‘4th Republic’: Good Story, Tedious Delivery – A Review

4th Republic, a 2019 FilmOne production which follows a court petition to overturn an unfair election result, dropped on Netflix on June 13. Directed by Ishaya Bako, 4th Republic stars Kate Henshaw as the conscientious gubernatorial candidate for the fictional “Confluence State”; who tries to go about Nigerian politics the right way.

Plot

Mabel King (Kate Henshaw) is a political aspirant trying to unseat the corrupt incumbent governor of Confluence State, Idris Sani (Sani Mu’azu). After the murder of her campaign manager on election night at a polling site, King has to contest the results of the election. But this involves finding evidence of what happened that night; evidence belonging to an elusive youth corps member.

Cast

The movie stars Kate Henshaw, Sani Mu’azu, Linda Ejiofor, Enyinna Nwigwe, Bimbo Manuel, Yakubu Mohammed, and newcomers Sifon Okoi and Saratu Ibrahim.

Accolades

I think it’s great that movies about women in politics are becoming a thing. Also, using a radio show host to provide exposition especially in a politically-themed film was a nice touch.

The redemption arc for Danladi was an important part of 4th Republic and Yakubu Mohammed delivered his role quite well. The only question is why it took him so long to do the right thing and what life would be like for him afterwards.

The revelation made by the leader of the market women was a nice twist. Mabel King seemed sanctimonious and unrelatable throughout the movie, but that scene drove home the reality of the Nigerian political culture; that even good people do bad things.

This begs to question, do the ends ever justify the means?

Unimpressive acting

I’m just going to come out and say the movie was overdramatised, with the hand gestures and facial expressions. The entire cast acted like they were in a church play.

The Amina character was bland and might have as well just read her lines straight from the paper. Amina’s mother was passionless as well, not angry and determined enough for someone whose child’s life is in danger.

Enyinna Nwigwe’s Ike character was a brooding empty shell of a male persona, giving us absolutely NOTHING to work with. Mabel King’s headwraps had more personality than him.

Also, the white reporter, like almost all white people starring in Nollywood movies, acted so poorly. The lack of energy for a political reporter dulled every scene he entered; unlike Marc Rhys in Isoken who lit up the screen every time. Nollywood should cast better foreign actors or at least give them enough to work with.

The only character that wasn’t a drag to watch was Bimbo Manuel, who did a great job playing a not-so-lowkey henchman.

Lack of subtlety

This entire movie is completely lacking in subtext. The script is too direct, giving no room for context, nuance, or audience interpretation. The characters say what they mean and mean what they say; thereby making the movie unrealistic. People don’t talk like that in real life.

Every single character in 4th Republic has this problem, with every motive in circulation flying at the audience’s faces. It is as though the Nigerian cinema discovered for the first time that characters can have motives. So what we see on the screen are not personalities, but living breathing motives; providing unnecessary exposition for everything.

For a movie with crisper dialogue, please check out Living In Bondage: Breaking Free on Netflix, as well as our review of that movie right here on eelive.ng.

Syncronised speech

In the delivery of their lines, the actors completely lacked flexibility. We were not privy to the full range of emotions we could have felt from this story. The way the dialogue was handled was so far removed from real life. In a crowd full of people chanting, it should not sound rehearsed. Obviously, the characters did not transcribe the script into real conversations.

It appears that every character was just waiting for their cue, as opposed to actually living in that cinematic world. All the interactions came across very unnatural and thus, not engaging. Also, Bukky and Ike’s romance was not convincing. They had no chemistry and the love was just not sweet.

Subtitles

The subtitles for this movie kept making this consistent mistake; not properly labelling the languages. They kept mistaking Hausa for Pidgin and calling Pidgin “Naija”, possibly to make it more palatable for foreign audiences.

By far the most irritating part of this movie was the subplot of Ike’s brother’s imprisonment. It was unnecessary, poorly scripted, and just uninteresting to watch. If his mistake was meant to teach the youth a lesson, it does an abysmal job of that by all standards.

Also, why in the world did Mabel’s car stop? Were the writers too lazy to arrange a proper shooting scene? It seemed as though they stopped JUST to get shot at, which is just annoying.

You can also tell that they were trying super hard to endear the Lucky character to the audience by making him relatable, pragmatic, and witty. But it just came out as him looking annoying, greedy, and a bit sexist.

All in all, this story had the potential to be so much more than its packaging and delivery let it. Check it out here on Netflix.