Movie Summary:
Lionheart, a leading interstate road transportation company, based in Enugu, Nigeria and largely owned and managed by the Obiagus, sees its future under threat. The sudden ill-health of chairman/CEO, Chief Obiagu (Pete Edochie) and an attempted hostile takeover by the competition prompted by a default on bank loans, leaves the survival of the company in the hands of chief’s first child and daughter, Adaeze (Genevieve Nnaji who also co-wrote and directed) and her uncle Godswill (Nkem Owoh), who is brought in to oversee her efforts.
My Review:
Some heart, plenty of hype thanks to it being the first Nigerian film to be bought by Netflix, but Lionheart is still just a basic movie for us Nigerians and as well as the foreign audiences that may watch it.
It does a passable job of promoting the Ibo culture and language but it is really just a lazy tale. I mean the suspension of disbelief requires such an effort that it makes a small mess of a formulaic story-line (yes, we have seen this story countless times) which is rather cringeworthy: so, their lazy presentation was the best the state director/commissioner of transportation had seen? No one else in the company knew about the loans? No debits on the company’s accounts to show loan repayments? Also, chief did not seem that incapacitated to me either and seemed fully capable of making life and death decisions that could affect his company. Or was it all a test?
So great cinematography and acting by some of Nigeria’s finest, particularly Nkem Owoh but Lionheart adds nothing to the genre but perhaps Nigeria's own version of things.
And yeah, I wish they would have gotten some wise words out of Chika Okpala too; sad to see such talent go to waste.
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