A Corporate World Entertainment/ Filmone Entertainment/Gush Media Production presents Ramsey Nouah (Ayo), Jim Iyke (Naz), Ayo ‘Ay’ Makun (Amaju), Ufuoma Mcdermott (Zara Aminu), Folarin ‘Falz’ Falana (Remi), Damelola Adegbite (Dare), Regina Daniels (Kenya Obi), Ireti Doyle (Dame Maduka), Rosey Meurer (Kemi Alesinloye) Nancy Isimi (Sophie Obaseki), Williams Uchemba (Johnny), Linda Osifa (Hassana). Production Manager, Jeffery Otas; Story by, Ayo ‘Ay’ Makun; Screenplay by, Anthony Kehinde Joseph; Director of Photography, Adenkule ‘Nodash’Adejuyigbe; Executive Producers, Kenneth Okwosa, Moses Babatope Valentine Ozigbo; Producer, Darlington Abuda; Director, Moses Inwang. ©2019
I can’t cudgel my old brain enough for a Nollywood film similar to Merry Men-Another Mission. The whereabouts aren’t farfetched, though. It is in Ocean’s Eleven (2001), the remake of the 1960’s Hollywood’s Rat Pack. Imagine an ex-con, parolee (George Clooney) released from prison, finds his way to California, and broaches to another ex-con, the idea of stealing $150 million from three Las Vegas casinos, and both embark on the spree. Steven Soderbergh directed Ocean’s Eleven, the director of the nationally acclaimed film, Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989).
Merry Men aren’t merrier in Another Mission. They have a handful of problems to contend with, from curtain up unto curtain down. It whisked them away from their semi-retirement fun back into action, only this time not for money. Thank God, they all ended unscathed, so that they can go back to being finally merry forever and ever. Merry Men…Demons live a life that could be most men’s envy. Didn’t you hear Inspector Jack (Francis Duru) almost fuming with hatred and envy as Merry Men make their acclaimed entrance at Dame Maduka’s (Ireti Doyle) birthday party? “More thieves, fancy dressings, expensive attires, diamond studs, gold. Take all that away. What is left? A thieving machine,” sucking his teeth at them.
But this particular evening, they can hack into Maduka’s account and got information on a 30 billion Naira deal pointing to Chief Omole (Jide Kosoko), which the government greenlighted and transferred the money to his account for the Garki Village project. But blackmailing won’t work on Chief as no tangible evidence surfaces yet. They want some of that cake, or all of it, even if it takes to sabotage the Garki Village project. Garki Village is the ghetto, where Ayo hails, so this need was personal. That’s the basis of Merry Men-The Real Yoruba Demons.
In Merry Men 2, Zara Aminu (Ufuoma Mcdermott) is freed a month away from freedom, from a prison transfer truck, on a lonely freeway at night, by a bunch of bike-riding figures. The peace and serenity of Merry Men 2 break one morning when unknown gun-toting young women and well-trained assassins, attack all of them, Ayo (Ramsey Nouah), Naz (Jim Iyke), Amaju (Ayo ‘Ay’ Makun), Folarin ‘Falz’ Falana (Remi) simultaneously. And worst of all, the assassins take Kenya (Regina Daniels), Naz’s wife as a hostage.
Ayo stops in his tracks when he hears a stranger playing on his piano, and he is attacked not by the pianist but another paid assassin; Naz, comes back from buying a pregnancy test for his beloved wife, and jumps into fighting and warding off intruders who take his wife away as a hostage, anyway. Amaju (Ayo ‘Ay’ Makun), what about him? He’s laid out in chain in some motel room in handcuffed by two women. Remi (Folarin ‘Falz’ Falana) is dead asleep like a baby, while a night-over girl from the nightclub is rummaging through his computer files.
