(SabiNews)--I really wanted to enjoy watching Jeta Amata’s movie
Black November but like an errant step child, it kept rebuffing my love.
I had read scathing and devastating reviews from
journals like the Hollywood Report, Variety, LA Weekly all of which eviscerated
the movie and wanted to see it and review it, to show the world that Jeta Amata
has done something worthwhile and impressive.
So, I went looking for it and found it.
Black November attempts to be many things all at once;
it is both advocacy and propaganda, Nollywood and Hollywood but it fails
woefully in becoming something of character and substance.
And the fault lies squarely with Mr. Amata who is a
triple threat on this one; writer, producer and director. Scratch that, he is a
quadruple threat actually as writer, producer and director and SONGWRITER. Yep!
This movie does not make Jeta Amata look good. This is
the simple truth and a very kind way of putting it.
The movie has a fine story, one anyone familiar with the
devastation and environmental degradation of the Niger Delta must be used to; a
young girl, US educated thanks to a scholarship grant from an oil company
returns home to a tragic incident which for want of a better word ‘radicalises’
her but her radicalisation is fraught with indecisions; she is a half-hearted
revolutionary; wanting the oil company to pay yet not quite sure how to go
about it.
