Eastsyde Entertainment presents Ramsey Noah (Dennis), Uche Jombo (Anna), Gentle Jack (Terror), Justus Esiri (Harry Dickson), Kelvin Books Ikeduba (Osas), MacMaurice Ndubueze (Chuks), Okey Sino Anagor (Tobi). Story/Screenplay/Director, Moses Inwang; Director of Photography, Tunde Adekoya (C2008)
Chase movies are the most exploited themes in the world of film. Hollywood alone has produced over ten such films starting from Buster Keiton’s, The General (1926) to North by Northwest (1959), and the Naked Prey (1966). The Fugitive (1993), and The Hunted (2003), and the list goes on. These are movies with breathtaking scenes and actions that sometimes suffocates the viewer like one lost in some hideous dream. There’s Cary Grant, chased by the crop duster, in a cornfield, or him scaling Mount Rushmore, in North by Northwest. A white hunter captured by African tribesmen but leaves him in the wild to be hunted down like a game in Naked Prey. Tommy Lee Jones is in charge of bringing to justice his former trainee who has become an unhinged psychopath in The Hunted.
Chase movies have a specific aspect to them hardly experienced watching any plot. You, the viewer are drawn into the story and experience the fear, danger, and the excitement of the action on the screen. You can be so engrossed in the story, and you hardly noticed sitting at the edge of your seat. Out of fear for the life of the white man not being caught by savages, I threw up in my chair at Roxy Cinema, the first time I watched Naked Prey. Chase titles are by nature easy stories to tell. The plots are linear, mostly, and there are not many complex dialogues to treat. Nollywood has told its share of chase stories and still counting, like The Chase, Game of Chase, Chasing Wealth, Green Chase, Rough Chase. I like the Chase with no article or word attached to its title. Standalone, “Chase.”
The Nollywood Chase is a straightforward but excellent chase movie. The conflict in chase films is made clear from the beginning, and the character motivation is paramount: one is the pursuer, and the other is the pursued. The pursuer doesn’t want a witness to his action, or he wants a valuable item in the hands of the sought after, that he could get at any cost; the pursuer maybe a law officer running after a culprit to bring him to justice. The pursued must be running away for his life in danger; he has a secret or an item the world wants. Chase is a story based on being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Dennis (Ramsey Nouah) and two friends Osas (Kelvin Books Ikeduba), and Chuks (MacMaurice Ndubueze), and his college junior brother, Tobi (Oki Chuckwo Anagor) witness a murder, firsthand.
On a quiet Friday evening, they hop in a BMW convertible car, to go to a Bachelor Eve party, and get lost in some part of Lagos and end up on the dead-end of a street. As they ponder how to get out of there, they witness, a few yards away, the most gruesome murder of a young man, by a political electoral candidate. They record the event on camera. A telephone from a friend rings, and the politician, and his hired killers notice they weren’t alone, and orders Terror (Gentle Jack) the leader of the politician’s appointed killers, and his men to get whoever witnesses this incident to die. Ramsey and his boys find themselves in political campaign crosshairs. The chase begins.
They barely escape from the scene behind their car, for the machine-gun-toting hired killers to get there and shower the BMW with gunshots and set the vehicle ablaze. And the chase continues. Meanwhile, a police superintendent had been anxious to nail the notorious politician in the community and already gets a whiff of the recent killing and the burning car and works on the assumption that Badmus is responsible for the killing and that he’s close to arresting the politician. Ramsey’s nagging wife too is all worked up at home as she couldn’t hear from her husband since he left with friends for the party.
In the dark of night and in swamps, forests, and ravines, the hired killers pursue the innocent party-goers, at a distance and occasionally close to Dennis and friends. For a minute, they seek refuge in an abandoned building with some homeless people, who by nature of being noisy and pestering requests for money, blow their covers, but they escape from there before the killers arrive, and from the sound of shots ringing from that end, we presume the homeless dead. They need no witnesses.
By now one of the friends, Chuks, has an asthma attack and could run no more. He decides to brave it out to confront the killers assuming he will outwit them. He’s the first to get shot at close range as the killers couldn’t buy into his story of a hidden treasure in the bushes somewhere. The chase continues. Now the college kid is getting tired, but there’s light in a far away house, and Ramsey encourages them to trudge along there. Luckily they are accepted by a little girl even as her mother is against allowing fugitives in their home. The killers still find out their hiding place, but again, they escape from there and left the old woman in peril, in the hands of the killers. The bad guys shot her too. No witnesses, I said.
They can only run thus far, and the trio decides to confront these killers. By cleverly waylaying one killer who happens to stay behind the troop, they overpower him and luckily come into possession of a firearm, and seek refuge and ambush the perpetrators in an abandoned factory. Then there’s open confrontation. Terror shoots Tobi in the arm, and he drops, and as he’s about to kill him, Dennis jumps on him, and they go fist to fist. Meanwhile, Justus and the one second in command to Terror, are hell shooting and missing one another but they soon go fist to fist, and Justus finishes him. Terror overpowers and chokes Dennis, but before he could kill him, the police commissioner saves him by shooting him right between the bulging eyes and drops dead. Terror finally meets his Waterloo.
The plot mechanics used in this story is remarkable. The political campaign plot storyline and the Bachelor Eve party storyline are both at a tangent. One going East and the other going West, but by smart writing ingenuity, the two plots converge seamlessly at a dead end street. The politician, Badmus suspects that his campaign team has a mole, secretly telegraphing their campaign secrets and tactics to his opponents. He suspects his media guy, and when the media guy notices that someone blows his cover, he goes on the run. He barely escapes with his life until they close in on him at the dead end of a street, just where Dennis and his gang are waiting for a phone call for direction to the party.
The most interesting character in this movie is Gentle Jack. His wardrobe (trench-coat) over the gigantic intimidating height, the galoot, and rugged body with mean facial expression, always chewing on the cigarette tucked in the side of his thick lips, the bulging menacing eyes, with never smiling face, strike terror in my heart and make my blood pressure mounts. There’s a scene when he stands outside the house where Dennis and his boys are hiding, and in the near dark points, like a general in an invading army, to the house in the distance, and as he turns to look at his men surrounding the house, he stands in a trance caressing the machine gun, like one making love to death itself. Quite menacing. Great movie, this Chase.