When the Nigerian police murders and frames Damilola Edima, his ageing father Paul (played by Richard Mofe-Damijo) shockingly isn’t seized by a murderous rage. Instead, all Paul wants is his son’s body for burial and to salvage his reputation by proving his innocence. Formerly a ruthless hitman, Paul’s pacifism is inspired by his finding God (he is a deacon), but also by a belief in karmic comeuppance: he takes his son’s death as divine retribution for his own past sins. As Paul Edima finds, it’s neither easy to retrieve a corpse nor to prove one’s innocence within a political system that is rigged against ordinary folk.
Currently streaming on Netflix, The Black Book is the first feature-length film directed by Editi Effiong, who was executive producer of The Set Up (2019) and Day of Destiny (2021). Like many newcomers, Effiong seems eager to prove himself as a serious filmmaker, and what easier way to do this than by taking on a serious subject: Nigerian politics, in all its panoramic nastiness, a world where the police, military and press are morally compromised, at least according to this film. By choosing a political subject, Effiong keeps with the times, as it’s become fashionable for Nigerian blockbusters to play political commentator, with Jade Osiberu’s Gangs of Lagos as a ready example. Even Femi Adebayo’s historical epic Jagun Jagun, which is the furthest thing from a political film, allows for baldfaced political commentary in its third act.
Effiong’s desire to prove his bona fides is also evidenced by his starry cast of veterans: from Alex Usifo to Norbert Young to Ireti Doyle to Taiwo Ajayi-Lycett. As some of these actors have minimal screen time and play characters who are not intrinsic to the story, it’s quite possible they have been cast largely as a marketing ploy. If that is the case, it has worked: The Black Book is currently a global hit; on Wednesday, it became the first-ever Nigerian film to claim the number one spot on Netflix worldwide.
The Black Book strives for realism by both depicting and alluding to major, real-life events in Nigerian political history. Set in 2020, it dramatizes a major talking point in Nigeria that year: the brutality of and extra-judicial killings by the police, especially by members of the defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), an abuse of power that would lead to a nation-wide protest against the police unit. In The Black Book, SARS becomes SAKS; and the catchphrase “soro soke” from the widespread protest appears fleetingly in one scene. In staying faithful to life, one scene also alludes to the mail bombing of Dele Giwa, a real-life Nigerian journalist who was assassinated in 1986.
As a fitting complement to the film’s grim subject, Kulanen Ikyo creates a sombre soundscape. Songs by Fela Kuti and Christy Essien-Igbokwe also give certain scenes a retro vibe. But while it is apt for the subject matter, the sombre mood evoked by Ikyo’s score becomes cumbersome after a while, as it does not allow for more upbeat notes. This is similarly the case with the dialogue which reads as serious, while brooking neither humor nor witticism.
A staid tone, however, is not the dialogue’s only letdown. Sometimes, it also doesn’t cast the characters as believably human, lacking as it often does the nuances of real-life speech and human motivations. When Paul tries to dissuade a journalist, Victoria (Ade Laoye), from investigating his son’s death, she rebukes him by saying, “leaving it for God is the problem with Nigeria.” With its activist ring, the line makes Victoria seem like a plastic character, while rendering her motivations as generic. In another scene where she is on less friendly terms with Paul, she tells another character that she felt safe “until he showed up,” which feels out of sync because Victoria shows up in Paul’s life, and not the other way round. Besides failing to enliven the characters, the dialogue sometimes proves to be logically inconsistent.
Co-written by Effiong and Bunmi Ajakaiye, the story, however, winds up as the film’s greatest drawback. As the story takes one too many turns, it lacks a strong emotional core; what starts as a tale of a father seeking to clear his son’s name co-opts several other concerns. For example, the film also tries to be a story about a father seeking reconciliation with his proxy daughter; at the end, it also tries to be a story about crafty and strong-willed women taking back power from corrupt men. Because there is no proper build-up, the feminist angle feels extraneous and unjustified; so does the dimension that the relationship between Paul and Victoria takes. Their relationship, we are made to believe, is rooted in a secret that goes back several years, and yet when the two characters first meet, neither of them shows a flash of recognition, nor is there any hint of a possible acquaintance. The Black Book offers a bakery-sized plot twist without first giving us a breadcrumb trail.
Some of the plot choices also call the story’s credibility into question. Why, for instance, would the son of a high-ranking politician act as a foot soldier in a kidnapping? For a film committed to portraying Nigerian reality, it misunderstands a basic fact about the country’s political elite, which is that while they may be corrupt, they almost never do the dirty job by themselves. And why, one may ask, would a character be in possession of a book—the titular Black Book (another of the film’s unearned revelations)—containing secrets which can cause his ruin, and yet store it in a safe rather than destroy it? Not only is this implausible, it contravenes the character’s profile as a shrewd schemer.
Yet, it’s not the only time the film fails at characterization, failing precisely because it relies heavily on exposition in revealing character. When one character describes Paul as “the most dangerous man in the country,” it beggars belief because we have not been given sufficient visual proof of this claim. Paul neither shows a capacity for cruelty to justify the qualifier, nor does he show a facility for strategic planning to justify the claim by the same character that he has “plotted eight coup d’états.” One scene where Paul rounds up his son’s killers is meant to demonstrate the breadth of his resources—even street children are on his payroll, recalling the Baker Street Irregulars of the Sherlock Holmes short story series. But by relying on ellipsis, the scene does not make a convincing argument for Paul’s tactical acumen: we are not shown how Paul rounds up the men, but rather are asked to use our imagination to fill in the blanks. But because Paul has not previously proven to be capable of such tactical maneuvering, the imagination has little to work with.
More importantly, the film misses a golden chance to gain a psychological edge by not emphasizing the moral crisis stemming from the conflict between Paul’s new-found Christian ethics and his quest for justice which requires less than Christian-like methods. As Paul stares ruefully at a church in an early scene, it seems like there might be an exploration of his moral dilemma. But it proves to be a false alarm: the film progresses without Paul feeling any cognitive dissonance about being a deacon and having to resort to torture in pursuit of the truth.
Its flaws aside, The Black Book shows the kind of visual crispness that is possible with a large budget. With Yinka Edward manning the camera, this film is pretty to look at; and for a certain kind of viewer, this might be enough to overlook the cracks. For another kind of viewer, the gaping holes in the story and the lack of a cohesive controlling idea will prove too much to ignore. But then, it is only Effiong’s first feature-length film. Perhaps he’ll strike gold on his second outing.