A Fabien Martorell Film presents Langley Kirkwood (John Graser), Zoey Sneedon (Nicki), Mpho Sebeng (Thando), Vuyu Dabula (Bra Sol), Tessa Jubar (Diane Gresar), Samke Makhoba (Palesa), Pheelo Kotelo (Wiseman), Siphesihle Vazi (Cecil), Shehanela Maesela (Agnes), Thamsanga Booi (Adze). Executive Production, Brigid Olen, Mark Myers, Daisy Hamilton, Clifford Elk, Patrick Bauwen, Sean Cameron Michael. Producers, Neo Baloyi, Fabien Martorell, Siphosethu Tshpu. Director of Photography, Ofentse Nwase, Tiyane Nyembe. © 2022
Collision is a South African film. It has two distinct storylines and is unrelated to one another, but both hit the point of Collision. A private corporate security captain embroiled in dirty deals with a notorious gangster in Joburg loses a CFO position to a black South S. African female. He is bitter. On the other hand, the average South African Blacks blame their economic demise on foreigners. They turn their anger and hatred toward the foreign Blacks, mainly from Nigeria, and want them gone or killed. Nigerian and other Black foreigners’ businesses are rummaged, burnt, or ravaged, and themselves killed.
A White South African upper middle-class collide with the average Black hoodlum. John Graser (Langley Kirkwood) is bitter after losing a CFO chair to a Black female executive in his high-end security company. He doesn’t want his wife, Diane Gresar (Tessa Jubar), to know anything about it. But he is a dirty security officer dealing with a shady character, Bra Sol (Vuyu Dabula). There is a problem in the Gresar family household. Their only White daughter Nicki (Zoey Sneddon) falls crazily in love with a Black guy from the Soweto neighborhood. With who she could escape school and hang out for the rest of the time.
Another storyline with a subplot is developing on the other side of town. The Black South African community blames economic misgivings on the foreign Black Africans. They want to burn their businesses and kill them and their families. They want them gone. At this point in the story, Joburg is on edge; vigilantes with torches, machetes, guns, sticks, and daggers are weeding foreign African businesses throughout the city. The plot centers on the only Black South African allowed by Bra Sol, the top gangster to whom he pays protection fees. He runs a neighborhood store with his daughter but can’t stand competition from other foreign Black Africans.
Bra Sol kidnaps Nicki and sells her into sex slavery for $100,000. Before she could be shipped out, John gets an air of the kidnap and goes after Bra Sol, in company with Nicki’s boyfriend, Cecil. Meanwhile, the vigilantes headed by Palesa’s father (Samke Makhoba) are torching and hunting down Black businesses and owners. To make matters worse, his daughter, Palesa, is in a lockout with the Nigerian shop owner, Adze (Thamasanga Booi), in the neighborhood. The store is surrounded by an angry mob headed by Given (Louis Ngeayiya), once denied romance by Palesa.
The vigilantes break into Adze’s store. They are inflamed and sore when Given notices Palesa is locked in the store with the Nigerian. Her father has already arrived in the store, and his daughter falls into his arm, crying for rescue. Too late, Given, incensed by jealousy and hatred, shoots Palesa dead in the back in her father’s arms.
John fights to save his daughter from the trunk of Bra Sol’s old Mercedes and is at the same time locked in a one-on-one gunfight with him. Bra Sol first shoots John in the lower abdomen while he holds Nicki with a gun to her head. “Drop your gun and pushes it to me!” Bra sol yells. As John does so, he uses his backup pistol from the back of his pants and wastes shots into Bra Sol. He falls to the ground, dead.
Collision is a tense story about crime and ethnic uprising in South Africa shortly after gaining independence. Corruption and drugs, and ethnic hatred were rampant. John Graser isn’t satisfied when the position he assured was his got passed over to a Black South African female. He says, “These affirmative action postings have one thing in common….After a few months, they’ll always call me in to clean up your mess.” The lady retorts, “When are you apartheid-era dinosaurs gonna stop using the victim card and just get on with business?”
Thando (Mpho Sbeng), a pal of Cecil, turned yellow in the face of Bra Sol and, for a few dollars, delivered Nicki, Cecil’s girlfriend, to be a sex slave. Nicki is disappointed in Cecil because she never trusted Thando as a friend. Palese’s father collides with the vigilantes after discovering her daughter was in Adze’s store. He loses his daughter, and now he is all alone. It is then too late to defend her daughter in the face of the angry mob. Diane Gresar (Tessa Jubar) also lost her husband Johan in the shootout with Bra Sol on the street of Joburg.
Collision, as the name signifies, follows the title to the end. The White upper-class family of the Gresars collides with the dirty drug peddling criminal, Bra Sol, who had been doing dirty deals for Johan. When Bra Sol’s account was drying up, he had to turn to other tricks like human trafficking. He started with the wrong girl. Palesa’s father is so hateful of foreign traders that he lost his only daughter, who loves the Nigerian shop owner. The vigilantes kill both his daughter and the young shop owner. The White and Black families in this story collide with disaster out of hatred and greed. Bra Sol, of course, was warned by his mother of his doom, like Gunpowder (Richard Mofi Damijo) in Oliobiri (2016).
One difficulty I find with Collision is its two distinct storylines. They neither intersect nor were parallel to each other, except that they collided with the element of plots differently. However, the two storylines jostle for prominence over each other. I’ve seen snippets of stories on CNN and other notable news outlets about the harassment and dangers foreign Black Africans, especially Nigerians, endured at South African Blacks’ hands. In Collision, it stays in the shadow of the story of a White upper-middle-class family head who got embroiled in dirty deals with a Black gangster. And their only daughter wants a Black South African for a lover, then things got ugly. I wish the vigilante storyline had been presented independently and by itself.