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.