Direction: Charles Officer
Country: USA
Akilla’s Escape, the latest feature film from Jamaican-Canadian director Charles Officer, is a low-budget indie crime-noir with a robust direction and decent acting that stumbles in the plot and kinda disappoints in critical sections.
The central character, Akilla Brown (a positively cool Saul Williams), is a longtime marijuana dealer based in Toronto who, in the verge of retirement, had thought he had overcome his traumatic past in Brooklyn in the ‘90s. However, when a frightened 15-year-old Jamaican boy, Sheppard (Thamela Mpumlwana), tries to rob him, he firmly and resolutely decides to save the kid from the criminal underworld, easing the mind of the youth’s aunt, Faye (Donisha Prendergast). On the other hand, episodes of Akilla’s complicated life when he was 15 - especially those involving his father, a violent gang leader and woman beater - recur with higher incidence.
Inspired by the Toronto police crackdown on the Jamaican gang Shower Posse, Officer delineates two narrative threads - past and present - and mounts them as a redemption song with some decorous neon-drenched visuals and a fine original score by the multifaceted Williams and the Massive Attack’s founding member, Robert Del Naja (a.k.a. 3D).
The final moments are not quite convincing, denoting fragilities in the execution, but the director’s formidably hopeful message sticks in our minds.
