Niyi Akinmolayan’s The Set Up follows Chike (Adesua Etomi) and Grace (Kehinde Bankole) who find themselves caught in a manipulative web spun by Enitan (Tina Mba).
The story begins chronologically. We meet Chike and Grace as children and watch their friendship blossom into a sisterhood. With Chike losing her father and Grace’s parents attempting to sell her into sexual slavery, the two become drug mules in order to survive.
Four years and twenty successful jobs later, Chike and Grace are approached by “Madame” (Tina Mba), who helps them narrowly escape arrest from the NDLEA.
In return for saving them, Chike and Grace have to work as covert agents in Madame’s “Academy”. In the said academy, they learn to fight (a skill that doesn’t come in very handy) and obtain information by any means necessary.
But everything goes south when Mr Edem (Jim Iyke) hires Chike to help him marry unassuming wealthy heiress Motunrayo Elesho (Dakore Akande). They craft a plan to execute this mission. But Mr Edem keeps straying from the plan and putting the mission in jeopardy.
As it turns out, the mission is just a front for the real set-up, which is the acquisition of Daraja, the Eleshos company. The real plan involves throwing Chike under the bus and using her to implicate Motunrayo’s brother; whose character is so irrelevant that I do not remember his name or deem it fit to check. Ayoola Ayolola plays the brother.
Enitan, Mr Edem, and Motunrayo succeed in this mission; largely because of Motunrayo’s guilt over the accidental death of Enitan’s daughter, her stepsister. It’s a whole mess.
An American drug enforcement agency arrests Chike and she learns soon enough that her “sister” Grace sold her out in exchange for her mother’s immunity. If this all sounds vague, please know that this is exactly how disjointed the movie was.
The double-cross turns into a triple-cross when we find out that Chike and Grace were working together; playing along with Madam Enitan’s double-cross.
Delving into the issues with this movie is a headache. It was as though the filmmakers watched Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden and decided to adopt the concept of the triple-cross in literally the laziest way possible.
There was not enough action to make it thrilling and they managed to make mind games and betrayal as boring and undramatic as possible.
The storyline for this movie looks like a first draft; poorly structured and not yet filtered for holes. The pacing of the movie is horrendous and the lapses in time make it look like the filmmakers were making up for a ton of lost footage.
This is not to say it’s a bad story; but because it is not a book, execution must be smooth and airtight. The Set Up could have done with an extra month of writing and two extra months of filming.
And although the movie has a star cast, the acting is so poor and weak. However, you cannot blame the cast because even the best actors can only work with what you give them.
Overall, this movie was painful to watch, stressful to finish, and not fun enough to serve as mindless entertainment. It is evident that they had something with this story. Unfortunately, it just does not shine through in the execution.
But if you’re not an overthinker like me, you might enjoy this. Perhaps it has some bright spots that I may have overlooked. If and when you find them, share them in the comment section below.