Five Fingers For Marseilles (Available Now)

Tau, Cockroach, Unathi, Luyanda & Bongani-these are the "Five Fingers for Marseilles. Even as a young group they agree to protect Marseilles from those that would harm it, including anyone of them.

We are told the story of five friends who have become like brothers and agree to ride together and fight for what's their's.



Zulu is the leader , Lerato , their heart and soul, Unathi who they call Pastor-the storyteller. Luyanda the broken one, who they call Cockroach. Bongani, called Pockets because he was the rich one.

Then there is Tau , the lion, ruthless , the fastest and sometimes the meanest.

In all of my years of reviewing or just watching movies in general -this is one of the most beautifully shot films I have ever seen.

Think Lawrence of Arabia in Africa. The lighting on every shot is amazing as you can briefly see here above.

There are soldiers who come once a month to receive payment from the local town merchants, upon one of their visits the group are waiting for them--eggs in hand.

This ensues a capture of one the members of the five and a chase ends up happening. Tau kills the men involved thinking they killed one of his friends.

Tau is sent to prison for the crimes and we follow up with him and his friends as the story continues on.

There is an evil in the air and he goes by the name of Ghost.

His men come to town and make it known amongst the locals that he shall be coming and they need to be aware of it and pay close attention-even the mayor.

He speaks with a heavy voice and is one of the better villains in the last little while. Evil and sinister he makes his way across Marseilles and takes what he wants to. His presence is felt from the minute he hits the screen, even before he emerges from his car.

This is not an over the top performance, it's very subtle and delivered very well in both character and by the actor playing him,

(Hamilton Dlamini)

Sepoko is his name and invoking fear in others is what he aims to do. 

He tells the story of how his mother was struck by lightning when giving birth to him-then forcing the child to find his way out of his mother's charred body--hence giving him the name "The Ghost".

He is the most interesting character in the film and as my favorite movie reviewer of all time once said.

"Your movie is only as good as it's villain" Gene Siskel

This plays out very much like a classic western -High Noon etc when we know something is going to go down, we just are not sure how, or when.

This puts a new play in at the end of the film , one that I did not see coming at all-or would have thought would happen, but does.

Thank you for reading this

Sincerely

Anthony Nadeau

I was sent this news last night and decided to include it here:

Acclaimed film Five Fingers for Marseilles, now available On Demand from Uncork’d Entertainment, emerged the biggest winner of 14^th Africa Movie Academy Awards, taking home five awards including Best Film.



In addition, the film snared the AMAA 2018 Award for Achievement in Production Design, Michael Matthews won the AMAA 2018 Award for the Best First Feature Film by a director, the AMAA 2018 Award for Achievement in Cinematography, and the Ousmane Sembene AMAA 2018 Award for Best Film in an African Language.