The movie Broken Cross premiered at the Odeon Cinema Greenwich on Friday 14thNovember 2014. Prominent on the red carpet were HRH Theodora Ibekwe Oyebade and Ayo Oyebade, Marie Gomez, Tolu Yesufu, Toyin Moore, Danny Erskine, Florence Blaster Okonkwo, Collins Archie Pearce, Daniel Ndlara Robson, Mary Lawal, Malcolm Benson, Toksy B, Julian Sandi, Riyike Alayande amongst others.
Storyline: Broken Cross is an emotional story centred around a young girl Esther. She is haunted by her past upbringing as a child, living with her grandmother and later on joined her mother who lived with an abusive step father, she battles to come to terms with her family breakdown. Her father got married to a jealous step mother, she hates Esther with passion. Esther’s life changed when she stated to suffer a lot of abuse from her step father and this completely turned her life upside down and made a young innocent good girl suddenly turn to be a bad girl, turning to alcohol and drug abuse.
The movie is a mixture of romance, comedy, action, lies & deceit and a little bit of thriller as well. This movie is different from the normal African movies that we watch in that one will not easily make up what is going to happy next.
According to the synopsis of the movie, this movie was set to raise the standard of African movies and to show the world that we can do it to a very high standard. The movie was Produced and Directed by Daniel Ndlara Robson of Star Galaxy Media, a UK based Zimbabwean upcoming Director and Producer.
I would like to start by commending the Director and his cast for effort. It is not easy to come out with a production and bring it to live. Hearing all that happened during the making of the movie, I can only give kudos to the team as this is his first effort. However, If I had not read the synopsis if the film, I would be lost as 20 minutes into the movie, even as a critic I did not know the direction of the movie.
Again the movie ended with a message about teenage pregnancy and HIV. This on its own is commendable, but the storyline should have been written in such a way that it was clear that these were the central themes of the movie. I think in terms of the message, people watching the movie may have been confused and take away the end from the script would have been unable to tell what the central message was. This is a learning curve and hopefully in the next production, these points would be addressed.
Cast: The movie showcased Danny Erskine as George Cole, HRH Theodora Ibekwe Oyebade as herself promoting an NGO, Florence Blaster Okonkwo as the Millionaire widow, Collins Archie Pearce as Jeffrey Rodney, Daniel Ndlara Robson as Danny Bradley, Mary Lawal as Esther Bradley, Julian Sandi as Pastor Bakasi amongst others.
I observed that some of the cast were novel to acting and to the industry. This showed in the way they acted as most of the cast were not actually acting but had just crammed their lines. This is as a result of inexperience. When one is acting, the passion, the action needs to show in the character they play and this was lacking in most of the characters.
Taking an example, if someone is meant to be crying, there should be real tears from the time she starts crying that convinces anyone watching that she is crying. An example of the cast that seemed to cram his lines and in my view was just shouting was Esther’s step dad when she was young.
However, there were positives. In a previous movie, I had commented about Danny Erskine’s acting skills. However, in this movie, I must commend him. I think the role fit him, I think he studied the role, I think he acted the role, he convinced me and went away from talking into acting, in a nutshell, he nailed his role in this movie. Well done Danny. I am looking forward to you even getting better in subsequent roles that you are given. Collins, although your script was flawed which is not your fault (see my final comments), you also nailed your role especially where you sarcastically caught Danny having an affair with your fiancée. That was sarcastic, funny and real. You brought some life into the movie.
Picture Quality: The picture quality was fair and could be improved more. The aerial views were so bad and in some cases the lighting probably of the camera affected the picture e.g. where the pastor was speaking with Esther’s friend, Fabian. If one is going to premiere a movie, the Director needs to look at the final cut and possibly edit such scenes.
Sound Quality: There were buzzy sounds in most scenes and the sound quality could have been better. However, I commend the effort with regards to effects. The sound quality with regards to the impact of the accident for example was good. With regards to sound, there were good and bad parts.
Overall performance: Firstly, I believe that when writing a script, one needs to research the area of the script. An example is when a client came to Collins in his office, I heard him say “we would not file a counter claim” and immediately as a lawyer myself I wrote “Counter claim in a criminal matter”? At the end of the movie, at the scene of the conference, I also heard “Commit suicide to kill herself”. That made me and those seating next to me laugh and in fact reminded me of the kind of thing the First Lady of Nigeria would say. These are things that should be checked and should not find a place in the movie.
I was shocked that the movie started abruptly and there was no introduction to the movie. This made the movie from the beginning difficult to follow.
In a scene, I also saw a plane flying or landing and at the same time there was someone in the room. I did not seem to understand that overlap, a plane flying in a room, that is novel. In post-production, this should have been eliminated.
Finally, even a member of the cast was confused as the ghost of grandma just showed up and there was no correlation to show that grandma had died.
There were good parts and not too good parts of the movie. While I commend the final scene, the introduction was abrupt. There should have been a link between the scenes to introduce such an important scene with what was possibly the message of the whole movie.
For a first attempt,although in totality, I believe it was a bad movie, I commend the Director and his team for trying, especially when I heard all the things that happened on set. However, as a reviewer and critic, I need to write what I saw. I believe taking these points on board, the next production can only get better and I wish the team all the best in future productions.
Watch the trailer:
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