Slow Country

There’s this thing called the curse of the second half. It’s when a movie starts off great but somewhere around the middle it looses steam so that by the time you get to the end you’ve forgotten your initial love for the movie. Slow Country is quite the opposite case, we’ll call this one the curse of the first half because the movie is almost impossible to watch in the first half and difficult to leave in the second half.

Slow Country is the story of Kome (Ivie Okujaye) who becomes a victim of life after she gets pregnant at a young age and finds herself as a call girl for a drug lord, Tuvi (Sambasa Nzeribe). Tuvi is a ruthless thug who seems to have his hands in every sideways business that ever existed from human trafficking to drug trafficking and everything else. He takes to Kome because she is educated and attracts big business, and he is ruthless whenever anyone comes between him and his business.

So when Kome reconnects with her son’s father (Tope Tedela), things start to get heated around the neighborhood and Tuvi goes out for blood. Meanwhile, Inspector Dave (Majid Michel) is on the sidelines awaiting the right opportunity to nab Tuvi for all his crimes.

It’s quite the intricate world that Eric Aghimien stitches together in Slow Country, and though it takes a while to get immersed inside of it, it’s definitely worth the wait. Slow Country is possibly one of the most convincing rugged action films we’ve seen about “the streets” in a while. Tuvi, as embodided by Sambasa Nzeribe, is the scariest villain I have seen in modern day nollywood (and my gauge of that is the fact that I had to start fast-forwarding through his scenes at some point). 

Aghimien builds up the factors that make this film work but they take a while to get used to. The production design of this is quite peculiar initially and hard to accept. From the grading to the cinematography choices, it’s all quite jarring. But that effect that might have you shaking your head in the first half is what makes the second half that much more believable. It’s these little bits from Aghimien that helps to create characters like Brasko. Brasko is a fiery drug dealer who is comfortably dwelling in the shanties of the city and ready to kill anyone who crosses him. Yet, when he meets Kome and hails her you can’t help but cheese along with her. In the end, the question really is how many viewers have the patience to make it through that first half to reap the rewards of characters like Brasko

The performances here were raw. Ivie as Kome embodies the character and she never ceases to amaze in just how much flexibility and variation she can create in her character within the same scene and in the same frame. Tope Tedela balances this role of a bold lover-boy who still recognizes his own limitations in such an endearing way. Majid…. uhm Majid does a lot of running here. Sambasa is a beast here and it’s not hard to see why he has since been type casted into these roles. And then there’s Gina Castel as Ola. In that one scene in the car with Kome after her incident she will sell you, buy you and repurchase you. She draws the audience in with such ease.

Slow Country is a slow build of a movie. Everything doesn’t always work in this one but when you look back on it, it achieves its intended effect.