Tsotsi

Tsotsi is a film by Gavin Hood made in 2005. Its story revolves around the main character, whose nickname is "Tsotsi" which means thug.  Tsotsi is an orphan  who grew up on the streets of Africa. He is in a gang with 3 friends: Butcher, Aap, and Boston. In order to get money these young men go around and either mug people, steal cars(which Tsotsi cant drive good) and kill people.  They have only recently started killing people which some of the boys are against and give their opinion to Tsotsi and he gets mad and storms off to go do "jobs" by himself. 

Tsotsi goes to a rich neighborhood to wait to steal a car or break into a house and rob it.  He sees a car pull up to its front gate and the female driver gets out to be able to hit the buzzer to open the gate. Tsotsi sees this woman as an easy target and approaches her with a gun, threatens her and gets in the drivers seat. What Tsotsi doesnt realize is that there is a baby in the rear seat so the woman trys to approach the car to make him aware to take the child out of the car. When she does this, Tsotsi takes this as an aggresive action and shoots the woman.

Now Tsotsi is on the run from the law along with a baby that needs attention to be fed and sheltered. He crashes the car on the way home from the robbery since he is not a good driver.  Tsotsi has no money to pay for baby supplies so he follows a woman from town who does have a baby to her home and holds her at gunpoint and orders her to breast feed the baby and wash him. This woman  tells Tsotsi that it is probably best if he just leaves the baby with her since he is not fit to be a father and its not his own child and he carries it around in a paper shopping bag.

By the end of the film, Tsotsi determines that he should return the baby to its parents so he goes back to the house where he stole the car and used the intercom to alert the people that he was going to leave the child at the gate. Tsotsi goes to walk away but the child begins to cry and Tsotsi doesnt have the heart to leave the baby crying so he picks him up to comfort him. Tsotsi takes too long and the police show up.  Tsotsi hands the baby over to the father and the police order him to put his hands up and the film ends.

I thought this film did a good job to show how life was like in the Soweto slums. It shows how Aids is a major problem in that area and  how it affects many young people by leaving them parentless to roam the streets as confused uneducated gangsters that have to try to survive anyway that they can. The living conditions of the slums was very harsh. Its strange to see that some areas are very modernized with gated communities and then not too far away there are villages filled with those who live in shacks and low quality housing. I liked the music that way in this film. It was interesting to see that they had hip hop music from over there so modern technology is present over in Africa but its not widespread I guess.