Golden Effect presents Angelique Kidjo (Dr. Zimmerman), Wale Ojo (Kola Alabi), Jimmy Jean Louis (Jean-Marc), Hilda Dokubo (Supt. Ebenezer), Nicolas Panagiotopulos (Riikard), Aurelian Eliam (Eloise), Fatym Layache (Yasim), Peter King (Jomo). Producer, Kunle Afolayan; Screenplay by Tunde Babalola; Executive Producer, Kunle Afolayan; Associate Producer, Seur Soyinka; Director of Photography, David Pietkiewicz; Director, Kunle Afolayan. (2016)
CEO reminds me of the experience that Foulton Mansion gave me. Of course, Foulton Mansion except for the retreat at the mansion, or instead I say, the camping of young girls to get picked in a competition for modeling, has nothing on CEO. Foulton Mansion gets fierce but no blood and no fight, and in the end, Stephanie Okereke wins. Here in CEO, the film brings its gritty filthiness and dirtiness of the corporate world, from the boardrooms to the street, cleverly told in medias res. The story opens in the middle of the plot, as we see Kola out of breath, rushing, chased, or pretending to be chased on the beach, when arrested by the security officers, and accused of multiple murders. The rest of the story follows in expositions and flashbacks.
Imagine a new CEO could have a scale of three million dollars and a company share from the get-go with all the perks, for some the faint hearts, it is worth selling one’s soul, or killing a fellow man. There is Kola Alabi (Wale Ojo) from Nigerian HQ. A flirt with a Niaja swagger. Pretty laid back and walked with both hands in his pockets brimming with insolency and overconfidence. Riikard (Nicolas Panagiotopulas) from South Africa, an over-confident guy who texts his home office that he had the contest in the bag. Aureliam Eliam (Eloise), has a husband who uses a wheelchair. She left him in Ivory Coast; to come here and quickly get the portfolio and rush back to him. Fatym Layache (Yasim), is a Morrocan assigned to TransWire, Lagos. Jomo (Peter King) from Kenya, who confides in Kola that he “leaves behind a big mess in Nairobi.” Three men and two women cooped up at the idyllic beach-front lodge in Lagos.
Dr. Zimmerman (Anjelique Kidjo), is an unorthodox and unconventional teacher. I didn’t call her so; she did. A fifteen-year corporate teacher, her method of recruiting CEOs has been approved and certified by the corporate world. TransWire wants to replace the retired foreign expatriate, in Nigeria, with its plentiful and growing population. This time, they want an indigenous African. She is here to recruit a qualified CEO. She has an assistant, a bespectacled young woman, Lisa (Kemi Lala Akindoju).
Unconventional and unorthodox, she said, Dr. Zimmerman practices the primary school ‘musical chairs’ method of self-elimination in recruiting her candidate, and she proves so true. The chair eliminates Jomo (Peter King) in the first round of the game. During that session of the course, Dr. Zimmerman delves into “fear or respect, which virtue should a leader expect to endorse?” She rubs in the question of embezzlement from the company coffers, as she stands over Jomo’s head and then faces him. Jomo feels guilty and assumes his financial transgressions back in Nairobi head office, follows him here, and having earlier told Kola his secret, he attacks Kola thinking he snitches on him.
Jomo’s dead body washes off the beach the following morning. Competition continues, albeit the catastrophe. For the four contestants, Lisa reduces the chairs to three. On the second day, Yasim loses the chair and gets eliminated. That day, Zimmerman introduces, “collective responsibility,” and as in the case with Jomo, Zimmerman takes Yasim upon the issue of collective responsibility. Yasim embroils in graft at TransWire, back in Lagos, and she is on camera bribing a government officer, and EFCC is closing in on her. Her travel documents have been seized by the Nigerian government. Since no way out for Yasim, she supposedly cut her wrist to death. Things get a little spooky. Eloise is terrified and tense now. She has witnessed two of her colleagues dead. She lost the chair.
