There are many expectations when a film is hyped, and eventually, it is either the film meets up to expectation or not. So for the Nollywood movie “SOOLE”, let’s see if it is worth the hype or a total waste of time.
“Soole” means “cheap ride”, is a story of different travellers who decided not to go to the park, but instead enter a cheap bus to Enugu. A particular lady comes to drop a box which she said she would like to deliver to someone in Enugu. The crux of the story centres around the happenings in a long journey, from a Pastor, preaching and collecting offering afterwards to another selling sex enhancement products.
Eventually, the travellers are being waylaid by thieves and the bag of one of the travellers was stolen.
The thieves later discover that they carried the wrong bag, and instead of taking a bag with money, they carried the bag with dildos.
The thieves had an accomplice in the car, and they decided to call this accomplice to make sure the money is found. The people in the car become curious, wondering why the bag is being targeted and decide to check it. When they find out it is money in the bag, everyone in the vehicle becomes desperate to get the money. Who is the accomplice in the car? Who eventually gets the money?
The storyline has prospects, but it seemed like the writer was trying to achieve too many things at the same time. An hour into the movie, you are still trying to understand where the story is headed, and no visible twist is seen until later. All the actions, shootings, and drama didn’t even happen until later in the movie, and if there is an impatient viewer, the person would have walked away before getting to the movie’s main plot.
The directing is poor, and there are too many unbelievable scenes in the movie.
You cannot easily ignore the scene where Adedimeji Lateef is using a pocket knife to threaten about 12 people, and none of them could attack him. It is even worse because, there are two police officers with guns, a Hausa man with a bow and arrow and a spiritualist. The question is; Is a pocket knife rationally enough to scare these men?
Another disturbing scene is that of the driver waking up in the bush 11 months after he was shot. And then we discover it is the dollars he stacked in this stomach that prevented him from dying. So he was actually in that bush for 11 months? The director could have done a better job. The director’s attempt to infuse comedy was a total failure as the actors were using curse words as their form of humour.
The acting was just fair, and at some point, it seemed like every actor was trying to show their acting prowess. No doubt, there were beautiful actors in the movie, but the characters didn’t just sync. Instead, the actors looked like in each person playing different parts.
More disturbing is the fact that there was just so much noise, and at some point, the dialogues were becoming long, unnecessary and boring.
The production is fair, but the subtitling could barely be seen as it was placed below the screen level. Regardless, Good pictures, Fair costume, Fair make up too. The whole team tried, but for the standard of movies now showing in the cinema, Soole is a NO-NO. To rate it, it would be 3/10