Movie Title: 4th Republic



Year: 2019

Cast[/b]: Kate Henshaw, Enyinna Nwigwe, Linda Ejiofor, Sani Mu’azu, Bimbo Manuel, Yakubu Mohammed, Sani Mu'azu

[b]Genre: Political Thriller

Producer: Kemi ‘Lala’ Akindoju

Director: Ishaya Bako

Writers: Zainab Omaki, Emil B. Garba, Ishaya Bako

Run Time: 1h 59mins


Plot:
A female Governorship aspirant, heads to the election tribunal, when she lsoes the election. The bid to uncover nefarious activities that wnt down the night of the election, leads to unexpected discoveries.



Review:

Quite easily, this story should be about the female Governorship aspirant, Mabel King (Kate Henshaw) and her battle to claim her stolen madate, while maintaining her motto of integrity. At least, that’s what this movie looks like for the most part, however, things aren’t as they seem and this movie proves that massively.

First off, I would like to specially appreciate the writers of this movie. As stated, it is largely based on reclaiming a mandate at an election tribunal, and so, there was substantial dabbling into legal activities, and I must say, the execution was quite brilliant. The writers of this script were impressive with their knowledge, as various elements of the law, as pertains admissibility of evidence, relevance, tendering of documents were explored sufficiently. I mean ,even frontloading was mentioned. Any student of the law would have been greatly pleased by what they saw in this movie, and considering lots of Nigerian movies would rather not explore the legal world, this movie did it justice greatly.

To be sincere, it took me weeks to see this movie, despite having it for a while, I suppose I was far too busy with other things to find time to watch the movie, but I must say, I greatly missed out.

There were so many talking points to this movie, aside the fact that Enyinna will always be a gorgeous, scrumptious meal, even while dressed in attires of questionable fitting. There was sufficient exploration of the political world and all the shenanigans politicians get into, I liked that infusion of the supportive women association and their energetic leader, as well as topics such as greed and a lack of integrity within the political space, despite the best intentions from the participants.

What I liked most, was the lesson, that even in the midst of what is wrong, some people still stand on the right. Ike Obiano (Enyinna Nwigwe) was the man who, in the end, refused to compromise his stance. The man who knew that wrong was wrong, irrespective of the time that had passed, the man who realized that starting on a new slate was easier said than done, and the man who valued his conscience over a promise of glory.
My best part of the movie though, was that I didn’t see the end coming. I know a lot of Nigerian movies have a cliché ending, and it is common place that you know the way the movie will end as soon as you see the cast, however, this one movie did not fulfill that cliché. You wouldn’t know the end until eight minutes to the end. You could take a wild guess, but I kid you not, you still wouldn’t be prepared for the end.

4th Republic is a movie filled with intrigue, each actor put in stellar work. I particularly enjoyed Enyinna (don’t I always? ) and the man I was introduced to, via Genevieve’s LionHeart, and who I’m rather fond of, Yakubu Mohammed, Linda also had quite the performance, I really loved the scenes she got emotional, and there were a decent number of them, and Ms Kate Henshaw, was brilliant, as per usual. The movie is certainly one to watch. It is testament to the fact that Nollywood can still do great movies, without the Lagos faux rich scenarios, that has come to define New Nollywood.

Rating: A solid 7.5/10
Play or Trowey: Play



PS: I wrote this review last year, and only came back to it, because the movie was recently released on Netflix.

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