“College Wars” is not about physical war as the name connotes than about war over character.
An armed robbery takes place and a prominent politician’s son is murdered in the process, but at the scene of the murder another popular and prominent student’s passport is found. Now the police and the dead boy’s mother accuse Mike (Van Vicker) who happens to be the best friend of the murdered student as a suspect, and he goes into hiding.
The small world of the college is divided between those who believe Mike is guilty, usually his personal haters including college rival group, headed by Supremo (Jim Iyke) and those who in every scene give character witnesses of Mike. Among those is Nancy (Mercy Johnson) whose only brother is killed but strongly doesn’t believe Mike commits the crime even at the point of falling out with her heart–broken mother.
Tension is set as everyone including the police combs every street corner and alley looking for Mike. The campus gang, the main perpetrators of the crime gets on the street looking for Mike too. By the writer’s ingenuity for creating suspense which I enjoyed in this film, it takes a while before Mike could be apprehended. He can’t give himself up to both Supremo and the police because he believes it is a setup. Meanwhile Supremo and his gang having got air of Mike’s hideout, come up on him in an unfinished building and set him on the ground ready to execute him. They fall into a police dragnet and rounded them up including Mike. Mike is let go, after the police knowing he’s innocent. Excellent denouement this story has.
The school let Mike take the school sport team away, because they know what God has blessed, no one can curse. Nancy’s mother consents to her daughter ‘s relationship with Mike and even accepts him and his sister as her own children in her household, since their father was murdered by Supremo in pursuit of Mike.
A beautiful and a well-structured story this one. The main player who wins my admiration and who keeps the story from being a sleeper is Mercy Johnson’s character. She is not the type of brat who stands in front of her bedroom mirror the whole day smearing lipstick, or manicuring her fingernails while she listens to Beyonce on FM radio. She jump starts the tension and keeps pumping in every scene she appears, to the hospital where she enters with the inspector and to the scene in the unfinished building. She made this movie a notable picture.
It is been a long time I saw Jim Iyke in performance since “Who Am I?” when he plays the gigolo and that is a good performance though here too, not much of a role but plays well. Van Vicker is maturing with every movie he appears in.