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When you’re putting an action movie on Netflix for the whole world to view, there should be some basic criterion that needs to be adhered to. All the action and fight sequences should look either believable or spectacular (or maybe both) on screen. Sure, a director has the choice to do anything as he is the captain of the ship, but the actions you see in Moses Inwang’s latest socio-political thriller, Blood Vessel, really don’t make any sense. It is just plain bad. There are a lot of gunfights as well as physical combat in Blood Vessel, especially during the final act, and all of it looks unbelievably amateurish. In fact, I dare say this but even some fan-made movies look better than what we see here.

There’s a reason I am jumping into the criticism before anything else here. If you must know, the Nigerian...

The criminal fringe meets sexy high-stakes espionage in this rough-and-ready Nollywood action sequel

Considering it had a budget hundreds of times smaller than Fast & Furious, this sequel to last year’s top Nollywood grosser, Merry Men: The Real Yoruba Demons, makes a reasonable stab at being a Nigerian version of the Hollywood action-film franchise. Said merry men are four Lagos playboys who are showing dangerous signs of shrugging off their roguish pasts and settling down, when Abuja politician Dame Maduka kidnaps one of their wives and blackmails them into jacking crucial evidence in her forthcoming graft trial.

You couldn’t call Merry Men 2 stunningly original, but director Moses Inwang and producer Ayo Makun (who had a hand in several top-end 2010 Nollywood films and also stars in this film) have studied the Fast & Furious handbook. Inhabiting that just-in-the-movies crossover between the criminal fringe and sexy high-stakes espionage, the film...