Magic Movies Productions Presents, Jerry Amilo (Bawayne), Gentle Jack (Okwesilieze), Sam Loco (Baba K), Mitchelle Ogor (Peggy), Abrahim Nwodo (Benson), Ugezu J. Ugezu (Gemande). Screenplay, Ugezu J. Ugezu; Producer, Chioke Nneji; Director, McCollins Chidebe. (2006)
The title Mafians throws a chill up my spine. I watched the Godfather movie and saw firsthand how the mafia operates. They can be merciless in pursuing both money and power; the entire system is owned by them, including police officers, bank officers, and government officials. The mafia in Godfather is a ghost-government that exists beyond the pale. They flourish, they live big and do businesses like everyone in the community, only that their form of companies are never legal. The tax man or the law never touches them. Who dare ever touches or disrupts the flow of their businesses ends up in a gutter, his head cut off, body cut off off the torso, or a bloody finger delivered by the mailman to his wife, early Monday morning. All revere them.
The real Don walks into the back of a favorite restaurant in the middle of town, passes through the kitchen where no one pays him attention, though there is a hush by his presence. He raps on a door one time in the interval of three, and it opens. It is now in the early morning hours. His white Stetson hat is leaning to one side on his enormous head. He’s damper on the last letter. The Don’s merely a touch of class: Eight hundred dollars cashmere suit, pinky gold ring on his finger, donning Kenneth Cole shoes, and a scent of a perfume mingled with a puff of the most elegant cigar smoke wafting in the air, like a thick grey blanket. He’ll shake hands with his goons or Capons, and takes his seat in the only empty leather swivel-chair in the basement room.
Business begins. A stack of brown envelopes neatly packs in front of the Don. A Capon brings him a cup of coffee with lots and lots of milk and sugar, that is his brand, and another brings him the early morning newspaper: Headline reads: George Big Nose At The Dead End: Dead In A Car Crash! The Don turns to his Capons: “He deserves it. Don’t he? Son-of-a-bitch, has no bisnez interfering in my bisnez,” pounding his chest. Desmond Elliot comes close to such charisma and persona in Fly Without Wings.
The imagination comes to me when I saw the title Mafians on a rack in a store, and I paid for it and hurried home. In the Mafians, Bawayne (Jerry Amillo) is a miscast and the producers didn’t quite have a grasp on the most critical theme in crime thrillers with which they were toying. Bawayne looks like a small-time crook who sleeps in his clothes and cowers in the face of challenge. Real mafias are larger than life, no wonder some are called, ‘Teflon Joe.’ They control the police, government officers and the unions in the city. But our Mafia here in the person of Bawanye is a small-time crook who couldn’t enforce repayment of his money swindled in a crooked land deal by Baba K. ( Sam Loco). Instead, he kidnaps his wife. Why not present his wedding ring finger, with the ring still stuck on it, wrapped up in a handkerchief to his wedded wife? True Mafia does that.
Mafians starts as a movie of vengeance. A girl named Peggy (Mitchelle Ogore) arrives from America to find out the killer of her sister in Nigeria, and she hires an investigator who later becomes a vigilante slash boyfriend. It is easy for them to run into Benson (Ibrahim Nwodo) who tells the name of the killer and how to get to him. They soon get in touch with Gemande who tells all: Bawayne had seen a girl one night when they went out on the town. He said to Gemande he loved the young girl and put Gemande to the task. Gemande made the connection and Bawanye, and the girl starts a relationship.
Being so religious, the girl takes Bawayne to her church, but the Pastor suspects that the girl is hanging out with the wrong man. Meanwhile, Bawanye kidnaps the wife of Baba K, innocent of the fact that the wife is a princess of the kingdom. The king sends his palace guards to get his daughter, but Bawanye releases the princess and cowers out of sight before they could get to him. When Peggy and her hired hand form a ragtag posse to get Bawanye in his holdout shed, they quickly take him. In the living room where all goes down, Peggy shoots Bawanye, and he falls to the floor with a thud, dead. Where’s the beef in the story?
Titles like Mafians, strike the devil in every viewer, and so could be the characters, especially the lead role. The lead in the film doesn’t need to be a small potato who sleeps in his clothes and do not even have a fitting posse that carries on his biddings.The Mafian lead like Bawayne here needs be larger than life. He should strike awe and fear in the heart of his community. Mothers would be dragging their kids off the road when they see the Mafia’s car approaching. Unless you want to create a small-time village crook or a town rascal, mafias don’t be drunks and live in abandoned buildings or ghettos. They have money; they live in mansions with bodyguards and securities four Capons thick; have power, they have the police and government officials’ in their community pockets lined up with bribes. The Don of a mafia organization doesn’t tote a gun and go on to the street to kill anybody. He’s too good for that, and in fact, he needs not be committing such a low life capers. Desmond Eliot didn’t go out on the street to kill anybody in Fly Without Wings; he has Capons who run the streets for him.
Bawayne as a mafia didn’t put up a fight with the Kingdom when he kidnaps the King’s daughter in the land deal that goes sour between him and Baba K. I expected a fallout here. Instead, he quickly escapes town and lies low, running away from the palace guards. I believe we want to see the Mafia and what sterner stuff he’s made off. He and his underlings would have taken the palace guards until they sent for reinforcement. Again Peggy, a lay American returnee, a woman, herself takes Bawayne single-handedly when she shoots him in the living room, and he falls to his death. He didn’t fight as a mafia could. The Mafian here is not made up of steel, and this one is made up of straw.
Producer and director of this flick had the noble idea of producing a film noir, but they do miss their marks by a long shot. Bawanye by a long shot couldn’t be a Mafia; he’s a miscast here. To typecast a lead role of a crime gang, put a little bit of fearful personality in character. He could be as small as Michael in The Godfather, but with the aura of personality or behavior, his cold, menacing and murdering look on his face gets you peeing in your pants. Bawayne’s demeanor, his wardrobe, and his features do not look like a mafia. Then too, producers intentionally use darkness in the film to portray film noir. No, film noir doesn’t necessarily have to do with dark color, or night, but, lots of blood and gore, pessimism, fatalism, and could even be nerve-racking and tear-jarking than this turkey of a crime movie. In case I’m harsh on my review, I’ll go back and watch, Public Enemy, Goodfellas, White Heat and The Godfather 1.