A Frank Raja Arase Film, Presents, Melvin (Majid Michel), Laura (Yvonne Okoro), Raymond ( Edie Narty), Paula (Kafue Danker), Kimola (J.J. Bunny), Isabelle (Chi Chi Neblett). DOP, Adams Umar; Producer/Executive Producer, Chidibere Solomon; Director, Frank Raja Arase. ( C2017).
Dear reader, if you ever watched the C 2010 Movie 4 Play Reloaded, you must be knowledgeable about the story line for Sexy Crime, only that Sexy Crime is 4 Play Reloaded to the third power. It takes a serious look at the games young married and affluent men, and women play with their spouses. And here the game got real desperate, bloody and tragic.
Kimola: I never thought we’d cross path again…leave me alone. We never met.
Melvin: You know I still love you, don’t you?
Kimola: If you come closer to me I’ll kick you in the balls. Back off! Look at you; I can tell you’re still broke.
Melvin: Whatever deal you’re here for, I’m in on it.
Kimola: Well, if you claim you still love me, why not join me?
That is the quaint and witty exchanges between Kimola (J.J. Bunny) and Melvin (Majid Michel) in somebody’s living room during the fun time of the young and affluent in Ghallywood, and that straightforward and short exchanges set the movie in motion.
Writer introduced Melvin as a (corporate con-man), and Laura as two petty scammers who practically live on the streets of Accra, pilfering money from unsuspecting people, car-jacking and all. Then we see Melvin and Laura in the company of Kimola (J.J. Bunny) an old crime associate of Melvin. Raymond (Edie Narty), inheritor of a precious family fortune is there; Wilson, a man with an air of a celebrity; Paula (Yvonne Okoro), a one-time divorcee, now married to gorgeous man, Raymond.
Out of a privilege conversation, among the guest during the fun time, bets were made as to how the spouses are secure in their marriages and how Paula assures and bets Kimola that her husband Raymond will never cheat on her. From here on, we find Wilson get laid by Kimola, Raymond’s wife is f**ked by Wilson, Laura sexed Wilson, Melvin too, put Wilson’s wife. They were going in a circle having affairs with each other’s wife.
Paula and Kimola gamble set the story in motion. The bet for which Paula paid Kimola, goes far beyond into getting her pregnant for Paula’s husband, Raymond. At least that’s what Kimola said. Kimola wants her expectant baby-father, Raymond, dead, so she gets inheritance money and asks Melvin to commit the crime, which he does, but Kimola double-crosses Melvin by asking another man, later called, the actual father of the baby she carries, to shoot Melvin. Melvin fakes his death, but then comes and kill him while they are locked in an embrace.
As aforementioned, Jackie Appiah, wanting to find out the honesty of her husband, sets him up with a girl in 4 Play Reloaded, and she almost gets to the point of losing her husband by the end of the story. 4 Play Reloaded is strictly the exchanges and infidelities between young middle-class city-dwellers, but Appiah did not miss John Dumelo. Great comic narrative. Majid is driven out of his marriage and ends washing underwears for a woman he hardly knew. Yvonne Nelson’s prayer for a loving, honest and a career and “straight up six-pack,” husband realizes her prayers. Majid and Edie Narty are locked up in a five by five shower by a girlfriend they unknowingly shared, and they are run off by the girl’s gun-toting army husband. Majid gets slapped because he says his friend’s wife snores. That movie is fun, pure fun.
Not with Sexy Crime where, “married men have extramarital blowjobs from hungry starving wives,” and “where married women are sucking on married men’s candy bars.” In Sexy Crime, the latter-day characters created from 4 Play Reloaded are much brutal and desperate: marriages get broken, lives shattered, and blood spilled. None of the actors come off unscathed. Majid, and Kimola ends tragically, killing each other, and Laura, “comes to the end of the road,” as one of the two detectives she opens her door to says to her.
It’s funny to find that Frank Raja Arase in Sexy Crime, didn’t wander away from revisiting his earlier theme of social commentary on the lives of the young, and restless, and affluent IT class in Ghallywood. Only this time, instead of dealing with the kind of slackers he portrayed in 4 Play Reloaded, he approached the same theme here with gusto, exploiting the ruthlessness of the same class with desperation. His characters in 4 Play Reloaded are younger and careless, but matured here in Sexy Crime as they see the world in yet different light
There’s one simple observation I make about most of our actors in both Nollywood and Ghallywood. No matter how much I denied myself in observing their acting, I always found in them a real role-models from the parenthood (Hollywood). Watch Ramsey Noah on screen in Figurine (2009), with the nuances, gestures, and evil laughter regarding, Terms Of Endearment (1983), and One Flew Over The Cuckcoo’s Nest (1975), and you’ll be reminded of no one else but Jack Nicholson. And take, for instance, Majid Michel’s behavior and acting in this film and remember Robert De Nero, in Goodfellas (1990), or better yet, Taxi Driver (1976) in a room by himself, learning to use a pistol, uttering his famous screen lines, “Are you talkin’ to me?” Majid performs so perfectly, and sometimes I want to stay in the same room when he takes his bad girls there because I don’t want to miss the action and the dialogue:
Melvin: …don’t fool yourself…you know, I know you don’t love him..and I know we both love this game.
Kimola: Why must I run into you, Melvin…why?
Melvin: Destiny.
Kimola: I hate you.
Melvin: Same here.
Melvin grabs the glass of liquor from her hand, takes a gulp of it, and skillfully swoosh it in his mouth. He’s standing real close to her, almost smelling his breath, and she too looking keenly, wantingly in his eyes.
Melvin: Let’s have sex.
Kimola: (giggles) I can’t say no.
The acting in this scene is classic De Nero. The opening dialogue between Melvin and Kimola at the beginning of this film and the closing love scene between both characters before going on to kill each other, have me forgive Frank Raja Asare all the production sins he may have committed here. By Majid and Kimola dying together after he utters the word, “Destiny,” is justification enough, that Asare created characters no lesser than Bonnie and Clyde. I never rated a movie, but it won’t be bad if I started here and awarded this project a five star. Excellent production.