The movie draws inspiration from popular films like John Wick, The Equalizer, and possibly Sicario. It accomplishes its objectives through its unique storyline, captivating action scenes, innovative camera angles, and engaging dialogue. ‘The Black Book’ is a daring film that successfully breaks new ground in Nollywood by pushing boundaries. Their motives were clear: to evade law enforcement after kidnapping and killing the family of the Nigerian Energy and Oil Company’s DG (Bimbo Akintola).Įdima finds himself in a situation where he must confront his past and go against former allies to clear his son’s name. Previously, he had renounced his life as a top hitman, only for the very men he once served to murder and unjustly frame his son for their nefarious deeds. The plot follows the story of Paul Edima (Richard Mofe-Damijo), a devoted church deacon forced back into a life of crime. We have been blessed with many daring and game-changing movies from Nollywood this year, but ‘The Black Book’ has arrived to remind us that there is still more to come before the year concludes. Since its release on Netflix on September 22nd, the movie has risen to become one of the top five films in various countries, such as Nigeria, Brazil, the United States, South Korea, France, Argentina, and more. The highly anticipated movie displays a remarkable amount of courage on the director’s end, which seems to have paid off. This quote from Editi Effiong’s directorial feature-length debut, ‘The Black Book,’ is not only a testament to its expert scriptwriting but also a logline of one of the many prominent themes in this film. That is the natural order of things.” -General Issa (Alex Osifo), The Black Book (2023) Repeated references to the Resistance as terrorists are surely designed to echo the cruelties of Guantanamo Bay and the purposes of Bush's regime.“We allow them a sense of democratic freedom but retain power and knowledge so their delusions of liberal society do not lead to anarchy. And the Dutch provocateur is not stopping there. Such horrors are, perhaps, best processed by gallows humour. You suspect the often laughable depiction of conflict may get closer to the messy, unconventional business of war than tenfold tales of enduring nobility. In this dizzyingly complex world, Nazis can be handsome and decent, and the Resistance’s drab warriors corrupt. This is Verhoeven's war.īut if there is parody, the target isn’t the traumas of WWII rather than the dubious moral certainty with which it is so often portrayed. Verhoeven harries proceedings impatient with any worthiness, unable to resist the urge to poke a stick at it - if a scene contains a vat of slopped out human excrement, you can guarantee it’s going be tipped over a half-naked leading lady. The plot propels us unsteadily through the succession of close shaves and tragic blunders that made-up Stein’s turbulent war, and this trembling gait that makes it unlike any other war movie. With the captivating and impressively resilient van Houten portraying much of the ensuing drama with her privates on parade, you might dub it Basic Insurrection. With its morass of double-treble-quadruple crossings and squib-popping shoot-outs, you could coin it Total Reich. While Black Book is a telling portrayal of wartime vicissitudes, it is still has the sensibility of a man who deems restraint the stuff of wimps. Has our lascivious director tempered his randy habits for a tale of courage and honour? Is this a Verhoeven minus the wobbly parts? Black Book is assembled from fragments of truth, a Secret Army-style blizzard of intrigue and death surrounding the remarkable Rachel Stein (Carice van Houten), an indomitable Jewess who disguising her origins - collar and, most sensibly, cuffs - ends up fraternising with the local German bigwigs on behalf of the Dutch Resistance. Now he’s back, but instead of subverting Hollywood’s generic ways, he has returned to his roots to make a Dutch language WWII drama, fuelled by his own experiences of growing up under the Nazi occupation. Part deranged part naughty schoolboy part thrilling, whimsical filmmaker, he stood for something heroic: sticking two fingers up at whatever establishment came within range, utilising a triple-whammy of ultra-nudity, ultra-violence, and ultra-cheek. The flying Dutchman’s lusty approach to filmmaking, a singular mission to detect the limits of common decency and pursue a course far north of them, hid a febrile, satirical mind, a need to gnaw and press at the moral platitudes of Hollywood formula. It’s been six years since Paul Verhoeven last flashed a leading lady’s nether regions or exploded a human head like a watermelon and, boy, have we missed him.
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