"Inspired" by real events, Gangster's Paradise: Jerusalema takes place over a ten-year period and depicts the rise of Lucky Kunene (Jafta Mamabolo as a boy, Rapulana Seiphemo as an adult), a poor but clean-cut gas station attendant from Soweto who becomes a millionaire real-estate kingpin in Johannesburg. While the film has many of the generic qualities we associate with gritty crime dramas of the past, Jeruslema, submitted by South Africa to the Academy Awards to qualify as a nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, stands out for its uncommonly vivid performances and stunning cinematography as well as its harsh, though mainly surface, look at the realities of the post-Apartheid years in South Africa.
The film opens when Lucky and his best friend Zakes (Motlatsi Mahloko as a boy, Ronnie Nyakale as an adult), inspired by the euphoria surrounding the election of Nelson Mandela and the ANC, dream of a better life. Lucky has been accepted into college but without a scholarship, the only university he will attend will be, as he puts it, "the University of Life." Unfortunately, his ambition soon draws him and his friend into the criminal underworld of Soweto where he becomes a follower of gang leader Nazareth (Jeffrey Sekele), a former ANC guerrilla leader who received his training in Moscow.
Nazareth teaches him the skills of carjacking which he calls "affirmative repossessions," and Lucky earns enough money to bring new furniture and appliances to his family. In basically the only light touch in the film, a hijacked car owner is forced to teach the hoodlums how to drive his car through trial and error. Like any addiction, however, the amount of money Lucky accumulates will never be enough and he is drawn into even more serious crimes. Thwarted by his lack of political connections and the social and economic situation he finds himself in, he moves to the crime-ridden Hillbrow district of Johannesburg where the film jumps several years.
After the breakdown of his taxi business, Lucky concocts a semi-legal scheme to take over run-down tenements under the cover of being a charitable organization, The Hillbrow People's Housing Trust. "In the new South Africa, everyone deserved their entitlement," Lucky says. He becomes known as the "Robin Hood of Hillbrow," collecting rents and negotiating for a lower rent on behalf of the tenants, then holding out against the slumlords that have benefited from the tenant's miserable living conditions, forcing them to sell to the Housing Trust for a pittance. Throwing out the drug dealers and prostitutes, he promises to confront the racist power structure and provide the tenants with much needed reforms, but never really delivers, having to maintain a steady cash fund to buy more properties and repeat the same scheme.
Even though he has become a slumlord millionaire, to the residents he is a saint. To the cops, however, particularly white cop Blakkie Swart (Robert Hobbs), he is just another hoodlum and scam artist. Trying to outwit Swart is one thing, but having to also deal with Nazareth and drug lord Tony Ngu (Malusi Skenjana) becomes increasingly dangerous. A relationship with a wealthy white woman, Leah Friedman (Shelly Meskin), in which he offers to help her brother escape from Ngu's clutches, shows his capacity for growth but provides only a temporary trip to the good side.
With war building for control of the cities slums, confrontation with his rivals becomes inevitable and the blood begins to flow. Though it has more than its share of bloody violence, Jerusalema is a gripping thriller, entertaining and uncompromising in its no-holds barred realism, but also fails to dig very deep into the background of the country's urban decay and it's continuing racism. To its credit, Lucky is depicted neither as an inspiring hero nor a corrupt villain but somewhere in-between, a man with a strong entrepreneurial spirit whose heart is in the right place but one who has lost sight of his dreams and is blinded by power and greed and an ambiguous moral compass.
The film opens when Lucky and his best friend Zakes (Motlatsi Mahloko as a boy, Ronnie Nyakale as an adult), inspired by the euphoria surrounding the election of Nelson Mandela and the ANC, dream of a better life. Lucky has been accepted into college but without a scholarship, the only university he will attend will be, as he puts it, "the University of Life." Unfortunately, his ambition soon draws him and his friend into the criminal underworld of Soweto where he becomes a follower of gang leader Nazareth (Jeffrey Sekele), a former ANC guerrilla leader who received his training in Moscow.
Nazareth teaches him the skills of carjacking which he calls "affirmative repossessions," and Lucky earns enough money to bring new furniture and appliances to his family. In basically the only light touch in the film, a hijacked car owner is forced to teach the hoodlums how to drive his car through trial and error. Like any addiction, however, the amount of money Lucky accumulates will never be enough and he is drawn into even more serious crimes. Thwarted by his lack of political connections and the social and economic situation he finds himself in, he moves to the crime-ridden Hillbrow district of Johannesburg where the film jumps several years.
After the breakdown of his taxi business, Lucky concocts a semi-legal scheme to take over run-down tenements under the cover of being a charitable organization, The Hillbrow People's Housing Trust. "In the new South Africa, everyone deserved their entitlement," Lucky says. He becomes known as the "Robin Hood of Hillbrow," collecting rents and negotiating for a lower rent on behalf of the tenants, then holding out against the slumlords that have benefited from the tenant's miserable living conditions, forcing them to sell to the Housing Trust for a pittance. Throwing out the drug dealers and prostitutes, he promises to confront the racist power structure and provide the tenants with much needed reforms, but never really delivers, having to maintain a steady cash fund to buy more properties and repeat the same scheme.
Even though he has become a slumlord millionaire, to the residents he is a saint. To the cops, however, particularly white cop Blakkie Swart (Robert Hobbs), he is just another hoodlum and scam artist. Trying to outwit Swart is one thing, but having to also deal with Nazareth and drug lord Tony Ngu (Malusi Skenjana) becomes increasingly dangerous. A relationship with a wealthy white woman, Leah Friedman (Shelly Meskin), in which he offers to help her brother escape from Ngu's clutches, shows his capacity for growth but provides only a temporary trip to the good side.
With war building for control of the cities slums, confrontation with his rivals becomes inevitable and the blood begins to flow. Though it has more than its share of bloody violence, Jerusalema is a gripping thriller, entertaining and uncompromising in its no-holds barred realism, but also fails to dig very deep into the background of the country's urban decay and it's continuing racism. To its credit, Lucky is depicted neither as an inspiring hero nor a corrupt villain but somewhere in-between, a man with a strong entrepreneurial spirit whose heart is in the right place but one who has lost sight of his dreams and is blinded by power and greed and an ambiguous moral compass.