Inkabi is a less-than-stellar film only made bearable by the talent of its lead actress.
By Frank Njugi
Currently, Africa is experiencing its great age of voluntary mass migration. Within the continent, intra-African migration has been on the increase in the past few years – as African migrants move within the continent – corresponding with extra-continental emigration, which has also tremendously increased. In Kenya, we have a saying about emigration, “If you feel like leaving, go to Mzansi” — Mzansi here being South Africa. This is because South Africa is home to cultures that mirror that of Kenya, good tertiary institutions that prepare one for the Kenyan job market, and a large community of fellow East Africans who reside in the country. What is less talked about, however, is the influx of Zulu hitmen, known as Inkabi, who come from the villages in rural Natal to South Africa’s major cities to be hired as mercenaries.
Netflix’s latest South African offering is titled after these known hitmen. The film is one of 6 micro-budget projects being produced through a joint film fund by Netflix and the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) — an agency mandated by South Africa’s Department of Sport, Arts, and Culture, to provide funding for the development, production, marketing, and distribution of films. It is directed by Norman Maake, with Chuanne Blofield serving as the cinematographer and Tongai Furusa as the editor.
In Inkabi, Kenyan actress, Michelle Tiren, who is popularly known for her breakout role as Nikita in the 2021 Showmax production, Famous, plays Lucy, a struggling Kenyan immigrant to Johannesburg, who still speaks a lot of Swahili. Lucy, who hails from a small village by the seaside in the Lamu Archipelago, has a daughter, Angela (Andile Masai) whose legal custody she has been denied by the South African court system due to her inability to exercise parental care.
Lucy has a run-in with a Zulu hitman, played by Dumisani Dlamini (popularly known as the father of American rapper and singer, Doja Cat), who has been contracted to kill a white man she is in a romantic affair with. After witnessing the death of her lover at the hands of the hitman, she somehow manages to escape and seeks the help of a former hitman-turned-taxi driver named Frank, portrayed by veteran South African actor Tshamano Sebe, with whom she had previously been acquainted.
Tiren well embodies Lucy’s character; her mannerisms fully encapsulate those of an immigrant woman on the run from a killer, and she retains her authenticity by maintaining her Kenyan accent — a cacophony of rolling r’s with an over–emphasis on vowels — in the film.
But her performance might be the only highlight in this thriller. Maake has made a film which relies too heavily on a story he does not effectively narrate or execute. For one, the film is riddled with several plot holes. For instance, we don’t get to find out the backstory relating to Lucy’s daughter, and the circumstances that led to her being taken away. Frank, who is supposed to be the medium through which the lives of the Inkabi hitmen are explored, offers nothing with his story beyond being a “Mulinzi” ( protector) to Lucy. In fact, the script seems to treat his personal life as only an afterthought — secondary to his position as that ‘friend’ who is protecting Lucy from being killed. This is a failing on the part of Maake, who through the film’s title, promised an exploration of the realities of the Inkabi Zulu hitmen. Instead, we are offered a muddled story which overlooks Frank as a character.
Save for the eye-rolling, the action sequences in Inkabi also offer very little, as the fight scenes appear to be edited ultra-rapidly. At times, there’s mixed up with laborious flashbacks of previous fights, with camera angles that seem to strive to be arty, but ultimately fail. The film is also further marred by scene compositions that go contrary to the conventions of renowned cinematic auteurs of crime thrillers. Some of the shots are poorly framed, with no noticeable elements in the background, and the choice of filming locations at times does not draw any visual interest.
There is usually a conceptualisation that crime stories are rarely about crime, but a study of its aftermath. In Inkabi, this has been actualised through Lucy who is on the run after witnessing a crime commited by a hitman. But while Maake may have explored this ‘aftermath’, Inkabi still presents itself as a less-than-stellar film only made bearable by the talent of its lead act.
Rating: 1.5/5
(Inkabi is currently streaming on Netflix)
Frank Njugi is a Kenyan Writer, Culture journalist and Critic who has written on the Kenyan and East African culture scene for platforms such as Debunk Media, Sinema Focus, Culture Africa, Wakilisha Africa, The Moveee, Africa in Dialogue, Afrocritik and others. He tweets as @franknjugi.