The CEO

The CEO is a movie made up of a series of surprises. However, the biggest surprise is how disappointing it was.

In The CEO, the expat chief executive officer of Transwire – a multinational telecommunication company – retires, and the global headquarters pulls together a group of five potential replacements. Before the final replacement is selected, all five of them must attend a leadership conference in a resort on the outskirts of Lagos. However, when they arrive weird things begin to happen.

The CEO is a thriller without the thrill. The most exciting parts of this movie are the advertisements for Tourism and Hilda Dokubo. In the first few scenes as the stage is being set and the introductions are being made, there are some neat shots of Ivory Coast and Kenya. Then as the group moves to the resort, the camera does a great job of selling the beauty of Lagos and increasing the Tourism prospects. Then there was the thrill of Hilda Dokubo. In her intro scene, where she is seen standing over an exhausted and trapped Wale Ojo, I had to clear my eyes to make sure it was her. Someone had the genius idea of pulling her from her type-cast and placing her in a position of power, and it was a delight to watch. It wasn’t so much a delight because she nailed the role – to be completely honest much of her performance seemed forced – but it was delightful to see her in a powerful position that required no tears. Dear nollywood, more of this please.

From the synopsis, The CEO seems like a story with a lot of promise. Even after watching the twists and turns, by the end it still seemed very promising so I am at a loss as to how this fell apart – and fell apart so briskly. For whatever reason, the movie struggled to create a connection between the audience and the main characters such that when things start to go wrong and tense moments start to arise, we find ourselves from the outside looking in with popcorn in hand and barely any investment whatsoever. Even one of the most striking and arguably the strongest willed character – Riikard – doesn’t really strike you until his second to last and final scenes in the movie.

Then there are the performances. It is an amazing idea to pull in pan-African actors in one film. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, while they were all together either their chemistry was completely off or everyone forgot how to act. Even Lala Akindoju in this film gave a very questionable performance in her biggest scenes. There is also no room for any individual one of the actors to shine because no one has thought it through. So right as we are getting to understand Jomo’s nuances, that chapter closes; and before we can understand Riikard the story moves on too. The same can be said for the elements of suspense in this film. There are individual aspects of the storyline that could have been gold with better exposition. It’s hard to say that not enough time was spent on any individual aspect, because the movie itself was long enough it just wasn’t time well spent.

It is difficult to think of “The CEO” and not draw parallels with “The Arbitration”. That was another atypical nollywood movie that required the audience to embrace the idea of drama from the work place as opposed to personal-life drama. The difference is that where that one succeeds in pulling the audience in, this one fails. Where the surprises of that one struck a chord, this one slides off.

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