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Avg. Critic Score: 70 out of 100 Generally favorable reviews Metascore® based on all critic reviews
Information for Parents:
16 Iffy for 16+
Read Common Sense Media review

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 100
    San Francisco Chronicle | Ruthe Stein

    It grabs you from a symbolic opening scene of gang members rolling the dice -- the odds, it soon becomes clear, are stacked against them getting lucky -- and never lets go. Read full review

  • 100
    Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

    What a simple and yet profound story this is. Read full review

  • 80
    Washington Post | Desson Thomson

    As Tsotsi, Chweneyagae turns his face into a living battle mask -- curved, molded and sandpapered into smooth ruthlessness. But as the story unfolds, Tsotsi's mask begins to crack, and his humanity begins to flow through. Read full review

  • 80
    The Hollywood Reporter | Ray Bennett

    Brutal but believable, the film in some ways harks back to early Hollywood, when Jimmy Cagney or Richard Widmark played callow villains out of their depth in everyday life. Read full review

  • 75
    Rolling Stone | Peter Travers

    Based on a play by Athol Fugard, Tsotsi is South Africa's entry in this year's Oscar race for Best Foreign-Language Film. This remarkable movie means to shake you, and boy does it ever. Read full review

  • 75
    USA Today | Claudia Puig

    Though the story teeters on easy sentimentality, it doesn't succumb. Though unabashedly emotional, it isn't maudlin. Tsotsi's story feels believable. It is made all the more engaging by a wonderful soundtrack of African Kwaito music. Read full review

  • 70
    Variety |

    Powered by a pounding soundtrack of dance hall Kwaito music, the pic has vital, urban energy similar to the Brazilian crossover "City of God" but with a tauter, more conventional storyline. Read full review

  • 70
    The New York Times | Manohla Dargis

    To his credit, Mr. Hood's meditation on truth and reconciliation doesn't traffic in the cheap thrills of art-house exploitation, like "City of God"; he wrings tears with sincerity, not cynicism. Read full review

  • 70
    Los Angeles Times | Carina Chocano

    Whatever its weaknesses, Tsotsi is redeemed by its excellent performances. Read full review

  • 50
    Entertainment Weekly | Lisa Schwarzbaum

    More calculated than a Starbucks sampler CD, the picture could win the up-from-hardship award. Read full review

View more reviews for Tsotsi on Metacritic

Information for Parents
Common Sense Media says Iffy for 16+ Affecting tale of a street hoodlum's evolution.
What Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that this movie shows kids and young people living on the streets and in poverty in South Africa, with scenes showing harsh violence (stabbing, shooting, beating), drinking and drug use, the accidental kidnapping of a baby during a carjacking, posters warning against AIDS, and the parents' subsequent distress. The focus is on a young hoodlum, whose initial inability to cope with the infant's needs leads to terrible mistakes (the baby is covered with ants and filth, cries, needs food). He holds a gun on a young woman to force her to breastfeed the baby; he beats one friend and regrets it; he kills another in order to stop more violence.
  • Families can talk about Tsotsi's transformation, from tough-fronting street gangster to vulnerable, generous young man. How does the movie show how he became so callous, with flashbacks to his mother's illness and death, his father's abuse, and Tsotsi's subsequent lack of a home and stability? How do you come to understand the reasons for his cruelty, even as you hope he changes his attitude? How does the baby's helplessness affect Tsotsi's necessary focus on his own survival, before all else? How does the young mother help him to change his mind-set?
The good stuff
  • message true0 Positive messages: Characters are thieves and brutes by socialization; they lie, steal, and commit violence; one is redeemed when he learns to give up his needs for a baby's.
What to watch for
  • violence false5 Violence: A disturbingly slow and quiet assault with an ice pick; brutal beating that leaves victim's face a bloody pulp; carjacking that leaves woman driver beaten and horrified.
  • sex false3 Sex: Woman nurses a child with her breast partially exposed.
  • language false5 Language: Profanity in subtitles (f-word included).
  • consumerism false0 Consumerism: Not an issue
  • drugsalcoholtobacco false3 Drinking, drugs and smoking: Characters drink (some drunken behavior by 18- and 19-year-olds), smoke cigarettes, and take drugs.
An independent nonprofit dedicated to providing families the information they need to help kids thrive in a world of media and technology. © Common Sense Media Inc. 2010. All rights reserved.

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