Luke of Lies

My verdict: 3.5 out of 5

Cast

Alexx Ekubo as Luke

Daniella Okeke as Susan

Eddie Watson as Ubong

Belinda Effah as Shola

Laurel JE as Tunde

Directed by

Emmanuel Mang Eme

Written by

Nelson Jombo

Crime Drama | 1hr 16 minutes 32 secs | Watch here

This was a very simple story about a band of con artists consisting of three individuals: Luke (Alexx Ekubo), Susan (Daniella Okeke) and Ubong (Eddie Watson). Luke and Susan were quite successful in their exploits unlike Ubong who was rather slow and emotional which tends to spoil most of his jobs meaning that he was the weakest link of the three.

So on a good evening, Ubong who usually felt left out, decided to recruit a supposedly street smart Shola (Belinda Effah) whom he saved from a man she owed some money. Now Ubong recruits her initially for his own personal desires but gets jealous when she refuses him and grows closer to Luke who is in a relationship with Susan (who was very suspicious of Shola and always stating she didn’t trust her).

The synopsis of the movie read:

A close knit trio of con artists’ trusting relationship begins to suffer when a street smart savvy young woman is recruited into the group on a whim by one of the weaker members much to another’s disapproval.

Clearly that does not give anything away. However, before I say the things that I found wrong with the movie, I would say for the first time, in a while I was taken by surprise at who the snitch/rat/undercover person was which was good. Also, that was the only good thing about the movie besides the fat budget and amazing equipment.

For me, this story had the potential to be great if they spent the time to allow us know quite a bit about these characters. It was quite the superficial movie, all we got was at surface level. As a viewer, we were not given the time to know who Luke was, why he was into what he was and how come he was super smart. We did not get to know Susan or Ubong as well and why it is so easy for him to get attached.

The dialogues were disjointed, all we hear is Susan bitch and moan about not trusting Shola and the Shola not even given as much screen time for us to understand her. The problem with this movie was that the writer and the director invested so much in surprising us at the end that they created a series of loopholes that kept the viewer confused. An example is Shola and Luke having an affair, that just came out of left field. The director and writer did not even make us believe in Luke’s smartness completely, so as for us to think “ah! she fell in love with his brain“. For a movie trying to wrap a full fledged affair, undercover and fraud in one envelope – all we got was some simple fraud, a one night stand and a flash of undercover.

Moreover, the truth is that for a crime drama movie an hour and sixteen minutes is not enough for us to really invest any kind of emotion or thought process about it because there are so many layers that have to be covered. Layers like the back story of the leads, more than two visible and believable skulduggery before the ‘main job’ for the movie. Also each of the moves are to be shown, not tell us something would be done and not show us because it is a crime drama, we are here to see the crime and not hear it. Hearing it, is like hearing my dog say it wants to act in a drama… nope! not happening.

To be honest, the movie ended well but it bore semblance to a vacuum flask; beautiful finish but very empty on the inside.