Uganda’s
leading action filmmaker is resourceful and prolific, but he makes no secret of
his Hollywood influences. In his latest throw-down, there are plenty of shout-outs
to Ryan Gosling in Drive and Joseph
Gordon-Levitt in Looper. No, of
course not. His conception of American action films remains blissfully stuck in
the 1980s. The names of Stallone, Van Damme, and especially Schwarzenegger will
be invoked throughout Nabwana (Isaac Godfrey Geoffrey) I.G.G.’s epic
sixty-eight-minute Bad Black (trailer here), which screens (for free) during the
2017 Beyond Fest.
Swaaz
(short for you know who) is a decent guy, but he will commit a brazen heist to
pay for his sick and pregnant wife’s medical bills. How does he relate to the
story of Bad Black, the legendary Wakaliga gang leader? It is pretty obvious,
but IGG will still try to keep it a secret until the third act. When we first
meet Bad Black, she is a much-abused little girl, who takes control of her own
destiny by killing the Dickensian master of her pan-handling gang. Her fellow
former beggars will become the core of her feared street gang.
However,
the grown Bad Black might bite off more than she can chew when she targets both
the idealistic American medical missionary, Dr. Ssali, and Hirigi, a politically-connected,
mobbed-up developer planning to raze the slum. Dr. Ssali (talk about your
stereotypical American name) is determined to reclaim his passport and
dog-tags, so he trains with his street urchin orderly, Wesley Snipes, to become
a commando, just like his brother, father, mother, and dog back home in the
U.S. (we’re not making any of this up). Meanwhile, Bad Black is seducing her
way into Hirigi’s bank account.
Bad Black has such a loopy,
go-for-broke sensibility that makes Nollywood movies look staid and
focus-grouped. It starts with the gonzo narration, which is more like a
cross-between a drunken Rifftrax audition and the guileless commentary of a
hopeless naïf, who really is following the film on the edge of his seat. After
twenty minutes, it becomes exhausting, but by the forty-minute mark you start
to admire the sheer relentless chutzpah of it.
The
special effects are deliriously DIY, on a level that would have underwhelmed
Roger Corman in the early 1960s. Again, the brazen cheesiness of the
green-screen work is sort of the point. However, during the unrelated opening
prologue, it is sort of troubling that IGG opts to blow-up Katz’s deli. Of all
the New York landmarks he could destroy, he chooses one that is deeply enmeshed
in Jewish and Yiddish cultural history? Nice, thanks for that.
Assuming
no sinister symbolism was intended, Bad
Black is rather enjoyable as a spectacle of lunacy. Alan Hofmanis, the
first westerner to appear in Ugandan cinema and IGG’s producing partner is
certainly a good sport as Ssali (his adopted Nkima name) and even shows some
legit screen presence. His co-stars aren’t likely to generate much awards buzz,
but clearly everyone is doing their best.
