I’m not sure I’ll see an opening-credits sequence this year at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) that’s better than that of “Akilla’s Escape”. As the title credits appear, we hear the opening strumming of Bob Marley and the Wailer’s “Punky Reggae Party”. The first distinct image is a black and white shot of a muddy puddle, reflecting a dancing man. This is Akilla. But we don’t know this yet. As we watch him dance in abandon, the black and white sequence imitates newsreel footage interspersed with snapshots of key moment of Jamaica’s post-independence history. “Jamaica ends British Rule!” one headline says. Then, “Ganja Law, Lunacy, Murder!” screams another. For four minutes we cut between Akilla’s dancing and these clips, painting a stark picture of Jamaican political history and violence as Marley’s voice offers an ironic contrast to the news. The sequence, which is so loose and organic, is perhaps the best in the film.
It’s not that the crime drama that comes after isn’t good. Director Charles Officer (who co-wrote the script with Wendy Motion Brathwaite) challenges our ideas of gangster narratives and drug tales in a way that suggests a thoughtful consideration of the genres’ inherent trappings. But there’s something seductive about that opening history lesson. In the context of the film that comes after, it becomes a striking but significant anomaly since “Akilla’s Escape” is set in Toronto and Brooklyn, and never sets foot in Jamaica. And yet, the seeds of Jamaica are integral. Jamaicans, like many other Caribbean nationals, are scattered across many parts of North America and Officer’s sharpest instincts can be seen in the way the film never deigns to qualify or explain that connection. Officer is a Canadian-born director of Jamaican heritage and, without any over-explanation, sharply captures the immediacy of the immigrant life.
But it’s some time before that context is given. The opening interlude gives way to the film’s true opening. As the credits end we see glimpses of a man falling. He seems to be falling towards in an almost dreamy way before we arrive in Brooklyn in 1995. 15-year-old Akilla Brown is being questioned by police. His father, a drug-dealer, has been murdered. And the police want information. After that brief introduction, we travel to Toronto in 2020. Akilla, played by Saul Williams, is older, and weathered. He is now a drug dealer, but his countenance of calm seems atypical to our ideas of drug dealing. He seems to be on his way out of the business. But as with such tales, leaving is hard. And he unwittingly walks into a violent robbery forcing him to track down his stolen goods with a silent teenaged-boy, an unwitting accomplice to the robbery that Akilla feels compelled to save.
Before we get to the film’s major plot turn, that first meeting with adult Akilla, as we watch him prepare for a run, is significant in presenting Officer’s interest in subverting our ideas and illusions of films about the drug trade and who gets to be the centre of them. At 48, Williams is eight years older than the character he plays. But there’s a gravitas that comes with him in this role, as if the 15-year gap between the two Akillas we see has aged him from the earnest, youthful 15-year old (played by newcomer Thamela Mpumlwana, ably shouldering dual roles). But Williams is an exceptional fulcrum for the film. He is so good that the film’s juxtaposed narratives almost become a liability. As we follow adult Akilla across a fateful night, Officer fills in the gaps of teenaged-Akilla and how he came to be in police custody at the opening. It’s a straightforward tale of identity creation as Officer draws explicit parallels between the sins of Akilla’s youth and the penance of his adulthood. But “Akilla’s Escape” is best when Williams is onscreen, imbuing Akilla with a restless but incisive energy that feels significant, especially when the film starts foreshadowing its ending.
Even when “Akilla’s Escape” flirts with too much of the generic, it’s presenting a thoughtful depiction of Jamaican influences on-screen. There’s still a nascent quality to elements of Officer’s storytelling. The film is a brief 90 minutes, but feels like it could benefit from a 15-minute development of the middle act where adult Akilla becomes fleetingly involved with the aunt of his teenaged subject. But the interrogation of blackness and black legacy offered by “Akilla’s Escape” feels vital at a time when the world over seems to be reckoning with the implications of being black in a world that is so often anti-black. There are two decisive uses of the n-word that feel especially loaded and Williams’ facial reaction is key in both instances. Williams’ face is a gift that Officer uses to excellent means. Officer’s film is rarely didactic, but it burns with a potent awareness of the anti-black dynamics that affect the lives of Akilla, and those around him.
The supporting cast is dependable to varying degrees. Bob Marley’s granddaughter, Donisha Prendergast, has an excellent first scene, playing the concerned aunt to a potential criminal. Her arc never seems to fully develop, but the camera likes her and her confidence on-screen makes for rewarding moments opposite Williams. Even as Officer is focused on the price of masculinity in a world of inherited gangs and violence, the film is clear-eyed about the way women become collateral, or can be saviours, in this world. An arc with Akilla’s mother in the 1995 sequence works more because of Olunike Adeliyi’s commitment to the role as Thetis Brown.
In an early sequence, Akilla reveals to a potential buyer that his name is inspired by Homer’s Iliad and the heroic, but ill-fated Achilles. It is in Williams’ manifestation of the role that the Homeresque allusions make the most sense. Even when the film falters a bit in a resolution that feels slightly disjointed, Williams’ surety retains an element of melancholy that has weight. The film uses the allusions as a way of binding the story together. It’s unsubtle but it is evidence of the film’s interest in something beyond the usual triteness. It’s valuable enough as a restless presentation of the way legacy and heritage bleed into the present and the future.
Akilla’s Escape is an acquisition title currently playing at the 2020 Toronto International Festival in the Planet Africa 25 category, celebrating films showcasing Africa, and the African diaspora. It will be released later in the year.
