Soldiers of the Rock

A South African gold mining crew struggles with cultural pride, violent feuds, and constant danger in this bracing, socially-conscious action film made by students at the South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance. To experience the world in which his father died, Vuyo uses his break from business studies (paid for by dad’s meager savings) to join a jaded, well-muscled Johannesburg crew of deep-level gold miners working lengthy shifts far underground. Intense fraternization alternates with efforts of ex-con laborer Suto to organize purchase of their own mine; his violent fate prompts a shift in power among the men that leads to a harrowing subterranean showdown with a crazed dissenter.