Tsotsi film review

Tsotsi is a film about a teenage boy who lives in South Africa, Johannesburg. He is a criminal until one day he steals a car and finds that there us a baby on board. His mother is slowly dying because she has aids. At the start of the film there is continuity editing at the train station where Tsotsi is with his friends/associates. The main transitions that are used in the film are cuts. An example of this would also be at the start of the film where the man is stabbed on the train and getting robbed the group of people including Tsotsi, the cuts were used showing the expression on each characters face and also what they were doing. The very start of the film shows all the characters at someone’s house which is seen to be in a very run down urban area in Johannesburg. The shot used close ups of the game that was being played and the characters when they were talking, besides this there was a long shot which showed the whole room the characters were in and all the characters themself. A similar shot list was seen during the scene where he was looking after the baby; there would either be medium shots of the baby or Tsotsi and a long shot of the room that they were in. Majority of the time when there is a scene in a room there would be a long shot to show what's happening. The story also changes as instead of a life of crime and deviance Tsotsi starts to look after this child he has stumbled across.