The conventional wisdom used to be that in polite company
one doesn’t talk about two matters — religion and politics. There’s too much
chance of offending someone’s delicate sensibilities, so it’s best to avoid broaching
these subjects, at least in any substantive manner. Hollywood,
for the most part, has typically followed suit in decades past — after all, it
covets the green in the wallets of both Red Staters and Blue Staters.
But the massive success of both Michael Moore’s filmic
Molotov cocktail Fahrenheit 9/11 and
Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ,
though, combined with a country riven by an unpopular war in Iraq and scandal, serial
incompetence and other turmoil at home, has created a populace where, no matter
their opinion, more people than ever seem to at least be engaged in some form
of discourse about politics, cultural values and faith. Ergo, we’ve seen over
the last several years a number of movies which have examined, to varying degrees
and from various angles, the interrelatedness between American political policy
and/or international issues. Movies of this ilk have typically been somewhat
niche-aimed dramas — films like The Quiet
American, Hotel Rwanda, The Constant Gardener, The Interpreter and The Last King of Scotland, with Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana being the biggest if also most
amorphous of the bunch.
A dramatically complex, terrifically involving allegory for
both the effects of modern day, draconian antiterrorism techniques and the
scorched-Earth war of cultural absolutes currently being waged between Iraq’s
Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish populations, Catch
a Fire tells the true story of a humble, apolitical man, wrongly accused of
terrorism, who eventually feels compelled into the very sort of disobedience
and armed uprising of which he was accused.

Set in apartheid-era South
Africa, where for years 25 million native
Africans were ruled and brutally oppressed by less than three million white
colonial South Africans, Catch a Fire
is based on the real-life story of Patrick Chamusso. Patrick (Antwone Fisher’s Derek Luke) is a simple
family man and part-time soccer coach who serves as a foreman at the local oil refinery
and loves his wife, Precious (Bonnie Henna), and two daughters, ages 8 and 6.
An explosion at his plant, though, places Patrick and his friends under a cloud
of suspicion, and he’s arrested by anti-terror unit chief Nic Vos (Tim Robbins, above),
who’s tasked with rounding up the responsible members of the African National
Congress, or ANC — an expatriate South African rebel group that operates out of
neighboring Mozambique.
At first Nic’s questioning is cajoling, but he tacitly signs
off on harder measures that certainly border on torture. Though innocent,
Patrick has a secret that serves as a mitigating circumstance; when he finally
tells the complete truth, Nic still views it as a ploy, and has Precious picked
up and beaten by a government-sanctioned squad. Eventually freed but
understandably shocked into action, Patrick finds his sense of self and purpose
irrevocably reoriented. He leaves his family and sneaks across the border in
order to become a political radical and rebel operative — fighting against the
apartheid regime of South Africa
for equality and the very future of his country.
The movie expounds upon and melds together some of the same
themes touched upon in director Phillip Noyce’s austere 2002 two-fer of the
Vietnam-set The Quiet American and the
Australian-set Rabbit-Proof Fence.
Each of those films are, in their own way, about the slippery slope of absolute
authority and the warped decisions that it leads those in control to make in an
effort to retain said power, and how government policy both official and
coercive can have equally damnable, socially devastating consequences. Still, to call Catch a
Fire a “political thriller” is a bit misleading. It’s much more a straight
drama, with its politics kept at a polite arms’ length. That said, while not
driven by any sort of traditional action scenes, it does, as well, cultivate a certain amount of tension and dread as Patrick
morphs into a political revolutionary and fitfully grapples with the notion of violence
as an alluring form of expediency. Luke is flat-out excellent, in one of the
more under-recognized performances of the year.
Packaged in a single-disc Amray case with snap-shut hinges, Catch a Fire comes with an unfortunately
spare roster of supplemental extras. Three deleted scenes tally just over two
minutes, and don’t provide much additional depth or characterization. One shows
Robbins’ character excavating a piece of evidence at the site of the oil
refinery blast, and another establishes the long hours and dedication of his
job, featuring him getting called away from a family gathering. The final scene
shows Precious receiving a piece of gifted furniture.
The film is presented
in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, which preserves the aspect ratio of its
original theatrical presentation. The colors are sharp and consistent, and there
are no problems whatsoever with artifacting or grain. The movie was shot on
location in Johannesburg, Cape
Town and Mozambique,
and cinematographer Ron Fortunato’s work is both searing and wide-ranging,
capturing the jumbled sociopolitical backdrop that comprises Catch a Fire’s setting. Much use of
natural light is made, and it’s remarkable, the variety of textures and moods
that are conveyed — be it in the menacing blue-grey dusk of Nic’s outdoor water
torture of Patrick, or the vibrant sunshine of a group of children’s dusty
soccer match.
Parallel Dolby digital 5.1 mixes in English and French anchor
Catch a Fire’s audio options, and
each adequately captures the proceedings, with clear, consistent, discernible
dialogue. The material itself doesn’t require a grand, wall-to-wall aural
sweep, so the sound design places its emphasis on more restrained natural and
atmospheric noises, all of which come through loud and clear. Rear channels,
meanwhile, get a nice, subtle workout in the few sequences where violence or
explosions spike. Especially notable is a slowly building scene where Patrick’s
coworkers voice their support for the aims of the ANC through a buoyant group
song as they’re patted down by white African security officers. Optional
English SDH, Spanish and French subtitles are also available.
Apart from the aforementioned deleted scenes, the only other bonus feature is an audio commentary track that
gathers thoughts from director Noyce, stars Luke, Robbins and Henna,
screenwriter Shawn Slovo, producer Robyn Slovo and the real-life Patrick
Chamusso. These comments are frequently interesting, but don’t typically follow
the action on the screen. Noyce talks about the movie’s use of the
aforementioned freedom songs, advised by ex-ANC trainee David Embarta. He also
fascinatingly discusses the war in nearby Angola
and its relationship to South Africa’s
struggle for independence, as well as how the movie relates to problems of
reconciliation in his native Australia
and elsewhere, throughout the world. Luke, meanwhile, talks about the
difficulty inherent in preparing for his accent in the film, and bemusedly notes
that Chamusso asked him, upon their first meeting, “Do you know Beyoncé?”
Bottom line: while a tide of rhetoric painting the world in broad strokes
of black-and-white swirls around us, Catch
a Fire reminds us that there are those who do “noble” service in the name
of misguided or otherwise perverted callings, and that they aren’t blind to the
contradictions and shortcomings of a given system, or otherwise shuttered off
from inwardly channeled doubt. It’s a film about life’s grey areas — an
involving drama and psalm for a higher moral and ethical dialogue. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. B+ (Movie) C+ (Disc)