The Train – The Journey of Faith
1. It’s a biopic of a veteran in the Gospel Nollywood space and it’s truly inspiring.
2. A story of faith and determination for pioneers to draw from.
3. The costume team and locations truly depict epic Nigerian scenes.
4. No star names, mostly amateur actors but still a decent performance.
1. An almost 3 hours cinema time for a Nollywood movie actually puts some people off from watching.
2. The directing sometimes seemed shoddy and amateurish.
3. The duplicity of scenes to drive home a point made the screen time unnecessarily longer.
It’s a classic-type shoot. Not much for modern filmmaking technology.
However if you like stories about faith, determination and going against the odds, then Mike Bamiloye’s true life story should get to you at some point in this shoot.
Real Nollywood's certified tear-jerker.
The Train is a biopic of popular Nigerian drama evangelist, Mike Bamiloye, founder of Mount Zion Films Productions. It chronicles his struggles as an unruly orphaned child to his struggles as a young adult in ministry up to his “calling” as a drama evangelist on national TV.
Mount Zion Film Production Studios is a renowned Christian Production studio in Nigeria founded by Mike Bamiloye. The Train is the story of how it all began.
Now, as a person of faith myself, I was inspired by this biopic. His determination to stick with what he believed God told him to do at several points regardless of how stupid some of them seemed is of Biblical proportion. Even if you’re not a person of faith, true life stories of achievers who beat so many odds including so many heartbreaks to go ahead and get their dreams done definitely is an inspiring sight any day. On this plot side is where this movie scores its highest point.
The cinematography is actually impressive considering they probably didn’t have a hefty budget to work with. There’s not much in terms of contemporary cutting edge cinema tech, just classical well done low budget cinematography. On this side, it felt like I was seeing a movie shot in the early 2000s, maybe it’s not the cameras maybe it’s something else, but we’re already used to HD/4K filming, let’s go forward please 😌.
They also chose to use Damilola Mike-Bamiloye’s Youtube page as the release site, a growing option in Africa for filmmakers who don’t want to go the traditional and expensive route. Probably a brilliant idea as well, considering that the cinemas are presently grounded due to the COVID19 pandemic. At the time of this publication (2 weeks since its release), the video has garnered over 1 million views already- masterstroke.
I reckon the directors put a lot of work in to get this quality of acting out of the cast as it was pretty clear that most of the actors are young in the industry and aren’t exactly grade A actors yet.
So my verdict is that this is a great movie, tear-jerker, you’ll love it even more as pioneer of sorts going against the tides, and oh, the soundtrack team did a good job too, some emotional tunes in there.
Note also that this film is heavily Yoruba language themed but there’s subtitle to it all, so any and every one can yet have good time.
Star Performer– Seun Adejumobi
He plays Mike Bamiloye and quite frankly not much more could’ve been asked of him. So, he probably didn’t give the strongest impression but acting another person’s true life story is tall ask and he did alright.
Can-do-better Performer- Nil
I’m feeling nice today. If I gave one, I’d have to give all, truth is they matched themselves and they all did alright.
Great review. Thanks for the heads up