"Catch a Fire" presents the complicated, complex character of South Africa under apartheid through the eyes of two men who believe desperately in the opposing causes they are fighting for.

Those powerful, polarized forces pit them against each other, and connect them, creating a microcosm of the entire nation and the conflict that consumed it, and blurring the lines between freedom fighters and terrorists.

This political thriller directed by Phillip Noyce (Rabbit-Proof Fence, The Quiet American) is based on the real life of Patrick Chamusso, played by Derek Luke (Antwone Fisher, Glory Road)

Chamusso is an apolitical young black man making his way in South Africa in the early 1980s. With a wife (Bonnie Henna), two daughters and a job as a foreman at Secunda, an important oil refinery that stands as a monument to the nation's self sufficiency, Chamusso is doing well in an increasingly unpredictable and tense period in the country's history.

The black population is beginning to rise up against what they see as their white oppressors, and the much smaller, though powerful, white population is fighting desperately to hold onto the status quo.

Chamusso has a lot to lose, however, and has no interest in rocking the boat.

On the other side of the conflict is Nic Vos, played expertly by Tim Robbins (Mystic River, The Shawshank Redemption). Vos is a shrewd, calculating and cold colonel in the national Police Security Branch.

Vos also has two daughters and a wife -- whom he loves desperately -- a good job and a secure lifestyle that is all put at risk by the dark cloud of uncertainty presented by those trying to free SA from apartheid.

"Between you and me Patrick, apartheid can't last. Twenty-five million blacks, three million whites. We're the underdogs. We're the ones under attack," Vos tells Chamusso grimly.

When a bomb is detonated at Secunda, a series of circumstances leads Vos to Chamusso's door, sparking a volatile relationship that will shape both of their lives.

Vos arrests the innocent Chamusso and subjects him to physical and psychological torture, eventually eliciting a confession under duress from a man desperate to protect his family.

By the time Vos eventually releases Chamusso, the man who once had no political beliefs has become a cornered animal desperate to free his country from oppression, whatever the consequences.

He flees his country and seeks out the African National Congress and Joe Slovo, the exiled leader of its military wing, in Mozambique. Patrick offers himself as a freedom fighter for the cause.

"Once you cross that fence, once you decide to fight back, everything is different," Joe Slovo tells him. "You cannot contact anyone on the other side. That means no phone calls, no letters. You may never see your family again."

Chamusso understands that the stakes are high, but he has been driven to a desperate sense of justice, and has little left to lose.

With his insider knowledge of Secunda, Chamusso helps plot a one-man attack on the oil refinery, planned in accordance with the ANC's philosophy that no lives should be lost.

The bold assault and tense climax bring Chamusso and Vos face to face once again.

"There's nothing else you can do with me," says Patrick when he confronts his nemesis. "My life is finished. I may never see my children again, but when they speak of me, they will say he was a man who stood up for something right. A man who said I must do something now. What will your children say of you?"

In a powerful moment, Vos is faced with the reality that Patrick has come full circle -- an innocent man with no political aspirations has become a freedom-fighter willing to commit terrorism for the cause he believes in. And Vos, through his determination to suppress the rebellion, has made Patrick into what he has become.

From the opening scenes the film carries a heart-pounding urgency and authenticity that is firmly grounded in the fact that this is a true story based on Chamusso's first-hand account of his life as told to Shawn Slovo, Joe Slovo's daughter.

Chamusso spent three days with Slovo shortly after his release following nearly a decade in prison. She told CTV.ca that she simply asked Chamusso to tell his story -- a tale in which her father played a brief, though critical role.

"We just sat down," Slovo told CTV.ca in an interview from Los Angeles. "He was very disoriented, obviously, having spent that period of time in jail and been released into the beginnings of the new South Africa. We just sat down and I took his story down, I just let him talk about his life and about these events."

She recorded the conversations, but packed them away after those few days, allowing the dust of time and historical context to settle before she revisited them.

At that time there was a great deal of uncertainty about the future of SA, with many predicting revenge attacks and years of violence and bloodshed in response to 300 years of apartheid as the nation transitioned to democracy.

Years passed before Slovo felt the time was right to tell Chamusso's story to the world. In the meantime she had suffered her own losses. Her father passed away and her mother Ruth First, an academic and anti-apartheid activist in her own right, was killed by a parcel bomb sent to their home. Though the apartheid era was over, it was still a very volatile time in SA.

"Because of that uncertainty about the context in which to tell the story I kind of had to put it away for 10 years, through the terms of Nelson Mandela's government, until one had recognized there was a kind of miracle happening in South Africa," she said.

Director Phillip Noyce has described the film as an homage to both Chamusso and Joe Slovo -- one of the only white men in the highest ranks of the ANC. But Slovo said it wasn't her intention to pay tribute to Patrick or her dad. Instead, she said, she chose to write the screenplay because she knew it was an important story about an ordinary man -- an unsung hero with an extraordinary story.

"He is not an iconic figure like Mandela or Walter Sisulo or our father Joe Slovo, but an ordinary working man like most people on this planet, just concerned with his family and his life and his security and a future and a good job. It's that that I related to in the story," she said.

Overwhelmingly, this film is about forgiveness. Years after his imprisonment and with his freedom long secured, Patrick has the opportunity to take his revenge on Vos. But despite the immense losses he suffered at his hands, and the conflict in his heart, he makes the right choice.

In that way, he represents the ongoing struggle among South Africans to move forward and forgive, while never forgetting the cost of freedom.

"Nelson Mandela, our leader, our father, he told us we could never be free until we learn to forgive," Patrick says.

And so, he forgave.