The topic that day was on “Can a person who cheats on his or her spouse be a chief executive? If your husband has reason to mistrust you, why should a firm of 100,000 staff members place their fate in you?” “A cheat is a cheat,” bellows Riikard (Nicolas Panagiotopulos), when asked. As usual, Dr. Zimmerman directs her question in the face of Eloise. Eloise, a happily married woman, and Kola had had a fling on the second night at the resort, and the issue didn’t sit well with her. She runs out of the class, crying, “I don’t want to die.” No, she didn’t die; her husband did. Of course, the fling ends on her husband’s computer, and he overdoses himself to death.
Eloise is so afraid to stay by herself she invites Kola over, but he dozes off and wakes up way into the night and rushes over to her. No Eloise in the room. Then he comes back to his quarters, and his computer is on playing the recording of the fling he has had with Eloise that night. Someone had recorded them having it out. He goes out back into the night, yelling her name, searching for Eloise with a flashlight. A woman in swimming gear tasers him, and he drops into the pool backward, though, miraculously, he survives by the pool the next day. He hardly had time enough to explain himself to Eloise that he has no part in the scandal. “For what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul.” Says Eloise on the way out of the lodge to bury her husband in Abidjan.
On the last day before class would end, Kola signs a letter on behalf of Riikard. The message is from the rival Standard Telecom, where Riikard worked before. Today’s topic in the class is “Industrial Espionage.” During the session, Kola suspects both Riikard and Dr. Zimmerman, based on the fact of the recent correspondent Riikard receives from Standard Telecom while being in the employ of TransWire. Then too, no information surfaced on the web about Dr. Zimmerman; even as she boasts, “She operates under the radar.”
That evening, as if expectant, Kola arranges his bed as if he was sleeping under the covers. Lisa stealthily walks in and stabs the pillows, and Kola jumps on her, and there’s a fight, only to discover it was Lisa, and not Riikard. She tasers Kola out and drags his limp body away. Riikard walks upon the scene when Lisa is about to get away but confronts him with a series of stabbings. Kola comes back to and still jumps on Lisa, yet she gets away. Kola calls medical help for Riikard while chases after Lisa. There’s another fight on the beach, and he almost drowns her, then three Chinese fellows mysteriously appear there.
My review is both unorthodox and unconventional, as Dr. Zimmerman’s class. I put the cart before the horse, though Kola, the accused, starts with how he ends up haggard and dirty, running on the beach, with two dead competitors behind and Riikard, holding on to his dear life in intensive care. Screenwriter uses in Madias Re in telling his story. That way, he grabs the attention of the viewers and people like me and shoves us into the middle of this interesting story. Kola’s repetitive denial of the crime gets us to know the story, which goes toward a detective story and whodunit. Yet, kind of pretty sotofa spooky, all in a flashback mode.
Kola digs in on Lisa’s presence among the contestants, even as her attire and bespectacled demeanor present her like one coming from all night Virgil, and this is what he finds out. With a Master’s degree in human resources, TransWire HQ hires her in the human resource department. On the father’s side, she’s half Nigerian, half Cameroonian and the mother side, she’s half Kenyan and half Namibian, and she works undercover for a Chinese company that could be a competitor and were interested in the likely CEO of TransWire, with whom to do business. Lisa had been eliminating weaker competitors with the help of Zimmerman, and the Chinese who supplied her the tasers.
Not even a soothsayer would have predicted the nightmare that befell these intending CEOs camped out at Inagbe Grand Resort & Leisure. Kola gets the job of CEO, though, it is evident he’s part of the intrigue but didn’t want any deaths as he makes us understand on the beach, talking with the Chinese representatives. No wonder they let him escape at the beach. Lisa went rogue on the Chinese by double-crossing them. I guess the Chinese drown her when they drag her towards the sea.
I’m amazed by the writing ingenuity of Tunde Babalola. The October 1 (2014) and The Meeting (2012), projects leave me with so much admiration and respect. Research aside, the knowledge of corporate business, as he demonstrates here, and the usage, and dialogue, tells me he has had a first-hand understanding of the corporate world. They said, write what you know, and he knows about what he writes. No kidding. Hey, I spotted Kunle Afolayan in cameo there at the soiree, serving a drink. Did you place him? Well, I did.