In for the thrill
SA action flick is visually stunning but low on character complexity, writes Kavish Chetty
POLITICAL corruption has become an itching wound in post-apartheid cinema. The country is splitting apart with the gluttonous politics of its leaders and the amnesia of our historical trauma. In films like How to Steal 2 Million or 31 Million Reasons, characters hang at the ethical edge of a world in which honesty no longer makes sense. iNumber Number is a heist-thriller that plunges into the underbelly of this South Africa.
In its opening act, Chili (S’dumo Mtshali) and his partner Shoes (Presley Chweneyagae) are two cops in the rush of a sting operation. They burst through a claustrophobic labyrinth of corrugated iron on a nervecharged manhunt. The music thrums and roars, the camera lurching and swooping. This is a film that triumphs in the technical savoir faire of the action genre.
But when the duo, having captured the criminals, victoriously return to their downtown precinct, the police commissioner denies them their share of a promised reward.
“His father was a comrade,” he mouths with grim nonchalance, and the two become aware that institutionalised criminality has foreclosed their ambitions.
“The country owes us,” Chili says as he begins his moral descent, surrendering himself to the national game. Using his undercover contacts to learn of a planned cash-in-transit heist, Chili decides to work with the criminal outfit and share their gains rather than turn them in.
At first glance, this provides the film with a fractured psychological setup: two embattled cops whose economic desperation forces them into an uneasy alliance with the enemy. But iNumber Number does not aspire to be anything other than a hyper-stylised crime caper — and its use of genre formulae dims the complexity of its characters’ motivations. Its cast of players are more like flesh capsules, all destined to succumb to the film’s Tarantino-esque relish for a rising body count.
The gang they infiltrate is headed by Mambane (Owen Sejake), a snarling alligator in a sportscoat of dull-cream plaid. He assembles a team of venomous personalities — trigger-happy double-crossers, complete with murderous idiosyncrasies — such as Skroef (Israel Makoe), Stakes (Brendon Daniels) and Gugu (Hlubi Mboya).
Their hideout is a derelict warehouse captured with gruesome charisma. Shadows spill across its jagged industrial interiors. The cinematographer’s exquisite sense of space and location gives this meeting point an eerie atmosphere for the torture and chaos that unfurls within its desolated walls.
Even the heist scene, taking place on a lonesome highway under a ragged quilt of cloud, is superbly visualised. Chili stands guard over an empty bridge with his black shirt clinging to his sweaty pectoral curves. The broken bark of gunfire sends tremors of nervous energy across the landscape. iNumber Number manages to overcome the embarrassments of earlier SA action films by mastering the instruments of tension.
Despite its many stylistic victories, iNumber Number is challenged by the same kind of schizophrenia that threatens to undo otherwise promising films, such as Ian Gabriel’s gangland drama, Four Corners.
In both, we have a world precariously suspended between reality and fantasy. These films are anchored by the gravitational urge of authentic SA struggles — the way our political realities interrupt ordinary lives and force everyday people into dangerous, slippery moral compromises.
But by transplanting the expectations of the mainstream action genre, both films empty their characters of urgent psychological complexities.
The psychic reality of corruption in SA — masterfully summarised in Chili’s remark that “the country owes us”— is not explored as an existential pressure, but rather becomes a trigger for a 90-minute splurge of violence.
Of course, the film half inoculates itself from these criticisms by never pretending to be anything other than a thriller. But much is lost in the sacrifice of these intriguing dynamics in favour of spectacular bloodbaths.
Its characters are entangled in stereotype, and large portions of the film are devoted to overlong displays of carnage: it becomes a thrilling but safe and ultimately predictable tour through a carnival of genre tricks.
iNumber Number carries itself with an admirable and professional enthusiasm. But one can’t help but long for the perfect balance of action and introspection that would allow crime thrillers to offer a more critical vantage on national reality. LS
iNumber Number is in cinemas on Friday. Kavish.chetty@gmail.com