Four Corners

Director: Ian Babriel

Starring: Brendon Daniels, Jezriel Skei, Abduragman Adams

After an almost 10-year directorial hiatus, South African filmmaker Ian Gabriel steps back up to the plate with “Four Corners”, a coming-of-age South African crime drama. Filmed with a distinct visual flair and accompanied by a block-rocking original soundtrack that includes many native South Africans, “Four Corners” is often engaging and entertaining, but it is in many respects disjointed.

We follow 13-year old chess prodigy Ricardo as he chooses between pledging allegiance to the warring gangs in the area ( either the 26's or the 28's) or being a good boy and focusing on chess. At the same point, Farakhan (who is also Ricardo's father), a General of the 28's, has just been released from prison and is intent on setting himself straight ( a storyline that is more clichéd than compelling). Additionally, there is a large-scale police investigation of a child serial-killer and a romantic relationship between Farakhan and a young female doctor named Leila returning from London to her childhood home in South Africa.

Gabriel seems unsure of exactly what film he wants to make. Is this a coming-of-age drama, a romantic comedy, or a mystery thriller? The overlapping tones of these different sub-genres makes more for a narrative cacophony rather than a consistent story. What's more, different sub-plots are introduced and re-integrated into the story with no discernible pattern. For instance, we follow South African detective Tito as he tries to apprehend a child abductor that has been plaguing the Cape Flats slums. Forty-five minutes to an hour pass without a single scene dedicated to the investigation then out of nowhere, Tito finds a big clue! After such a long absence from the story, the audience can't be expected to be as emotionally attached to that element of the storyline as they are to others. Instances such as this leave the whole film feeling spliced and uneven from a viewer's perspective. The story would be served with shorter scenes of all the different plot-lines edited together in quick succession.

There are also several plot-holes that are hard to ignore. Some of the more emotional moments of the film are related to Farakhan and his valiant efforts to leave the gangster life behind and rehabilitate himself. He eventually finds himself in a budding romantic relationship with Leila. Apparently, we are expected to believe that these two have known each other prior to Farakhan's incarceration, but no explanation is given, which could have been done with a few simple lines of dialogue. That being said, their relationship feels manufactured and altogether unlikely. Any emotional moments between the two feel more like “The Young and the Restless” than of human drama worthy of the Cannes Film Festival. Another shameful instance of a hurried and annoyingly busy narrative is Ricardo's transition from docile chess player to street solider. With no clue whatsoever to the audience as to why, Ricardo suddenly decides to become a gangster with the 26's, an idea he had vehemently opposed before.

Moments of the story border on ridiculousness. Ricardo goes to help the 26's not by actually being a gangster but, at the suggestion of the one of the leaders of the 26's, by betting money on his chess skills, an idea that just seems silly. What makes this seem more disingenuous in a narrative sense is that earlier in the film Ricardo had been ridiculed and physically abused for playing chess by the very same gang leader. Narrative shortcuts like these rob the audience of a later emotional payoff. As a result, these characters often have big dramatic scenes that don't feel earned, taking away the emotional impact of some very good acting by the entire cast.

Of course there isn't anything inherently wrong with multiple story arcs in a story as long as they are each tended to and developed fully. Gabriel doesn't quite accomplish this difficult feat, but nonetheless shows promise as a director. There is an interesting combination of long and short shots, especially in the opening prison sequence, that perfectly capture the palpable tension prevalent throughout the film. Some seriously beautiful photography nicely complements an excellent soundtrack that fuses South African hip-hop and electronic music with classical sounds. More is said about the environment through the interposition of the music with images of grade-school kids holding AK-47s than any line of dialogue could.

“Four Corners” has the ingredients of a potentially great story. The juxtaposition of the game of chess with the equally challenging game of survival in the South African slums is a creative and fascinating perspective on a world that is seldom explored in film. That alone could have made for a great film, but there is just way too much going on narratively to enjoy it.