Starring Stephanie Okereke (Monica), Yul Edoche (Sup Mark), Cha Cha Ekeh (Portia), Sylvester Madu (Jazzman). Story/Screenplay, Sylvester Madu; Director of Photography, Laure Oluwale; Editor, Samuel Emanuel Aja; Producer, Onyeka Joe Orajiaka; Director, Ifeanyi Ikpoenyi
“Bank Business” is a story about a bank heist. The caper is pulled off successfully but the leader of the gang is shot and arrested. They are in the process of freeing him from police custody, which they successfully did but ran later into a police check point as they make their way to the border. There’s a hail of bullets from both police and the five-man gang. Jazzman (Sylvester Madu) , plus three girls from his gang are shot dead but his sister, Monica (Stephinie Okereke) the only survivor is arrested and cuffed up by the police. That is the epilogue of the most heart-wrenching caper movies from Nollywood I have seen yet. A film noire.
Now here comes the prologue, Monica and her brother Jazzman, are left orphans at a young age. They sleep under bridges, fend food for themselves from the dumpsters, and while her brother becomes a purse-snatcher from women, Monica loses her virginity through rape before she could graduate into a full time prostitute. Jazzman goes his way and becomes a full time armed robber and lives in an upscale uptown apartment.
Monica falls into a group of three other girls, one named Portia (Cha cha Eke), live happily as prostitutes and they always come home and tell their friends the encounters with men when they go out. It is all fun and laughter when they’re together. One night on their gig, a jeep pulls up in front of them on the sidewalk of the street and Monica is the lucky one. At the man’s pad, she tries the old trick of drugging him-a common trick they pull on their customers-and she’s caught. And to avoid the backhand this customer gives her, she falls and exposes a butterfly tattoo, same as Jazzman has on the side of his belly. “Monica!” Jazzman yells. “Jazzman!” Monica yells back. An avid Nollywood film viewer can snatch the rest of the story from me, from this point on.
However, Monica’s friends are invited to Jazzman’s apartment. Birds of the same feather, they get along well with Jazzman. They pull their first motel room hold-up and Jazzman, believing in the guts of his gang, talks them into bank robbery. He bloats the hopes of the girls by presenting them each with a passport already stamped with entry visa to the USA. Like in all caper movies, the crooks are forced out of retirement to run one more gig and are always caught or killed on that last gig. Jazzman trains them how to use machine guns and plans both the entry and exit from the bank. This is his last gig so he can go into retirement as well. Meanwhile the police lieutenant is on Jazzman’s tail because the wise guy had eluded him for so long and swears to bring him in dead or alive one day.
Now the dialogue: At curtain up, a gang of four girls takes their places at a bank and wait for their leader Jazzman. He enters the bank and the bank business starts. All customers are shuffled into a room and the manager is commandeered into opening all the safes and the vault which they empty into a duffel bag. Meanwhile, one of the hostages uses telephone and calls the police, and they are surrounded.
This is a well-oiled story with believable and hardworking characters like Jazzman, Monica and especially the police lieutnanant, who thinks Jazzman has been eluding him too long and, is bent on putting him away forever. Another aspect of the film is the sense memory acting of Jazzman as he sits at the back of the police jeep, looking into the camera, soliloquizing: Where were you when my father was killed by an unknown gun man? Where were you when my mother was killed by a car and the driver ran away…? Where were you…?
Portia and the rest of the gang played their roles to the fullest. However like all gangster movies, there’s always a crack in the operation. The heist in the bank takes too long, Jazzman who has never killed anybody, kills a notable man’s only son. The lieutenant is in hot pursuit of Jazzman and to bring him in in twenty-four hours. And the hot-headed gangster girls are all in nervous wreck. With these flaws, it’s only a matter of time for them to be rounded up.
I learnt this trick with writers and film makers long time ago when I started out reading Nick Carter and other crime fictions, that crime and criminals shall never get away from either the law or the protagonist. I attribute the success of this project to the director for producing through rhetorical method of combining images, movements, location, lighting and music to bring such a wonderful story on screen which leaves viewers wanting more. Grab a copy and have a good evening!