[blockquote align=”centre” author=”EfikoScore: 3.5/10″ style=”font-size: 30px”] A lack of finesse (and finance) hinders the ambition of Tade Ogidan’s “Prison Break” movie. [/blockquote]
Tade Ogidan’s Gold Statue balances a rhinoceros ambition on an ant budget. A general lack of technical finesse also hampers that ambition.
This movie immediately recalls the series Prison Break and the film The Shawshank Redemption. All three involve a prison, an underground tunnel, and an eventual prison break. What Ogidan’s movie lacks though is the other two’s self-reflection. Unlike Prison Break, for instance, its protagonist suffers no moral strain over allowing convicts, some of humanity’s worst, join in an escape plan that will set them loose on civil society. And unlike the other two’s protagonists, this one shows more mettle than smarts. The allure of freedom impels the other two. For this one, it is ambition, greed, and a youthful sense of adventure.
Wale (Gabriel Afolayan) reaches an epiphany during a university lecture. He learns of a pre-colonial gold statue whose existence and location are mired in myth. His eyes widen on learning its market value: 500 million dollars (he later learns it’s actually one billion dollars). A film of uncanny coincidences, Wale’s lineage, we learn, has guarded the secret of the statue’s location for centuries. The secrecy around the statue hints at a paranormal nature. But we see none of that.
This is a film grounded in the material world, though its cinematography sometimes reaches for the metaphysical, and not in a good way. Like in its imperfect use of visual effects to create the exterior of a prison, which Wale would later end up in. Not to mention its tacky use of green screen. In one scene, the potential buyers of Wale’s loot watch a live feed from Dubai against a backdrop that, evidently, is not Dubai.
Wale recruits his best friend Eze (Kunle Remi), and together they hunt down the treasure. The two friends learn the statue is buried somewhere in Southwest Nigeria, and they travel there. To their surprise, they find a prison has been built over it. Their will undimmed, Wale schemes to have himself incarcerated so as to dig up the statue from within the prison’s walls.
This is straight out of Prison Break’s playbook. Only difference is that in Wale’s bid for jail time, he ends up nearly engulfed in the fire of jungle justice. If you think it improbable that one would put his life on hold to hunt an unlikely treasure, more so endanger himself in a Nigerian prison, you are not alone. But this is a film with an affinity with the absurd, one of which is Sola Sobowale’s acting. As Wale’s mother, she is understandably hysteric on learning of her son’s incarceration. But that hysteria knows no bounds. It colours one scene and the other, testing even the most patient nerves.
Now in prison, Wale has to deal with his cutthroat cellmates. This is where the viewer sits up in his chair, psyched to see what troubles await Wale. To see how he either overcomes or crumbles underneath them. But Wale has things too easy. His cellmates tell him to have his mother cook for them, if he is to avoid getting shanked. His overly doting mother is happy to do so, and Wale quickly wins the affection of his cellmates. His time in prison, thus, is without any real hassle.
A particular prison warden, a stickler for the rules played by Norbert Young, looks like he would be Wale’s scourge. But besides a dressing-down that he gives Wale in one scene, their paths barely cross.
There are no pretensions of gravity here. The film flaunts its comic intentions openly. You can tell from its voice-over’s irreverent tone, and from Wale’s off-kilter Efik accent, which he doesn’t really need to feign. And in the end, by how it breaks the fourth wall. If being funny is what it strives for, it succeeds, but only sometimes. It shines the most in those scenes with the male prisoners, with Kelvin Ikeduba as the movie’s comedic standout. But considering its running time, it’s no surprise that those things that made the film funny in its early parts struggled to tease out a grin by its final act. Because, if brevity is the soul of wit, how humorous can a two-hour movie be?
