By Ali Baylay

EXECUTIVE IMAGE MOVIES and FRANCO FILMS. Starring: Olu Jacobs, Larry Koldsweat, Alex Osifo, Saidu Balogun, Francis Duru, Bimbo Akintola; Screenplay/Director: Akinlosotu Femi Despy; Producer: Larry Koldsweat. 145 mins; C 2009.

 AFTERWARD: Nnamdi marries Sandra, Scorpion marries Iky. The law finally caught up with Sandra and Scorpion and they served two years each, Chairman served 20 years. Nnamdi pays the medical bill of his bad uncle, Iche Okorie, and also pays the university tuition for the uncle’s daughter.

Unwritten is a drama based on one  family’s land dispute between the son, Nnamdi (Francis Duru), the rightful owner and his uncle, Iche Okorie (Alex Asifo), who wrongfully claims ownership. In the process of owning the property, he plots with the police, to pin armed robbery on Nnamdi but as his good luck should have it, he’s able to escape to the city in search of a friend but unluckily falls in the hands of a gang of three women who live by crime and reports to a hoodlum who goes by the name of Chairman.

Upon falling in the hands of the gang, the leader, Sandra (Bimbo Akintola), sexually depraved,  assumes influence over the vulnerable Nnamdi and even to the point of having him in bed but she’s disappointed and annoyed but keeps her cool until they use Nnamdi in one of their capers and Scorpion kills a man. Nnamdi with his saintly character gets the true nature of the group which habors him and runs from there into an old friend, who hires him as a driver.

While driving one night, he happens upon a heist just taken place and rescues a young lady.  Sandra and her gang are the culprits, unbeknown to both him and the gang, but the lady forgot her purse in Nnamdi’s car. Upon returning the handbag to the owner, Nnamdi finds himself account position in a construction company belonging to her father, Alhaji Usman (Olu Jacobs), who’ll not allow Nnamdi have relationship with his daughter, for differences in religion and culture. Sandra on a visit to Alhaji, obviously her sugar daddy, discovers Nnamdi in his employ and soon after while Nnamdi is fired from the job, Sandra and her gang go on the run from the law. Meanwhile in the village, the wicked uncle is fallen onto hard times, abandoned by both his wife and two sons recently deported from America. Alhaji comes face to face with Nnamdi,  over the sale of Nnamdi’s land to him. Alhaji is subdued, humbled and ashamed once he finds the true sense of integrity in Nnamdi, and even allows Nnamdi and his daughter have tit a tete, something unimaginable before this meet. Film ends.

Unwritten has two distinct plot lines: family feud based on land and a caper. Writer/Director, Akinlosotu Femi Despy, puts too much on his plate in this movie but manages to pull it off by stage managing the two plots as a counterpoint to each other until they converge amicably at a successful resolution. Though these two themes could have run independent of each other, as they did sometimes leaving one theme hanging in the air for almost half an hour,  in the process of interweaving them, Depsy did commit a literary crime of interjecting surprising scenes and incidents with no cause and effect. I feel cheated but all the same grateful for a wonderful production.

By Ali Baylay

EXECUTIVE IMAGE MOVIES & FRANCO FILMS presents Emeka Ike, Uche Jombo, Uche Elendu, Queen Nwokoye, Emeka Enyiocha, Adoara Okoh; Story: Collins Chidebe; Production Manager: Solomon Apeti; Associate Producer: Uche Elendu; Director: Mac-Collins Chidebe;  129 mins. 2008

Screenwriter, Nkem Alu’s use of a clever motif (oversize picture of a naked man placed at a focal point in the primary location of the movie) quite justifies its theme: nestfull of not-too-young-spinsters, whose biological clocks are out of whack,  laying in their nest awaiting vulnerable bachelors and cheating husbands. Koko Babes is a farce with poor production by a large measure. In some cases it touches on serious themes like serial killings and four-one-nines with no serious outcomes to affect the advancement of the story.

Digressions and subplots aside, Koko Babes is a story of four spinsters (Princess/Uche Elendu; Esther/Uche Jombo; Halima/Queen Nwokoye; Titi/Udora Ukoh) each out to get one guy they admire , a local star (DJ/Emeka Ike) and to get him in bed.

At the beginning of the film, Princess runs upon promoters putting up fliers about a local celebrity’s upcoming musical appearance at a local night club. She grabs some of the fliers, gets back into her car and runs home to her nest, their nest (spinsters) and lies that her boyfriend DJ, will be performing at a local club in town. Though the gang did not buy into the lie outright, they half convince and with envy, that there must be element of truth in Princess’s claim. Now, with the exception of Halima, Esther and Titi too want DJ for themselves. From thereon, is Esther and Titi versus Princess, and altercations after altercations, stand offs after stand offs, and near-fight after near-fight ensue.

