Breaking Ranks

This is a shameless shameless amalgamation of many action movies. Despite this, this has been the best action movie I have watched to date, which isn’t saying much considering how notoriously bad these types of Nollywood movies are.

The plot is a familiar one, a police officer is framed only to turn into a great detective but this one has twist upon twists. The story is interesting, easy to follow and more importantly not contrived. At least, not as contrived as other Nollywood action movies. The characters are compelling and three dimensional especially Nse Ikpe Etim’s and Femi Jacobs’. It is long – almost four hours of footage – but it doesn’t try to cram a lot of external plotlines and irrelevant things into it. On the other hand, it did take way too long to get into the storyline and had a twist that one can see a mile off. All in all, very inspired storyline that was only let down by their insistence of including juju. All in all, there was a pretty good structure, not as much waffling as one would expect from such a long film but it did take a while to get too the plot and dragged in the middle.

The acting was of course top notch, Nse Ikpe Etim was on fire and I was quite impressed at how she played the character. Femi Jacobs was so also good, with brilliant performances from Seun Akindele and Jibola Dabo as well. The key to making credible , non-cheesy action movies is that the actors play it straight, and try not to be too ‘badass’ and cool. Maybe this worked because it was more of a drama than an action film and the actors treated it as such.

The fight scenes were just so bad, not as bad as other Nollywood action films but still not well choreographed. The audio was horrendous, sometimes cutting out; sometimes extremely low and sometimes it didn’t quite match up. The visual is crisp and clear, and the wardrobe in particular was impressive. It was appropriate and still quite professional, none of that fake leather coats and weak looking boots. The physical effects and special effects did not bear up to scrutiny , looking cheap and amateurish.  The soundtrack was really good and catchy, top notch.

In conclusion, this movie is miles ahead its peers in its genre. However it is very predictable, slow moving and far too long but enjoyable none the less. I would call it good but not great. By the way, the newscaster/newsreader/interviewer set my teeth on edge, could barely speak english or even enunciate properly.