The Department

With a stellar cast and its not-the-usual-nollywood-movie storyline, the department aspires to so much and achieves a lot but it does not achieve it all.

The Department is the story of a secret department in a highly successful company which has gained its success by disabling other companies in order to acquire them. All this is done through the efforts of the members in this department. All is fine and dandy until two of the members decide to leave, one is indispensible to the organization, and the other is resolute to keep his wife away from the business. Both motives eventually clash in this aspirational thriller.

The movie has a stellar cast, in fact everyone in this movie has the tools of the trade. Hence, this post will get really lengthy if we decide to touch on all performances so let us stick to the surprises. The number one surprise in this movie was Osas Ighodoro. From the first scene her ease in front of the camera is apparent. For most of us who only watch Nigerian movies and do not have access to the TV shows, we were not aware of her. Regardless, Osas disposes of any kind of skepticism about her performance from scene one.

Then there was Kenneth Okolie. I am currently in a state of confusion as to whether his acting was always this natural or to chuck this off to great directing. Regardless of what it was, this was the most comfortable he has ever been in front of the camera. OC Ukeje owns the bad guy look in this movie. Whatever was done for his carriage in this movie, is what needed to have been done for “Alan Poza” because I swallowed the bad guy impression hook line and sinker.

It was simply a delight to see many of these actors in the same frame as each other. Personally, it was the cinematic equivalent to a broke druggie getting a free high. However, all good things must come to an end have their own comma in them.

What do you have to do in order to be called a thriller? You have to thrill and unfortunately for the most part in this movie, it doesn’t. I’m just going to go ahead and grant this disclaimer now that if this was a home video it would be a great movie, but when you have upped your own standards beyond the average nollywood flick you have to rise to the challenge. And rise, they did, but achieve, they did not.

The movie is never able to attain any kind of involvement for the audience with the characters. In fact, in many scenes the characters themselves seem uninvolved with each other. It was such that person A is giving a great performance and person B is giving a great performance, and in as much as these performances are great on their own but together they are nothing.

The emotional investment is completely lost on this movie and the complete silence in the beginning and end of some scenes did not do much to help the situation. Granted, this movie put me on to a lot of new songs that I otherwise would not have known of but the score was not on the same playing field. Per chance, using more emotional music, especially in the silent spaces, might have helped lift the movie up.

The movie, the department, did great work with the little details however together the finished work falls flat and will probably be forgotten by your next breakfast.