Catch.er

What do you need to make a good murder mystery? A classic whodunit that has its audience gasping at the end? It involves following a very specific formula. It is basically like making a perfect meal. You must have your charismatic hard nose battle weary cop (played by Oc Ujeke), the multiple motives and opportunity, the big mislead and the big reveal. The filmmaker is the chef and the audience his consumer, you can’t have too much of one thing and too little of the other. With the movie, “Catch.er,” about the investigation of the death of woman (played to perfection by Beverly Naya) who is found murdered on her wedding anniversary, filmmaker Walter Taylaur makes a tasty meal. Catch.er is not a perfect but in an industry that typically prefers fast food to three course meals, it is pretty close.

There is a scene at the very beginning where our detective tosses a cigarette on the ground before he steps into the interrogation room to start his verbal dance. This is a scene that is as natural to the movie as much as it would be right at home in a Hitchcock classic. It essentially foreshadows the producer/directors only goal. To make a classic murder mystery.  The shifty spouse, the culpable colleague, the intimidating investigator and more motive than you’ll know what to do with. Catch.er has it all, as it immerses its audience in the murder mystery genre while taking ambitious but rewarding directorial risks.  The movie seems at it high points to be an exhibition of the directors technical ability because although the plot suffers a little for not being conventional and linear, he deftly skips between scenes without skipping a beat, placing cameras where this reviewer did not beforehand even realise they could be placed.

Inarguably though the strongest element of this movie was the individual breath-taking performances of some of its actors. The lead character of the Detective Komolafe was handled deftly albeit a bit erratically by experienced Nollywood lead man (Oc Ujeke) who put in a dedicated performance but did sometimes feel like some bizarre hybrid of Sherlock Holmes and literally every cliché cynical lead detective ever on screen. Significantly less impressive was the unconvincing performance of Tony Bello (the husband of the victim and prime suspect for the murder) played by Alexx Ekubo as he seemed most times perhaps uncomfortable with what the role required.  This was painfully highlighted due to the effortless performance by Beverly Naya as Abby Bello (the victim). Simply, she was easily the best part of the movie with Blossom Chuwkuejukwu (Brume Idolor) and Tope Tedela (Officer John) both giving  confident and professional performances. Special props has to be the performances of Wofai Fada (Secretary) and Omowunmi Dada (Ese) which although under the radar far from being comic relief were easily the most convincing because it, along with the pidgin the characters occasionally lapsed into, reminded the audience that even with the movie spitting dialogue lifted out of a CSI episode, it was still set in Nigeria.

Special credit also has to be given to the producers as they proved that although a movie is not a documentary, authentic details matter, and there is room even in Nollywood to get to a point we hire consultants when we write scripts as they kept the movie as close to reality as possible with meticulous research. Ironically though, despite recognizing the need for authenticity, the movie with its bizarre soundtrack choices which left this viewer wondering in scenes with emotional depth whether perhaps the goal was free advertising rather than setting the mood. Even more perplexing were the costumes which for this viewer made the biggest mystery of all in the movie whether it was always casual Friday at the police HQ.

Perhaps it had too many Deus ex machina moments where a seemingly unsolvable problem in the story is suddenly resolved by an unlikely occurrence. But in a Nollywood filled with lazy writing the fact that ultimately the movie sticks firmly to the rules of the genre with little or no imagination and while it checks all the boxes falls into the clichés of telling such stories isn’t so criminal. This is because the end result is a thoroughly arresting journey littered with impressive scenes.