'Tsotsi'

A brilliantly beautiful film. Tsotsi is a local thug in the shacks outside Johannesburg, South Africa. Attempting to steal a car, he gets away by shooting the car's owner.

He later finds out that the woman's infant son is in the car. Not a total thug, Tsotsi's conscience plagues him and he takes the baby back to his shack. Realizing he can't care for the baby, he recruits Miriam -- a perfect stranger, who has a small son of her own -- to help out.

Meanwhile, Tsotsi is wanted and he's having to hide his recent acquisition from his gang.

Throughout, there are these moments of kindness and humanity. Whether its one of the gang not killing someone or the hesitation that happens when a crime is being committed. When a human life doesn't seem as cheap as we'd all like to think criminals consider life to be worth.

There are hardened people. Those calloused by loss and this animal instinct to survive at all costs. However, I think that's 10 percent of all criminals. And criminals are like five percent of all humanity. People are more often good (although they are not inherently good ... we must work at it) and even the bad people, the most desperate, have their outer limits. Places even they don't want to go to.