FilmOne Distribution and Productions, The Movement Pro. Pictures Aesthetics Of Filmmaking, Bank of Industry-Nollyfund, A Ibidolapo Ajaye Production present Gabriel Afolayan (Kossi), Damilola Adegbite (Oyin), Sani Danja (Abubakar), Bolanle Ninalowo (Rocky), Udoka Oyeka (Toye), Wole Ojo (Femi), Sharon Ooja (Sonia), Adeolu Adefarasin (Emmanuel), Wolo Ojo (Mr. Martin)Sambasa Nzeribe (Det. Hammed), DJ Izybeatz (Kachi), Femi Dayo Akinboro (Muhtar), Adore Akande (Mrs. Martin), Tina Mba (Police Captain), Adekola Odunlade (Cabo). Writer/Director, Akinyemi Sebastian Akinropo; Producer, Ibidolapo Ajayi; Director of Photography, Daniel Ehimen. © 2019.
Coming From Insanity, ending up with a blown and bandaged head, and headed into oblivion. He is the younger brother of Kunle Afolayan, the Nollywood film maverick. Gabriel bites bit by bit, even with his teeth, into the rock of Nollywood royalty. To wit: Coming From Insanity is partly financed by Nollyfund. You may think he is riding on the ‘Afolayan’ name. No! He earns every morsel by himself. From The Score (2012), his debut on the silver screen, to Citation (2020) and Lugard (2021), Gabriel has shown us he is a no-bull actor. If I say I love this guy, I will be breaking the bounds in reviewing literary subjects. My weakness for falling in love with honest acting and actors must be my fault.
My last review is on a story from Transvaal, Collision (2022), where racial themes form the bedrocks of their drama. There’s no present-day South African tale that remains clear from racial questions. Stories like Mapantula (1988), Sarafina! (1992), Cry The Beloved Country (1995) are commonplace themes. Like Hollywood and American narratives of old: In the Heat of The Night (1967), Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner (1967), and No Way Out (1950).
Nollywood doesn’t have to deal with such themes. Ethnic discrimination (The Bridge) 2017, Bank heists (The Millions) 2019, and industrial espionage (The Department) 2015 are Nollywood’s present and notable pieces. But the most frequent, however, are drug, human trafficking, body-part harvesting, money laundering, and human trafficking. And its unpredictable results are what this review is all about. Kossi (Gabriel Afolayan), like thousands of his kind, is smuggled from Togo and ends up in the household of Mr. and Mrs. Martin (Wolo Oji/Adore Akande). Kossi bonded with their daughter, Oyin (Damilola Adegbite), in the Martins’ home, like a sister.
When Toye could suspect that the houseboy, Kossi, is behind the counterfeit scam, he becomes enraged, clothed in jealousy. His estranged fiance’ Oyin (Flower Girl) 2013, couldn’t let him by bribing him with hot sex on his office desk. She had some bond with this Togolese counterfeiter. Oyin has come a long way in her relationship with Kossi. Both look at each other as brother and sister. Fifteen years ago, she had helped Kossi to run away back to his home country, Togo. But Kossi ends instead in the service of the Martin family’s son, Femi (Wole Ojo).
Coming From Insanity is a tight script. Mr. Martin could tell his wife, Mrs. Martin, that the Togolese refugee issue must only stay on her mind. Like most women who seized upon the first opportunity of cheap labor, she believed there was a civil war in Togo. There’s no limb chopping, eye gorging, and babies extracted from mothers’ wombs and killed in Togo. “Children were dying, and Kosso must be saved.” Mrs. Martin asserts. Mr. Martin could not accept the presence of Kossi in the household. At last, he had to move over to Oyin and Femi, both kids of the Martins.
In passing, I will like to address a personal experience about this story. My Graphic Arts Department head once told the printing management class that “printers are a necessary nuisance to society.” Yes, they are, as I live to find out. Shortly after, an FBI field officer visited our class and addressed us on the most dangerous tool of life we were about to cultivate. “Printing and Printers could cause wars and peace; could get rich by the numerous printing techniques available and spend the rest of their lives in jail by misusing that same technique.” He admonished us. He demonstrated to our class the easy method of making counterfeit from a desktop printer. Many times after that lecture, I had the temptation to try my hands at it, but I didn’t have the gut. Kossi has a criminal soul.
Kossi follows the intricate method of coming up with a counterfeit that passes for the actual United States one hundred dollar bill. Oluwale Market in Lagos, where one can quickly get the birth certificate of Jesus Christ, offers Kossi the opportunity, from ink to paper. Soon he forms a posse consisting of Emmanuel (Adeolu Adefarasin), Kechi (DJ Izybeatz), his old friends, and recruits two young guys. Soon, they trade half a million hundred dollar bills to A Hausa buyer, Abubakar (Sani Danja). Kossi’s karma is to go back to Togo in a private jet plane with lots and lots of bags of money, which is what he’s pursuing.
Kossi and his friends’ life change into a wealthy and flamboyant style. Kossi crosses his former housemaster’s son, Femi, who he had served as a houseboy, in the nightclub, and pays the bouncer to drive him off from his beloved Sonia (Sharon Ooja). Femi’s Sonia now loves Kossi because he has lots of money. Femi tells Toye (Udoka Oyeka), the Detective, and Oyin’s fiance, in the presence of Oyin, about the dazzling display of money by Kossi at the nightclub. Paying a bouncer, Rocky (Bolanle Ninalowo), with a hundred-dollar bill to throw him out of the club. The revelation rings a bell for the source of the counterfeit distribution in Lagos. The funny counterfeit bill Toye found in Oyin’s room confirms his belief.
When Toye and his underboss, Det. Hammed (Sambasa Nzeribe)–The Ghost and The Tout–(2018) traces the source of the counterfeit to the Hausa neighborhood; Abubakar sensed trouble because the detectives warned him about Kossi. Yet, Abubakar wants to rip Kossi one last time, so he ordered one million dollars from Kossi to be shipped on a Friday. Like all shady deals, Abubakar, knowing the Detectives are on Kossi’s tail, cheats him out of million dollars and beats him to a pulp. With the help of Rocky, his posse saved him from the dungeon in Abubakar’s beach house and got away with the loots.
The exciting part of Coming From Insanity is the Oyin and Kossi relationship plot which started when both were this young; their relationship runs as an undercurrent in pushing the narrative to the end. Kossi had gone to live with Oyin and her brother Femi, who didn’t give a damn about the boy. The bond and love remained between Oyin and Kossi almost to the point of being lovers. This last time, she helped Kossi escape the police dragnets, helped him buy a private jetplane, and got away with millions of dollars from Nigeria to Togo.
The writer, Akinyemi Sebastian Akinropo, achieves his literary ambition by landing this story arc to a stunning conclusion. At the film’s beginning, we see a truck plying a rugged, muddy road in the outback of Togo and a Nigeria border area. He places our lead character, Kosso, in the car brought to Nigeria and sold. And he commandeered the lead, Kossi, to leave the shores of Lagos in his very own plane. Kossi accomplishes his resolute promise that the only time he will return to Togo will be in a private jet plane with bags full of money. A million United States dollars in a briefcase and a Ghana-must-go bag full of N 350 million, back to his home country. Whoever dared pull such a stunt is a real motherf***er! According to Akinropo, this story is drawn from a real-life story.