Love & Crime

In regular Frank Rajah fashion, Love & Crime is a suspense filled thriller trying so hard to be twisted, convoluted and different that along the line the audience forgets what the movie is about.

The movie focuses on three particular couples, who also happen to be friends, and their scheming ways. The movie follows along their troubles and conflicts, and ofcourse, again in regular Frank Rajah fashion, borrows from other movies.

First there is the crook couple of Yvonne Okoro and Majid. This pairing probably made my week as I think Yvonne is a fabulous actor and pairing her with Majid is just pure magic. I was of the opinion that Christmas came early so I settled right into my seat and waited for the movie to unfold. And unfold it did as I sat penning down the numerous movies from which this film has surreptitiously borrowed lines from.

First there was the affair scene with Kafui and JJ plus Eddie in the room which was not similar to but exactly the same as the affair scene from ‘Single and Married‘ between Nadia and Tiffany plus Eddie again in the room. It is amazing how boldly these repetitions are flaunted, as though we did not all see Single and Married earlier in the year. Or the audience is supposedly too dumb to recognize when the same lines, dialogues and scenarios are repeated?

Then there was the confrontation scene between Kafui and Eddie, which again borrows from the confrontation scene in Single and Married between Yvonne Nelson and Chris Attoh, and very unnecessarily too. They throw in the exact same lines about oral sex even though it has absolutely no bearing on the story. If you thought single and married was unnecessary, then rest assure Love & Crime will blow your mind with all the extraneous, unnecessary fluff added in.

Then ofcourse there was the one I almost missed (almost missed because I only recently saw the movie it was stolen from) – The brazen theft of the dialogue (and entire scene actually) that starts the rising action of the 2001 Bollywood feature Ajnabee in the confrontation scene between Emmanuel and Nikki.

The movie stars Nollywood USA queen, JJ Bunny in a pivotal role. From her introduction, the first thing that stands out are her pretty clothes, and then she opens her mouth and it’s all downhill from there. JJ really cannot emote to save her life, so all her expressions are pretty much……. the same. Sad JJ is the same as angry JJ which is the same as scared JJ which is the same as in-love JJ which is the same as cunning JJ and so forth. My anger was that they wasted such perfectly fine lines on an actress who obviously couldn’t bring them to life.

Emmanuel Emoabino for me is to Ghana as Zubby Michael and Benedict Johnson are to Nigeria, and if you’ve read any of the reviews on NR with those two you’d know that that’s not necessarily a positive relationship. I don’t think Mr. Emoabino is a convincing actor. He did have some funny scenesm, and thankfully he didn’t have enough scenes in the movie for his acting-handicap to shine through.

And then there’s Kafui Danku who I just can’t relate to in any of her movies. She seems to go through the motions without achieving the results.

Think of Love and Crime as a medley of some of some pretty decent movies, combined with a couple comic scenes and a handful of actual actors brought together to give you, what has become the definition of a Frank Rajah film, a really colorful theft of a movie.