for help when he needs it, and even attempts to give the baby away to some children, but he realizes he actually does have something left in his soul that’s worth preserving. Hood delves into Tsotsi’s life from his horrible childhood, right up to his life as a criminal, and his struggles with the child and his curiosity as to what keeps us going through miserable situations, when confronted with a bitter old crippled man. “Tsotsi” is a surprisingly simplistic with no attempts to seem epic, and it’s merely a man trying to muster up some sense of the humanity he lost in his life, and this baby becoming the catalyst.

It's not often we can experience such hatred and disgust with a central character in a film who then transforms into someone we sympathize and cry for. "Tsotsi" accomplishes this feat well with an emotionally exhausting piece of art I loved.

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