Phil Noyce is a confident filmmaker. His work tackles challenging subjects while straddling a line between provocative and entertaining. He is as comfortable directing big budget action flicks like The Bone Collector as he is with quiet studies of social injustice (Rabbit Proof Fence). In this South African apartheid-era political-thriller, he gets to place a firm foot in both camps. Based on a heart-felt script by Shawn Slovo (whose own parents were apartheid-era activists), Noyce establishes this true story when Patrick Chamusso (Luke), a power-plant foreman, takes his family to a wedding. He’s stopped by police after a railway line is hit by ‘terrorists’ and a car-driving black man is highly suspect. His second, more violent encounter is delivered by Colonel Nic Vos (Robbins) when Chamusso’s plant is bombed. Severe treatment politicises the innocent man who joins the ANC and, ironically, becomes the ‘terrorist’ he never was.

Catch A Fire is compelling not simply for its political and social tone, but especially for Luke’s scorching performance. The New York native has a magnetic appeal that transcends his otherness, one that is ably supported by a strong and attractive African cast. Robbins is effective, though his familiar appeal lacks required energy, undermining the film’s intensity. Likewise Slovo’s script rests a little too comfortably on known outcomes and an expectation of sympathy for criminality. Without sufficiently demonising, or humanising, his character’s actions, the intriguing theme of what makes a man – Chamusso and Vos are both successful and equally determined to protect their worlds – gives way to conventional chase, as horrific as that may be. Once twinned with lazy moral certainty and the heat goes out of Noyce’s fire.

// COLIN FRASER