Miss Taken
Ruth Kadiri, Seun Akindele, Uru Eke, Uchenna Nnanna, Laurel Je,
A former inspector general of the Nigerian police is charged with corruption and financial misconduct by the EFCC. His eldest daughter Ruby solidly stands beside her father as she oversees his properties and tries to control her rebellious younger sister Chinny. But just as things begin to brighten for Ruby, she finds that even family can be one’s greatest enemy.
Ike Nnaebue
Nelson Jombo
Chuka Onuigbo
2015
Potentially interesting storyline
Poor development
One of the things that make it difficult to find motivation to watch most new nollywood movies of nowadays (non-cinema released and cinema-released alike) is the checkbox-attitude that most of them seem to have these days. This check-box attitude is when the movie constitutes of everything that should make a great movie but completely lacks the development. So we have fine quality (check), pretty actors (check), nice sets (check), storyline (absent).
Miss Taken also falls victim to this check-box attitude of filmmaking. The movie has the makings of an interesting and potentially different plot. It tells the story of two daughters of a wealthy Nigerian politician who is currently behind bars because he was charged for corruption by the EFCC. The older daughter, played by Ruth Kadiri, continues to try everything that she can to free her father. She is aided by her boyfriend and companion, played by Seun Akindele. The younger daughter, however, played by Uru Eke, is a bit more self-serving. She desires for things to return to how they used to be and feels like her sister is keeping the money away from her. This eventually leads to her cooking up her own kidnap and things eventually go awry.
With a solid character development and appeal to emotion, this movie could have been much more memorable and enticing. Granted, the filmmaker wanted to get straight to the point and we definitely appreciate it with a runtime of about 70 minutes (especially as compared to the usual 120-180 we see in nollywood). But I hold that there’s no point making a movie with zero emotional base because at the end, no matter how many favors you do the viewers by making the movie brief, the experience comes to null and is easily forgotten.
Asides from the unmotivating storyline, there was also the issue of non-actors parading as actors in this movie to contend with. Ruth, Uru, Seun and Uchenna did fair enough jobs making their characters convincing but it seemed like others in the movie weren’t necessarily motivated towards the same. And this definitely helped to bring down the already declining quality of the film.
To conclude, the movie needed to have been better developed and shot (what with the confused and shaky camera movements) with better actors to support. In the end, it doesn’t move you and the movie is simply ‘ok’ at best.
For more on this checkbox attiude of filmmaking see our article HERE
