King of Boys

Next on my list of stay-at-home movies is King of Boys, a 2018 Nollywood political thriller. The plot centers on Alhaja Eniola Salami, a teenage runaway who rises from prostitution to ruthless mafia kingpin and philanthropist. She is the king of her universe but things go awry when her quest to penetrate the Nigerian political scene turns her allies into enemies. With Eniola losing her edge, her political dream slipping away and adversaries on every side, will she come out on top as King?

So here’s the thing, this kind of movie can only end in two ways; first, she could get even with her enemies and die or second, she could still get rid of her enemies and not die. At a certain stage towards the climax of this type of movie you can tell which option it will be and in this case, it was when a subordinate of Eniola, who was after her crown, came to gloat while she was in prison.

I was impressed by the acting, direction and cinematography; it all blended in perfectly but the story line had a number of flaws though like the $500,000 to bribe; the anti-corruption official investigating Eniola found a bag filled with money in his home only to receive a phone call letting him know that the money was a bribe was from Eniola. This incident spurred the official to go after Eniola and charge her with bribery. The trial judge’s family was later kidnapped to coerce him to give judgement in favour of Eniola. Here’s the thing though, there was nothing linking her to the bribe save for a phone call and the voice was masked. No concrete evidence which, at least nothing that was revealed to the audience, so in essence the judgment, coercion or not, should be in Eniola’s favour.

If there had been a stronger charge with evidence against Eniola other than the bribery charge then the Judge’s contrary decision would have been more glaring as foul play.

Then the biggest plot hole were two scenes where Eniola’s daughter asked her henchman to do something for her in favour mother on two different occasions but we weren’t shown what those things were, the suspense was great letting the audience imagine what illegal plan they wanted to carry out. One of them we felt was to bribe the official and the second to kidnap the trial judge’s family in order to get him to give judgement in her favour but they both turned out to be actions of her enemies to look like Eniola authorized them. So what exactly did she order? Silence…….that is terrible.

Lots of muscle flexing and even spiritual flexing. Throughout the movie Eniola was all bark and no bite save for a scene in the beginning when she hit a guy with a hammer. She fell into helplessness so soon after being put behind bars. There was a scene where she was sitted with all her mafia dons that she referred to herself as being “gods worst punishment in a man” this was in reply to a challenge for her crown by one of the younger dons. I would have liked to see that part of her but it seemed that at that stage in her life she had already lost her edge.

Not minding any of that though, King of Boys is worth the watch. Laterz and stay safe.