Much ado about nothing in ‘Escape’

Tafadzwa Zimoyo and Tawanda Matanhire

The much-anticipated local feature film “Escape”, which premiered on Tuesday at the ongoing Zimbabwe International Film Festival, does not live up to expectations despite having many heavyweight actors. Although some have described it as “the rebirth of film industry”, the star-studded cast failed to stitch a production that justifies their expertise.

The film, which was directed by Dr Agnieszka Piotrowska and Joe Njagu of Thinking Films has too many steamy and explicit scenes which confuse the storyline.

One good reason why it managed to make such noise before premiere was the cast of celebrities that made people anticipate an epic product.

It follows in the mainstream of first series of Hollywood movies like “Expendables”, “Red” and “Oceans” that have cream but failed to please the audience.

Popular faces in the film include Jose Marques, Maria Wilson, Nothando Nobengula, Eddie Sandifolo, Selmor Mtukudzi, Acie Lumumba, Charles Nzemba, Farai Chugudu, Stewart Sakarombe, Daniel Tapera and Eunice Tava.

Although bringing in explicit scenes was taken as a way of experimenting with some common international traits, the sequence of the scenes leave a lot to be desired.

The scenes just pop up at unexpected intervals and it seems they were brought in to make up for a boring storyline such that at the end of the movie, it is not clear what the filmmakers wanted to achieve.

The make-up was fair, but was spoilt by too much close-ups.It also seems there was too much emphasis on the use of new gadget — the drone — in an attempt to show technological advancement and it ended up being overused.

Given Njagu’s expertise and experience with previous good films, the coming of new technology and the experiment with new style would have made an exceptional movie, but the execution betrayed the intent.

The combination of two great minds was expected to break record, yet Njangu and Piotrowska’s collaboration on the film seems badly timed.Yes, Njangu could be applauded for the work he has done in the film industry to make it better but he escaped from the plot on “Escape”.

With such a captivating title “Escape” will surely need to be buried and be a point of reference on the country’s worst movie production.

Revellers came expectant in their numbers but most of them had no kind words after the premiere. These many people got the shock of their life as the disappointment could not be contained.

Colour grading at some point seemed lost because it wasn’t consistent.“The production team has a lot to learn from “Neria” and “Yellow Card” which are so far the best full length movies to come from Zimbabwe. Yes the man got the faces for his cast but on this one, they failed to rise to the occasion.

“The script itself was poorly executed as one would not really tell what the story line was meant to achieve,” said Tendai Manomano of Helensvale.

However, some said this is the rebirth of film industry. They argued that despite the loopholes, directors should be applauded for the tremendous effort in making such a first movie for Zimbabweans.

“The issue here is about resources versus creativity. Joe Njagu and his team did good considering there is nothing to watch locally.

“The plot is timely and I liked how he did well with the drone and trying to bring in the explicit scenes, although it was too much. For a guy like Munya Chidzonga, I think his role did not fit him well and worse the fake beard was so obvious, it could have been better played by Eddie Sandifolo who at most did his best role.

“There were so many people because of the good marketing but the movie wasn’t fair at all.“Selmor did her best in the movie but towards the end it looked like a drama,” said local film writer and director who didn’t want to be named.

“Escape” is a film about a mixed race man Charles (Jose Marques) who discovers from his mother (Maria Wilson) that his father is Zimbabwean and is dying.He travels to Zimbabwe to find his father and as a stranger is enveloped by mysterious situations.

Charles is torn between two women Tsitsi (played by Nothando Nobengula) a damaged and wicked wife to a hotel owner who desires her husband dead by Charles’ hand and the other Anna (Selmor Mtukudzi) a journalist.