Anakle Films, Edeti Effiong Film & Netflix Presents Richard Mofe-Damijo (Paul Edima), Ade Laoye (Vic Kalu), Alex Usifo (General Issa), Olumide Owuru (Damilola Edima), Shaffey Bello (Big Daddy), Ireti Doyle (Police Commissioner), Sam Dede (Angel)Bimbo Akintola (Professor Craig) Director of Photography, Yinka Edwards; Executive Producers, Editi Effiong, Uyai Umoren Effiong, Kola Oyeneyin, Adesubomi Plumptre, Ezra Olubi, Toyin Adewunmi, Bienose Tito Ovia, Odunayo Eweniyi, Somto Ifezue, Joshua Chibueze, Gbenga Agboola, Kola Aina, Olumide Soyombo; Story/Screenplay, Edeti Effiong, Bunmi Ajakaiye; Co-Producer, Yinka Edward; Producers, Kemi Lala Akinjodu, Edeti Effiong; Director, Editi Effiong. © 2023
The Black Book is not a real-life documentary of a man’s nightmarish experience in the oil manufacturing industry. You may think Oloibiri(2015) tells lies. It is a fictional story that takes place in Kaduna, Northern Nigeria. But writers give the story non-stop incident after incident to get viewers’ eyes glued to the screen. It is a novelty worth watching, though. Like a reviewer once said, if you missed the first ten minutes of an action film, all you have left is “Get out of the car!” “Take him. Come on, let’s go!” “Get down!” Come on, get in the car!” These are commands Angel (Sam Dede) passes to his posse of gangsters, during a skirmish with SAKS (government police) in the kidnapping of Professor Stella Craig, Director General of NEOC, Nigeria Oil and Energy Company. A young gangster is taken by SAKS but mysteriously released.
As I said in the first paragraph of this review, The Black Book is no exception. Machine guns on shoulders and guns mounted on top of police cars were fired in a public space causing an imaginable panic, commotion, and pandemonium. And when the guns seized shooting, an oil executive and his baby in the crib were kidnapped: “The police describe the suspect as male, dark, tall, and with dreadlocked hair.”
The evening news broadcast relays the description of the escaped culprit in the kidnapping of Professor Stella. It always happens everywhere in the security force: “Bring in anybody who fits the profile, and let’s get over this before somebody loses his job!” Damilola Edima (Olumide Owuru) befits the description of the wanted man, and he gets caught in the crosshairs by matching the profile of the kidnapper. In a hurry, they shoot Damilola Edima, the only son of a renegade who left the gang over twenty-five years ago and turned into a born-again preacher in a church.
I have never seen RMD in such action movies, adrenalin-drenched like Sylvester Stallone, in his prime in Rambo: First Blood (1982). Not even in Zero Hour (2019). What enthused me about the film is that I saw RMD go out of his gentlemanly element for the first time and act as a renowned stooge or hooligan, like one fighting over something his life depended on––claim his nephew’s business conglomerate. Here he acted as the leading man with a good heart, out to reconcile with his past. God and the church help him because this could be a death wish.
In The Black Book, he had turned away from the street and all its acts of killing and other sinful acts in exchange for the church as a Deacon. This one day he is preaching to the congregation, “God can forgive us our past sins because some of us have done some terrible things in our lives. We have all committed grave sins in our lives. But the good news is that this Bible that we read …it says in Second Corinthians 5 verse 17…. Everything you have done before, God has thrown away….Praise the Lord.”
As he preaches from the pulpit, in this scene we juxtapose with the scene where his only son is shot on the beach by SAKS officers. By circumstances presented to him here, he immediately assumes, his past has come alive to fight him. For the only thing he calls his own in this world is shot dead. He had to claim the body of his dead son, wherever he was buried. So, the machinery of this drama is focused on the mind and the vindictiveness of Paul Edima (RMD). He has turned into his old self, a killing beast. His hunger to avenge the death of his son. Nothing more. And as spectators, we are made to side with Paul for the loss of his son, even temporarily. He had done lots of killing in his youth but like us who have committed sins in our past, repented and entered the church. But temporarily I said, until he comes across Victoria, whose mother had perished in his hands, as she sat on the typewriter.
From here on, Paul embarks on a hallucinatory journey and a death wish to face his past life and sins. He has two principal enemies: SAKS (govt), and the General, and his gangsters. Added to his dilemma in accomplishing his goal is Victoria (Ade Laoye), the investigative journalist on a parallel investigation of the death of Paul’s son. They converge but on ugly grounds. Paul had shot Victoria’s mother; she too, was an investigative journalist who had probed all the crimes in Kaduna and documented everything in a sacred black book.
Now that Paul runs into Victoria as an investigative journalist, probing into the death of his son, and later knowing that Paul had killed her mother, twenty-five years ago, but now playing her protector, is hard for her to put her guard down around him. At some point in the moment of truth, he had to come face to face with the truth, when Victoria pointed her gun at him. No, some things we do in life are not easily washed away as Paul preached to his congregation. Here he comes face to face with the ills of his past.
However, both Paul and Victoria had to forge a relationship against the common enemy, General Issa, who had put Paul on Victoria’s mother’s head and perpetrated all the killings in Kaduna. Yet, the SAKS police force had been implicated in killing his son. They now had two-pronged factions to contend with. When finally they achieve their goals, even at the point where Victoria points a gun at Paul under duress, they ultimately destroy General Issa and his criminal empire and get hold of The Black Book that would go on to prosecute all the rogue business tycoons and politicians and crimes.
Let us contend with the fact that Paul became a renegade twenty or, so years ago. What plot mechanics the story didn’t resolve is, that Paul never had a singular vision. Or, can we blame that on the writer packing his plate with a buffet of plots? Paul is thrust back onto the street, not to kill anybody again. He had retired from that life, a long time ago. The new mission is to let SAKS tell him the burial place of his son. Along the way, he collided with Victoria, whose mother Paul had shot, and from her, he collected The Black Book, yet handed it over to General Issa to save Victoria’s life. The showdown with the General is to retrieve The Black Book which he did under a hail of bullets.
Then comes the plot involving Big Daddy (Shaffy Bello), she reprised her role, as Sola Sobowale in King of Boys (2021), though on a lower scale. She doesn’t have the flame and the nuances of Sola. Her husband was killed by General Issa and was ready to settle the score with him, through the help of Paul. Big Daddy with the help of the ragtag Fulani women, (Buku Haram style attack), in a well-orchestrated attack on General at his farm, obliterates his guards and gets to him. After saying this and that about The Black Book and its story structure, Angel and Dipo are arrested, and General Issa and his fumigation crew are all prosecuted. Still, the retribution of General Issa and Angel isn’t commensurate with the numerous crimes they committed. Yet, I give this picture the due it deserves. I see innovations comparable to Oloibiri.