Andre Stander was a happily married Captain in the South African Police during the dark days of apartheid. He worked at a time when it was compulsory to do 'riot duty' in the township ghettos, this is covered in the film. Then he decided one day to rob a bank and by all accounts he ruddy well loved it. He went on a massive crime spree – but it was not too long before his erstwhile colleagues caught him – but the adventure was not about to end because of a pesky prison sentence – this purports to tell his story.Now I say purports because there has been a bit of licence taken with his actual story, which was obviously a deliberate choice of the film makers, but if this whets your appetite then do check him out further. Portrayed as a frustrated Robin Hood sometimes, and a clear career criminal at others he appears to have been someone that was hard to define in any neat way. The film though is really well made with great period detail and some fine performances and indeed accents – Thomas Jane as Stander shows what an impressive actor he can be and why he should get better gigs. Ably supported by Dexter Fletcher and Deborah Kara Unger as Stander's wife Bekkie; this is for those who like a bit of a thriller and a bit of realism thrown into the mix – one I missed first time round and am glad I finally got to see it.

For £1 in your local supermarket's bargain bin (€1.10 and $1.65 at the time of writing) you don't really expect the DVD you picked up on a whim to amount to much. But Stander is a revelation and quite why Morrison's had already relegated it to junk status, I don't know. Another drawback - or apparent drawback - was the legend on the cover 'Based on a true story', which usually means 'we got the idea from something that happened and glammed it up'. Yet Stander sticks pretty close to the facts. Andre Stander, at one point the youngest police captain in South Africa and the son of a respected general, starts robbing banks while still serving. Later, once he has escaped jail, he forms the very successful Stander Gang and carries on his life of crime. As portrayed in the film, greed is apparently not his motive. The film suggests that he after killing a man while on riot duty he simply loses faith with the establishment and decides to f*** the system. Biographical details I have looked up suggest he had some sort of breakdown after his brother was killed in a crash and he had to identify the body. But what is remarkable about the film is that despite a storyline which is as close to fiction as life is ever going to get, nothing is sensationalised. Stander's relationships with his father, his former wife and his friends all ring true and Bronwen Hughes, the American writer/director plays it straight without, however, playing boring. There are several quite moving scenes in the film as when, for example, Stander seeks out the father of the man he killed and allows him to take his revenge. Whether of not that happened I don't know, but the film doesn't play it for cheap emotions. There is another scene where Stander tries to persuade his former wife to leave the country with him. She refuses, obliquely admitting that she, too, hates the apartheid system in which they all live, but that she has found a way of accommodating it. In fact, it is pretty obvious that she feels betrayed by Stander who had more or less thrown away a happy life with her. Honesty is, in fact, the hallmark of Hughes's film. Worth more than being given a chance. You might even be persuaded to go out of your way to watch it. Scenes which in less subtle hands might have made this just another run-of-the-mill movie - for example, the way it the rottenness at the core of the regime, also ring true. I puzzled that I had never before heard of this film, or why it is already languishing in a bargain bin valued at merely £1. It is worth every penny, and then some.

If you're a solid citizen with a firm belief in the rule of law, the important role and trust given to officers of that law, you will find this film arduous to watch from beginning to end. The lead character is a truly flawed personality so much so that he is oblivious to long standing police culture and glaring lessons of right and wrong played out daily as a part of his job. It is really the obverse of a "Butch Cassidy" theme and while the Stander gang become darlings of the press as the film evolves, their families, lives and states of mind deteriorate is a very short while (6 months) as they are absorbed into the twisted mind and perception of their leader, Andre Stander. It is a truly biblical ending "the wages of sin are death", and it is expertly brought out by the director. There was no glossing over or glamorizing of anything and no relief whatsoever from the glaring wrong/betrayal of trust perpetrated by Stander. You were simply unable to root for the bad guys in this film and could only standby as the inevitable pursuit and capture, and final lessons were affirmed. A terrible beauty.

OK so imagine pitching this story to a Hollywood exec. A young police officer flips and becomes his country's most notorious bank robber. Seems rather far fetched but it happened in South Africa in the late 1970s/early 1980s when Police Captain Andre Stander became his country's most famous bank robber and is pretty faithfully retold in this film, although a few details are left out.Thomas Jane excels in the leading role and it's kind of hard to think that this is the same guy who played cardboard cut out Carter in Deep Blue Sea and unlike most Americans playing South Africans (particularly Afrikaners) hits the accent perfectly as does the extremely beautiful and talented Canadian Deborah Kara Unger as Stander's estranged wife Bekkie.South Africa itself makes a fantastic backdrop to the film, from the rich Johannesburg suburbs, the black shanty towns and the wide sweeping landscapes. Against this though however is the grittiness of Stander's crimes and imprisonment filmed brilliantly and the film's standout scene a reconstruction of the 1976 riots which will make your stomach turn. It also stays faithful to the period and the ways of life under Apartheid and if anything shows how a corrupt system can turn it's most loyal subjects.