Raging Passion

A genre we do not get enough of in this new improved modern day Nollywood is ‘romance’. Whatever the reason may be, not many filmmakers seem to be willing to make pure romances anymore, much to the dismay of die-hard romantics like myself. Now that’s why it is extra infuriating to finally find one potentially amazing nollywood romance, and for it to end up watered down due to the laziness of some and lack of talent of others. Raging Passion is a movie about a boss who is in love with his secretary, and it stands out for a couple of reasons. First of all, there is the obvious! A couple minutes into the movie there she is, live and direct, it’s Nneka the pretty serpent otherwise known as Ndidi Obi. You might have to wipe your eyes a couple times but believe it… it’s real! On a more serious note, one major thing that did stand out was that the movie seemed like it was going somewhere. It has all the telltale signs of a potentially well done movie – it had only one part, the picture quality was amazing, it had solid actors from the past in the persons of Chidi Mokeme, Darlene Cobhams and Ndidi Obi and even arguably Uche Obodo. It was headed somewhere but it got derailed along the way. Even though the movie is without a doubt a visual rendition of a mills and boon novel, it could have been to romantic dramas what flower girl was to romantic comedies – unabashedly fulfilling all stereotypes yet winning our hearts along the way – but it wasn’t. Yes, it fulfilled many stereotypes, the lines were so very cliched that a 6th grader could have written them but is that my problem? No, not really. The fact is that if a movie is going to indulge into this degree of romanticism that it becomes unreal, you have to ensure that the audience is never broken away from this alternate world and that we stay with you for the two hour length of the movie. Otherwise the movie becomes quite comical. In this movie, reality was broken by the performances. First of all there was the actor who plays Gideon – Charles Billion – who somehow managed to give a 100% unconvincing performance. I cannot point at any one scene of his where I believed him or was tempted to believe him. Then there was Mary Remmy. There are not many things more annoying than seeing a beautiful character destroyed by a weak actor. Mary is not a terrible actress. She can present her work in a tolerably good manner, however, this character required more than she could give and this broke the reality. Personally, Chidi Mokeme’s performance in this movie had much room for improvement and I don’t know if that is to be credited to his performance in and of itself or his response to Mary’s performance. The movie did drag at some points and with all those romantic scenes it was inevitable that some would come across far fetched. But all in all, Raging Passion had the potential to be much more than what it was in the end. With a stronger lead pair it could have been a much more memorable romance.