Son of the Soil review – a bone-chilling Lagos revenge thriller with bruising swagger | film

YYou have to respect an action movie whose hero staggers out of the intensive care ward and into an open-air street market wearing a hospital gown with his arms open, his fists visibly hitting the fabric. Star Razak Adoti can’t blame his agent, as the actor himself wrote the script for this revenge thriller set in Nigeria, in which his former Special Forces soldier makes a Jack Carter-like return to wreak havoc on the streets of Lagos.

Zion (Adoti) made the United States his home after being dishonorably discharged from the service and went on a knockout stretch. But he heads straight to Lagos when he receives a distress message from his sister Ronke (Sharon Rotimi), a hotel room maid who stumbles upon respected doctor and evil drug lord Dr. Baptiste (Philip Asaya) murdering a sex worker. It’s too late for Zion: Ronke is a goner, framed as another victim of the fentanyl cocktail matrix doing the rounds, thanks to the bad doctor. It’s time for Zion to dust off his own set of skills.

In large part, it turns out he’s walking obliviously into unwise places and getting absolutely beaten up. But despite Zion’s heroic lead, plenty of plot-facilitating character choices and a burst of mature Nollywood acting, British-Chinese director Chee Keong Cheung delivers a deeply satisfying ride here. What’s more is the somewhat inaccurate ’80s action movie-style characterization: Zion gets a cute street urchin boyfriend (Ijelu Folajimi), just so we know he’s on the side of the angels.

Even Zion’s inexplicably haphazard street smarts are somehow aligned with the brutal and chaotic world he infiltrates: a dazzling array of sacrifices, bludgeoning, and machete beatings is carried out once he teams up with the albino leader Jagunlabi (Damilola Ogunsi). Cheung’s direction matches this with gusto, recalling “City of God” in a colorful, handheld blitz – although his penchant for the Dutch angle becomes a little annoying. He uses it so much they’d have to rename it with the Nigerian angle, but his film has an undeniable gangster vibe.