The holding of Kenya as a hostage leads us to the perpetrators or kidnappers, and the incident propels the drama to an entertaining path. Kenya is the wife of Naz and a sister of Ayo which makes her issue paramount to these revelers. A notorious character, Zara Aminu once a member of the Merry Men-The Real Yoruba Demons, believed to have been killed in a shoot-out with the law, reemerged, in the employ of Dame Maduka. Dame Maduka is responsible for her escape from the prison break, she uses Zara’s son as leverage, in getting her to do this mission. And too, she also holds hostage Sophie Obaseki’s (Nancy Isime), brother. The motive for these kidnappings is for the Merry Men to steal Dame Maduka’s court records from the EFCC, so she can be free from going to jail.
Merry Men is a Nollywood star-studded rat-pack project like that of Ocean’s Eleven. Ocean’s Eleven have eleven people, including Danny Ocean; they are all dandy, spoilt, and live big. Their Mission is to rub three casinos that have $150 million in the safe. That’s not an easy feat to pull. They need pickpockets, techs, acrobats. Ayo and his Merry Men couldn’t pick the assignment alone in the seventy-two hours Dame Maduka gives them. And Naz is on edge for his wife’s release. By his wits, Remi comes in handy with the computer knowledge, but Ayo recruits another young and funny hacker, Johnny (Williams Uchembu). Again the Merry Men need Maduka’s girls to help them with the break-in just the way Ocean’s Eleven use each person with a criminal specialty.
Merry Men-Another Mission is the leftover issues we find in Merry Men-The Real Yoruba Demons (2018). Except for Ali Nuhu (Bank Client Service Head), Francis Duru(Inspector Jack), Jide Kosoko (Chief Omole), and Richard Mofe-Damijo (Chief Alesinloye), the Mission carries overall personalities from Yoruba Demons. I jumped over Merry Men to review Merry Men 2, and it wouldn’t have been helpful if I did so without touching on Demons, because the sins committed by the Yoruba Demons follow them to The Mission. The billion-dollar heist gets Dame Maduka facing a jail term, and knowing full well how to play the Lagos game, has to level with the team. She goes after them in Merry Men 2.
At the end of Merry Men, the boys are about to retire as we see doubts and fears of discovery creeping in. Ayo loves an EFCC mole which he wants to marry, and Dera (Damelola Adegbite) has been pressuring him a lot to retire from the group and its ways. He wants to quit and settle down with her, and so is Naz as well. Remi and Amaju also have women they are going out steady with, and may likely marry and settle. The condition Maduka gives to them gets all of the Merry Men from retirement back into another break-in at the EFCC’s office to steal records of financial transgressions on Dame Maduka. In most heist films, when characters come out from retirements, that’s when situations could go wrong. There could have been an alarm; Inspector Jack would have uncovered Dare’s involvement or Naz’s wife would have been killed by Dame Maduka. In essence, the writer justifies criminal behavior, even as Billy Preston could say in Will it Go Round…, “Let the bad guy(sic) guys win every once in a while.”
The Merry Men series must have inherited its seed from a little known movie called Cornered (2017). Most principal characters in Cross’s (Ramsey Nouah) Cornered, bilk billions of Niaras and millions of dollars by blackmailing and hacking millions from unsuspecting accounts and transfers like we see done to Chief Omole in Merry Men. I like the jokes at the end of both films that Ayo and Amaju pull on their girls. In Merry Men 1, Ayo fakely gets arrested during his sister Kenya’s wedding, but before they took him away, he proposed to Dere, with a ring that came out of a bulb of a red rose. And at the end of Merry Men 2, Amaju on his knees opened his wallet and got everyone stoked about what was to happen, and he pulled a half-ass cigar and toked it, to everyone’s disappointment. No, no engagement ring. Ha!
All the Merry Men 2 characters shall now retire to, “where life is nothing but a big amusement park. I crown Merry Men series as the Nollywood Rat Pack royalty. And remember, they may have enemies in the general population, and law enforcement, but “The one thing you should never be guilty of in Nigeria is poverty.” Naz. They are rich and famous, indeed.