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.

By Ali Baylay

A Venus Film productions.Starring: Van Vicker, Jackie Appiah, Kofi Adjorlolo, Kalsoume Sinare, Rama Brew, Gavivina Tamakloe, Yvonne Nelson; Editor: Dapo Ola Daniels; Assistant Producer: Ali Samba; Producer: Abdul Salam Mumuni; Executive Producer: Abdul Salam Mumuni; Director: Frank Rajah Arase. 150 mins.

The princely cast of Gollywood’s finest really do an excellent performance here, to boot, and in fact this movie got me sold to Gollywood movies. As you can see, I’ve been all about Nollywood, but since  I discovered Tears of Womanhood, a Gollywood classic, I  believe  good movies do come from Ghana’s woods, such as Princess Tyra. With its fairy tale nature, this movie will take you to a fairyland where stories like Cindarella may seem a joke.

Princess Tyra is not our typical royalty versus peasant kind narrative; it is a kind of story about a royalty kicking against the mores of a palace,  in exchange for the common life. Your guess is good as mine where such kingdom exists in our part of Africa, but this prince sure looks like a future king of Morocco than the true negroid prince of lower Sudan.

I did not have the patience to sit through part 3 of this movie, ’cause I live in the first world and no one movie will put my life on hold for three hours straight. Princess Tyra  is a good movie though, one of its kind coming from Africa today. Imagine, two royal families promised each other a child in marriage so both kingdoms could cement relationships. It turns out  Prince Kay (Van Vicker) has turned liberal, scorning everything royale in exchange for common life. He doesn’t believe that in this “ 21st century people still indulge in those barbaric rites”, he queried at one point.  At the other end of this tangent,  is a saucy, spoilt brat, Princess Tyra (Yvonne Nelson), who can put on hold the hustle and bustle of a supermarket, just so she can buy an item or two.

Prince Kay is turned off by Princess Tyra’s stringent royal tradition and principles, who declares that, “the wishes of mortals the gods command.” And she has  frequent outbursts with not a dint of romance in it. He, runs from a princess, “who’ll not have my peace”, he laments. But for Princess Tyra, “Where thunder and lightning strikes birds don’t fly”, she boasts of destroying whoever stands between her and her desire for the prince, because, “vegeance of a woman is like a burning bush”.  

In the middle of it all is a common maid, Maafia (Jackie Appiah) who massages the prince’s feet in a rite once and later in a queer bathroom incident, falls under the romantic rader of the prince. We did not see the two (prince and maid) mate, but not long after the maid’s mother dies of asthma attack, Maafia leaves Ilugbo Kingdom in search of Prince Kay to report her pregnancy to him but instead meets the prince’s mother, the Queen, and reports her pregnancy. The Queen doesn’t handle this news well.

The story gets sticky when writer employs another plot  and character, Ashley to merely resemble Maafia and gets Ashley pregnant by the prince , and both by bizzare plot twist, meet side by side in a hospital. Camera and edit can pull all kinds of  tricks but this Maafia look alike coming into the story sure put a damper and unbelievable feeling to the story. I marvel the fact that writer created a three dimensional character for Jackie Appiah’s role (maid, Ashley, Maafia) , only that in narrating such a wonderful fairy tale, story and character have  to be linear in nature, or not even Cinderella could have survived as a timeless tale with such muddled plots. Prince Kay would have gone on pulling all the stops to get to his one and  only cinderalla, rather than easily fall for a look alike and gets her pregnant too.

By Ali Baylay

Cast: Van Vicker, Chika Ike, Desmond Elliot, Tonto Dikeh. Screeenplay: Chidi Chijioke. Director: Ikechukwu Onyeke. Sky Movies Ltd.

“They are from decent christian families aspiring to be university graduates but after admission, they find out that it is not all rosy.” that’s how the sales pitch at the back of the scabbard of the dvd of  Before the Rain goes. While intensely watching this flick of university kids with my twelve years old daughter, she made a remarkable observation that would have totally escaped my critical viewing eye: “Daddy, your African university campuses look overgrowth and shuddy,” she complained. In most cases, I stood in defence of our age old Africa, and blame it on the bias of western media, but this time I was cornered.

There in front of me on the screen, in a major Nollywood production, the principal location of a story of university students on the campus of Namdi Azikwe University, are overgrowth and unkept fields, squalid environment, classrooms with  ricketty desks that don’t measure up to a primary school in today Africa. If  the right location adds up to the beauty and believability of a movie, Before the Rain’s location doesn’t pass.

