The Millions

I would really love to know how the idea for this film was conceived. Did you see all the digging in Gold Statue and think, “oh I can do that better”? Or did you see Money Heist and figure that you wanted to re-do it, Naija style. Whatever the case may be, can we just agree that some ideas are best left inside our minds?

The Millions is the story of how a genius con-artist, Bem (Ramsey Nouah), recruits a group of people he barely knows for a heist to steal $42 million from a heavily guarded house. The solution he comes up with involves digging a tunnel from the house of a rich girl he just met into the house where the money is stored. It’s a concept that could have turned out quite well even with the minimal resources that nollywood movies generally have to work with. The writer could have chosen either the comedy or the thriller part of this “thriller comedy” to focus on, and we’d have had a better movie. Instead, it just ended up being a bumbling mess of a film.

The biggest problem with the film is the lack of structure. It fails woefully in building up this world where the characters have any degree of believability, and their actions and its consequences have any weight. When you tell me that Bem is a genius con artist but just a few scenes ago I saw the man make and spend N6 million in one week while leaving the receipts on Instagram, it’s hard to believe. When a rich spoiled brat randomly sashay’s into the storyline for no reason and conveniently eases the path towards the money, it’s hard not to suspect her. And when the solution to noisy digging is a spontaneous idea of throwing a loud party, it’s hard to take the writing seriously.

But those aren’t even the biggest failures in the world building here. It’s just the progression of the events and the lack of impact any of it has. From the planning of the heist to the actual execution, if you blinked you would miss it because nothing builds up here. And then when we are finally in the tunnel, suddenly someone says “we’ve been digging for four days” and you start to wonder when did that happen? There’s minimum effort put into making anything convincing at the most basic level. So yes, the sets are gorgeous, yes the props are in place but no your story does not follow.

It’s not all woes here though. The beginning of the movie did bring a lot of joy especially in watching the chemistry between Ramsey and Blossom. Ramsey’s first scene with the Sheikh (Ali Nuhu) reminds us of why he’s such a good actor, as we see him quickly switch from suave and classy to street and humorous without effort. Then Blossom enters the scene and in that first living room scene together, watching the two actors play off each other is exciting. However, it gets old quickly as Blossom is saddled with this unfitting and tired nerd trope for the rest of the film. And the viewer is also forced to swallow multiple scenes of AY attempting to act and attempting to be funny.

Surprisingly, AY was actually not the worst actor on the sets of this movie. That honor is reserved for the producer of the film, Chika Lann. For some reason, Lann decides to insert herself into this film as the unnecessary character of Amaka. As her lover (played by AY), attempts to be funny by repeatedly saying “Amaka you will never disappoint me” (a reference to this 2face Idibia song), the viewer can’t stop thinking her whole presence is actually quite a disappointment.

To state it simply, the best parts of this movie were the first 5 minutes and the last 3 minutes – credits included.