Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
It’s one thing to see a film like STANDER when you live in America and have at best a nodding familiarity with the events in the movie. It’s quite different when you’re from the region where the film is set and you have a strong connection to the material. For that reason, this review caught my eye:
Hi Harry, guys... first time writer, long time reader. I've read a review of STANDER on the site and seeing though it was released in the States recently, I thought you might like to hear the opinion of a South African on the film...
The film, just released here on DVD, caused quite an uproar here in South Africa as almost everyone in the local film and acting industry had a hand in making it... To tell you the truth I think a lot of us filmmakers were a bit pissed off that the yanks were telling one of our stories and not us... but that's a different tale altogether.
First of all, I was too young to remember anything about the actual events that transcended around Andre Stander and his infamous gang, but did grow up with the stories of his legend. I'm by no means an expert on his life... just that of a South African's.
Stander is a good film, there's no denying it... Set in the backdrop of an Apartheid stricken Johannesburg, the film definitely shows South Africa as it was back then, not holding out on the good or the bad.
Andre Stander, played by The Punisher's Thomas Jane, is a successful police captain turned famous bank robber that foiled police forces around the world for decades in his escapades. Once the elite in his force, he fooled his friends and family for years by investigating the very crimes he was committing.
It starts off with Stander getting married for the second time to his wife, Bekkie, who is played fabulously by Debra Kara Unger, and things are pretty good for Stander as he heads off on his honeymoon. I must sidestep for a second here and point out how well Jane And Kara Unger grasp the South African accent in this film. It's an accent that, in most South Africans' opinions, has always been screwed up completely by non-local actors in the past. I can only applaud the director for this (Oh, and from Forces of Nature to this?! What the Fuck is going on with Bronwyn Hughes?!)
The main character point in this film is when things really turn pear-shaped for Andre Stander after he kills a protestor in the famous uprising in the Tembisa Township (a scene shot quite spectacularly). He then starts to ponder about his loyalty to the police force and indirectly the government he serves. This forms the motivation for his bank robbing and the reason for his total abandonment of the law enforcement he is supposed to uphold. Now this is where, factually, I questioned the film a bit. Most people familiar with the Stander Gang legend know that this was not the reason for his criminal behaviour. Some criminal psychologists who worked on the Stander case stated that it was probably the mixture of his disintegrating marriage and the trauma of identifying the mutilated body of his brother who died in a train accident (not mentioned in the movie) that made him snap. That or the fact that he just wanted to rob banks for the cash... Hey, no one really knew anyway, but after watching the film I felt that the script's motivation for Stander's shenanigans was actually brilliant. It gave the film a whole other dimension... one in which a man was fighting a regime that he no longer supported in its methods. I for one thought it was about time a story about Apartheid was told in which there were white people in it who were opposed to the government.
But this film is not about politics, thank god. Besides being one of the most original Period-piece Heist movies out there, it's a story about a very charismatic, charming thief with noble intensions...
After Stander turns bank robber, the film spirals into a crazy ride of heists, jailbreaks, mistaken identities, lost loves and loads of action. I'm not going to bother going through the narrative 'cause you just going to have to see the picture for yourself...
Stander is faulty in many places but is still great because it's fresh. Never before, in my opinion, has a story like this been told about South Africa. Its a neat little package of a film and the fact that a bunch of foreigners came over here, adapted our story, got performances out of our actors and made our locations look good with a South African crew makes Stander an envious inspiration for our wounded little film industry... Hopefully soon enough we can be making similar flicks ourselves...
I'm extremely cynical about American films made about South Africa 'cause they almost always seem fuck it up, so when I suggest you go see this film, I'm tipping my hat off to these film makers for once not making my country look like shit on celluloid...
Thanks Harry, if you honour me enough by using this, you can call me CrazyGod...
Thanks, man. Nice work.
"Moriarty" out.
