Starring: Nadia Buari, James Gardiner, Fred Amugi

Synopsis:

A woman partakes in a scheme to disbar one of Ghana’s top attorneys but the plan changed when she fell in love with him.

Review:

Drake and Bridget (James Gardiner and Nadia Buari) were top-notch lawyers that never lost a case. Drake defended a wealthy client accused of raping a woman but he switched alliances and defended the plaintiff when he realized the woman was telling the truth.

The firm was disappointed in Drake’s disloyalty and the client threatened to revoke his investments in the firm and seek council elsewhere. With the financial threat to the company, the firm’s senior partner set out to disbar Drake and put an end to his cocky attitude.

Bridget came into the picture when she was covertly hired by the firm to gather information about Drake that could bring him down. During their association an attraction developed and as one thing led to another, they fell in love.

Bridget tried to back out of the deal but the tables turned on her when the firm threatened to ruin her career if she didn’t end her relationship with Drake.

The subplots dealt with Drake’s money hungry uncle and Bridget’s wayward sister.

Let’s Talk. This is a love story told with law as the backdrop. The main characters were successful attorneys that came together under false pretenses. Bridget was only on an assignment and Drake saw her as competition in the law profession. 

The story itself was a bit over the top in that the firm could have just fired Drake for his actions. But had they done so we wouldn’t have had the love story that developed between Drake and Bridget. The rapport between the two actually heightened the movie. Their relationship was developed slowly and there were some touching scenes between them.

What caused the movie to suffer was that it was saddled with numerous subplots. We had detail of numerous court cases, i.e., the rape case, the cancer case, the real estate property case, and then we had the money woes of Drake’s uncle. Mimi’s short lived romance with Drake and Bridget’s mysterious past added to the drama. Sometimes when too much is going on, a movie becomes cumbersome, you lose track, and the momentum dwindles.

As for story blunders, Drake miraculously recovered from a gunshot wound without even visiting a hospital. How is that possible? Also, subtitles were not provided when dialogue was spoken in African dialect.

As for technical issues, the first few scenes were not visually the best but I can live with fuzzy video as long as the sound is satisfactory and in this case, it was.

Performances were good. Both Nadia and James Gardiner are respectable actors and they worked well together. Fred Amugi provided humor although his character and storyline should have been in another movie.

Overall, the story was so-so and the movie was too long. It had the makings of a good romance but the excessive storylines were distracting and caused the movie to be bland at times.

To sum it up, “Game Plan” was one wheel short of being a car. It almost got us there. EJECT