`CATCH A FIRE' LACKS SPARK.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

`Catch a Fire'' is different from other apartheid movies.

The true story of an apolitical family man, Patrick Chamusso, who was radicalized by abuse from South African authorities into becoming a bomb-planting terrorist, it's one of the few films about the separate-but-criminally-unequal system that doesn't filter the horrors of the regime through the sensibility of some well-meaning white folks.

Furthermore, the film manages to find empathy, if not sympathy, for one of the bad white characters, the Afrikaner interrogator who oversees Chamusso's torture.

Add to that ingenious use of the equality movement's freedom songs, a screenplay written by Shawn Slovo (``A World Apart''), daughter of anti-apartheid guerrilla leader Joe Slovo, and director Phillip Noyce, who's been making pretty impressive political films of late (``The Quiet American,'' ``Rabbit-Proof Fence''), and you have all the ingredients for a superior historical thriller.

But in the end, ``Catch a Fire'' doesn't seem all that distinctive.

Chamusso, while hardly a saint, nonetheless comes off as a remarkably fine man the way Derek Luke plays him. The racist system's myriad injustices aren't illuminated in any particularly new or striking way, except that maybe Tim Robbins' police colonel Nic Vos finds the crueler aspects of his job distasteful and seems mainly motivated by a real concern that his wife and daughters are threatened by the nation's black majority and Communist insurgents.

And for some reason (concern for elderly academy voters' delicate sensibilities would be my best guess), Noyce presents both Chamusso's brutalization and later suspense sequences in an overly discreet manner. We get what's going on, but not in the gut-grabbing way that would make this a great movie rather than just one with good intentions.

Luke, best-known for his headlining role in ``Antwone Fisher,'' plays Chamusso with grace and intelligence, but never quite locates his emotional mutation from get-along guy to hard-core revolutionary.

There's no doubt as to why Patrick changes the way he does, but there are questions unanswered about how such a radical shift affected, and was reflected in, his personality.

Born in neighboring Mozambique, Chamusso had built as good a life as a black man could expect to in 1980 South Africa. He had a foreman's job at an oil refinery; his wife, Precious (Bonnie Henna), was a former beauty queen, and they had two sweet little daughters; and he coached his township's boys' soccer team.

Though not naive, Chamusso made sure to stay out of trouble by keeping strictly nonpolitical. When a bomb went off at the refinery, however, circumstance makes Chamusso a logical suspect. He was innocent, but that didn't stop Vos' goons from beating the bejesus out of Patrick and Precious. As soon as he could, Chamusso split for Mozambique and joined the exiled African National Congress' military wing, for whom he eventually tried to carry out another bombing at the very place he'd been falsely accused of attacking.

Luke hits all the right notes of courage, fear, anger and forgiveness a good hero of this conflict should -- and throws in a smidgen of guilt. His accent is consistent, too.

But it usually feels more like a careful performance than a spontaneous, lived life.

Some are saying that ``Catch a Fire'' has as much to say about current events as it does 25-year-old history. I guess it does, to the extent that torturing innocent people is rarely a productive stratagem.

Beyond that, though, there's little that really links Africans' freedom fight with Iraq today or anything else related to the current war on terror. Part of what makes such comparisons easy, though, is that the film has a certain generic quality to it, despite Noyce and company's evident wish to tell a distinctive story about one man's unique, inspiring struggle.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

CATCH A FIRE - Two and one half stars

(PG-13: violence, language, racism)

Starring: Derek Luke, Tim Robbins, Bonnie Henna.

Director: Phillip Noyce.

Running time: 1 hr. 42 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: True story of South African anti-apartheid activist Patrick Chamusso gets points for mainly being about a black character for a change, then loses them for not telling his story in as compelling and suspenseful a way as it should have. In English and Afrikaans with English subtitles.