DOUBLE CROSS

DBF productions

Breakthrough Media Production

Story by D.R. Kufuor

Director Pascal Aka

Producers D.R. Kufuor and Ama K. Abebrese

Rating 4/10

Reviewed By – Vivian Nappier

“Double Cross” is a romantic thriller about a young woman determined to prove the innocence of her imprisoned finance but ends up in a twisted love triangle, along the way. It is written by D.R. Kufuor, Directed by Pascal Aka and Produced by Ama K. Abebrese and D.R. Kufuor.

PLOT

Effie (Ama K. Abebrese) meets Danny (John Dumelo) at a restaurant, and threatens him with a supposed gun to confess to a robbery incident that landed her fiancé in prison. After the confession, she informs him that it was only a phone and she has his confession recorded. Effie threatens to expose Danny unless he does one last robbery job. He reluctantly agrees to it and they agree to rob the bank in 2 months.

Effie goes to visit her fiancé, Ben (Adjetey Anang) in prison and informs him that she has more than enough evidence to prove his innocence. She also informs him that Danny will be carrying out a robbery attack on their behalf and with that, they can live a better life when Ben gets out.

The robbery is easily successful, but Danny and Effie starts creating a special bond between each other. Things starts to get complicated and Ben begins to suspect something is going on with Effie. She eventually confesses to missing their scheduled appointments because she was with Danny. She also informs him that before he gets released, she has to carry out one more assignment at her work place because she needs diamond jewelries for the wedding. Ben extremely upset and jealous, breaks up with her.

Danny and Effie slowly begins a romantic relationship, making things a bit complicated.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Danny agrees to carrying out the jewel heist at her work place but gets caught during the single man operation. The police tries to negotiate a deal with him but he rants about letting everyone down and not being loved by anyone. He commits suicide by explosion.

Ben is released from prison, ends his engagement to Effie and goes on to start a family years later. Effie donated the money to charity and continued to live in their (Ben and Effie) home alone. A flashback shows that Danny actually escaped as planned with his mother and now currently in Panama.

The End

Great production value and good acting from everyone involved. I really liked the title graphics and applaud the Cinematographer for being experimental with shots and angles BUT this movie was unfortunately a big let down due to minor mistakes and continuity errors that could easily be avoided.

The lighting was really flat and plain, numerous shaky camera movements and the sound was a bit off. The story was inconsistent and the plot a bit mediocre. Continuity errors were one too many and sadly, a very predictable ending.

The movie dragged on way longer than it needed to be, and despite Ama K. Abebrese being a fantastic actress and John Dumelo a great actor, this two together on-screen had zero chemistry!

Funny enough, Adjetey Anang and Ama K. Abebrese had great chemistry although he had very little on-screen time, He seemed the most intriguing character of them all. I secretly wished the roles were revised between Adjetey Anang and John Dumelo.

Continuity… where do I begin! I will go easy on this and let the images speak for itself. The last scene had Effie drive up to the side of the road, opposite or behind where she works (considering this location wasn’t fully established) and communicate with Danny via Walkie Talkie… Wireless Device? I don’t even know at this point, considering he had nothing to or in his ears but yet heard everything she said! Now, if she is parked by the side of the road and can’t see much while Danny was going into the Jewelry house, how did she magically see every other person come, go and enter the house?

According to the story, Danny’s mom was waiting behind the house for his escape, and Danny went through the front door as well as a mystery man (will get to that in a bit) and some of the Swat team. I really need to know where this mysterious door came from, because if it was the back door, then they would have entered through the back gate and seen his mom during the process.

Now, about that Mystery co-worker, why did he randomly show up at work in the middle of the night? Did he forget something? Why did he set off the alarm to get the police if he didn’t know there was someone in the house? Where did he magically vanish to after the police arrived?

Okay, this moment right here was actually very embarrassing. The Swat team arrives and surround Danny inside the Jewel house and then the Head of the Team begins communicating with Danny via walkie-talkie… how exactly is he communicating with Danny if no calls were made? There were no phones anywhere and Danny wasn’t on the phone?! The best part is they are actually communicating with each other?! Is there suppose to be a magical invisible phone line that we all are not seeing?!

After Danny was done with his rant about how he is not loved and feels let down, he proceeds to show he has a bomb. I have to say, the police must have been really, really comfortable with Danny, allowing him reach to his jacket, unzip, turn around, and take off the jacket to show the bomb without considering maybe he has another gun in there, “maybe we should fire a Taser at him to calm down” etc….

Also, we see that the explosion went through the front door, damaging it and shattering the glass. How come the door is magically restored when the ambulance arrives to take away the body?

Finally, during the news conference about the explosion, the Head of the swat team states that the body is unrecognizable but later also states that they believe this is the man who committed the robbery attack months ago, how? How did you know this is the same man? I know Ghana does not have only one robber per town so if you didn’t know who was in the fire and no one had given you any information then how did you know he is the same person?

If Effie’s original goal was to get Danny to confess, why didn’t she just use the information she already had to turn him in? If she really needed the money then why didn’t she turn him in afterwards? Actually, how was that plot supposed to ever work? If a man knows he is screwed either way, why would he risk his life to get her the money if she was going to turn him in any way? That didn’t make much sense to me… He could have easily escaped to Panama with the money as he did at the end.

Again, weak story line and plot. I am asking all these questions because it would have made the story a little better. Making everything easy for everyone leaves the story very weak and actually a bit lazy.

I understand that we are growing as an Industry but continuity error is becoming a very big issue with our industry and will get worst if no one points it out every time it occurs. Reshoot is there for a reason and some of these can be caught during editing. Nollywood/Ghallywood, we can do better o!

Random thought on storyline – If Effie worked in the Jewelry house, why didn’t she just buy the diamond jewelry with her employee discount and choose to pay layaway for the remaining balance? I mean, she could easily earn rewards points and use that in purchasing more jewelry in the long run.

Overall, good production, great for a one time watch, and great acting on everyone’s part.