Jealous Wars
A Ken Simon Productions presents, Ini Edo, Mike Ezuruonye, Ngozi Ezeonu, Leo Mezie. Director: Iyke Odife. Editor, Okey Benson; Executive Producer, Kenneth Ogbuike; Producer, Kenneth Ogbuike. (c) 2015
Every once in a while, among the myriads of discreditable movies Nollywood, pushes onto the market, there comes one that pleases the critical eye. Jealous Wars is structurally sound as presented. Is it because the producer and the executive producer are one person?
Certain elements go into every film production and some are integral in forming the components of a feature. One is the cinematography. Camera eyes interpret this script to become alive. The shots here are purposeful, concise and subjective. The other notice of recommendable standard in Jealous Wars is the music. In most African films, music is louder than the dialogue; and music is placed in the wrong scenes, and at odd times. Here in Jealous Wars, music is used economically and sparingly. I was caught whistling a track from this film in a shower. It means the music was so pleasing that I unconsciously took it in the shower with me. What better objective can a film music achieve with the audience than that?
Jealous Wars is not totally free from the common sin of Nollywood though. The idea of the writer must have been borrowed from the American Twin, and funnily enough, this realization escaped me all through the viewing of Jealous Wars-I must have been engrossed–until I observed the twitching of the surviving twin Nicholas, which reminds me of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Twin. And that brings me to a different level of perception of Jealous wars, though it doesn’t shatter my once gained admiration for the project.
Twin is a story of a eugenics experiment in which the sperm from six fathers was combined and injected into their mother. The experiment went wrong and produced not one baby but two, one perfect as a genius-Arnold Schwarzenegger, intimidatingly tall and gaunt; an unpaid lab assistance with the capability of speaking six different languages, and one imperfect-Danny De Vito, short as a midget who turns out to be a small-time con-man, who steals the wrong cars from airports.
Whereas Twin is a comedy, Jealous Wars is a serious tragic drama. Avoiding the jealousy plot, this is a story of a woman whose husband out of jealous streak, made her become crazy, but then she was already pregnant. She died after delivering twin boys, one named Franklin (Mike Ezuruonye) and the other named Nicholas (Mike Ezuruonye). Nicholas is stolen at birth by a neighbor and turns out to be a big-time criminal, so bad that a man-hunt on his head leads to the shooting death of the good twin, Franklin.
When a grieving girlfriend, Amanda (Ini Edo) perchance runs into Nichiolas, she’s convinced that her Franklin didn’t die anyway, and brings him home to her mother. But it turns out Nicholas in a heist, had once put Amanda’s aunt at a gunpoint at a hotel parking lot. It is late for Nicholas to repent and change his ways because Amanda knows this new Franklin is an impostor.
There is one line from Amanda (Ini Edo) that stands out in this film. “That is the man I want to spend the rest of my life with…to have my children ….”, she says. Coming to think of her recent wedding in Texas, she seems more like addressing her future husband of real life in this film. Art imitates life!