There's a specific kind of disappointment that only comes from watching a film nail its first act so convincingly that you start mentally drafting the glowing review, only to watch it slowly lose its grip in the second half.
That's exactly the experience I had with "Gangs of Lagos." For roughly its first hour, this is genuinely one of the more confident, well-observed crime dramas Nollywood has produced in recent years. By the time the credits roll, it's a noticeably thinner, shakier film than the one it started out as.
I still think it's worth watching. I just don't think it's quite the "world-class" achievement some of the early hype around it suggested — and I think it's more useful to be honest about exactly where it succeeds and where it stumbles than to just pile onto either the praise or the backlash.
What "Gangs of Lagos" Is Actually About
The story follows three childhood friends — Obalola, Ify, and Gift — who grow up together in Ìsàlẹ̀ Èkó, a real, historic Lagos neighborhood the film depicts as a community dominated by political thuggery, gang violence, theft, and a constant, grinding struggle for power and survival.
As they move from childhood into adulthood, their lives get pulled deeper and deeper into the gang warfare and political manipulation that runs through their neighborhood, with each of them navigating their own version of ambition, loyalty, and inherited danger.
Director Jade Osiberu has said the idea for the film actually took root years earlier, during the production of her 2016 project "Gidi Up," when she found herself observing the daily lives of Ìsàlẹ̀ Èkó residents through the windows of neighboring buildings — a genuinely evocative origin story for a film that ultimately wants to feel like a lived-in, ground-level portrait of a specific place rather than a generic gangland backdrop.
A Landmark Release, Whatever You Think of the Film Itself
Before getting further into the film's merits and flaws, it's worth sitting with just how significant a release this actually was. "Gangs of Lagos" was released into theaters and onto Prime Video by Amazon MGM Studios on April 7, 2023, making it Amazon's first African original movie — a genuine milestone for African cinema's relationship with major American streaming platforms, and one that came with a suitably glitzy rollout, including tastemaker premiere screenings in Lagos, London, and New York.
Commercially, it delivered. The film earned roughly ₦230 million in Nigeria and was recognized as one of the top ten most-watched locally produced movies on Prime Video outside its own country of origin — a genuinely strong result for a Nigerian film trying to find an audience beyond its home market. It also picked up several accolades at the 2023 Africa Movie Academy Awards, cementing its place as one of the more commercially and critically discussed Nollywood releases of that year.
The First Half: Genuinely Excellent Crime Drama
I want to be specific about what works here, because I think the film's opening stretch deserves real credit rather than being lumped in with its later shortcomings. Multiple reviewers, including some watching from a distinctly Western vantage point with limited prior exposure to Nollywood, singled out the first half as genuinely strong — a classic "friends from the streets" organized crime story, sure, one you've seen variations of a dozen times before in other cinematic traditions, but elevated by a specific, richly observed Lagos setting and committed lead performances that give it real texture and stakes.
The film's handling of Ìsàlẹ̀ Èkó itself is a big part of that success. One reviewer noted, with real specificity, how accurately the film portrays the political exploitation of neighborhood "touts" and "area boys" — young men recruited and manipulated by political leaders and parties they've been conditioned to believe in, used as disposable foot soldiers in electoral violence and intimidation campaigns. That's not an invented plot device; it's a genuinely documented feature of Lagos political life, and the film's willingness to render it with this level of specificity gives the story real weight beyond generic gangland melodrama.
The fight choreography also drew consistent praise. Reviewers noted that the fight scenes bear a real resemblance to how physical confrontations are actually staged in Ìsàlẹ̀ Èkó specifically, rather than importing a generic action-movie choreography style that could belong to any city in the world. One reviewer went further, praising the film's genuinely inventive use of the Eyo masquerade — a well-known Lagos cultural tradition — as a disguise for an assassin, calling it a small stroke of genius that manages to be both a clever plot device and a distinctly, unmistakably Lagos touch that few other crime films could replicate.
The Performances: A Deliberate Break From Nollywood's Usual Faces
One choice that seemed to genuinely delight a lot of viewers was the casting. Tobi Bakre, in the lead role of Obalola, and Chike Osebuka, playing a part-time gangster and part-time musician, both draw specific praise — Chike in particular was described by one reviewer as endearing and believable in a role that could easily have tipped into caricature, and Bakre was credited with delivering a performance genuinely worthy of his protagonist status. Adesua Etomi-Wellington also earned specific mention for her work opposite Bakre, described by one reviewer as excellent.
What struck several viewers, though, wasn't just individual performances — it was the film's willingness to lean on relatively fresh faces rather than the same small rotation of actors that tends to show up across multiple high-profile Nollywood releases in any given year.
One reviewer specifically praised this choice, noting that Nollywood's tendency to repeat the same familiar names across five or ten anticipated films in a row can make it hard to fully buy into any individual role, and that "Gangs of Lagos" benefited from a cast that felt genuinely suited to their specific parts rather than recognizable stars slotted into whatever role happened to be available.
Cinematography That Signals a Real Leap Forward
The technical polish here is a genuine step up from a lot of earlier Nollywood crime and action productions, and it's worth naming specifically why. The film was shot using RED Digital Cinema's DSMC2 MONSTRO 8K VV camera system — genuinely high-end equipment by any industry's standards — and that investment shows on screen. Reviewers consistently praised the quality of the imagery, the camera angles, the shooting heights, and the fluidity of transitions and action sequencing, describing it as a real marker of how far Nollywood production values have come relative to the industry's earlier eras.
