Fatalistic Fire

Apartheid film shows good but flawed men who are shaped by their fate | Arsenio Orteza

The credits at the end of Catch a Fire (PG-13 for violence and several obscenities) conclude with a disclaimer: The film, while "based on a true story," contains fictional characters, dialogue, and scenes.

Given the film's politically inflammatory setting (1980s South Africa under apartheid), the disclaimer would seem to serve as a warning both to activists who would see the film as a justification for terrorism and to viewers inclined to swallow dramatized historical distortions whole. The problem is, the disclaimer appears after everyone has left the theater.

In fact, because the film's real-life protagonist (Patrick Chamusso) appears in a coda describing the orphanage that he and his wife now run for South African children whose parents have died of AIDS, and because the film was written by Shawn Slovo, the daughter of an African National Congress leader depicted in the film, director Phillip Noyce seems to insist that the film be taken at documentary face value.