The Patient

We’re all here for exploring new storylines in our movies as well as venturing into new genres that deviate from the usual formulas that nollywood has become known for. Hence, we give props to this movie for at least attempting to stray but no matter how good the intentions, “The Patient” had quite a number of shortcomings.

The Patient is the story of a matron in a hospital who meets and falls for a patient. She soon learns, however, that this patient might actually be a dangerous criminal who the police are out to get. So she is left to contend with her feelings while helping the police officers to apprehend him.

As earlier mentioned, hats off to the writers for attempting to deviate from our nollywood norm in storytelling. However, that deviation ended after the premise was established. The number of people who watched this movie and actually expected ‘the patient’ to end up being a bad guy at the end are greatly outnumbered by those who knew better. The surprise really would have been if he was a bad guy in the end.

And then let’s talk about the props and the graphics and the settings and the entire layout. I will grant that this was probably one of the better hospital sets that we have seen in nollywood (because we have seen some really nonsense set designs when it comes to hospitals and patient rooms in nollywood), but the movie loses you in many other points. First we have the doctor recklessly discarding blood soiled gloves in his office trash can, then the patient is in a coma and all we have running is one lousy bottle of what I assume to be saline by gravity – yup, I’m pretty sure that saline is gonna save his life while meeting all his neuro, cardio and gastro needs – mmhmm. 

Let’s actually move away from the healthcare WTF-moments and go into the action. From the first flashback scene of how our patient lands in the hospital, you can immediately tell that not a lot of money in this movie’s budget was allocated for graphics. The gunshot that Seun Akindele’s character supposedly dodged could have been done better in Tom & Jerry and it doesn’t get better in the upcoming action scenes.

The movie, however, does charm you in the little things. Things like the overly romantic doctor that has for some reason decided that the hospital setting is the backdrop of choice for his uber romantic proposal to his nurse-girlfriend. I am really fighting everything within me not to mention the annoying stereotype perpetuated here in the assumption that nurses and doctors will end up together. We watch our doctor friend come up with so many ridiculous ideas after the other on how he will propose to his lady, that by the end when he finally does it you can’t help but be happy for him.

All in all, “The Patient” was a fair attempt from all the actors. There’s no single performance here that will leave you in awe but there’s also not a single performance here to put you in tears.