Gangland thrillers, with their true-to-life characters and gripping storylines, are taking South African cinema by storm. Best-selling crime fiction writer Mike Nicol finds out why.

Seven guys in a township street at dusk. Blue mountains in the distance and tall street lights gleaming, like distant stars. Flames leap from a brazier on the sandy pavement as the men – wearing hoodies, beanies, baggy jeans, trainers – move towards you. Most of them are toting pistols. Guy in the middle’s got his jacket open, bare tattooed torso, a silver chain around his neck. Your worst nightmare approaches. Welcome to the Cape Flats.

That scene opens the trailer for a new South Africa crime thriller, Four Corners. The gritty realism recalls The Wild Bunch and The Magnificent Seven, but what is remarkable about this movie is not only what it’s about (gang life on the Cape Flats, and all the horror and heartache and fear and redemption that entails), but that it is South Africa’s official selection for the Best Foreign Language Film category at this year’s Oscars.

Not bad going for a movie genre that’s as young, locally, as its crime fiction counterpart. In fact, apart from a few thriller movies in the previous three decades – among them Diamond Hunters (1975), Mapantsula (1988), The Line (1994) and Sexy Girls (1997) – there has been a steady accumulation following Hijack Stories, which so grippingly got things underway in 2000. With that movie came a new feel and a tougher, more realistic style, and it spawned films that instead of romanticising underworld life were more unrelenting in their vision. Up came Tsotsi (2005); the fast, stylish Jerusalema (2008); the complex A Small Town Called Descent (2010); then Menda City, the searing State of Violence and the slick How To Steal 2 Million (all in 2011), to name the most prominent. And for release this year: Four Corners (on 28 February) and iNumber Number (on March 28), about a cop turned robber.

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