Survival of the Fittest

This is a rare instance of a home video with a most apt title- one which describes the experience of sitting through this movie. It took an almighty chore to get through this; but the thing is, it shouldn’t have. The storyline, where a businessman morphs into an unlikely crusader for justice when he is duped out of millions by serial cheats,  was not the usual nollyfare; and there were a few seasoned hands on deck, one or two of whom can usually be counted on to elevate most of what they work in (Jim Lawson Maduike, I’m looking at you; Desmond Elliot, you’re running a close second here). But for some reasons, the movie kept tittering on the brink of success and then pulling back into ‘huh?’, ‘you’ve gotta be kidding’, ‘did I just see/hear that?’ moments.

Epileptic directing was a problem. Scenes abruptly shifted, rather than seamlessly transitioning; leaving the viewer to perform rapid mental gymnastics in an effort to follow along with the story. Another distraction was superflous characters: there was zero value added by giving the lead character, Engineer Georgewell, several daughters, as only one of them, Natasha, was of any consequence to the story in the end.

Then there was the usual roll call of issues that plague nollywood in general: wooden extras; dodgy audio at times; fumbled lines; people falling in love in very short order; and gaps in the story at critical junctures (there didn’t seem to be any explanation for how the bad guy’s subordinate, Mr. Samuel, ended up in police custody, which turned out to be a major plot point, as it triggered the bad guy’s downfall).  There was also a slew of redundant scenes that could have been left on the cutting floor with no loss to the viewers. Such as the scene where Desmond’s character disguises himself as a mad man and kills some random guy in an SUV. Several hours later, I was still trying to figure out who the man was and why he had to die. Or the scene where the main character’s wife calls her store manager in for a meeting, but we’re never told why, never see the meeting, and the store manager never appears again. And finally, there was of course the incongruous, which always manages to put in a head in nollyland (one instance: a businessman who paid millions for a piece of land can only afford a torn leather swivel chair in his office?).

The movie had a story to tell, and it did try to stick to it, for the most part. You could see the arc traced from start to mid point to finish, if you followed closely and overlooked critical transition points that were poorly handled. The viewer should never have to work that hard, though. And that’s what made viewing this such a drag. Which is disappointing, because it could so easily have been so much better.