Story/screenplay by Miriam Ogbonna, directed by Frederick Leonard (also starring as Pastor King) as well as Desmond Anyawun and Executively produced by Frederick Leonard himself, this faith-based film with a runtime of 2hours 2minutes is currently available for streaming on the latter’s YouTube channel with same name.

SYNOPSIS: (MAY include spoilers)

Pastor King Oriakwu (Frederick Leonard) is a devout man of God, respected by his congregation and loved by his devoted wife Dakore (Uche Montana). He wakes up one morning and realises that everything he’s ever held dear has been a travesty all along. Will he confront his fears or would he hold on to faith?

MY TAKE:

In all honesty, I approached this movie with huge reservations. Would you blame me? I mean, in recent times, we’ve been quite inundated with the excessive churning out of bland movies. Hence, I wasn’t very expectant of anything particularly fascinating but I’m here to say without any iota of doubt that I was blown away by the storytelling here; much respect to the writer.

The twists…THE PLOT TWIST would blow your mind. Then the end, simply a breath of fresh air…it would make you smile. Hardly any cliches here! Now, THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!

Story/Plot:

The story highlights lies, deception, infertility issues, obsession, dedication to a true calling, infidelity and the need to know one’s status as regards HIV. Without being overly preachy, the movie naturally gives a Christian ambience. The plot with a twist you won’t see coming you’d realise is straightforward in the end. Questions are answered as you follow through quite attentively.

Casting/Performance:

The lead actors delivered crisp 👌The combination of the cast is perfect. By this, I refer to Uche Montana, Frederick Leonard and Cynthia Clarke. However, some of the supporting actors didn’t really interpret their roles as much especially the actor who played the role of the other Pastor who took over Pastor King at some point.

Cynthia Clarke did a thing with her role here as a seductress. Her accent is always delicious to listen to. Her beauty, simply alluring! I’d like to see her in a movie with Sunshine Rosman (I want to check something…that is if they haven’t been featured together already). UM & FL gave a powerful performance too. Ah! FL is who he says he is! Guy’s great with his role delivery, no cap!

Direction/Execution:

While the directing here is good, the duration was unnecessary long. As a result, the movie felt too slow paced that even at a 1.25x speed, it still felt like tortoise-race. However, the dialogues remained engaging enough to keep a viewer like myself glued. There was intrigue and suspense. The approach to storytelling worked well.

Frederick Leonard may just be the Tyler Perry of Nollywood when it comes to telling Gospel related stories. I’m loving it as I’m always an advocate of doing something and doing it well. This worked.

Makeup/Location/Editing:

The Church location looked like the one several producers have used in several movies. Be that as it may, the hospital scene is good. Makeup is natural especially UM’s look. I loved it. Hair was equally beautiful. Editing was good but the water mark needed to have been more centralised (in the middle of the screen).

Camera quality:

The colour grading was good but the picture quality sometimes looked hazy. Overall, it was beautiful.

Background Music:

I loved the background songs particularly the one when Damsel (Cynthia Clarke) was doing some clean up. I’ve heard about two of the songs used here on YouTube (part of my playlist of my favourite relaxation songs actually). I guess the producer got copyright permissions to them.

Lesson:

Sometimes, the person closest to you is the one hurting you and cutting you deep!

Observation/Questions:

1. I’m still trying to figure out where the very first scene of this movie fits into in the entire story. I mean the one where the seductress was doing some zipping down and Pastor King was asking God for mercy. That scene did not connect with what we later knew.

2. In a hypothetical scenario that what happened was real, who goes to perform deliverance or exorcism in a lady’s house alone? What happened with going with a prayer team?

3. Some of the scenes were unnecessary and overly prolonged. Probably so in order to extend the runtime; all for profit maximisation. But at whose detriment? A perfect example was when Damsel was doing some tidying up. We didn’t need to see the whole nine yards of her cleaning up.

4. Duration could easily have been reduced effectively by at least 30minutes. The pacing was too slow

5. Again, in a hypothetical situation that the entire second act of this film was true, how does the seductress sleep and wake up with full makeup on? Please make it make sense?

6. Was the pastor right on the action who took towards the end? On the other hand, was the reason for Dakore’s action a justifiable one or she just lied? I’d like to know please.

Conclusion:

Besides its head-scratching moments (which most later cleared out), this was interesting to watch. It was suspenseful, intriguing, engaging, educational, captivating, believable, relaxing and enjoyable. Indeed, there are some truly called men of God who have gifts of foresight and deep revelations. This was by no means predictable. It was a good show. Kudos to everyone involved in the project.

Verdict: 5.8/10

Have you seen this? What did you think?