Shanty Town began fast-paced: a sacked community, blazing guns, thumping bodies, and dissociating families. The first scene – a proem – portends grim, gore, rape and lands ravaged by flagrant rogues.
Directed by Dimeji Ajibola, Shanty Town debuted on Netflix on January 20, 2023, and it explores the (s)exploitation of ladies forcibly tied to work for a kingpin, Scar (Chidi Mokeme), who himself is at the beck of an extensive crime network headed by the unflinching Chief Fernandez (Richard Mofe-Damijo). True to its title, Shanty Town depicts the dirty inner workings of a social and political landscape run by desperate political juggernauts whose overbearing ambitions cause ripple effects on the common people.
Although underwhelmingly, Shanty Town does open a lead on corrupt politicians and their far-reaching adverse influences.
When Netflix teased the movie prior to its release, social media went on pins and needles and netizens recoiled from conversations around Far From Home, also a Netflix movie, and Battle on Buka Street, which debuted to rave reviews. With a trailer reminiscent of King of Boys, movie lovers envisaged the thrill and caught sight of Chidi Mokeme, a longtime actor who peers with the likes of Jim Iyke, Ramsey Nouah and Emeka Ike. After a long haul off the scenes due to Bell’s palsy, which he revealed after the movie’s debut, Mokeme came with a natural, almost inherent embodiment of Scar – eponymous in its most physical and psychological way possible. Chidi Mokeme’s performance was just stellar.
With support from Nollywood august faces Ini Edo, Ali Nuhu and Uche Jombo, and go-to actors Richard Mofe-Damijo, Shaffy Bello and Shola Shobowale, Shanty Town’s diverse cast is immediately outstanding, especially if their enactments added blush to the less than convincing acting of ex-reality TV star, Mercy Eke (Jackie).
Shanty Town impresses with visuals, too. Nollywood has improved its cinematography in recent times and this is obvious in the ambience, the shots and the colour grading that perfectly capture the breakdown in Shanty. As the camera hovered over Shangisha community displaced by heavy artillery in the first scene, the audience could feel the emotive substance released through the billowing smoke and parched earth. Two scenes from then — or thereabout, a piercing bullet struck Inem (Ini Edo) and her father, and the sound and sight were indeed those of organs truly bursting.
Nudity may have been a conversation to shy away from in Nigerian films but not anymore. Nudity and sex are an integral part of Shanty’s setup and lifestyle; therefore, there’s no way to talk about such a collapse in scruples without showing the part. And so the movie didn’t hold back in showing ladies in the buff. Although social media was thrown into a frenzy because of the nude scenes, especially that of Nancy Isime, the scenes are not unnecessary; they instead help to drive the story and make a point that Shanty is simply raw.
Filmmaker James Omokwe captures the place of nudity in Nollywood better. “If a movie is supposed to be mirroring society, then why can’t we talk about nudity? The thing about nudity in film is that it can be used so far it helps to drive the story forward”, Omokwe told Netng in a 2022 interview.
For many parts of Shanty Town, we see a lot of code-switching, code-mixing and extensive use of Nigerian languages, specifically the Ibibio language. Inem and Moji (Nse Ikpe-Etim) dialogued more in their native language and it was interesting to see the Ibibio language flourish on a grand scale.
Shanty Town came with all the thrill. From bare-knuckle fighters and impeccable bodyguards in gangster suits to deadly slashers and scarred villains, the movie possesses a rewatch value that would endure, at least until another Nollywood ‘bad guy’ usurps the terrifying Scar. On the tail of the thrill clings important lessons: not all that glitters is gold and your favourite politicians involve in dirty powerplays of lies, betrayal, backstabbing and cruelty.
However, with all its thrill, fun turns and message, Shanty Town lacks the originality to seal it as a classic or set it apart among its peers. At different points, the movie appears like a spin-off of King of Boys that draws flesh and idioms from Oloture to make a rounded whole. The plot is often cliche — a politician who controls a mob or a politician who aims to sabotage his rival to become the governor of Lagos.
The first few episodes did just enough to sustain interest but much less to show the true direction of the story, thanks to bland dialogues and overstretched scenes. To make it worse, because it employs action and stunts as a selling point, the fight scenes were always overly explored and, as a result, overarching. The stunts recreated a flattering but deceiving Hollywood-esque feel or a slim-budget Instagram skit copy of a Chinese Kung-fu scene. Stunt is good, but it could mar a project when it isn’t well done, or worse, when it is needless. Shanty Town’s is needless.
Similarly, there’s an obvious lack of attention to the minutest details. How did Jackie send a “voice note” she had started recording to Shalewa (Nancy Isime) after she had been hacked to death by Scar? Who pushed the send button? Perhaps, if Moji’s voice hadn’t been recorded in the voice note, we could have argued that Jackie pushed the send button while she grappled with Scar before her death. But dead people don’t send voice notes.
Again, why would Shalewa check Jackie’s voice message a few days or even weeks after it had been sent? It seemed almost impossible that she had disregarded her benefactor’s call and follow-up message, a friend who had given her 500,000 Naira earlier for her freedom. It was all too convenient that she only read the message while Inem ran into her at Femi Fernandez’s (Peter Okoye) restaurant. If anything, it was a desperate attempt to unknot the plot into a resolution.
As a result, despite all the stretched build-up, Shanty Town’s denouement is overly rushed. Nollywood directors must start seeing the climax of a movie as one of the essential ingredients and stop grinding out resolutions. In a flurry, Chief Fernandez’s ‘Juju’ saved him from a gunfight, a bare-knuckle broke out between rival gangs, Dame Dabota (Shaffy Bello) escapes and Femi Fernandez is convinced to give the police a pass to his father’s exclusive manifesto. Then, the all-too-known epilogue tells us what becomes of the villainous Chief Fernandez.
Shanty Town’s thrill, backpacked by Chidi Mokeme’s stellar embodiment of Scar, is a saving grace. Its lessons on corrupt politicians come next, but it ends there. Scar will live within the pages of our minds long after Shanty Town is gone.
Rating: 6/10
The post Movie Review: Shanty Town’s Salient Lesson Soars On Gore And Thrill But Stalls In Originality appeared first on Nigerian Entertainment Today.
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