Where It Falls Apart: The Second Half Problem
Here's where I have to be honest, because it's the single most consistent criticism across nearly every serious review of this film, and it matches my own reaction almost exactly. The plot, several reviewers agreed, starts off genuinely strong and then becomes increasingly threadbare as the second half unfolds. One reviewer put it plainly: as the action ramps up, the plot becomes noticeably thinner, and it seems the budget does too.
That last observation is worth dwelling on, because it points to something more specific than just "the writing gets weaker." Multiple reviewers noted a visible drop-off in production quality during the film's climactic stretches — one reviewer bluntly pointed out that a large chunk of the final showdown is obviously shot against greenscreen, with a generic rooftop backdrop that lacks any of the specific, grounded Lagos texture that made the earlier scenes feel so alive. Without that grounding, the reviewer noted, the film's ending starts to feel less like a Lagos crime epic and more like a very low-budget generic action film that could have been shot anywhere.
The technical execution of the action sequences takes a hit too. One reviewer specifically criticized how some fight choreography isn't filmed fluidly, with sound effects that fall out of sync with the on-screen action — and pointed to an overreliance on slow motion that, rather than emphasizing weight and impact, comes across as a way of papering over choreography the filmmakers didn't fully trust to hold up at normal speed.
Another viewer, watching with a more forgiving eye, still couldn't help noting that several of the fight scenes were "so bad they're good" — describing moments where characters flip and fall with a total absence of physical impact, more reminiscent of dated low-budget genre filmmaking than the polished, high-end camera work on display elsewhere in the same movie.
The central friendship at the story's heart also doesn't quite land the way it needs to. One reviewer pointed out that the three friends who form the film's main leads don't have much real chemistry together — though they were careful to clarify that this isn't really a failure of the actors themselves, but a structural problem with how little actual screen time the three of them spend together as a genuine trio before the plot pulls them into their separate, increasingly disconnected storylines.
The Language and Marketing Mismatch
One smaller but genuinely notable complaint came from an international viewer who felt misled by how the film was marketed. They'd been told to expect an English-language film, and instead found the dialogue was overwhelmingly in Yoruba — by their own estimate, barely ten percent English. To their credit, they stuck with it and still walked away satisfied with the experience overall, but it's a fair point about expectation-setting for international audiences discovering the film through Prime Video's global catalog without necessarily understanding what they're getting into going in.
A Story That Clearly Wants a Sequel
Something several reviewers picked up on, and I think they're right to, is how deliberately "Gangs of Lagos" seems structured to support future installments. The plot interconnects multiple gangs, factions, and side characters in a way that leaves real narrative threads open — one reviewer specifically wondered aloud what happens to Obalola next, and what becomes of another character, Teni, whose arc feels intentionally unresolved by the film's end. Whether or not that's a satisfying way to end a standalone film is a fair question, but it does suggest the filmmakers were thinking in franchise terms from fairly early on, treating Ìsàlẹ̀ Èkó itself as a setting rich enough to support multiple stories rather than a single, self-contained narrative.
The Real-World Controversy Worth Knowing About
No honest discussion of "Gangs of Lagos" is complete without addressing the genuinely significant backlash the film generated after release — a controversy that, in some ways, ended up dominating the conversation around the film as much as its actual content did.
The film was described by a number of prominent voices as derogatory toward Lagos culture, and the Lagos State government formally called for it to be banned from Nollywood media. Reno Omokri, a well-known Nigerian commentator, publicly criticized the film as defamatory, arguing that portraying the country this way in a film amounted to undermining Nigeria's international image — comparing it, memorably, to punching holes in a ship you're a passenger on yourself.
The Kosoko royal family of Lagos and Chief Adebola Dosunmu of the Dosunmu royal family also condemned the film on similar grounds, joined by veteran Nollywood actor Prince Jide Kosoko speaking in a private capacity. Nigeria's National Film and Video Censors Board weighed in as well, though its head clarified the board didn't currently have the legal authority to regulate content on streaming platforms specifically — while noting that an amendment potentially expanding that authority was under consideration by the National Assembly at the time.
I think this controversy is worth understanding on its own terms rather than dismissing outright, because it reflects a genuine, long-running tension in African filmmaking more broadly: the question of who gets to depict a place's harder realities, and whether doing so honestly constitutes valuable social commentary or reckless reputational damage
One critic, reviewing the film for Afrocritik, offered a useful framing here, arguing that the film — like "Brotherhood" before it — isn't really fiction in the purest sense, but rather a cinematic exploration of real conditions many Nigerians are compelled to witness firsthand, spotlighting the damage that follows when government remains apathetic to genuinely developing and solving the underlying problems on display.
That's a fair defense of the film's underlying intent, even if you can also understand why residents and officials connected to the real Ìsàlẹ̀ Èkó and broader Lagos community pushed back hard against how their home was being portrayed to a global audience.
Final Verdict
"Gangs of Lagos" is a film of two genuinely different halves. The first is a confident, well-observed, technically polished crime drama that earns its comparisons to prestige international gangland dramas, anchored by strong lead performances and a real specificity about its Ìsàlẹ̀ Èkó setting that few Nollywood films have matched. The second increasingly trades on thinner plotting, visibly reduced production value, and action sequences that lean too heavily on tricks — slow motion, unconvincing greenscreen work — that undercut rather than enhance the tension.
It's also a film that arrived with real historical weight, as Amazon's first African original movie, and left behind a genuinely significant cultural controversy about who gets to tell Lagos's harder stories and how. Whatever you make of the back half's shortcomings, "Gangs of Lagos" is a film that clearly mattered — commercially, culturally, and as a marker of how far Nollywood's technical ambitions have grown.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 — a genuinely strong opening act, elevated by fresh performances and real cultural specificity, that loses momentum and budget-driven confidence in its back half.
0 Comments