Director Philip Noyce is back after his stellar 2002 tandem of Rabbit-Proof Fence and The Quiet American; while this film, about one man's conversion from apolitical to revolutionary in apartheid South Africa, isn't up to the standard set by those films, it's still a well-made and aggravating (in a good way) character study. Derek Luke plays Patrick Chamusso, an oil worker who eschews politics in favor of taking care of his family. Despite his best efforts, he's rounded up by the secret police, led by Nic Vos (Tim Robbins), who think he was behind an attack on his refinery. They torture him and his wife (Bonnie Mbuli), but when he's finally willing to give them the confession they want in order to stop the terror, they let him go. By this point, though, he's convinced that he must join the fight against apartheid, even if it means losing his family and his life.

Luke wins the battle of accents and performances against Robbins, whose here-today-gone-tomorrow attempt sometimes sounds vaguely Australian. Robbins works a little too hard on his scowly, jaw-clenched smoldering, but there are scenes, such as those with his family, where he's able to suggest something resembling depth; it's in these scenes that his character stops being a cardboard villain. He's more than matched by Luke, a rising star who proves that he can carry a movie (I haven't seen Antwone Fisher, so I can't judge him there) and also carry an accent. The script sometimes provides him with too-easy transitions—his embracing of rebellion as signified by his turning up the volume on an ANC radio program is too simple—but Luke eases through these rough periods, never less than magnetic. (He eclipses Robbins in the film, but there must have been some interesting negotiations over the credits: during the opening credits, they're listed on the same screen, Robbins on the left but Luke elevated slightly; then during the end credits Robbins has top billing.)

There's a balancing act going on in the film's attempts to be relevant to the current situation in Iraq. The oppressive apartheid regime, which we see using the very torture techniques that the United States is strongly suspected of using (I'm trying to be fair here—my first draft said simply "uses"), relies on secret arrests and indefinite detainment without recourse to the justice system. Sound familiar? Noyce and company don't spend as much screen time linking the ANC fighters to the insurgents in Iraq, because they'd risk alienating that part of their audience that hasn't already made the connections. All the same, the film's mostly subtle tying of the events of 25 years ago in another country work a heck of a lot better than, say, the insistent association of every political event of the last few years with the 1968 election in Emilio Estevez's overeager Bobby.

The film misses several opportunities to explore in a deeper, more subtle way the connections between this period and today. Intriguing thematic and visual elements that are raised and then dropped include the government's almost fetishistic use of video cameras, the white soldiers in blackface who raid an ANC training camp, the unmistakeable image of Luke strapping bombs to his torso in preparation for an attack, the whole issue of Robbins training his children to fire pistols—these and others had me hoping for development that didn't come. Despite these flaws, though, Catch a Fire is well worth watching, a great combination of slick Hollywood filmmaking and important message.

—November 26, 2006