Tsotsi (2005)

An improbable winner at the 2005 Academy Awards, Gavin Hood’s South African crime drama Tsotsi (2005) chronicles six harrowing days in the life of a Johannesburg thug. Presley Chweneyagae stars as a low-class hood who regretfully empties his pistol into a single mother (Mothusi Magano) before begrudgingly deciding to raise her orphaned son. Hood does an exceptional job of showing the depraved conditions in which his protagonist lives and operates, as well as his difficult struggle to recover a moral compass. Making things particularly difficult is the presence of the sultry Miriam (Terry Pheto)––a voluptuous vixen whose Tsotsis are nearly enough to cast the young thug back to the dark side.