Catch a Fire is the story of the Apartheid's collapse and South Africa's independence through the eyes of Patrick Chamusso, a real South African brought to life by Derek Luke, and his antagonist, police chief Nic Vos, portrayed with considerable chill and menace by Tim Robbins.

It must have been such a gut-wrenching experience for Robbins, as liberal a Hollywood actor as they come, to play one of Botha's chief enforcers. Vos is as ruthless in his defense of the white order as the ANC is determined to take it down.

What makes the clash as ironic as violent is the fact that, deep down in his bones, Nic Vos is also aware that the whites cannot hold the fort forever and things will probably change no matter what kind of a force the regime brings to bear against the "terrorists" and the "communists." It's a futile eleventh-hour effort to plug a bursting dam and that's the kind of desperation which escalates the stakes at every turn.

The film excels in laying out in the open the steps through which law abiding working class average-Joes like Chamusso are gradually pulled into the revolutionary fold and end up transforming into well-trained guerillas ready to sacrifice their lives for the common good.

Constant daily humiliation, indiscriminate intimidation and suppression of the natives including women and children, and the wide-spread crushing poverty of the black population is how the Apartheid regime prepared its own end. This film documents that fact beyond any doubt. Newton's third law of motion postulates an opposing force of equal magnitude for every force vector. Similarly, the ruling white minority at the end creates its own enemy that brings it down through sheer numbers, a burning motivation steeled by generations of pain, and an unassailable logic of justice that won't be satisfied by anything less than power changing hands.

The film uses to the fullest a very important and gorgeous character who is there in almost every frame of the film – the South African music, which I dare say is one of the most beautiful and sublime choral achievements of the world.

Riding the irresistible rhythm and haunting melodies of South African songs, we flow down the story of Patrick Chamusso, drift along the tributaries of his less-than-perfect relationship with his wife, survive the rapids of his trials and tribulations, and then find ourselves out in the open sea, in the choppy waters of his training as an ANC fighter.

However, after the liberation, when the ebb and tide of fate washes him back to the shores of his beloved country, Chamusso gets a chance to really prove his mettle as a human being and he does not fail the test.

When he catches the opportunity to kill off an unsuspecting and much older Nic Vos, Chamusso acts against his basic instincts and rejects violence. By letting their enemies live in the new free country that they have created with much suffering, all South Africans can at long last be really free, Chamusso reasons with admirable fortitude. That scene of true spiritual grandeur will probably stay with me long after the plot details of the "Catch a Fire" erode away from my memory.