Many reviews of Stander will likely pose a jovial question about how director Bronwen Hughes went from directing kiddie flick Harriet The Spy to Ben Affleck romcom Forces Of Nature to this, a gritty social-political-period biopic. I, dear reader, will not be one of them; I'll simply remark that Hughes shows great aptitude in this genre, and that the film is a worthwhile and well made piece of entertainment. I enjoyed it fully, and learned something in the process; that I didn't find it as rich or socially revelatory as it might have been simply means that Hughes may be slightly more mainstream than the grainy film stock she uses here might imply.

The film tells the true story of Andre Stander, a detective in South Africa who in the late seventies and early eighties switched sides of the law and successfully robbed nearly fifty banks. As the movie presents it, Stander was disgusted with the apartheid police system, and walking into a scarcely guarded bank one day, remarks to the teller that "a white man could get away with anything today." Something clicks, and he returns to the bank in dark sunglasses and walks out with a pockets full of cash. He repeats the process. Of course, still being an active detective, he's sent to investigate his own robberies. Quite a nice setup, for a while.

He's eventually caught; that it takes a 19-man force is something of an embarassment to the Johannesburg PD, and he's quietly sentenced to 32 years behind bars. Two years in, he escapes and takes two other inmates he's befriended with him, Allan Heyl (David Patrick O'Hara) and Patrick Lee McCall (Dexter Fletcher); shortly thereafter, they're back on the bank beat and having a ball. Because of Stander's familiarity with the police system, they have no trouble knocking of two, three, four banks a day. There's one of those inevitable montages, set to a zippy bit of music, in which they smoothly stick up bank after bank, Out Of Sight-style, never forgetting to compliment the female tellers, and then go off and buy Porsches and mansions and new disguises for their next job. Such montages are always signs of bad things to come.

I knew nothing of the Stander Gang prior to seeing this film; doing a bit of online research afterwards reveals that the story may have been glossed over a bit. I get the impression that Stander, as portrayed by Jane, has been made out to be a little bit more dashing than he might have been in real life. In an interview, Heyl (the only one of the gang still alive) calls the real Stander "calculating...beyond emotion..." and also mentions a weakness for women and an illegitimate son. The movie's Stander has his moments of conflict, and seems to have an undying love for his long-suffering wife, Becky (Deborah Kara Unger). But Heyl also said this: "He...despised everything that the police stood for...considered them to be corrupt, inefficient and brutal and savage."

We do get to see that, or at least a bit of it. The early turning point for Stander is when he's on a riot squad facing off against a march of protesting Africans in the slums. Peaceful protests and twitchy trigger fingers never end well, and in the ensuing melee, Stander fells a young man with his shotgun; the man's face as he dies sticks with him, and later in the movie we'll realize that he must have been carrying that guilt with him for a long time, when he goes to visit the young man's family and lets them enact their retribution.

That this is something we have to figure out ourselves is one of the movie's faults; a stronger film would never let the context of the story fade from view. As it is, for the majority of the film South Africa is an irrelevant element; these heists could just as well have taken place in the United States. The climactic scene is rich with a sense of ironic justice, but I wonder if that might be lost on viewers who have forgotten that the setting of the film is also its catalyst.

This doesn't mean it is a bad film in the least; only an imperfect one. It may be a bit underreaching, but hits all the right notes that a film of its scope requires to work, and Thomas Jane gives a performance that makes me hope he foregoes the easy paycheck of a Punisher sequel and continues to take on more challenging roles. And I'll look forward, too, to whatever Bronwen Hughes decides to make next; I may be above making snide remarks about her filmography, but that's only because her work here has reminded me of a nice lesson about what happens when you assume.