Boy Called Twist

TV director Greene’s debut feature film takes ‘Oliver Twist’s’ narrative chassis and bolts on a latterday Cape Town location, a hip-hop soundtrack and street-level issues: glue-sniffing, AIDS, child labour and abuse, drugs and prostitution. Fagin becomes a dreadlocked Ethiopian, the wealthy saviour of the tale a Muslim. Nothing inherently wrong with monkeying around with a classic text, of course, but this particular update is a pedestrian affair, marred by uneven pacing and a gnawing sense of self-consciousness. It’s not brilliantly acted, either, though Geduld makes a reasonable fist of the title part.