Entertainment

Movie Review: ‘Freetown’

Published

10 years ago

April 9, 2015

Oakland Post

Henry Adofo and the cast of “Freetown”

by Dwight Brown
NNPA Film Critic

It’s an urgent escape. Like the Jewish people leaving Germany in the face of imminent death. Only, this journey to freedom takes place in Liberia and involves the personal story of six Christian missionaries. The film, based on true events, feels dramatic and thrilling at moments. Other times, its heavy-handed proselytizing mars the proceedings. While the preachy nature may put off general audiences, it may inspire the faith-based crowd. Who knows?

Director Garrett Batty has a propensity for making movies about missionaries in peril. He made a similar-themed movie in 2013: The Saratov Approach was a dramatic thriller about a 1998 kidnapping of two Mormon missionaries in Russia. Freetown follows that same path. Batty was looking for another faith-based true-life story to develop into a film, he came across the events in Liberia and hired playwright Melissa Leilani Larson to co-write the screenplay with him.

In 1990s Monrovia, Liberia, rebel, gun-toting forces menace the city. They’re looking to weed out and kill a faction known as The Krahn. Six missionaries try to buck the violence and teach Christianity as they baptize locals. They are ardent about their mission, but also have to deal with the realities of war and mayhem. The leader of the group, Elder Menti (Michael Attram), wants to flee. He turns to church member Phillip Abubakar (Henry Adofo), who drives a rickety red Toyota Corollla. Abubakar loads the car, and altogether, the seven men are off, headed to Freetown, the capital city of Sierra Leone.

Rebels block roads and menace everyone. They don’t seem to have a problem specifically with Christians. However, they are united in their hate of The Krahn. Traveling in the group of faith healers is a man named Gaye (Phillip Michael), a Krahn. Along the perilous journey he will be confronted time and time again, and part of his ordeal is whether he will admit to his background or deny it to survive.

The First Liberian Civil War, an internal conflict in Liberia that raged from 1989 until 1997, killed over 200,000 people and eventually led to the involvement of the United Nations. This tiny slim-focused film fails to reflect the magnitude of that aggression. It sets up the characters, in a very insular way. As you watch the missionaries face danger in their neighborhoods, you have no idea that the entire country is aflame. It would have been helpful if the footage included TV news reports, or radio reports that let the viewer know that there really wasn’t any place to hide.

That lack of perspective is just one of the script’s big faults. The other looming misfire is the tendency for the dialogue to get weighed down in bible talk and spiritual dogma. The characters are set, their dilemma is noted, their antagonists brutal—that’s enough for audiences. If faith and serendipity are going to get the group through their crisis, show it, don’t’ talk about it. The average filmgoer will get the message that the group is blessed and a higher power is looking out for them. Hammering it, over and over again, makes the movie pedantic, like a long-winded sermon.

The film goes on for 116 minutes, when it could have been edited (Connor O’Malley, S. McKay Stevens) down to 100 minutes tops. The cinematography, by Jeremy Prusso, makes the lush landscape of West Africa so inviting. (The film is set in Liberia, but shot in Ghana.) The perfect lighting of the dark complexions makes the skin look radiant. The musical score by Robert Allen Elliott dramatizes the footage in ways it needs at points, though sometimes it is almost overbearing.

Henry Adofo’s performance of the character Phillip Abubakar, who takes the group on a path to freedom, shows a steady, strong undercurrent. Actor and model Michael Attram, as Elder, is photogenic. Phillip Michael as Gaye, the Krahn who wrestles with his identity, shows the most range and depth as he finds a way to show the misery and pride of a people who are being slaughtered.

Freetown doesn’t tell its story with the eloquence and understatement of Abderrahmane Sissako’s Timbuktu or the solid dramatic flourishes of Terry George’s Hotel Rwanda. Still, the film depicts a part of African history that is worth knowing and sharing.

Visit NNPA Film Critic Dwight Brown at DwightBrownInk.com.

Oakland Post

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Arts and Culture

Book Review: American Kings – A Biography of the Quarterback

Published

4 days ago

September 14, 2025

Oakland Post

Book Cover of American Kings. Photo courtesy of Hyperion Avenue.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Author: Seth Wickersham, Copyright: c.2025, Publisher: Hyperion Avenue, Price: $29.99, Page Count: 407 pages

Snap.

And with that, and a catch that’s picture-perfect, your team is on its way to another win. The guy that threw the football sure knows his stuff. He’s worth every penny he’s paid, and in the new book “American Kings” by Seth Wickersham, you’ll see what it took to get there.

Like so many little boys, Wickersham wanted to play pro football when he was growing up; specifically, he wanted to be a quarterback. Unlike most other boys, though, he took it to an extreme, becoming “obsessed” with throwing a football with the best accuracy, hoping to match the skills of the players he admired.

Alas, despite an entire childhood of near-constant practice and a few wins on the field in high school, he didn’t make varsity and ended up playing as a receiver.

He knows now that to be a quarterback is to be a star, but it’s also “a way of life.”

Here, he writes about Arch Manning, “a legend, a folk hero, a song title… and the beginning of a family franchise…” Wickersham shares the story of Warren Moon, how he stepped up to help his mother when his father died, how domestic violence almost derailed his legacy, and the racism he quarterbacked under for years.

He spent time with Caleb Williams, “the first true professional amateur quarterback” to get money for playing at the college level. He interviewed James Harris, who was prepared to become a teacher “If the league didn’t want a Black quarterback…” Wickersham “spent much of 2022 with” Andrew Luck, who “learned quickly that greatness requires an… unlimited selfishness.” He writes about how Jack Elway influenced his son’s choice of career, what Hollywood had to do with one pro footballer’s life, and the post-career of the first player “to throw a consistently beautiful spiral.”

Says Wickersham about his subjects, “Anyone could throw a football. Only a quarterback could make people cheer.”

Your favorite chair is oiled for smooth reclining and fast slam-downs. The snacks are laid in for at least a week, and beverages are on ice. You know exactly what you’re wearing for the game this weekend. All you need is “American Kings” and you’re set.

Wickersham calls his book “a biography,” but it’s just as much a history, since he refers often to the earliest days of the game, as well as the etymology of the word “quarterback.” That helps to lay a solid background, and it adds color to a reader’s knowledge about football itself, while explaining what it takes for men and women to stand out and to achieve gridiron greatness. On that. Wickersham is honest, sometimes calling out his subjects for their attitudes toward teammates and others. Blunt words are used that are unprintable in family newspapers, so beware if you’re sharing.

Is your team’s QB in this book? Maybe. But, more than likely, a past favorite is, So, check out “American Kings” and see what you find. Football fans and pigskin prognosticators both will love this book in a snap.