2Broken

2 Broken is a tear jerker of a storyline. From the writing and the overpowering music in the movie, you can tell that the crew is holding nothing back in trying to get out as much tears from the audience as possible. For many reasons though, the movie ends without ever achieving its maximum potential.

The movie follows the life of a young girl whose fiance dies in an accident on her wedding day. After this she finds out that she is pregnant and her parents who are pastors are embarrassed about this. To save face she moves out of her parents home and one night she gets raped in her home with her little baby beside her. Afterwards she develops a stoic attitude towards life and refuses to let anyone in asides from her best friend, played by Omotu Bissong.

Belinda Effah is pretty much the only established name in the entire movie therefore the onus is on her to carry the movie along and she does well enough. However, when her character becomes stoic she takes that gra-gra to that whole other level that only she can (at this point I’m not even sure if my criticism stems from being tired of seeing actors like Uche Jombo, Yvonne Jegede and Belinda Effah doing this gra-gra role time and time again, or whether there really is something wrong with their portrayal of it?).

Regardless, Belinda does a decent job holding the movie together. But she is surrounded by not so proficient actors. The most standout poor performances in this movie came from the actors who played the parents. I literally found myself shaking my head at the level of the performances at many different points. Omotu does a decent job in this supporting role. Not much was required of her but for that which was required, she brought enough to the table.

Watching this movie, you can tell that the writer had great aspirations. Either the script was too long and someone decided to cut out scenes or the writing was initially tacky (I’m leaning towards the former). I say this especially because after the initial wedding scene and the rape scene arrives, there was no explanation. The viewer has no idea that she had moved out and now lived on her own because the entire time I’m waiting for her parents or someone else to come to rescue her. I must say though, that in that moment you see Belinda transform mentally and lose all faith in humanity. And you literally see this in her eyes as she pulls out her diary.

The storyline behind the movie is definitely very heartfelt but there are just too many flaws along the way for that heartfelt emotion to come across as purely as it needed to. The quality of the movie could have been elevated with better supporting actors and a more concrete script.