By Bob Ross

He calls his company Messenger Films, but writer- director Cris Krusen is more of a storyteller than a preacher.

Sure, there's a heartfelt plea for forgiveness and hope here. But there's an edge - a real-world sense of rage, danger and reconciliation - behind this humanitarian drama to which the Tampa native devoted a decade of work.

Even the title carries echoes of evil: "Final Solution'' evokes memories of Nazism, and Krusen shows us parallels in South Africa not so long ago.

Set during the dying days of the vicious apartheid regime, Krusen's movie personalizes the social and political cross-currents that swept the land. He mentions Nelson Mandela, of course, but he centers on ordinary folks struggling with the turmoil in and around Cape Town.

Gerrit Wolfaardt (Jan Ellis) is an Afrikaner - a white native who believes blacks are inferior and who feels threatened by their impending freedom. As part of a paramilitary extremist group, he joins in bloody racial violence. His leaders tell him it's God's will as written in the Bible.

Gerrit's beliefs are challenged when he meets Celeste (Liezel van der Merwe), a liberal student with egalitarian ideals. And his very life is threatened during a tense standoff - in a church, fittingly - involving a violent fugitive (David Lee) and a black man (Mpho Lovinga) whom Gerrit once brutalized.

Completed more than two years ago, "Final Solution'' makes its commercial theatrical debut at Channelside Cinema in Krusen's hometown. It's a carefully crafted piece, balancing brutal action sequences with taut, confrontational dialogue.

The actors summon the emotional strength their conflicts require: This is not easy viewing, because Krusen draws us into a war of ideas - and a quest for solutions - that isn't over.