By Ali Baylay

An Annex Merchandise Productions Film; Starring: St. Obi, Stephnie Okereke, Ifeoma Anyiam, Steve Eboh, Andy Chukwu,Uche Elendu, Cynthia Okereke, Chikezie Uwaizi, Esther Aikpokpoje, Nnamdi Eze; Story: Nwafor Anayo; Screenplay: Chuks Obiara; Editor: Iyke Okafor;  Production manager: Chie Jina Ephraim O; Executive  Producers: Nwafor Anayo; Producer: Nwafor Anayo; Director: Andy Chukwu. 108 Mins.  C 2006

Kevin, “you know what? You’re stupid….” (?), “I don’t mind calling me stupid, but to call my wife….” Kevin, “Nancy is not your wife and never will be…Well, we’ll see who gets hurt.”

 Such is the heated confrontation this Nollywood piece presents for our viewing pleasure. And as a friend of Kevin could comment, “This is getting messy.” It rightly gets messy: one suitor of Nancy on his way to the alter gets kidnapped, another lover who offers Kevin millions of Nairas to give up his incessant desire for Nancy, is swept away by a gang of kidnappers before his traditional wedding ceremony with her could start. Ones Kevin knows he’s not going to get Nancy anymore he declares an all out war on her piece of mind, and it is a stand off after another, though Nancy couldn’t yield.  

 Woman On Top is a sour romance flick. It is the type that goes sour for everyone connected to the lovers: Nancy’s mother, her friends and Kevin’s friend. Kevin (St Obi) is a well-to-do businessman who falls in love with single mother’s daughter, Nancy (Stphnie Okereke). He assumes he’s on top of her love because he showers her with money. Nancy uses this head over heels type of fall to her advantage by pilfering money from Kevin in return for no love. Lies after lies and deceptions after deceptions on Nancy’s part the relationship continues.

 But when Nancy finally decides to break off from Kevin, and just when Nancy is about to get wed to another man, the man gets kidnapped. Nancy goes into hiding but is dug up by Kevin. Kevin falls under suspicion for the disappearance of Nancy’s groom, but soon released for lack of substance. The stand off between Kevin and Nancy continues and gets to a boiling point after Nancy discloses to Kevin that she’s not in love and has never been, and will never be in love with him. Nancy’s new boyfriend and would be husband approaches Kevin for a deal: Kevin should take so much nairas for all his troubles and expenses on Nancy. Now, Kevin feels really insulted. Shortly before Nancy could be traditionally betrothed, her fiancé gets kidnapped again.

 I must give it straight to the screenwriter of this movie for his laconic and taut conversational dialogue, that didn’t waste on anything trivial. Every delivery is appropriately used and used economically for the screen. There’s enough tension and conflict that keeps the plot moving enough to keep viewers eye glued to the screen. Character development is one way of rounding up a screenplay to the point of resolution. We see Kevin’s character, the principal player in this movie come full circle. At first he’s a well dressed successful businessman but as the movie and tension progresses he’s become much more a hudlum, and a creepy one at that,  than the gentleman we meet at the beginning of the story.

 Woman On Top is a remarkable ‘woman’s film’. Just as the name itself (on top) signifies, it is an African woman’s empowerment  movie. It is about time Nollywood recognizes the role of women in our films as not subservient to men but can as well stand up to their male counterparts in many aspects and get away with it. African culture and films have portrayed women as merely housewives, secretaries or other menial services in society. What Woman On Top does is to present to us a liberated fearless woman who can have her cake and eat it too.

Ali Baylay

Starring:  Desmond Elliot, Magid  Michel, Tonto Dikeh,Uru Eke, Ejine Okoroafor;  Producer: Okey Okonkwo, Director of Photography: Alex Effiong; Production Managers: Ifeanyi Udokwo, Boniface  Ogbonna; Executive Producer: Okey Okonkwo; Director: Daniel Ademinokan; Story: Ral Nwankwo. 100 mins. 2009

 All I Ever Wanted is a story with voice over narrative told from the point of view of Didi (Sandra Uchemba), the oldest daughter of Eddy (Desmond Elliot). She is not warming up to the girl friend and soon-to-be wife, Binye (Mercy Johnson) of her father. Didi’s idea of a happy family is nothing more than her, her two siblings, the father and the aunt, and she considers any other person, be the girlfriend of her father, as an intruder. She is at a tangent with her sibling sister, Kachi (Chidera Anih) who cunningly put both her father and Binye together, as she wants mother figure in the household. Didi abruptly stops eating, leaving her family at the dinner-table and bursts into tears, when her father announces he’ll soon be marrying Binye.

