By: Arc

Level: 3

(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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This MOVIE was totally UNBELIEVABLE, I mean that quite literally. It was a 100 percent UNBELIEVABLE. Not unbelievably good, just plain UNBELIEVABLE. See? If you read the word Unbelievable one more time eh. This is exactly what the movie gave us, an over flogged rhetoric mess. This movie should have been named PLOT TWIST, all the writers really wanted to do was twist the plot, over and over and over again till you remember that the entire movie is a lie. Niyi Akinmolayan and Inkblot productions must accept responsibility for this.

I would just go ahead and state that the movie has a stellar cast, Jim Iyke, Dakore Egbuson, Tina Mba and Joke Silva. All A list stars notorious for carefully selecting scripts and roles save for our NINO BROWN acting Jim Iyke**. At the end of the movie, I couldn’t help clapping for the team for convincing these fine people, to make this “fine” film. Probably they were told “You know what Nigerians like, flashy costumes and settings, LUDICROUS stories and then of course we would splash everyone’s sweetheart-Adesua. It would sell I promise you.” You cannot be sentimental when picking roles, no matter the director or the production company.

**Uncle Jimmy, this is a fall from grace, the last movie I saw you in was a huge step for your “acting” career @ Cold Feet (Immaculate performance). It is embarrassing to finish that then drop to “Home Video” standards on this.

Sell it did, for the first time in a long while, the auditorium was filled for a Nollywood movie. So after enduring the hyper annoying Coleman Cable advert, the movie started and I braced myself, my note pad was ready. I gave full points for the depiction of the ghetto and the overtly cute secondary school girls. Then the madness starts:

Scenario: Gangstar Father is chastising his daughter and her friend in his vehicle, driving them home after school. Age estimate of secondary school girls- 14 years old. Uncle Anini pulls a gun from the glove compartment, shoots men dead and starts a fight with the other, 14 year old girls stay put and remain UTTERLY calm, passing the message that they have heard gunshots several times, they have seen people murdered in cold blood so much they can’t be bothered with a flinch.

Nigeria is not Afghanistan, it is no war zone and these are no Taliban kids. The scene reeked of insolence to our imagination. After the movie, when you realize the scene had zero relevance to the story, it just adds salt to injury. We are really stretching the Western Influence.

I was impressed as soon as I saw Madam Tina Mba, she was so graceful and it was so enjoyable watching her, from start to finish. Ma Joke Silva was brilliant as usual only I couldn’t stop thinking “What are you doing here?” I was also impressed by the movie soundtrack and how it sounded very much like Game of Thrones’ Jenny of Oldstones song. My eyes rolled into the back of my head when Chike’s training @ the Academy started, for some reason I was hoping to see Robert Peters. The writers then proceeded to drag Pharmaceuticals into their story and somehow linked it with Pastor Blackmail.

Oh sweet sweet Dakore, how do you still look 24? How is it that I have crushed on you for the past decade and now look older than you do? Sadly my crush level dropped when you said that line “I’d pay your rent if you take me home?” Again, UNBELIEVABLE!! This is OUR NIGERIA, too much money in circulation where the elite 1% would pay your rent for a ride back home? To the script writers try replacing rent with 20-50 thousand naira; that one we can swallow. Who spends all that money trying to get two people who already know each other to meet? Watch Hitch and see that there are simpler, cost effective ways of staging a meet. You don’t have to spend a quarter of a million or more @ get the police involved, pay street boys and pay rent. At this point, I concluded the writers were delusional.

So it is about 40 minutes of run time and I haven’t even cracked a smile, no comic relief, no commendable word play, zilch. At this point all Chike’s “Why didn’t you tell me?” shouts is becoming crazy. I was almost falling asleep, this is bad bad writing, zero character development (characters were just slapped on) and lazy directing (was it so difficult to shoot the hospital scene in a real hospital or one with its semblance?). As we move along we discover that the entire movie is based on the promise of an 8 abi 9, 10 year old child. She didn’t take any oath, she was a KID, she wasn’t Lord Eddard Stark, she was no Samurai making a solemn pledge at a sword’s edge. The entire premise of the movie is based on the child’s promise, it says everything. This was an ambitious shitty production that must have felt good on paper; the writers must have felt orgasm at preparing such multilayered convoluted script, in the end it turned out to be balderdash. Simplicity is key sometimes.

There were a lot of bad moments and bad acting from Adesua (I take a firm stance now that she isn’t worth all the fuss, pretty and stunning yes, great actress- HELL NO)

The bath tub suicide with head above water (scientifically impossible to drown yourself in a bath tub by the way) and the water clear (no slit wrist or at least an attempt to show the pill she popped), LAZY DIRECTING. US Government has really suffered at making deals with criminals, chai! The “F**k you, I won” moment didn’t even pull any strings, wasn’t anything near climax. Finally, please explain to me how someone with zero negotiating power reduces a 15 year sentence to 5? A favour from one beautiful woman to the other? Like everything in the movie, it didn’t make any sense.

The lady behind me said the movie gave her a headache, I came out screaming WHY, WHY, WHY in my head.

Good movies pull you in and make you believe in the world you are viewing, goose bumps and all, your head begins to live the fantasy, you forget you are in fact seeing a movie E.g Hogwarts, Westeros, Mordor sounds like REAL places right? Hold it, before you make the argument that those places were captured in detail in the books which made the movies easier to penetrate our minds, let me draw you closer to home. I believed in ARAROMIRE after watching Figurine. Get the point?

Some of you believe in THOR and Superman in tiny sections of your brains. The Academy and the entire HOGWASH portrayed in this movie @ NDLEA, US GOVERNMENT immunity deals and such and such (very real things oh) have been turned to ash.

This was watching over the top drama, say ZEE WORLD or Telemundo. Only you didn’t just catch it off cable TV, you paid 2000 naira to watch it. I wouldn’t even be surprised if this is a stolen story, a remake of some low budget HOLLYWOOD movie with a cheesy title like THE CARTEL or THE ACADEMY or plain THE SET UP’s SET UP. This movie deserves nothing more than be dumped on African Magic Epic (For home videos) and shouldn’t be showcased at cinemas.

Anyways, there are over 200 million of us here in Nigeria and a good percentage really has poor taste in movies and storytelling so yeah this movie would pass as a COMMERCIAL SUCCESS but a FAILURE in the ART DEPARTMENT.

(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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