Based on the true life account of the eponymous South African police captain (Jane in a multi-faceted turn) circa 1976 at the height of Apartheid becomes increasingly disillusioned and frustrated with the rigors of the violent job begins robbing banks, seemingly as a lark, that leads to a colorful anti-heroic life of crime.

While becoming a sort-of-modern-day Robin Hood cum Butch Cassidy, Stander and his two partners in crime (0'Hara and Fletcher) he realizes that despite losing his lovely wife (the ethereally beautiful Unger) in the process he has also lost his identity: is he really a criminal at heart, a wronged civil servant or a lone wolf looking for an adrenaline rush just to feel something that has replaced his sense of duty and justice in a nation gone horribly awry.

Filmmaker Bronwen Hughes delivers a smart, funny and fast-moving action drama with a fluid camera (kudos to cinematographer Jess Hall), quick cut edits (ditto Robert Ivison) and a pulsating score shot on location with a real-life feel to the film as a whole and for the cheesy disguises and circumstances Stander and his gang manage to concoct.

Some of the hold-ups may seem a tad too casual and outrageous but I'll be damned if they aren't original and more importantly entertaining. At one point the gang learns over a news bulletin on the radio about the bank they just robbed actually had a much more hidden that they promptly U-turn back and demand the bypassed bounty!

What could easily have been a pretentious political manifesto about apartheid or a light-hearted romp about daring do cops and robbers ala "Ocean’s Eleven" instead is a sharply skewered look at how society's ills will eventually breed contempt, disdain and ultimately seeking of a radical change, even if that means going against the actual morays one has been engrained with from the get go.

Jane, a combination of Tom Berenger, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, is on the verge of major stardom in a film that finally allows all his talent simmer to the surface in his ballsy, breezy and self-confidently sufficient performance. Like Val Kilmer before him he has that bad-boy yet heart-of-gold hunkiness with a deep thinking brain that will always be slightly ahead of his beefcake brawn, even if it means winking with some tongue-in-cheek sassiness. The sleeper of the year.