Rich Rock Production Ltd presents Tonto Dikeh (Gloria); Ini Edo (Caliste); Yul Edochie (Johnson); Annie MacCauley (Steph); Ikechukwu Siryuneh (Detective Kalu) Screenplay by Amaechi Ossai, Director, Nonso Emekaekwue. ( C 2010)
THE NOTORIOUS ESTATE HOUSEWIVES’ GIGOLO CONFESSES TO RAPE, MULTIPLE MURDERS AND KIDNAPPING!…reads a newspaper headline.
Johnson (Yul Edochie) called so in the estates, but J-Boy by his gang of thieves is caught at a late night city roadblock by Detective Kalu (Ikechukwu Siryuneh) with a dead girlfriend, Steph (Annie Macauley) sitting by him in the front seat of her car.
As the story would unfold, the odyssey of a killer starts in the estate at the family home of Calise (Ini Edo), when she invites a handyman electrician to fix her electrical wiring in the house. Then enters Johnson (Yul Edochie), in a blue overall, innocent but handsome, with a little toolbox in his hand and immediately goes to work. Calise’s friend, Gloria (Tonto Dikeh) comes in upon the scene and instantly falls for Johnson and takes him home and have sex with him in her marital bed as her young baby cries in the background. Her husband is away on a three weeks business trip. Life and sex are good for Gloria and the financial payback for Johnson aplenty.
One afternoon after a heated sex, and in his boxer shorts, Johnson comes downstairs from Gloria’s bedroom and on happenstance stands face to face with Calise in the living room. The envious but tantalizing look in the eyes of Calise at Johnson is understandable. She may want some of him too. Next time, while just after a shower and in a bath towel, Johnson barges into her upstairs bedroom and with a little fuss from her, he has a hot sex with her. As of then, the handyman electrician in the blue overall, no longer a man of mechanical trade but a gigolo, who shuttles between the two housewives and a handsome paycheck too.
On leaving Gloria’s home one day, Steph, a boutique owner nearly hits him with her car as he walks by the roadside. Sorry as she could be, she volunteers to take him to her house, but Steph was desperate for a husband, and such a handsome fellow Johnson is, she instead has him in her bed that same evening. Sex is great as long as Steph milks the cow.
It is now, Gloria, Calise, and Steph, all in the estate and all well-to-do, on Johnson’s list of active source of income and sex. Steph’s aunt seems to see through the character of Johnson, and a crook he is, it is easy to get her out of the way in a botched up murder. Meanwhile, Johnson kidnaps Gloria’s daughter for ransom. Upon her husband’s return and learning of his daughter missing, gives her options: Bring back my baby or lose the marriage. One day, and shortly after a steaming sex with Johnson, Calise’s husband comes home and gets murdered during a struggle with Johnson, but covered up as a heart attack.
Now Steph’s aunt is missing, Johnson kidnaps Gloria’s baby for a ransom, and Calise’s husband is lying dead cold by the closet in his bedroom. But Johnson’s still good and runs his gamut as usual, yet detective Kalu is a relentless public servant, who could smell trouble thousands of miles away with the meticulousness of Detective Mallow. When Steph’s friend get murdered by Jonson on tape, she gets to know she’s been sleeping with a murderer and is afraid, but too late.
In as much this story got me sold to Nollywood wave of pressing projects, I, however, observe a weakness which must have been caused by the editor’s oversight. A flashback to a movie needs not take a life of its own. I even get confused as to whose point of view is used in the scene when Johnson faces Steph’s aunt in the holding cell, and after that, the next flashback is either too extended or comes in late in the story with no bearing. This flashback scene loses the intensity of a would-have-been strong tale.
Pleasure and Crime is a simple dissertation in criminology, but it slightly flirted with the topic. Johnson’s criminal mind did not exhibit causation. His behavior of demanding brutal sex from sexually starving housewives, brutal murders of husband and girlfriends do show crime with passion and pleasure. He does not have any remorse for these crimes, but every time he commits one, he wipes his face and disappears. Is there any reason why he wipes his face after every commitment of a crime, is there a logical reason why he rapes women even when they generously offer their bodies to him? To viewers, the deviant behavior of stealing toothbrush is different from the commission of multiple murders with no guilt.
One evening, Carlise gives in to one more sex with Johnson. I guess a parting sex for the good old timed. By the beads of sweat on his forehead, he seems to enjoy the sex even as she doesn’t seem to notice his presence in her bed, and afterward, obliviously, she asks him: Did you enjoy it?
Johnson, “Yes baby, I enjoyed it very much.”
Carlise, ” You are a cold-blooded murderer, with no iota of regret. Get out of my bed, get out of my house and don’t ever come back!”
Johnson, yelling out of the room, “I don’t get dumped…ladies don’t dump me…I get tired of them!”
Sociologically, we must have been allowed a snippet of Johnson’s background as to what makes him what he’is as we experienced in Bank Business. Jazzman and his sister’s parents were armed robbed and killed in the process, and the government couldn’t do anything to investigate the crime, and both the children were left homeless, hence, their revenge on society. Benthan, a sociologist, states in his theory that sources of pleasure and pain are also sources of crime. Can I say Benthan is vindicated here by the behavior of pleasure-seeking homemakers in Pleasure and Crime whose lives shattered to confusion just for the sake of sex leading to the commission of a crime?
In Pleasure and Crime, I conclude the incredible screen chemistry between Ini Edo and Tonto Dike, as I watch them in two previous ones as perfect. As principal players in Pleasure and Crime, their acting, keep the movement of the story in place. Pleasure and Crime is a movie to watch.