Devine Links Productions in Association with Sintec Digital Production Presents: Olu Jacobs (Lawson), Omotala Jalade (Roselyn), Saint Obi (Johnny), Script Developement, Cardinal Chukwujama, Omotala Jalade, Olu Jacobs; Screenplay, Chuks Obiora; Editor, Prince Kino Edikeh; Producer, Cardinal Chukwujama; Director, Fred Amata.
Whoever left Africa to study or travel abroad without promising a sweetheart that he or she would come back and marry him or her one day and take him or her and a toddler or two he had left behind, to the promised land? Few have made do on their promises and most have defaulted.
The bright light and big cities have changed everything for most of us and most of us in the end, ended up as punks, with lots of earrings in our ears, half-baked American street slangs in our vocabularies, but not a single certificate in our overheads. At home, the long awaited hearts had waited and gotten withered with the pass of time in vain, and have gone about their lives and businesses. Then we come home with empty bluff, even as we are afraid for anyone to know our history from abroad, still want to take over like we were never away.
A downtrodden family with barely a morsel of food to eat is rescued when the father of the house is put in the hospital, and there’s no money to pay the hospital bill. Fortunately, a wealthy widower friend of the family, Lawson (Olu Jacobs) volunteers to pay the bill but eventually asks the hand of the friend’s daughter in marriage. Rosaline (Omotala Jalade) had turned a spinster, putting her life on hold for Johnnie (Saint Obi), gone to America. She had to give in to the older rich man’s proposal. Marriage takes place, and life is good. Meanwhile, the long, long time ago boyfriend of Rosaline, who had promised her to wait for him to get marry, but had gone for six solid years, got married and have two kids in America, arrives at the airport in Nigeria with ear-rings and a valise full of American ghetto slangs.
The serene life of Rosaline and her husband soon become chaotic with the arrival of Johnnie in town. The moribund flame of love she had shut out of her loins inflamed with the presence of this American returnee with the earring. A pure punk! From the time she sets her eyes on Johnnie, she gets trapped under the sword of Damocles. To be or not to be! Johnnie wants her back, but in her hearts of hearts, she doesn’t want Johnnie, especially when the entire livelihood of her parents depend on her marriage. On the other hand, Johnnie’s love was irresistible.
After trying all the games in the book to turn her heart around, the rich senior man gets fed up and gave up on Rosaline’s love and so, he goes to the other side of town to get help by planting drugs on Johnnie. Johnnie is smart and knows what’s afoot when a car load of undercover police invade his apartment and find evidence of narcotic even as he washes down another stack in the commode. He gets arrested regardless.
“Reckless” by Roget’s Thesaurus’ definition means: careless, fast, impulsive, rash, and unwise. Rosaline is reckless, foolish, unwise and impulsive in determining who to love and how to love. Impulsive and rash for the fact that she never thought twice before jumping in the rich man’s bed and getting married to him; unwise for the mere fact that she couldn’t read the character of the earring-durag-wearing American returnee beyond her nose. Reckless as she could get, she left her husband for a punk whose American wife could stop their wedding at the altar.
All in all, however, the story has dignity theme. Though Rosaline is from a home that wouldn’t pay a hospital bill for an ailing father and thereby gets entrapped by a man who volunteers to pay it, she defends her dignity by refusing to live with a husband who daily abuses her. Pride on the side of the husband as well, who having fought tooth and nail to keep his marriage and seeing that Rosaline is incapable of leaving her long-time boyfriend, and he’s losing his respect in the process, finally gives her up, gloriously.
I do appreciate his character for the fact that he didn’t take matters to the extreme and the writer and director did not bring the story to Nollywood run of the mill resolution when the estranged husband would go on the rampage and kill his wife or boyfriend. Rosaline at the end has none of the men. No man. That’s what she gets, damn, Reckless Heart.