Xandria Productions, in association with Stella Marie Schools, present Genevieve Nnaji (Chioma Opara), Omotola Jalade-Ekeined (Anya Opara Machino), Barbra Opara Chinma (Young Chioma), Clem Ohanze (Papa Opara), Larry Ulrich (Jalen Turner), Odalys Garcia (Caroline Vasquez), Jeff Swarthout (Don Deccico), Ann D. Carey (Patricia Barone), Precious Ebelechukwu Okaro (Young Anya), Jon Morgan Woodward (Michael Machino). Producer, Paula Moreno; Writers, Chineze Anyaene, Samuel Tilson; Executive Producers, Uche Anyaene, Emeka Anyaene; Director of Photography, Keith Smith. © 2010
I have not seen the latest Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde’s Rattlesnake: The Ahanna Story (2020). I heard it is dark and cold. Directed by her erstwhile A Private Storm (2010) husband, Ramsey Nouah. I hope the lead doesn’t have his own private storm raging. You bet it would be one of those, “You kill my mother, I’m going to shoot you between your balls,” crime movies, as Kelvin (Jim Iyke) could yell out to another gangster in Left Alone (2012). Cassandra (Omotola) was shot in the back. I will look at it and tell you how it is.
Since A Private Storm, I have never seen Omotola so cowed and traumatized as in Ije. Here in Ije, she’s just another black girl caught in the mix. Her lawyer, Patricia Barone (Ann D. Carey), wants her to admit to triple murders of one Black man and two Caucasians. We talk about an African accused of a heinous crime in America in such a racial landscape. She’s looking up at fifteen years in prison, life in prison, or the death penalty.
She had been in the room when her husband, Machino, playing card with a young Caucasian and a Black guy, went wrong. She orchestrated every statement from this point on in the story for her to look good. The American judiciary system doesn’t buy into such ideas riddled with bullet holes of falsities.
Then her sister, Chioma (Genevieve Nnaji), shows up in the American, California terrain to help her sister out of jail. Your guess is as good as mine.
Patricia Barone, putting on air during a conversation with Chioma, let go some empty bull; Chioma didn’t buy into it:
Barone, “ A second-degree murder conviction carries a penalty of fifteen years to life. And I’ve been trying capital murder cases most of my career, and I’ve won more than I’ve lost. But what I can’t tell you, Chioma is that, in cases like this….”
Chioma, “When you said in cases like this…you mean involving an African immigrant and a rich white man?”
Barone, “That’s an element here.”
Chioma, “Do you believe…?”
Barone, “It doesn’t matter what I believe.”
Chioma, “But you want her to admit to something…that could put her in prison for years.”
At the end of the meeting with Barone, Chioma points to the document in front of her:
Chioma, “Um, you have misspelled her name. Anyanwu…with an ‘A.’
Chioma could not do business with a lawyer who can wrongly spell her client’s name.
Chioma, an Igbo tribe from Eastern Nigeria, has a heart of gold but deliberations and determinations as stern as steel. She meets her sister’s case being almost skewed. After the first conference with her lawyer, Barone, she senses her sister has no chance for the heck that she is African. Like all Igbos, of the hundreds I have known over twenty years in North Carolina, failure is hardly in their vocabularies. She comes to take her sister back to Niger. She’ll stop at nothing, even if she offends the law; of course, she did but never cared, and in fact, it was a blessing in disguise.
She first fired Patricia Barone and bonded up with a young handsome Black lawyer, Jalen (Larry Ulrich), who is fired by Barone in the presence of Chioma. The former lawyer had bungled up Anya’s case without collecting evidence and looking closely at the human aspect of her client. She gets offended when Jalen represents Anya. “I’m grabbing a front-row seat to watch Deccico and his lions tear you apart,” Barone yells in the phone to Jalen. Jalen cares not. He sees this African client’s character in close contact, assuming the predicaments of Black Americans in cases like this. After his first appearance in court, Chioma cannot withhold her praise for Jalen, “…did we do the right thing choosing you?” “You did,” he assures.
The story takes off when Jalen represents Anya. Chioma’s ever snooping around to find evidence or a witness continues. She finds a female pendant on the floor that didn’t belong to Anya but points to the presence of another person who was present in the room that night. Carolina Vasquez (Odalys Garcia) owns the pendant and gives the most damning evidence in court against the prosecution.
However, for a client-attorney relationship, Jalen, at the sight of Chioma’s no-makeup charm and beauty, becomes enamored and takes a romantic swipe at her after the visit from the Jazz club. Who couldn’t be, seeing that unvanished, primitive, and native African beauty? I used to date a girl of Genevieve’s stature, same face, same lips. (No fantasy intended). I never got enough of kissing those thin lips. My tung would rummage under those thin lips, that mint-fresh mouth, and she’ll be breathlessly holding me in. Gosh, it was beautiful. Jalen is rollicking in it.
Chioma will stop at nothing as I said earlier. To fight for her sister’s innocence, Chioma gets locked up too for evidence tampering, which in a way turns out to be a blessing in disguise. During her brief imprisonment, Chioma meets a prisoner with a Nigerian family connection to whom Anya had said the true story that took place that night. And about her rape incident when her father had killed her raper.
Chioma confronts Anya about it and admonishes her for hiding the fact from both her and the lawyer. Anya has to face the court, with her triumphant coral traditional bead on her neck. She has to face the court and tell how the two guys raped her and her husband, who she thought could come to her help, comes opening his zipper to have a piece of the action. She gets hold of Machino’s gun and shoots them all. She is set free by a jury of twelve. What carries weight in Jalen’s irony about the case is when he says to Chioma, “The truth is, your sister won her freedom, not me.”
One element stands out in this story: The spiritual bond between the two sisters is cemented by the Uchenna male coral bead. Anya had taken the bead with her to America, unknown to Chioma. She says she was jealous when their mother gave Chioma the necklace instead of her. And of all her worldly belongings, she begs Chioma to go to the dead husband’s house and get the beads before they come throwing everything away. Once the bead is recovered, life for Anya and Chioma seems on the right path. As you can hear Jalen calling his mother in the South, “…am coming home…. Don’t call her. I’m bringing someone with me…sort of, from further South.” In Doctor Bello, Eniola (Genevieve) whines, “I’m only doing my job.” I guess she’s doing a helluva job here on this journey, too. She came; she saw and conquered.