The extraordinary true story of Andre Stander, the 1970s South African cop who turned into a Ned Kelly-style bank robber, is given a gutsy if over-romanticised feature treatment by director Bronwen Hughes.

Thomas Jane plays Stander, who becomes cynical and disillusioned by the brutal apartheid regime which deployed most of its police manpower in suppressing the black townships, leaving white Johannesburg wide-open for regular civilian crime. Sickened by his role in policing the 1976 Tembisa riots - which are dramatised in tremendous scenes - he becomes a bank-robber during his lunch-hour, and finally goes on a thieving spree with his "Stander Gang".

The movie has some very PC inventions, including a truly bizarre scene in which Stander penitentially submits to a beating from the father of one of the black protesters he shot. It is debatable, to say the least, if the real Stander really had these tortured-liberal views. Political naiveties aside, it's full-throttle stuff.