That brings us to the story itself. Before the Rain is supposedly a story of Mercy (Tonto Dikeh) and Anita (Chika Ike-she would have been smashing without the fake thick eyelid which did not march the color of her eyebrow). Both leave home in a beat-up old car, evident of a poor background, on a trip to stay on a university campus. On campus, Anita and Fabian (van Vicker) soon fall out when he discovers that Anita has similar disease his one time girl had. Mercy has a series of run-ins with the Social Lady of the campus and at one point her gang  jump her and trash her (No campus securities?). Mercy absconds from campus and comes back a different butt-kicking no-nonsense gangtser, who can have Anita’s boyfriends at will. Motive, your guess is good as mine.

Anita cries a lot in this film, but in the end laughs the last laugh, when Raymond (Desmond Elliot), who had saved her life once by taking her to the hospital and both  fall in love later, brings his father to ask Anita’s hand in marriage. Like they say in screenwriting classes, if you can’t get much out of a character, kill it. Mercy ends up going to jail, and society lady ends up on the floor of her pad, dead with a bullet wound to her forehead. Before the Rain is more about Anita, hence she survives  the campus chaos around her unscathed.

Before the Rain falls, there is thunder, a distant murmur followed by a sparkle of lightning in the sky, the tropical cloud gathers hurriedly, there’s paleness everywhere, the chicks hurry to their coops, marketters gather their wares. And the rain comes and it pours. Was there rain in Before the Rain? I guess not, for the parts of this film do not come together. There’s no rhythm established so that there could be form, shape and climax building up tension and exploding it.

• By Ali Baylay

Strength of Faith: Producer: Sunshine Movies Limited, Director: Ikechukwa Onyeka. Cast: Van Vicker, Uche Jombo, Tonto Dikeh.

Strength to Strength: Producer: Solomon Apete, Director: Ugezu J. Ugezu, Prod. Mgm: Ifeanyi Udoku, Exec. Prod: Ezenwa Collins Chinedu. Cast: Patience Ozorkwo, Mike Ezuruonye, Mercy Johnson, Tonto Dike.

I do not know how these two identical title of movies ended up on my desk but for some reason they were there, and I kept looking away because the titles in themselves are not eye catching or meaningful. However, I got curious at one point, and my critical mind forced me to watch them, simultaneously.

One thing about Strength of Faith and Strength to Strength production processes don’t sit well with me. I don’t know about you, but for me  the titles are too close for comfort. I can’t imagine two seperate productions would have so close a title and so close a theme. It seems Nollywood is running short of story ideas and titles.

If I could work up some similarity traits between the two movies, both are produced in 2008 and marketed in America. Strength of Faith, by Black Star Entertainment , 3832 White Plains Road, Bronx, New York 10467; Strength to Strength, by Executive Image African Movies, 2811 White Plains Road, Bronx, New York 10467. Both these companies live next door to each other.

The casts are either compromised or borrowed from one set to another. The notorious mother-in-law of Nick ( Mike Ezuruonye) in Strength to Strength, commonly known in the film as Nick’s mom (Camilla Mgbrekpe), is also Mama(Camela Mberekpe)  who plays the evil mother of Van Vicker in Strength of Faith. Then enters Tonto Dike, (Chekwube) in Strength of Faith, and (Angela) in Strength to Strength, and in both films she plays the tragic character who ends dead before the end credits roll. Oh, one more thing about these two flicks that stand out as similar is, they both explore marriage themes in reference to in-laws: The aggrandizing mother (Patience Ozokwor) of Jane (Mercy Johnson) in (Strength to Strength) who would like to sell Jane to the highest bidder, versus Nick’s Mom (Camilla Mgbereka) who could stop at nothing but to get her son a woman who would give her a grandchild. In Stregth of Faith, the mother-in-law bewitches Chekwube for the mere heck of the fact that she hates her.

The only difference found between the two movies is that while one explores (Strength to Strength), the biblical plot of Jacob marrying Rachel and her sister Leah, but deviates and takes on a plot curve from there, ending the story with the death of the younger sister, Angela (Tonto Dike) in labor; In  the use of  of in the title of Strength of Faith, I find a difference, and poetic justice in the story: Devil worshipping works, as equally as belief in the holy ghost’s fire depending on the strength of faith like we find in both factions responsible for the death of Chekwube (Tonto Dike) and Mama (Camela Mberekpe), respectively.

The reason why Hollywood uses working titles during production of a movie is, by the time of premier their movie must have been christened a title unique to it and to it alone. In today’s age of  google keywording, your movie with a similar title to the production next door,  in the same market, can easily get lost in the laybrinth. Are we getting short of titles in Nollywood?