The Great Nigerian Films, No. 5: Last Flight to Abuja Review
PG-12, 81 m., 2012. Starring Omotola Jalade Ekeinde, Hakeem Kae-Kazim, Jim Iyke. Dir. Obi Emelonye. Screenplay/Story by Tunde Babalola, Obi Emelonye, Amaka Obi-Emelonye. Prod. by Obi Emelonye, Charles Thompson, Nyimbi Odero.
There were at least four major plane crashes recorded in Nigeria in the 2000s. Here: Aviation Development Co. of 2006, Sosoliso Airlines of 2005, Bellview Airlines of 2005, EAS Airliner of 2002. The least fatal of these recorded 96 casualties. The most at 177. Then in June, 2012, the year the film Last Flight to Abuja was made, a Dana Air flight crashed, killing 153. Obi Emelonye’s disaster film is dedicated to the memory of the victims and is itself “the story of one of the air mishaps” that rocked “Nigerian aviation industry” in 2006. This is the film’s context.
It is the last flight to Abuja from Lagos that Friday. Passengers trickle into the airport. Someone sold their ticket on the black market. Someone obtained it. Someone sleeps off, missing the flight. Someone’s daughter stopped them from going. A wronged fiancée, a young footballer about to sign for Arsenal, a company team going for a weekend vacation, an elderly couple, the man on his way to treat diabetes, all these people, plus the crew, gather into the plane. This is a flat way to present this story. The plot is surely more storied than that. The major dramatic tensions here arise from how many people will die when the plane crashes, but the plot creates of this a much thicker story, plus romance, suspense, chase.
Actually, the story is perhaps the most satisfying aspect of the film. The plot collects the lives of different people bound by a plane. Their stories, diverging at first, thicken into a whole. The threads wind on each other but tangle not. The pace quickens but is never hurried. And the characters are layered enough so that each character comes on board a full human being, their backstory a bridal train behind them. This is what turns the plot into a story, deepening what happens. (Anna Hornaday: “Plot is what happens. Story is meaning.”) Even the two pilots and a certain airhostess play out their stories through dialogs. Consequently, the script begets humans, complete even with a will to live, if hurriedly invented, and, well, a will to die.
And the actors. Some majors are a piece of show. One of many decent pieces of acting is by Hakeem Kae-Kazim, who played Mr Adesola. With a fine script, he becomes a fine example of men like his character. Charming, promiscuous. A flirt, a sweet talker. And dubious. He seems like we’ve known him from childhood.
If you don’t notice yet, the above is so for there’s a firm structure in place. We have a structure that, with style, guts, and gusto, holds our story together. First the film false-starts moments into the air turbulence, air hostess throating safety charges into a wire phone, passengers clinging to their lives in brace positions. Or not. Then it backtracks, starting where the passengers have gotten tickets, or are about to, establishing the multifarious reasons for the trips. They’re driving to the airport. Or they’re at the airport, standing, sitting, waiting. The choice of effect transitions, like during a flashback here, is a small piece of gusty taste. Then we pick off from where we’ve left off, faring into a deathly future.
Except the future, which is the end of the film, isn’t deathly enough. The film's happier-than-should-be end cheapens the fate it testifies to, almost. It feels like an easy attempt to buy hope. Or soothe a grieving nation. (Goodluck Jonathan, then Nigerian president, declared a 3-day national mourning of the 2012 Dana Air victims.) When at the end I see some survivors swarm from the belly of a fallen plane moments before it bursts into fire, I recoil, thinking how the film hasn’t been the story of one of the 2006 mishaps. This end is not itself inadequate. We love a better outcome for already-happened disasters. But it’s inadequate given the movie’s claim to life. At the beginning the film offers these words on black, in all-caps, in big fonts: “IN 2006, A SERIES OF AIR MISHAPS ROCK NIGERIAN AVIATION INDUSTRY. THIS IS THE STORY OF ONE OF THEM.” The weight of its context is too much for it.
This, the end, is only a lesser concern. The CGI soils what could have been a decent editing. At a point it seems the two pilots are filtered into a Snapchat sky, parts of their heads vanishing into the clouds. This is sad knowing the editors have televised clearly the structure laid out in the script, which is probably their hardest task. But the movie is important still. And what it lacks here, it makes up for in its script. See how the story is very Nigerian? Even the soundtrack, the source music, the car radio programs, all fluently communicate Nigerianness.
John Berger writes that the Palestinian artist Randa Mdah’s installation Puppet Theatre (2012), where a bas relief of crowd watched from a wall three life-size statues, bodies wrung in agony, has made sacred “the killing field between the aghast spectators and the agonising victims.” Obi Emelonye’s film, too, has made sacred the land rushing upwards to meet exploded planes. It has borne witness to the kinds of nightmare that, left to our leaders and us the led, might be wilfully forgotten. If for this only, the film is a vital entry in Nollywood’s disaster thriller department.
Obi Emelonye might not be known to be a filmmaker with a knack for making perfect films. But some of his features have always stayed important. Black Mail (2022) remains at 100 cinemas the biggest UK release for a Black British indie film. Badamasi: Portrait of a General (2021) is tagged the first Nollywood political biopic. We could find the acting in Last Flight so-so, the cinematography mid, the editing subpar. But you and I watch like bas relief the dance of fires and the wrecks of its doing from behind the comfort of our screens. The least we could do is watch. This film has made us do so.
Eurocopter EC130 of 2024, Beechcraft King Air 350i of 2021, Associated Aviation Flight 361 of 2013. These are some documented recent crashes since Last Flight. I've listed them to continue the list in the first paragraph. I’ve paid this much attention, very little yet it is, to these accidents thanks to Obi’s film. You, too, when you’re done watching the film, if you haven’t, read this 2023 timeline of crashes in Nigeria article on Punch.
The Great Nigerian Films (TGNF) are a collection of my favourite Nigerian movies in no particular order. My criterion is the quality of a film. But I'm likely to pick a so-so film that is vital to film development and studies in the country. These films are both a primer and a companion to Nollywood. And this is a work of documenting and archiving.
