Blood Or Wine

Asides from the blatant similarity between this movie and the 2008 movie ‘Fireproof‘, the movie also fails to impress in many critical aspects.

Blood or wine tells the story of a couple at the brink of a divorce, a nagging wife, a persevering husband and unfulfilled wishes. Ideally, this sounds like a recipe for a great 2hrs in movie viewing time. The story itself spells entertainment from every angle, and after seeing the trailer, that’s what I expected. I thought it was literally impossible to mess up a story like this, LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE!

Well turns out it was very possible, infact literally possible because it was done. The movie stretches about an hour and fifty minutes or thereabouts of film time, and it was only until the 45th minute of this movie did the movie actually start. And I remember that moment like a toddler remembering his first bike ride because the counselor says to Uche Jombo ‘take this book and for 30 days follow it’s routine’ and I sat up alert cos finally the movie was starting.

The first thing that hits you about this movie is the camera. The camera seemed to be zooming in and out, and moving from side to side for no apparent reason. And this was my cue that it was about to be a very long hour and fifty minutes.

You know, the thing about watching a movie on irokotv nowadays is that you can no longer tell whether a movie just has poor video quality or that’s just a glitch on the site’s system, the audio seems to be ever fluctuating but isn’t that true of all irokotv movies?

The actors in this movie did surprise me to a certain extent. Uche Jombo was in her usual gra-gra role in the beginning of the movie and eventually transformed to a subdued, calm and collected wife (almost like in “Holding Hope” but Uche in Holding hope was definitely better).

The shock for me was Jim Iyke. When the movie started and someone else (other than Jim Iyke) was playing the snob role…? I won’t lie, that definitely gave me motivation to keep watching. I can’t stand Jim in bad boy roles, but in subdued lover boy roles I think he is fantastic. That awesomeness unfortunately was neither able to save this wreck of a movie, nor was it enough to fall in love with.

I am really tempted to say that the stand out character was Femi (and I say ‘character’ here because the actor that played him was a bit shaky on presentation). Loved his lines and his continuous attempt at ‘building an empire’.

A couple things I couldn’t wrap my head around like how the producers could afford invicta watches but couldn’t afford Colgate Whitening for Jim Iyke’s teeth (or the Nigerian equivalent). And why is a neurologist (specialist in the study of the brain) being sent to a lady with a leg problem? Above all though, the most unnecessary thing in this movie was the sex scene at the end. Honestly, why? Is it Jim’s trend now since ‘my first wife’ to show off his sexual prowess in every movie? That scene was entirely uncalled for, completely unnecessary and frankly disturbing

The entire thing was an apology, very shabbily constructed and a sad death to a potentially amazing movie.