Can one ever return to innocence? Once it's been stripped like car parts from a stolen BMW on the edge of a desolate township, can you ever get it back? The theme of innocence replays like a broken record in the deeply moving motion picture, 'Tsotsi,' the twisted tale of a manchild in no one's promised land.

Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the subtitled South African motion picture chronicles the flimsy life of a lonesome gang leader who preys upon his community until he comes to take care of a baby boy through a rapid series of violent events.

Initially, Tsotsi (meaning "street thug"), carts the baby around in a shopping bag, but after a time with the infant, comes to regain some of the decency that comes with being among those who do not rely solely on feral instinct for survival. The baby is not only a young innocent to be cared for, but a link to Tsotsi's past, one filled with buried emotions.

Newcomer Presley Chweneyagae puts in a captivating lead performance, his difficult life evoking sympathy and scorn at turns. This is a child filled with rage -- a rage so rooted in a violent past that when confronted about it, he can only lash out and brutalize those around him (including his running mate and a wheelchair bound panhandler.)

'Tsotsi' mostly takes place in a South African township, a sometimes desparate community of over one million, packed into tin houses. Touching on the "new" South Africa, one finally gets a glimpse into a country not just dealing with the politics of a now "dismantled" apartheid, but an insular look at the black South African community which is diverse, textured and filled with many of the pathologies of ghettos everywhere (including black-on-black crime.)

'Tsotsi' explores everything from class divisions within the black African community to back-breaking poverty and the devastating impact of AIDS on children and families. It is also a story of children -- children abandoned, children brutalized, children who have a better start in life than others. There are child street gangs bound by loss, pain and abandonment. These are the children who lie, cheat and maim to survive, and whose rage is the only thing that keeps them alive.

'Tsotsi' is the African lullaby of a young man who tries to desperately to find his redemption song. A young baby forces him to confront his past so that he may gaze into his future. Yet, the words escape him.