RamseyFilms, and Sozo Films Productions present Gideon Okeke (Tukunbo), Darasimi Nadi (Nike), Adunni Ade (Iya Mulika), Funlola Aofiye (Folashade), Majid Michel (Raymond/Agba), Chide Mokeme (Gaza), Tosin Adeyemi (Lisa), Michael Smith (Bankole Smith), Stanley Chubunna (Chukwudi), Ivie Okujaye (Aziba). Director, Ramsey Nouah; Written by Todimu Adegoke, Thecia Uzozie; Producers, David Karanja, Chris Odeh, and Joy Odiete; Cinematography, Mohammad Atta Ahmed. © 2024.
Tokunbo’s character, whose name the claim of this movie is named after, reminds me of the diehard character in American film history, Bruce Willis. Tokunbo is a diehard here. He has been on the street and smartly carried on numerous shady deals, getting paid and living happily with a wife and a sick kid. Upon his third delivery, he is shocked to find that his courier job will entail cocaine delivery as well. He is in utter shock when he sees a sleeping ten-year-old girl in the back seat of his car, with instructions on the window of his driver’s side window to deliver the girl to the border in three hours. Now that is our in medias res. The writer has introduced the nature of the melodrama that will unfold in the film on the screen of your plasma TV.
The story itself: A just appointed saucy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, the success of a single mother with a heap of a chip on her shoulder. In fact, to her head. She is built ruggedly and rudely. Not graceful in stature. And by her stern look, she could play Lady Macbeth with no sweat. Folashade is the first female Central Bank of Nigeria Governor. She had a controversial meeting with her board of directors in a closed-door and stepped on some toes in that meeting; what Folashade (Funlola Aofiye) doesn’t realize is that first, she’s a woman with one only daughter, in a position never held by a woman. Second, she’s causing lots of angst and gripe among the powers in Lagos.
Majid can be brutal in his badass parts and still plays it like he was born with it. Well, that is a well-groomed persona in his career. He always plays the villain. He is Raymond/Agba (Majid Michel), Deputy Governor of the Nigerian Central Bank. He is shady like hell. Tokunbo, from Uber Eats to Uber Package Delivery. He had fallen on hard times and tried passenger pickups. They were all driving him crazy. The thing is, he needs a quick sum of money to pay medical bills for his son’s heart sickness in the hospital bed. In disregard of Iya Mulika, who warned him to stay away from Gaza. He had gone there and asked for a job. Gaza didn’t pay him attention, but shortly after he left, he was offered a pizza delivery job, then a cocaine delivery. The following third delivery he found in the back seat of his car was a ten-year-old girl, asleep, to be delivered across the border in three hours for the whopping sum of 300,000,000 naira. “I’ll do it.” Tokunbo gets trapped between saving his son and delivering a kidnapped kid to the border.
Iya Mulika (Adunni Ade), a female personality working her way up the Nollywood ladder, is a sex slave of Gaza (Chide Mokeme). She’s frightened by his presence, and you see the torture on her face, blueish and black, around her eyes, evidence of abuse. Gaza amputated a boy’s arm, and right in the presence of her and Tokunbo. Once again, she brings the boy in the presence of Tokunbo with a warning to stay away. She lives in the bondage of Gaza, and therefore, there is no escaping. Gaza had sponsored her a loan to start a business, which she couldn’t finish paying, plus the excessive extra sex he molests her with. Iya Mulika and Tokunbo have come a long way, and she looks out for him.
Chide Mokeme (Gaza) plays Ramsey Nouah’s one-time best friend and later nemesis in Merry Men 3. In Nemesis (2023), Ayo (Ramsey Nouah) and Dafe (Chide Mokeme) go mano-a-mano, and Dafe ends up dead. Here, too, as a villain, like most villains, Gaza will not survive. He is the frontman for Raymond/Agba and the Central Bank deputy governor, the racketeer behind the abduction of Nike. Raymond doesn’t want the bank governor to announce the restrictions on the Central Bank of Nigeria to allow the use of cryptocurrency, which doesn’t have the guarantee of gold backing. She isn’t for business as usual, but her deputy, Raymond, is for crookish business.
Raymond and his caboodle are heavily involved in the country’s fake currency deal, the result of Folashade’s daughter’s abduction. The twist in the melodrama is that the secretary assigned to the governor, Aziba (Ivie Okujaye), is in a cahoot with the blackmailers, and Raymond, the governor’s likely paramour, even as she seems to be relying on him to recover her daughter, is a dupe. “I can imagine the mental trauma and torture….” Raymond sympathizes with Folashade over the phone. “Oh no, don’t bother to come to Lagos. You stay over there and hold the fort.” Folashade assures Raymond to stay put in Abuja. All Raymond wants is for Folashade to postpone her 7 pm news briefing and tell her so in a distorted voice from an unknown phone.
The town is cordoned off, and Tokunbo is barricaded inside, strapped as in Strapped (1993), a Forest Whitaker-directed movie. Diquan Michell (Bokeem Woodbine) is in hot soup and must either pledge allegiance to law enforcement to release his pregnant girlfriend from prison or the street gang from which his life isn’t guaranteed. For to the survival of his son on life support–his wife and son are abducted as leverage at Raymond’s hideout, Tokunbo must get to the border in three hours at the scheduled time and collect his 300 million big ones. He needs it. His son, on life support in a medical bed, needs money. The stakes get high for Tokunbo when Gaza tricks him into the criminal game of the underworld. See his face as he freaks out when a man in the white jeep snorts cocaine in one of his deliveries. He has never done human trafficking, and he doesn’t want to do this. Presently, he is under the sword of Damocles.
Yet another twist in this melodrama: Tokunbo and Nike emerge from under the sea to dry land; escaping the dragnet, he takes Nike (Darasimi Nadi) to his old friend, Iya Mulika, who lives in the Lobule ghetto territory, directly under criminal auspices of Gaza, the notorious front man for Raymond. Gaza’s underground spies soon found Nike in Mulika’s possession and summoned her in front of Gaza. She nearly pees on herself. Gaza will have to go man-to-man with Tokunbo in a long-drawn-out duel–tiring scene/sequence. Mulika shoots Gaza in the back and falls as in a whole empire.
Ramsey Nouah must have Living in Bondage running in his DNA as he directs Tokunbo. Living in Bondage involves dealing with the dilemma a man creates for himself to come off on the other side of good fortune. A man could kiss the devil or lay prostrate before a fiery demon in worship, and some ride the thin, sharp edge of life with their lives and families involved. Tokunbo is riding one here right now; hence, the director, Nouah, signals the new life of Tokunbo by bringing in the soundtrack, Living in Bondage. He must deliver Agba’s needs or lose his son and wife, another life in bondage.
The fall of Gaza to the gunshot in the back by Mulika spells the end of the criminal dynasty in Lobule. Remember, Gaza had prophesied his end when he said so after having (molested) hot sex with Iya Mulika, “I swear, Iya Mulika, you will be the end of me in Lagos!” Raymond and Aziba are taken to prison. Another beef I have with Tokunbo is that “Tokunbo,” according to Google, means selling used items. I must be looking past more profoundly than the title Tokunbo. Is Tokunbo’s character used and overused in this film? That will bring me to character rewards from an entire story. One would ask, what is the reward for Tokunbo? Remember, he has lost his son in the kidnapping process, and the 300 million big ones are not forthcoming. I think he is the “overused.” What do you think?