'the black man can manage his own affairs'

this was a statement by the late Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the first president and prime minister of Ghana, not in that order:). He was truly a man withh a vision and a purpose plus a follow- through attitude. i respect him for that, but unfortunately i disagree with that statement he made.

perhaps he(Nkrumah) could manage the black man's affairs but it has become obvious over the years the black man is not capable of MANAGING his own affairs. let us take the case of Ghana.

simply things like garbage and waste management tells a tale to back my assertion. if you disbelieve me, take a look at 37 lorry station, refuse everywhere and check out our markets especially our FOODSTUFF markets! it's a complete mess.

not convinced? check out what we have done to our educational processes and are still doing, check out our health administration system, or better still check out our POLITICS...!!!!

this should surely convince you that independence doesn't appear to have done us any good!

Those were the good old days of ‘I told you so’, ‘stepdad’, ‘ghost tears’, ‘dza gbele’ and their league of movies, when there was really entertainment. I have always held the opinion that the quality of Ghanaian movies have been deteriorating since the nineties, I do not talk of before that period because I didn’t know any better then.

On watching ‘Heart of men’, I have drawn the conclusion that it is the worst Ghanaian movie made yet!

And I do not say so because of the nudity and explicit content (which by the way was totally irrelevant to the whole story). NO! That doesn’t in my opinion warrant my ink, it is the entirety of the story (assuming there was one) that alarms me.

I think that if the story were really to flow at all, it could have been told within 15 minutes or at best 20, all parts 1 and 2 of it. If anyone reading this doubts me let him go and watch the movie and come back and tell me so. I haven’t yet met anyone who watched that movie and was wowed by it as they would have had us believe, in fact everyone I know who has watched it was pretty flagger basted at how bad the movie was.

Let’s put aside the length of the movie and try and to concentrate on the details. Concerning which I vote the movie has no editor (sorry I couldn’t be patient enough to read about the production team at the end to ascertain if this were a fact, I barely made it to the end of the movie).

The movie began almost impressively with a lawyer( or at least that was the impression I got), Ritchie Adams, played by Majeed Michel, and a friend played by John Dumelo(sorry again he was almost so insignificant I can’t remember his character name) hanging around at a most unlikely place chatting. Now they meet Tracy (Yvonne Nelson), who was apparently Ritchie’s long time friend, and so the character of Dumelo meets Tracy and they end up married not ten minutes into the movie, leaving the character of Nadia Buari, upset since she was also in love with Dumelo’s character.

Ok, that’s a story line everybody can follow, but Tracy is supposedly murdered, of course nobody believes that! And Dumelo character charged for that, Ritchie (lawyer) then kicks up a whole racket about trying to prove his friend innocent, that doesn’t work and he gets all of Dumelo charaters’ money ostensibly in a bid to bribe the police to get him out, which he does and then shoots Dumelo character so he can keep all his money. In tune with Ghanaian movies or movies in general, Dumelo character doesn’t die as we soon learn.

That marked the end of a story and the beginning of ‘not so story’

After this he is no longer a lawyer at all and no explanations are offered the poor viewer (the writer/director thinks that line will no longer work for them so they change it), he is now an actor and a famed one at that and a womanizer….hmmmm (perhaps this is what they were trying to prove with the explicit scenes, mind you like I said before they didn’t tie in any way with the whole movie, but unfortunately they took up many many minutes of the movie.

Now Ritchie (actor) is getting married today. Its 4am and the bride is already dressed and ready to go(how many brides you know were done dressing at 4 in the morning, certainly not any I know, her maid of honour of course doesn’t even appear to have taken her bath.

Take note that in this ingenious movie everybody is a main and minor character at the same time so you do not downplay any character. Introduced at this stage is a family that Ritchie is apparently very close to, who are also invited to the wedding. At 4am, mother and two daughters are up, sitting in the living room and chatting!(outrageous). Both daughters are throwing up and mother suspects they are sick, both daughters however suspect they might be pregnant and one is able to take a pregnancy test with a home pregnancy test kit (no telling if she has a supply of the kit at home). She finds she is positive and dresses up to consult a friend (the ‘unbathed’ maid of honor)in her hotel room(I got the impression she was sharing a room with the bride but again when it didn’t suit the production team, that too was fixed).

Now here comes the real shocker, all these things and so much more happened in the wee hours of the morning! Meanwhile the bride is still fully dressed and ready and has even succeeded in undressing and dressing up twice already all by herself, she has even been out and about and back?!

As to what the groom and his best man have been up to all this while, half dressed, without even the appearance of having taken their baths, that’s a whole new ‘middle of another movie’

I must try not to write out the whole movie, but thus far I’m positive I haven’t made much coherent sense, have I? But that is the movie; it’s what I call a mess. Most of the scenes were absolutely irrelevant; just take a look at the last explicit inclusion, what was the point of that call up by that character whom we were only just meeting ,plus who would agree to such non-starter blackmail such as hers? But the story teller simply wants what they want to happen to happen so without consideration for the intelligence of the viewer, they go ahead with that scene.

Do you still remember Dumelo character the one who was shot but was brought to our attention soon after that he hadn’t died? Well he finally makes a dramatic appearance at the tail end of the movie. Dramatic I must say because he pulls some super human stunts that bewilders the viewer. He chases up a speeding vehicle favourably and while doing so is also able to inform that police to come to the location to effect arrest, as to the story he told the police to warrant the arrest, the writer/director is not to be bothered with that, which is left to the viewer’s already disoriented imagination.

The queries go on and on…

I have only one verdict. That movie should never have come out; it is the final signature to our disgrace citation when it comes to movies!

and the title is not even relevant