Gbomo Gbomo Express

There must be a reason why the fast and the furious series has made it to seven parts and people still flock to the cinemas for it. I personally watch a lot of TV shows, but as of today January 10th, 2016, the only TV show that I am willing to watch live (with commercial interruptions) is The Blacklist.

There are many action and crime type movies and tv shows but the one thing that distinguishes the ones that we love from the ones that we could care less about is the viewer’s affection for the characters. Was Gbomo Gbomo Express able to achieve that affection?

GGE is a movie about a petty crime group consisting of Gideon Okeke as Francis, Kiki Omeili as Blessing and Gbenro Ajibade as Filo. They specialize in a quick in and out scam type that hardly ever involves victims in any real danger and almost always excludes the use of guns. All this is until they are recruited for a job by an unknown main man. They receive the details via a middle man to kidnap and hold hostage a record label owner Austin (played by Ramsey Nouah) and his partner.

On the night that this is set to occur, Austin’s character is celebrating a new deal at a club. He meets a young Cassandra (played by Osas Ighodaro) and is headed home with her when he gets taken. Austin’s partner is called to pay the N50,000,000 ransom but he argues that the company has no money until Austin signs the papers for the new deal.

At this point, it seems like the kidnappers have found themselves in quite a predicament. All this and some extra talk about shawarma (chicken or beef) and designer shoe labels take up a huge portion of the movie.

Ok, I kid. The movie actually does have content. The storyline is cohesive from before the kidnapping to the actual kidnapping and the aftermath. By the end of the movie, the mastermind is revealed and I sense that most would expect an ahhh/ooo-la-la moment but let’s get real guys, if you actually thought about it you would have realized who the mastermind was.

On the acting front, everyone whose name you could recognize (this has become my new and kinder way of saying everyone except extras) did a solid and convincing job. Kiki owned the role of blessing from her talk to her strut. Osas was born for the role of a spoilt damsel in distress. I’ve not seen much of Gbenro prior to this but now you will have a tough time convincing me that he is anything but a rascal in real life. Gideon owns the role of Francis and Ramsey, Blossom and Ikechukwu do deliver.

The storyline just seems to carry itself along for the first hour or so. The first point at which we are a bit invested is in the escape attempt at the 1 hour mark. I was quite amused at the attempted rape scene between Gbenro Ajibade and Osas Ighodaro simply because of their real life situation. But beyond that, the movie did have a few funny moments to lighten up the otherwise serious atmosphere.

By the end of the movie though, there really isn’t much of an investment between the viewer and the characters. The characters are easily forgettable and so was the movie.