 With not much ado in this straight-jacketed story, Binye comes to the rescue of Didi, when Didi experiences her womanhood and gets really scared at the sight of blood. For the first time, Didi values the presence of another member in her father’s household and even goes on to cherish the child, a son, Binye brings into the family.

 Chinelo Uzoigwe’s screenplay, except for the wonderful acting of Desmond Elliot and Mercy Johnson, has poor plot mechanics, and no tearjarking incident that makes the story stand out as memorable.  In other words this story falls flat. It is the same run of the mill story: One character doesn’t like the other character for some reason, and bam, incident occurs that will unite the two. If All I Ever Wanted has had a radio or any other form of communication that will enable Eddy and Binye to get together, it would have been the classic case of the movie, Sleepless in Seattle. One thing in All I Ever Wanted that didn’t escape my notice is I can’t quite get a grasp on the scene of Eddy’s altercation with his wife in the bedroom and to the point of reference that his wife died in a plane crash. I want to believe this scene is a flashback but on the other hand, it seems in the present. You bet I wouldn’t have been confused if this scene had appeared in a prelude.

 Voice over narrative “I” as intended in All I Ever Wanted, is a beautiful device that can tell story from personal point of view, but just as useful as it can be, it is sometimes mostly overused or underused as in this film.

By Ali Baylay

Cast:Emeka Ike, Van Vicker, Prince Ike, Tonto Dikeh; Produced by Pressing Forward Productions; Black Star Entertainment; Screenplay: Greg Chyke Inawodoh. 145 Minutes.

There’re really guys like this: wise guys, fast talking, tough-talking, smooth-talking and confident- building guys who can present before you a heaven on earth. They’re not your 9 to 5 kind of guys. They live by scamming, pilfering, lying, deceiving and robbing, peddling guns and drugs. They’re the best dressed, they hang out with big shots-governors, ministers, bank managers, board of directors; and they shop for, and use beautiful women and later wad them off  like flies, and beside the cordon of securities, there’s always one henchman hanging around them with a briefcase full of money. These days in modern African countries, stringent financial difficulties creates certain nostalgia for their brand of lifestyle-easy living.

Andy (Emeka Ike) is a medical doctor who cannot find job or client so he can feed himself, as he sits lamenting and soliloquizing in his little scantily dressed apartment. Then saunters in Emeka (Prince Eke), dejectedly looking after another interview flop. While both are blaming their misfortunes on the government and their gods, then comes in Jerry (Van Vicker) who is offered N15000 for a job not quite made clear in the film. These three characters assumingly bunk together in this apartment. At certain point they look like the three stoogies.

Their luck soon change when per chance Andy saves a client’s life from heart attack and this client, Chief Braimor happens to be a big time drug dealer. Being poor, and down on their lucks the three idlers soon become Chief Braimor’s drug delivery people. The three are still living together, except their condition has changed a notch up, and we see them showering party girls with lots of nairas and dollar bills at a private party, in their new marble floor apartment.

Here’s where Marshals as a story has pitfalls: First,the story doesn’t justify the title. We see Jerry and Emeka ones in the traffic, each with a briefcase, one getting in a car, and the other on a bike. What makes them become marshals doesn’t have to be just a single shot of delivery. What happens to the principle of three in story telling? I did not see any action out of the ordinary (eg. mob) that could make them  marshals for what they do except seeing them getting  in traffic.  

There’s too much telling and no showing: We never ever see what the said marshals are trading in (cocaine, pills, marijuana, counterfeit etc), nor the type of people they do business with. There’s no establishment of link between Andy, Emeka and Jerry. All these do not have history to connect them together except the fact that they live in one bedroom apartment.  Lastly, the plot line involving Cathy (Tonto Dikeh) takes so much steam out of this lackluster story.  I wonder why this plot is necessary because it doesn’t  move the story at all. Excuse me if Andy’s  gonna fall in love with her, or she’ll hire Emeka to kill Chief Braimor, in part 3, but that remain to be seen.

Until I see part 3 and see these interactions in the resolution, Marshals does not measure to its name. Indeed not all. I can guess here the writer’s aim for this story is to take a pardoxical shot at the ills of our society, and which is somehow achieved. But as a story form, and structure, the goal is not achieved.