""Catch a Fire"" likely won't tell any educated person anything they don't already know about South African apartheid, but it's a powerful film nonetheless. There's a scene where Patrick Chamusso (Derek Luke) screams in anguish at his white captors, telling them whatever they want to hear, and it's an utterly believable, hellish moment. Yes, this movie tries to be about a great historical struggle. Yet it centers on one man doing what he needs to do to stand up for himself and his family.
For the first hour, Chamusso is not a freedom fighter at all. He's uninvolved with his country's struggle, until he's captured arbitrarily by government officials who want someone to blame for a recent bombing. He and his wife are brutalized for days, under the orders of Nic Vos (Tim Robbins), and eventually set free. Chamusso joins the anti-apartheid movement to avenge his treatment. Pursued by Vos and others, he helps orchestrate several bombings, which represented the peak of anti-Apartheid violence in the 1980s.
The source of the film's power is Luke's performance. Luke is an extraordinary actor, who deserved an Oscar for ""Antwone Fisher"" and will win one soon. He makes sure the film is taken seriously. His transformation from a peaceful father to a determined bomber is gripping. Observe a scene where Chamusso's unit, marching in file, responds to the shouted question ""Are you ready to die?"" The first three times this is asked, he does not shout back ""Yes, Master"" with the rest. He stares forward, hanging on to any last reservations, until he finally joins his comrades in unison. The scene could have seemed contrived, but Luke makes it the most important moment in the film.
Tim Robbins' Vos is nowhere near as gripping a character. This is the movie's central flaw. Robbins himself does what he can with the character, but Vos is not developed. He is based on a real-life person, but is presented as something less than real life. Here, the screenwriter likely consulted the politically correct character mill of what bigoted characters are likely to do. Vos likes to fire guns, naturally, and tries to make sure everyone in his family does too. At picnics, he sits with his wife and children and strums anti-black songs on the guitar. Even if all this isn't pure dramatization, it does a poor job showing the face of evil. Racism runs deeper than saying racist things and even committing racist acts. At its most diabolical, it has an ingrained seedy, almost tangible feel. You could smell the evil of Ralph Fiennes' character in ""Schindler's List."" He made you want to take a bath. Vos provokes no such reaction. He's evil in the way most movie bad guys are evil. A movie about apartheid should have been a little starker.
Yet through all this is Derek Luke. He fills in the blanks with astounding skill, and his Chamusso is a true cinematic hero. ""Catch a Fire"" could never have been about the evils of Apartheid, because it doesn't present them adequately. Instead, Luke makes the film's message more universal. His movie is about heart, heroism, strength, fear and courage. In the final moments, it's also about forgiveness. As movies go, that's probably a decent trade-off.
