Just a few days after Shakespeare’s unquenchable bloodbath (Titus Andronicus, cross-reference below) and in the midst of the Rupert Murdoch’s unfolding hacking scandal, it’s most instructive to travel back to 1978 and relive a highly stylized version of old-fashioned detective work bringing the bad guys to sudden justice.
Sporting full-on Afros, extra-wide lapels, festive fabrics, cigarettes, gas-guzzling cars, and a musical track awash in equally clichéd (now) musical effects (the high unison violins can only mean trouble ahead). the era is never in question. What is marvellously refreshing—especially then, in South Africa—is the complete lack of stereotypical roles for the principals be they black or white.
The hero of the piece is investigative reporter Steve Chaku (the ever-impressive Ken Gampu) who becomes embroiled in a mysteriously controlled War Against Crime vigilante group. Their apparent goal is to clean up enough criminals to allow the city’s budget to feed and clothe its homeless and poor, instead of doling out so much of citizens’ taxes for policing. Who could argue with that? Rather than waste time on the judicial process, the movers, shakers and mayhem creators of the underworld are brutally assassinated (not just guns; be sure to stay long enough for an axe of revenge and full thrust impalement—The Bard would have been delighted, methinks).
Chaku’s sometime chess partner and long-time best friend comes in the form of Lieutenant Ben Deel. Veteran Nigel Davenport is ideally cast as the no nonsense cop who gets his man and also enjoys the finer things of life. The two amigos’ friendship is severely tested when the cops come to the incorrect conclusion that Chaku is in cahoots with the terminators in order to get the scoop and front-page coverage ahead of his competition. The old-fashioned techniques of phone taps, dormant lines (in order to confuse tracing equipment), Telex terminals and carbon paper may have been replaced by faster more efficient machines and systems, but the results are the same, largely due to the fact that both the good guys and the bad guys were stuck with the same technology. Plus ça change …. But unlike News of the World (along with their admirers and fellow connivers), Chaku gets all of the information he needs the legal way: sharing truly off-the-record notes with the local cops and calling in a favour from colleagues in the U.S.
The wanton killers are also fully integrated. Kingpin Luther “Snowman” Daniels is played with just the right tone of double-dealing civility by Madala Maphalele. His most ruthless henchmen, and also sometimes friends (Bima Stagg and Tullio Moneta) are white, furry and fiercely loyal.
The few women in evidence (apart from the nightclub diva, Margaret Singava) are the typecast blindly doting babe (Moira Downie)—until she suddenly discovers her man’s day job involves the kind of coke that most things do not go better with), a well-racked office bimbo and a sullen prostitute.
Christopher Rowley’s film is worth a viewing not only for those who—like the capacity crowd last Friday in Stratford—enjoy gratuitous violence under cover of artistic expression but also those who understand ferreting out the truth from seasoned crooks can be just as deadly as their subjects’ activities. JWR