My first Nigerian film – the best bits about it is the Nigerian stuff, a melodrama about the battle of a woman from a poor village who is educated in the US courtesy of an oil company scholarship, then comes home to fight against said oil company. It touches on some real, important issues – the difficulty of keeping the peace in a volatile region, third world exploitation, the side-lining of women, etc. The oil company reps aren’t all evil and the locals aren’t all little innocents. Some of the acting is a bit OTT but I went with it all. Unfortunately the movie is bookended with this subplot set in America involving some Nigerian terrorists taking some oil execs hostage – actors in this sequence include Vivica Fox, Michael Madsen, Tom Sizemore, Larry off Magnum PI and Eric Roberts. (There’s also Billy Zane cut into the Nigerian sequences). Talk about straight to DVD. Best performance comes from Mbong Amata. Best feature is the Nigerian location footage.
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