A Blue Pictures Studio Production, in conjunction with Leon Global Media, presents Sam Dede (Ani), Gabriel Afolayan (Ayorchukwu), Sella Damasus (Ngozi), Bimbo Ademoye (Anu), Gbenga Titiloye (Phili), Bimbo Manuel (Coach Samson), Sophie Alakija (Zainab). Screenwriter/Director, Daniel Ademinokan; Director of Photography, Tawo Adeleye, Richard Mabiaku; Producers, Joy Odiete, Daniel Ademinokan, Oluseyi Asurf; Executive Producer, Joy Odiete, Marvelous Efe Odiete. © 2021
Here is a riveting story I could bring to you this Christmas season. Gone is a movie for all family members to sit around the grandfather, grandma in the kitchen whipping up pepper soup and serving the young ones. Mommy and Daddy, munching on popcorn, their heads stuck on the tube, all watch Ani, Anu, Ayo, and Ngozi on the screen. Except for the toddlers playing with their new Christmas toys. It will make you cry, but in the end, you will dry your tears and look up to heaven and say thanks to God, almighty, for Ani and his family.
The film opens with a lady showing Ani (Sam Dede) a halfway house (room). He should stay until he gets on his feet. It is in New York. Three guys confronted him about the money he owed Slice upon stepping out of the room. He ran away from them and got away-Gone. The next time we see Ani, he’s greeting his Aunt, in Lagos, Nigeria, who is not only surprised to see her nephew but tells him about his mother’s death. Ani traverses the ghetto neighborhood and secretly takes pictures of Ngozi (Stella Damasus), Ngozi’s boyfriend, Philip, and Anu (Bimbo Ademoye).
Ani later visits his old friend in the neighborhood, Coach Samson (Bimbo Manuel). He is glad to see his pal after twenty-five years. Ani wants to rejoin his family, but he doesn’t know how and where to start. A group of rowdy boys headed by Ayochukwu (Gabriel Afolayan) gets there, as he sits playing draft with an older man. Ani and Ayo get to know each other over Ayo’s help with the game Ani is playing. He is impressed with the boy’s intelligence, and he invites Ayo to a boxing match for a bet. Ayo lost the game but asked Anu to train him in professional boxing in return.
One morning Ayo’s mother rages at him for going to Coach Samson’s gym to practice boxing. She doesn’t want Ayo to take after his deadbeat father, who Samson misled to go to America. But the boxing practice and Ayo’s determination to succeed has made him change from his rowdy ways to good sportsmanship and a drive to succeed in the national exam. However, his mother couldn’t believe this; she had to see Ayo practicing in the gym. She and Anu come to see him practicing in the gym. Here, Ngozi sees Ani for the first time after twenty-five years. Ayo and her sister Anu see Ani, their father.
At first, they were all revulsive, throwing abuses at him. None of them, Anu and Ngozi, would let him come close to them to explain himself. Ayo couldn’t believe the outstanding boxer he had heard so many stories about, and the one who knocked him out in the ring the other day was his father and standing there in the flesh. It is all like a dream as he smiles at Ani. He thinks, now, I have a father figure to look up to, and he a boxer too?
Before this discovery, Ngozi’s long-time rich boyfriend, Philip (Gbenga Titiloye), proposes marriage with an engagement ring. This man had been there for her for so long. We see he bailed out Ayo from the police detention. She’s happy that, finally, things will change for her and the kids. Her life was getting good after these years of hardship. Philip, could take her to Dubai for shopping, buy her expensive things, and take care of her two fatherless kids, Ayo and Anu. Then shows up, Ani. A deadbeat father who had gone out of her life for twenty-five years. Ani comes to her apartment to explain himself. And here is Nollywood’s best monologue to date.
Ngozi, “For twenty-five years, Ani, you left me with a baby and an unborn child, with no money. Ani, do you know how we survived? How do we live? Things I have to do to keep our children off the street and make sure they have a roof over their heads at night? Through it, all staying faithful to a husband, who had vanished into thin air. Against all odds, Ani, I chose you over wealth! (sobs) Over my education, over even my family. I chose you! Why? Because I loved you, Ani, with every drop of blood flowing within my veins. I supported you. I believed in you. I loved you, Ani. I had plans for my life too. I had dreams; I had hopes and aspirations. But I tossed it all aside to support the man that my heart chose. And what did you do? You pissed all over my dreams, and you spat in my face. I’m marrying Philip. I won’t let you ruin my shot at true love again.
After this long dialogue (monologue), Ani says sorry and moves to touch her. “Don’t touch me!” She runs outside, and there comes her daughter, Anu, shielding her mother. “Go away!” Ani pleadingly says, “Look, I didn’t run away with another woman. I was in prison.” With that said, Anu, Ngozi, and Ayo all freeze in their stance. The statement sent a shock wave in the family. I, too, the reviewer, so engrossed in the story, already poured tears on my computer keyboard for Ani and the way his family misjudged him. Here is a true African ”coming to America’ story.
The reviewer must have taken this Gone movie experience personally. He had left a loved one and went to America. Because of his waywardness, when he was growing up, no one believed he would come back and marry the girl he left behind. He was afraid as not to get married for a green card, lest the family back home flag the girl, “we told you so.” He stayed over fifteen years without a green card and later heard his intended girl back home had had a newly born child on her lap.
Maybe Ayo is right all along. “Let us hear him.” He insists. Ani wanted to take the American Heavyweight boxing world like Mohamed Ali. Like every foreigner with no license, you won’t be allowed to show talent anyway. He had to marry Nancy for Greencard, and the woman got her in rape and aggravated rape charge, for which he went to prison in New York for twenty-five years. “The day I called you, Ngozi, to forget about me was the day I was going to jail. I thought my life was over.”
The character I admire in Gone is Ayochukwu. He spends seventy-five percent of his time in this movie as a wayward and rowdy area boy who has no regard for law and order, and he is a constant headache to both his mother and sister. He is the dynamic character in the story. After Ani is introduced in the story and introduced to boxing, Ayo gradually changes in nature. “Look, Femi, I’m not interested in fighting anymore.” You will say, “Look who doesn’t want to fight anymore.” I followed him from being antagonistic to a protagonist, making his character the most interesting in the story. I didn’t admire him like this in both Citation (2020) and Gold Statue (2019).
The screenwriter and director of Gone, Daniel Ademonikan, “has a knack for perfection and detail,” as a reporter says about him. In the panoramic shot, Ayo is caged in by the gang and runs from them. The camera is set at a pivotal point and follows the chase from high ground, following them in the nooks and crannies of the ghetto. The shot is seamless. We see the camera move vertically and horizontally without the viewer noticing movement while witnessing the gang and Ayo running all over the ghetto. That is ingenious. I will, however, withhold an essential part of this film until you watch it.