Stolen Lives

The movie ‘Stolen Lives’ is almost like a throwback to old nollywood. You know those good old times when our storylines had different faces, an actual storyline and still managed to be entertaining? Yeah, that.

Stolen Lives is told in a flashback form as a 23 year old writer narrates the story behind her autobiography. It follows her life, her cousin’s life and that of her cousin’s friends. She, Amarachi, was a 17 year old secondary school graduate trying to get into university when she attended party that changed her life forever. Her cousin, played by Ruth Kadiri, had been in a bad relationship in her jambite years and this had scarred her from relationships to the extent that she makes a few poor choices later on. Each of the individual friends also have one trouble or the other that they cope with in different unhealthy manners.

When it comes to morals, the movie has it. It’s written by Tunde Babalola and that right there is reason enough to see it. It’s not his best work but it is still a movie written by him so you know that the storyline is good.

The storyline of the movie keeps you interested from start to finish, however, the shortcoming of this movie is in the directing department. The quality of the directing does not match the quality of the writing.

There are new faces in this movie especially the lead character Amarachi who is played by Owumi Ugbeye. Owumi does well enough but there’s still more than enough room for growth especially in the beginning of the movie and working to convince the audience that you are the character and not just an actor trying to be the character. Regardless of her weak performance, better directing would have made it less obvious. 

IK Ogbonna and Ruth Kadiri were probably the two biggest highlights of this movie. They brought life to the scene whenever they showed up. Ruth with her mastery in owning the camera and IK with his sudden and pleasant new talent in enchanting the audience with everything he does.

Stolen Lives, regardless of its flaws, is still an entertaining watch especially for a Sunday afternoon after church (and you know I don’t go around recommending any yeye movie to watch on Sundays 🙂 ).