Devil In Agbada

The first scene of Devil In Agbada is one of its best shot ones. Armed assailants are at the home of Justice Obanor (Kayode Freeman) who refuses to give into their demands even at a threat to his life. His would-be assassin quotes a verse from the bible, from Mark 8 verse 34, “What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul”, in a bid to convince his victim to prioritise his life over his integrity. The honourable judge brushes this away in the most offhand way, ignoring the message to focus on the theological strength of his interpretation, apparently in no worry about the gun pointed in his face. This stoicness, though, dissolves into real fear the moment his wife is found and her life becomes a bargaining chip, and even after the good judge hurriedly signs the papers presented to him, he and his wife are killed by the attackers.

It is revealed that this opening bout of violence was orchestrated by Otunba Shonibare (Akin Lewis), the devil in Agbada, who has his hands in all the pies of crime and violence in Lagos state, and is now contesting to be its governor. It sets up what you hope will be a gritty political thriller with well-planned action setpieces, but with every minute it drags on, you realise it will never live up to that promise. Perhaps there should exist by now a fatigue of this kind of movies, that depict Lagos state and its political enterprise in its violent criminal light, but it can be argued that they are merely representative of real life dirty politicians that occupy offices all over Nigeria. However, while Kemi Adetiba’s King Of Boys (2018) was a game changer in its story and execution, Devil In Agbada only snatches at some of its core concepts, and then throws in a lot of other extraneous material till it no longer resembles neither of the formats it was moulded from. 

The film focuses more on its trio of protagonists, three young women in Kiki (Efe Irele), Tomi (Erica Nweledim) and Irene (Linda Osifo), who have all been molested sexually by Otunba, and now they seek revenge for these crimes and to put a permanent end to his political career, thereby seizing his power to do the same to other young women. After this premise there is not much by way of story progression, except that they recruit Machado, an ex-enforcer of Otunba, and then spend the rest of the movie plotting and training themselves to attack and possibly kill him. Other major characters around Otunba include his wife, Lady Gold (Uche Jombo) and his right hand man, Rasaki (Desmond Elliot), who frequently appear beside him at political events.

Devil In Agbada fails at what it sets out to be, which is hard to remember by the time its end credits roll. It begins with a focus on its villain, Otunba, and Akin Lewis’ natural entry into this role is one of the film’s saving graces. But his performance is not enough to help Devil In Agbada make a coherent film from its muddle of influences. It might have worked as a crafty political drama meets gritty crime thriller, but unlike Kemi Adetiba and Jade Osiberu (Brotherhood, Gangs Of Lagos), neither Chinneylove Eze, the producer and head writer, nor Umanu Ojochenemi Elijah, who directs, have the talent needed to bring this premise to life. Kiki, Tomi and Irene have already met one another by the thirty minute mark, but they spend so long going back and forth with their plans and arguments of whether they want to kill Otunba or simply put him in jail, it is obvious the writers simply couldnt be bothered with properly filling the gap between assembling these characters and delivering the final blow on Otunba.

A good plot point could have been to shine a torch on the political angle. Otunba’s party is the GDP, whose slogan is Champions!, (sound familiar?) but this is the extent of our knowledge of his political journey or rival parties. Also, although we are told how these three women came to bear grudges against Otunba, not enough is done to show the lives they led before him. Establishing these women as independent characters outside the abuse they suffered would have helped immensely towards fleshing out the story. Instead of these potential side stories, we have to sit through multiple drawn out scenes where Chinedu Cream (Alexx Ekubo), the pimp, funnels multiple girls for Otunba’s pleasure. None of these scenes was necessary, we did not need so much screen time to establish just how perverse Otunba is.

Devil In Agbada’s production quality is extra poor in certain areas, and as usual it is the very avoidable, very obvious errors that particularly tick me off. There are many gunshots in the film, but almost none of them is properly heard, for some reason the gunshot sound effects here have such a low volume that you may need the subtitles to indicate the gun has gone off. There is no way that could have been skipped by the producers while reviewing the film. Ironically, nearly every other sound effect is either too loud, exaggerated, or simply mismatched for the scene in which it appears, like when the soundtrack is tense and thrilling leading to a revelation that did not deserve that hype.

Fight scenes too, are poorly crafted, but I have purposely saved this for later, because proper fight choreography is tasking to implement and the producers perhaps had neither the budget nor expertise to pull them off, but it begs the question, who puts together an action film without being able to nail down action scenes?

For acting performances, you have to pick from a mixed bag. Akin Lewis’ charisma on screen is already established by now, especially at a role he is very adept at. Erica Nweledim, the BBN star, is the name that appears right after his in the opening credits, and at first it can be assumed this is a sneaky marketing tactic, to use her name to drive more views to the film. In reality it is a little worse; she does have a major role in Devil In Agbada. She obviously puts in a lot of effort into her scenes, especially those that involve crying (and there are a few), but her acting is still unsharpened, she is some levels below Efe Irele and Linda Osifo, the other members of the film’s main tripod.

Speaking of which, Devil In Agbada’s end credit scene manages to mix up these last two names as it rolls out the cast roster. Efe is erroneously credited as Irene, and Linda as Kiki, and it can provide a fair benchmark as to how much effort went into this film. If nobody on the production or editing teams could spot this major error, how much more the plot holes, sound problems and other technical errors the film is riddled with. It appears not a high enough incentive was placed on fleshing out Devil In Agbada to the best of international or even Nollywood standards, simply putting it out was enough.