The audience gasps in that odd mixture of surprise and recognition that great story-telling affords.

| Jan 16, 2018

What Tsotsi fails to explain is how the mere introduction of a baby can melt the cruel cycle of criminality and disregard for others.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Apr 1, 2006

With lively pacing, superb performances and a candid yet forgiving heart, Hood has created an inverse fairy tale that is never less than absorbing.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 1, 2006

To feel the full power of the movie's wrenching story, you must not rush to judge or embrace young Tsotsi. He is an enigma whose journey is the story.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 24, 2006

A deeply moving portrait of a human being, suffering in life and not having any handle on how to deal with it. It's tragedy, not melodrama.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 24, 2006

The picture can be squishy and obvious. Yet it works, thanks to Gavin Hood's straightforward, sensitive direction and his star's emotionally charged performance.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Mar 23, 2006

This deceptively simple movie brings to mind Italian neo-realist classics of the 1940s, and Presley Chweneyagae, an amateur actor, is wholly convincing as the disoriented Tsotsi.

| Mar 18, 2006

[Director] Hood gives the film energy by its unexpected locations, a score both jolting and soaring, and a carefully constructed screenplay that makes everyone in this film a dimensional, complicated character.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 17, 2006

It lays a stark narrative that's devoid of sentimentality but stoked with emotional power; without getting maudlin, it will tear you to shreds.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 17, 2006

Tsotsi never lets go of its edge, and that edge draws blood.

| Original Score: B+ | Mar 17, 2006

It is to [director Gaven] Hood's credit that he does not over-sentimentalize Tsotsi's story, nor does he glamorize thug life like so many American films do.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 17, 2006

We're not used to bad guys with redeeming qualities. And that makes Tsotsi as disquieting as it is intriguing.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 16, 2006

For all its dark edges, Tsotsi comes with a silver lining making it worthy of its squirmy ride.

| Original Score: A- | Mar 16, 2006

Important and vital -- if a little heavy-handed.

| Mar 16, 2006

Chweneyagae skulks with awesome menace, a cauldron of simmering rage and frustration and a performance of real skill, carrying the film effortlessly through to the nail-shredding conclusion.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 11, 2006

That director Gavin Hood, who wrote the script from a novel by playwright Athol Fugard, could get you to care so much is a mark of the heart that went into making the film.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 10, 2006

The film is worth seeing, for its faces and its evocation -- not without melodrama, yet not without impact -- of a harsh but not hopeless slum life.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 10, 2006

It's a solid, earnest drama of moral redemption that places old cliches in an unfamiliar setting.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 10, 2006

What a simple and yet profound story this is.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 9, 2006

A mixture of thrilling documentary-style realism and Hollywood hokum, Tsotsi leaves you all but tasting the orange dust of Joburg's shantytowns and moved by the harrowing journey Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae) is forced to take.

| Mar 9, 2006