Stander

Directed by Bronwen Hughes

Written by Bima Stagg

Starring: Thomas Jane, Ashley Taylor, David O'Hara, Dexter Fletcher and Deborah Unger

Rated R for violence, language, some sexuality and nudity.

111 minutes runtime

USA Release August 2004

In 1980s South Africa all was not well, even with the ruling elite.  The burden of the enforcement of apartheid and the condemnation of the world wore on the ruling class and particularly on those who were directly on the firing line.  Andre Stander was such a person.  The son of a military hero, Stander was the youngest captain in the South African police force and was being preened for the top.  He had it all: skill, courage, charisma and intelligence.  Too much intelligence, it turned out, to survive that watershed day on riot control during the 1983 Johannesburg riots where he finally snapped.

Riot control duty was a specific part of every police officer’s routine in urban South Africa.  When things got too hot, riot control meant killing people, frequently unarmed civilians.  On that fateful day Andre Stander was forced to kill an unarmed black man in a riot, an event that changed his life forever.  He went to his superior in the police force, requested permanent removal from riot duty and was initially refused.  Only when he threatened to leave the force altogether was his relief from riot duty granted, but at the cost of his career.  He was finished as far as any further advancement in the force was concerned.

Thomas Jane (“The Punisher,” “The Dreamcatcher,” “The Thin Red Line”) puts out a great performance as the modern anti-hero of South Africa, Andre Stander.  A combination of Robin Hood, Clyde Barrow and Frank Abignale Jr. (“Catch Me if You Can”), Stander robbed 24 banks while a captain in the police force and another 20 after he was captured, imprisoned and escaped from prison.  He gave much of the money to local blacks, seemingly on a random basis, and apparently spent the rest as fast as he got it on mansions and sports cars.

Stander’s main motivation appeared to be to mess with the system as much as possible and show the ultimate in disrespect for a regime that he felt was seriously misguided.  The movie opens with a crime scene in which a young woman is murdered and her four year old daughter kidnapped.  Crimes like this were very stressful for Stander, and not just for the obvious reasons.  As he says at the crime scene, “We are so busy controlling the blacks that white criminals can do anything they like.”  He saw himself as fighting a losing battle; unable to do his job correctly because of the burden placed on him by the antiquated policies of a blind ruling class.

Shortly after this crime scene is the sequence in which Stander and his fellow officers are forced to kill unarmed blacks in a riot situation.  The recreation of the riot scene is important in the movie’s telling the story of Stander’s rebirth as an outlaw.  The fact is, the rioting crowds were not well-handled, at least if we believe the movie’s version of the situation.  Rather than controlling the crowds, the police set up a situation that taunted the crowd and urged them on, while giving the crowd an ultimatum to disperse.  If one understands the importance of humiliation and the systematic denial of civil rights in controlling a native population of superior numbers, this makes perfect sense.  The objective was not to simply disperse the riots, it was to command the rioters to stop and then kill them when they didn’t.  The execution of the death threat was a part of riot control, and it got to Andre Stander.

As in the story of  “Catch Me if You Can,” Stander’s father plays significantly into his son’s rebellion and eventual shunning of authority.  In the case of Frank Abignale, Jr. we were given the distinct impression that Frank Sr. supported his son’s outlaw ways as a weapon fighting the “club” of the humiliating and superior ruling class.  “Stander” always depicts father and son as having a deeply loving and respectful relationship, as did Abignale Jr. and Sr.  Nonetheless, Stander goes in exactly the opposite direction as his military hero dad.  Could it be that his father frequently voiced his own dislike of apartheid, even though this is not detailed in the movie?  If so, this would have been an extremely unpopular stance for a military hero and might well have been kept under cover.  Or was Andre rebelling against his father for reasons also not detailed?  The audience is left to speculate.

Ashley Taylor plays Deventer, Stander’s partner on the police force with whom he shares some of his feelings about the failing apartheid regime.  Not much is asked of Taylor in this movie, but he does a good job in his few scenes as the man closest to the hero as Stander’s lunchtime bank robberies come to light.  David O'Hara plays the part of Allan Heyl, a fellow convict whom Stander met in prison and befriended along with Lee McCall; the three later escaping to become the “Stander Gang.”  Dexter Fletcher (Soap on “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”) rounds out the gang as McCall, the only member of the gang to die in South Africa during a stand-off with police at the gang’s luxury apartment.

Deborah Unger (Colette in “The Salton Sea”) puts forth a commendable performance as Bekkie Stander, Andre’s tortured wife who goes from being engaged to a promising young professional to being tormented by an outcast criminal.  Bekkie Stander and Andre’s father suffer the most as a result of Andre’s metamorphosis.  As Stander escapes into his own world they are left to answer for his behavior, which is very scary to all of their friends and family.  If Andre has acted like this, are they far away?  Is it catching? 

At the movie’s end the audience has to make up their own minds as to whether Stander was some kind of a Robin Hood or simply a spoiled kid that never grew up, and what role apartheid played in his demise.  Were the guilt and brutality of apartheid the reasons for his behavior, or just the catalysts that actualized a deep-seated psychopathy?  In any case, “Stander” is a great action movie and all the more remarkable for what appears to be a fairly realistic telling of the truth.  In the end, Andre passes his own sentence on himself.