The Berkeley Beacon

Issue date: 10/26/06 Section: Arts and Entertainment

Media Credit: www.joblo.com Derek Luke (left) stars as a young man during apartheid in South Africa.

Under apartheid in South Africa, three million white Afrikaners dominated over the 25 million Africans who were pushed to the outer edges of their own country. Apartheid paralleled the black segregation in America, yet it did not bother with the pretense of "separate but equal." It lasted until the African Nation Congress (ANC) was formed in the 1980s.

Catch a Fire picks up here and tells the true story of Patrick Chamusso (Derek Luke), a na've young African who wants nothing to do with the dangerous political atmosphere of apartheid. He watches as his friends get pulled from their houses by anti-terrorist squads and knows that breathing a word of dissent will only get him tortured or killed. He spends his time coaching a boys' soccer team and working late hours at the Secunda oil refinery. His wife, Precious, and his two daughters adore him and the town knows him as a good and consistently apolitical family man.

Luke plays Patrick with a puppy dog grin: he smiles and laughs, making it clear that he has no intention to face the truth of his situation. This reality, however, hits him hard when he is wrongfully accused of blowing up a power plant at the refinery.
Despite Patrick's plea of innocence, Nic Vos (Tim Robbins), a colonel of the Security Police force, is convinced of his guilt and has him brutally tortured. What follows is a realization scene that begs Luke to display some serious acting.

Until this moment, Catch A Fire has a difficult time igniting. Director Phillip Noyce overemphasizes Patrick's philanthropy and saturates his captivity with unnecessary sentimentality. The audience does not need a swelling musical score to know that Patrick is a victim of a corrupt regime. Blunt and impersonal direction on Noyce's part would have produced a more resonant and unforced sympathy.

When Patrick discovers a personally devastating fact, however, the effect is overwhelming. This is mainly because Noyce pulls back and allows the scene to unfold naturally. Patrick, weeping, runs up to the cell mirror and screams at the colonel, "How are you a man to allow something like this? You are not a man!" Patrick, however, can only see his own reflection when he yells this; he is shouting at himself.

Continued...

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