Blackbird

The story is centered on three individuals, Chukwuma, Babatunde and Raheem (quite the WAZOBIA line-up) who are all individually struggling to make it financially in the Nigerian economic environment. Each of them are educated but have been unable to secure jobs with their degrees. Hence, they are all in unfortunate financial predicaments that take them through different phases in life.

Watching this movie, I went through two distinct emotions.

The first emotion was awe and delight. The movie starts off with beautiful cinematography and very specific intent. It gets right into the storyline and sets up the background of each of the three major characters. The plot starts developing and you are even more delighted to find out the acting capabilities of these actors. Alexx, IK and Mike together did a fantastic job carrying this movie. 2 out of the 3 (Alexx and IK) were actors who one would never have though, especially in the initial phases of their career, would be capable of doing the work they did in this movie.

The standout performance, however, definitely goes to IK Ogbonna. In every scene that he appeared, there was only so much I could do to prevent my jaw from falling down in amazement (and not at his looks o! I was never one of una). It’s a sheer delight to see how much he has grown as an actor.

The second emotion that swept through me came towards the end of the movie and it was weakness and tiredness. This movie lasts an exhausting 3 hours, give or take, all in one part (which, ironically, makes it appear longer than it would have been if it had two parts – I’m not encouraging two part films o) . Watching each of the characters undergo their own individual series of unfortunate events was intriguing at the start of the film but by the end I was ready for all the characters to just die in one swift accident so that the movie could be over already.

As regards the story, it was set up in a way where it had our attention at the start and it was able to hold this attention to a reasonable extent. However, in as much as the conclusion of the movie might be a mirror of society’s reality, in film world, it was not fascinating enough or moving enough to have been worth the 3 hours it took to arrive at it.