Thin Line – Movie Review

Pastor Raymond and his wife, Dami, are devout Christians living life happily, but their world is turned upside down after Pastor Raymond’s encounter with Annie the prostitute.

When I started to watch this film, I was not expecting fireworks; I was not expecting anything too serious either. I just expected it to be decent, but it wasn’t. The movie lacked any form of originality or narrative depth; I have honestly seen YouTube movies with more nuanced storytelling.

What Did I Like?

Generally, I did not like much about this film. I mean, nothing really stood out enough for me to call out, but I was thankful for Uzor Arukwe and Mercy Aigbe’s acting. Their delivery made it easier to go through the whole thing.

Issues

Personally, I did not like the story. It was just too bland. It was not interesting; it felt like something that I had seen before, and while that in itself is not a problem, the issue was the way they told their story. No excitement, no highlights, no suspense, little to no entertainment value. The dialogues were not great, the characters were not interesting. I did not like any of them; I was not rooting for any of them. I must say that I was not upset while watching it; I was just very indifferent. The film did absolutely nothing for me.

When the movie started, they introduced us to Annie, a prostitute who was also a kleptomaniac. She would steal from the men she slept with and run away. Suddenly, Annie quit the streets and decided to blackmail Pastor Raymond, but we also later found out that the reason she blackmailed him was because she was in love with him and wanted him to marry her…... So If she had been listening to him on YouTube for a while, what happened to make her decide it was time to make contact? I don’t think they properly set the stage to show her motives and how she got there, so the whole thing looked ridiculous to me. I must tell you that after Annie’s death, the movie became increasingly tiring to watch.

 Moving on, even though Uzor Arukwe and Mercy Aigbe’s performances were good, the other actors in this film just did not do justice to their roles. Iyabo Ojo was overacting; she was just screaming. 

Yvonne Jegede and Olaiya Igwe were a no for me. Mind you, these actors are not bad actors by any standard, but they just did poorly in this film.

As the film progressed, I thought so many things happened just for the drama and not necessarily because that was the most logical flow for the movie. For example, arresting Pastor Raymond while he was in the middle of service with his entire congregation watching made no sense to me. Especially because they somehow found Chief’s house and they found Seyi Baller’s house, so why did they not go to the pastor’s house too? Mind you, nothing had been established at this point; the investigation just started. Where is that done? It is irresponsible for Nollywood filmmakers to keep approaching matters of the law like this.

This brings me to the biggest issue I had with this film. The investigation. The whole investigation was not properly thought out, and it was just not exciting. The police officers could not act, their lines were very poor, but most importantly, they just couldn’t convince anyone that they knew what they were doing.

I had questions while watching them carry out their investigation, but the main thing was: How did the police find Seyi Baller and Chief? They were one-time customers. She stole from them and ran. For Chief, she randomly met him on the road, tied him up and ran away with his money. I doubt she even knew his real name, so she definitely did not have a flash drive containing his details anywhere. She most likely did not have his details on her phone either, so unlocking her phone could not have revealed that. How exactly did they connect him to her?! Same for Seyi Baller: how?

I thought they did the arrests backwards. They should have started with the prostitutes, who would have led them to Annie’s Pimp, who would have led them to Seyi Baller. and maybe one of girls would have remembered seeing Chief pick her up. 

At the crime scene, they set the stage with the earring that was just lying on the floor. The flash drive just happened to be lying around, too. If you set the stage for a crime scene, when resolving the crime, you should show how those things came to be. The earring was the main thing that they used to implicate Dami, but they never even showed us when the earring dropped. Dami’s face and ears were covered the entire scene, so when did the earring fall, or when did she realize she lost it? How did she get an identical set? These were important elements of the investigation, but they were never addressed.

I don’t know about you all, but it was very obvious who the killer was, so there was no suspense. But that confession? It was more painful to watch than Seyi Baller’s accent. It was so lame. They had nothing! That trick does not work on anybody anymore. They should have tried something different. What do you mean she just started confessing? All I know that the eventual revelation and the way the film ended was really underwhelming.

Finally, I thought this film missed the opportunity to talk about the fact that men get harassed, abused, and taken advantage of as well. When the film started, I liked that it was a man’s POV: a man being vulnerable, a man dealing with guilt because someone took advantage of him. I mean, when the film started, they established that Pastor Raymond was a good man. When he was drugged and barely conscious, the only thought on his mind was his wife. He experienced something that violated his body, his faith, and his marriage, so watching him navigate that would have been interesting. But no, they couldn’t resist the temptation of falling back to the typical stereotypes. He is a man; he’ll do it again when offered the opportunity. It made no sense that he slept with her a second time, especially since he was planning to confess everything to his wife that same day anyway. By sleeping with her again, they shifted the focus and he was no longer the victim; he was just another man who knowingly cheated on his wife. I did not like that. I personally felt that the movie could have progressed the same way without that happening. Annie could still have been pregnant from their first time . Dami, the devout wife, could have decided to kill this woman who was stressing her husband and her family, and the whole injecting his sperm, which was ridiculous anyway, would not have happened. She would have been her husband’s alibi, and she would’ve gotten away because the police had nothing…..but that’s just me talking.

Overall, Thinline was not a good watch for me. I thought the story was unoriginal, the storytelling was a let down, most performances were not great; it was further crippled by a ridiculous investigation and an underwhelming conclusion.

My Rating: 2/10

Have you seen the movie, please share your thoughts with us in the comments below.

Read the review of Owambe Thieves here.

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