It starts off beautifully. Naive village boy off to the city with one repetitive t-shirt. Which is the reality of many such boys. While we follow his life quote well and his desperation for money that led to the introduction to crime, we really don't see the tipping point. The first "illegal" crime they did also wasn't very well developed. A second/third year kid could map out the plan of a building from just being in it? Enough to know where to possibly place bombs? That seemed abit ambitious that you could just draw blue prints like that.
While his campus experience doesn't get that much screen time, the women characters were barely developed. The first bougie date, when did they exchange contacts? Shix was a village girl when she is first introduced, when did they get back together? How did he convince her to come to Nairobi? Did he have to send fare? How did him being in school from broke to doing "crime" for pay strain their relationship? The next time we see her she's speaking English? Why? We didn't even see the struggle or transition. Her character was very rushed/wasn't developed enough.
Komus parents. After the first few scenes we never see them again. For a boy who could possibly go into crime, it was abit unrealistic that we don't see the joy and the pride of his parents guilt him.
Now, onto the second half of the movie.
The forest training was too stretched out, unnecessarily that the ending felt very rushed. If Omar had been a top terrorist for that long, it's a stretch that komu, an evidently naïve and new young man,would be the one to rat him out. Unless you're a sloppy terrorist.
That scene where the NIS agent runs into Komu while he was about to get onto a boda. He pulled out a gun, got into the truck,and they didn't move? While the boda guys did nothing to show panic or call for alarm?
While Bilal and Chris are such great actor, with such authentic conversations, the supporting actors barely relayed the emotions and panic they should have.
For instance,in the past acts, when the NIS agent finds Komu suffocating, he didn't panic, or rush to resuscitate him. And when he came to, I could barely see he was relieved.
I wish the sounds, for instance a gun clocking or a door banging were recorded separately because the guns didn't have that scary effect.
Overall,I really enjoyed the first half and the conversation. The action didn't have me at the edge of my seat and the actors weren't really relaying enough action for me to sympathize/hate them.
Solid 6/10. A good way to spend an afternoon and if I had watched this in theatre it would have been worth my money.
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