This sobering tale of the armed struggle against apartheid reaches the big screen by virtue of a personal recommendation from the legendary South African ANC lieutenant Joe Slovo.

Slovo, whose daughter Shawn penned the script, insisted that if there was one story worth telling from that volatile period it was Patrick Chamusso's.

Derek Luke takes the role of the humble family man and refinery foreman who - by comparison - done well for a black man with a car and even and camera to show for his hard graft.

However, following a terrorist strike on his workplace - the Secunda refinery east of Johannesburg - Chamusso was arrested by the South African security forces.

Suspected of having helped the ANC gain access to the plant, he was denied access to a lawyer and tortured by goons run by police colonel Nic Vos (Robbins).

It was this experience that turned him from model worker and devoted family man to a anti-apartheid agitator offering his services to the ANC.

Utilising his knowledge of the refinery, Chamusso is sent (by Joe Slovo himself) on a sabotage mission little suspecting that Vos is watching his every move.

Director Philip Noyce's straightforward political thriller is a salutary reminder of the vile regime which held sway in South Africa just a couple of decades ago.

Rather than a living, breathing character, Robbins' Vos is an amalgam of the unpalatable facets of the Afrikaner regime, the demeanour of an urbane white man masking the capacity for unrestrained cruelty.

Chamusso is a more complex personality, whose flaws (an affair with an attractive neighbour) lend him authenticity and make his transition from observer to participant all the more believable.

A simple tale well told, it's a fair guess that the late Joe Slovo would have approved.

Tim Evans