Writer Nkem Alu builds a little dramatic tension here to the climax, when all the girls and even Halima look to the day of DJ appearance at the club. Not much ado in this scene but it surprises viewers when DJ falls for innocent Halima, and the story ends.

Half of Koko Babes’part one doesn’t in any way contributes to the story except the expositions about killing cheating husbands in hotel rooms and making away with lot of loots. Part two has meaning, tension and direction.

If I could guess one essence of this movie, is that stardom in both Nollywood and Gollywood has taken off in the same way the western world views their celebrities: Do whatever it takes to get closer to the stars, and don’t mind losing your soul in the process. If the writer’s intended objective was to write humor, the incidental killings in part one would not have been done on a serious note. But these incidents really injured our viewing pleasure of this half-baked humor.

By Ali Baylay 

 Production: Busy Brain Entertainment; Cast: Jim Iyke,Omotola Jolade,Emeka Enyiocha; Director: Livinus Nwabueze; Executive Producer: Livinus Nwabueze; 1.15 mins.

The plot of gangster movies come straight from the day to day happenings in the society as brought to us in our newspapers and evenning news headlines,   and this is a subject that interests not only film makers but even the general public. In the US, gangster movies thrived in the era of the Great Depression, when jobs were scarce and families could not find work, lest make a decent living. Crime became rampart and the caricature of these criminals on the silver screen was entertaining to the general moviegoers. Characters in Little Ceasar (1930), Public Enemy (1931), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and not so recent movies like Natural Born Killers and Thelma and Louis, both in early 90s were people we can identify with as our neighbors and therefore be entertained by them in our living rooms. Since gangster movies do not warrant much crowd and other expenses, at this time in US film history, about six studios produced nearly 300 gangster films. With rampart crime in Nigeria due to lack of work or sources of decent  livelihood, Nollywood must be presenting its case in Left Alone.

 Some characteristics of a gangster movie include, iconic use of guns; tragic resolutions where the main characters have a shoot out; one of the two gangster lovers (there’s always a broad in gangster movies) gets shot and dies in the other’s arm, in some alley (Jim Iyke and Omotala Jolade in Left Alone); in car wrecks pushed over cliffs; both gangster lovers are shot together and die together while holding hands. All in all, gangsters’ lives in crime fiction always crumble, especially to signify that crime won’t pay. A classic gangster movie has to have a larger than life performer to carry it through and through, as Jim Iyke in Left Alone.

 You never want to miss the beginning of a gangster movie if you’re reviewing it. Most stories are told in the first five minutes of screen time. In the case of Left Alone, if you missed the opening sequence, all you have left is lots of gun plays; some one is in control of a mysterious briefcase and heaven knows what’s in it. Another person chases the other in some alley. The briefcase shows up again after more guns fired and bloodshed. Then a little scamper in an alley; wow!, someone gets arrested; no!, she escapes from the hospital and another chase begins. Amidst this all there’s not an intelligible dialogue from any body except Kelvin, “you killed my mother, am gonna shoot you between your balls!”

 Left Alone is a story of a heist gone soar between three criminals, Kelvin (Jim Iyke), Cassandra (Omotala Jolade) and Briggs (Emeka Enyiocha) over the sharing of  loot. At the beginning of the movie, Briggs in an old model Mercedes runs into Kelvin, helping his disabled mother out of an alley while Cassandra, clutching to a briefcase tows behind. Shock wave goes through Briggs and goes for his gun, ramming shots into Kelvin’s mother and kills her. Police arrives on the scene and Cassandra gets arrested and is forced to confess, but makes her way out by faking sick and runs from the hospital. Main while, Kelvin  goes under and joins pastoral service for a church, while Briggs creeps in alleys looking for both Kelvin and Cassandra.

 One thing with caper films, there’s no winner and in the end the characters are always trapped with no way out. Some brave ones even end up taking their own lives. In the finale of Left Alone, Cassandra goes back to retrieve the briefcase, both Kelvin and Briggs meet with her in this backyard alley, Kelvin with few exchanges with Briggs shoots Briggs and he falls. While Kelvin and Cassandra are locked in kiss, thinking they’re in the clear, Briggs comes back to and shoots Cassandra in the back. Of the three criminals only Kelvin is left alone, in Left Alone.