Movie Review: Oloture

The Good

Impressive cinematography. Given the movie’s theme, the cinematography captures people and places in fitting surrealism so that the audience’s attention remains focused on the movie’s theme. There is no distracting glamour. Just gritty, sweaty and hard-hitting unglazed reality.

The golden oldies classic highlife soundtrack takes you on a nostalgic ride back to 70s/80s Nigeria when life and music were much simpler and uncomplicated. We had good (scratch that, make that great) music back then.

Sharon Ooja impresses as the titular protagonist, an undercover journalist posing as a prostitute to investigate a sex trafficking cartel.

Omoni Oboli also impresses as the Sex traffic Madam complete with a scowling attitude albeit almost ruined by her (and the movie’s) off-putting obsession with cigarettes.

The Bad

The story was basic and uncomplicated such that it questions why it needed an undercover journalist investigating a sex traffic cartel to drive the storyline.

Nollywood has done the sex traffic storyline almost to death. So, if you’re going to tackle an over flogged storyline with the big names of Ebonylife Films and Netflix behind it, be sure to make it a story that is a cut above the rest.

There were no nuances or intricacies in the story, just your usual wham-bam-fuck-in-your-ghetto-whorehouse-and-now-take-me-to-Europe schtick.

Obligatory gratuitousness; the movie had it like condoms being passed around in a whore house.

The contrived orgy at a politician’s party, the overly contrived road-side and club-house solicitations by prostitutes plying their trade and the nude oath-taking scene that seemed more about adding an element of shock value as it could have been implied in passing rather than having it so elaborately performed.

Then, there was the implausible hint at a possible romance between Oloture and her editor which came off as rather lame.

Equally lame was the bathroom scene where he cold-cocked Sir Philip.

The Ugly

That scene of Patrick Doyle’s Sir Philip raping a drugged Oloture, hands down, deserves the AMVCA for Ugly Sex Face of the year!

In the end, while Oloture somewhat delivers, it clearly delivers less than it promised or was expected given the big production names behind it.

You go in expecting to see a truly fantastic movie but at the end when the credits start rolling (or more accurately; pretty much in the movie’s first half) it feels like being invited to an orgy and you pop the blue pill expecting to go rock hard all night long only to achieve a flaccid rise. 4.5/10