Hotstar International Presents, Majid Michel (Jason), Martha Ankomah (Zina), Adjety Anang (Dennis), Yvonne Okoro (Etta), John Demelo (Andy), Anthony Nkwoeha (Jim). Story, Pascal Amanfo; Screenplay, Folaki Nissi Amanfo; Director of Photography, Tunde Adekoya; Director, Pascal Amanfo; Producer, Michael Odika. (C2010)
In Daddy’s Girl, Martha Ankomah is this little girl who shrewdly plunged her unwitting father into the political limelight, only that the father fell short of becoming a Manchurian Candidate for the political establishment in Ghana. Here in The Game, she’s the femme fatale. And what a tragic character she proves to be, when now as an indigent, training a gun on both Dennis (Adjety Anang) and Ella (Yvonne Okoro), Jason shoots her in the back.
When the cotton went down on The Game, I gulped the last dredge of beer in the can and rushed outside my living room, to take a breather. The movie’s intense storyline had suffocated me, choked the living life out of me. Ones outside, I heaved a long sigh, and let some air back into my lungs. The journey through the film was like a phantasma, a hideous dream, and now that its over, I can give it some reflections. Yes, I love such breathtaking movies. Yes, I love the cruel callousness of Majid Michel; Yes, I hate the tragic fate of Martha Ankomah (Zina), lying there in bed with nasty slimy goo, spilling out from the side of her mouth. Yuk! A pitiful and disgusting sight to behold. Yvonne Okoro like Jason says, doesn’t deserve the pain of love but with resilience and shrewdness, she plays a better game than all.
The Game tells a story in the style of A Sting In A Tale: A Sting…orally tells a tale in front of a secretary of a movie production company, and acts the story at the same time. The Game is an eight-chapter book of pragmatic definitions of life, and the movie thematically follows the headings of each chapter shot by shots making the viewer and the camera, independent observers. The narrative structure of this type story is not told necessarily from a narrator’s point of view, but from chapters of a book, that manipulates the viewers as if we are witnessing the story together with the characters as it unfolds on the screen.
Chapter One of the book reads: ‘Life is a script, a script in which we have the privileged liberty of deciding the character we want to play.’ Zina enters the frame and sits on a motel bed speaking on the phone: “Look I’ve been lodging in a hotel for two weeks now… right now my life’s in a shamble, that is why I need you…Please don’t love me. I know I’ve made mistakes…I’m a mess. All I need is a roof over my head.” From the conversation with whoever on the phone, the writer is introducing our antagonist Zina, to us. Here in this game of life, she decides to play an existentialist. A woman who only needs a roof over her head.
She walks into a room where her friend is almost making out with her boyfriend, Andy (John Dumelo). Her friend is disappointed, embarrassed and at the same time jealous of Zina, for the way Andy looks in her wake: “The last time I checked, my butt was bigger than hers,” she complained. From the brief exchange between her and Zina, we conclude that Zina is a bag lady drifting from place to place. The next time we meet Zina, her half-sister, Ella (Yvonne Okoro), offers her a place to stay and she is introducing Zina to Andy, her husband. Zina and Andy had met and shook each other’s hand before. Andy and Zina cheat, and not long after, she fakes being pregnant for Andy and he Andy, turns around and asks divorce from Ella, then marries Zina. Little did Zina knows that Ella already knows about her trick to steal her husband away. In this game of life, Ella plays a beautiful hand by double hiring Jason, the Scorpion, unbeknownst to Zina.
The book, “Life Is Not A Game,” is about our femme fatale, Martha Ankoma, Folaki Nissi Amnfo’s Zena. She, I mean Zena, commits series of transgressions in her quest for answers to solve the puzzle of life in chapter 2. She didn’t look hard enough, though, but to let Ella catches her having sex with Andy in the foyer of her marital house and later snatches her step-sister’s husband, shatter their marriage; marries Andy and hires Jason to put a bullet in Andy’s head, and relocates to Kumasi with lots of money. In Kumasi, she runs into an old friend who introduces her to another well to do fellow, Dennis (Adjety Anang). They marry, but Zina’s jeep runs head-on with a truck, whose driver, happens to be Jason, The accident leaves her with a fractured spinal cord injury, making her disable and bedridden for life. Dennis marries Ella and brings her to the bedside of Zina. The story gets a little soapy here.
In chapter 5, we learn that ‘life is a road with many twists.’ We see Ella also marries Zina’s husband, Dennis, as a twist and the climax of the story. In the seventh chapter, where ‘life is a shooting range,’ gunshots ricochet. Jason as a sniper shoots Zina in the back as she trains her gun, at close range on both Dennis and Ella. ‘They who live by the sword, die by the sword.’ is the last chapter about the eight pragmatic definitions of life. Jason, who has made all the killings in the story also receives a shot in the back by an unknown assailant. The Game ends.
Majid Michel has matured acting the Nollywood/Ghallywood bad boy parts. Watch his compelling performance in the scene where he puts both Ella and his impostor girlfriend at gunpoint, and his maniacal laughter, it is so reminiscent of the wise guy, Robert De Niro’s peals of laughter and nuances in Cape Fear. No, not there, he was creepy and God-fearing in Cape Fear. It is in Goodfellas. In a moment of truth in the movie, Jason, relaxed, sitting on the couch, (talks to scared stiff Ella), “We are in the same boat here, only this time it is way bigger than the Titanic…Where this ship is sailing…dollar greens, gold-plated fantasy…We are all chasing after one thing worth dying for…you really don’t deserve to be cheated on, the same way I don’t deserve to share this (waving dollar bills) with anybody. Greed is a pathetic emotion; it creeps on you like cancer. (to his impostor girlfriend), “Fucking another man’s husband…(Yells at her), Lock the door!”
Ther’s use of a symbol in this movie that stands out as an essential element, where Ella is pouring her mind and suspicion out to Zina. Ella, “Someone took him away from me, Zina. Someone stole his love from me. I need to find that person.” In that scene, as she speaks, an ivory deco of a giant crocodile with big fish stock in its mouth divides her and her half-sister, Zina. Maybe this was intended by the director as a symbol of the ensuing struggle between Ella and her half-sister Zina. And the significance of the emblem shows what happens at the end of the story: Ella by her shrewdness, personifying the crocodile, devours Zina, the small fish. Ella survives the entire lead players, Zina, Andy, the impostor girlfriend of Jason, and Jason himself.
“Life is a game, but no one wins until the very end. Zina decided to play a deadly game on behalf of her half-sister, Ella, little did she know that Ella has an ace up her sleeve.” Says a commentary by a Youtube viewer.