Blood & Oil is a 2019 drama about the first oil well drilled in Nigeria and how it has impacted a small village.
Big oil companies are bad. We all accept that even as we tend to turn a blind eye to the real implications of what they do in feeding our insatiable thirst for the products they produce. Keeping ignorant of what really goes on in places few of us will ever see makes it easier to stay in denial. Many films have taken to exposing the atrocities of what big business has befallen the people under their thumb, or at least tried to, but not many have had any impact in making change. That’s probably also the case for director Curtis Graham‘s Blood & Oil, a small independent film that works hard to tell a local story of outrage, though most likely won’t have the reach it should. Hopefully, that will change.
In Nigeria, the small village of Oloibiri lives in the shadow of what was once prosperity after oil was discovered by an American company before falling into ruin when it dried up, with rivers polluted, children turned ill, and a devastated economy. Two decades later, another conglomerate strikes oil and it divides the community, forcing armed militants, led by a hardened killer named Gunpowder (Richard Mofe-Damijo) to kidnap the company ceo Robert Powell (William R. Moses), though the plan goes awry when the man escapes and ends up hiding in the home of Timpriye (Olu Jacobs), an elder fellow who long remembers the horrors of what men like him bring but lives by a higher moral code.
Blood & Oil is based on true events and filmed almost entirely on location in Nigeria, lending the topical story a great deal of authenticity. It’s not a very complicated plot but is made sturdy by a host of very strong performances, even as the filmmakers are clearly limited by a low budget. You likely won’t know any of the names in the credits, but most have long been working in Nigerian film and as such, deliver impassioned, deeply emotional turns that feel motivated by something well beyond the script.
Yes, this being what it is, the production lags with a very generic score and some weak moments in editing and audio. So much so that I wasn’t entirely sure I’d actually find anything worth redeeming in the first fifteen minutes. However, I was soon swallowed up in the story and the cast itself, with Jacobs especially memorable as a man torn apart by what oil has done to his community.
There’s a jarringly raw take to the violence here, too, with some gruesome, convincing effects that aren’t overdone but also don’t hold back. The third act is not easy to watch as some fall under torture, but this should not be a deterrent. It’s done to serve a point and while the movie may struggle in a few spots making the conflict feel legitimate, the earnestness at which Graham and screenwriter Samantha Iwowo go to in delivering their story deserves praise. This is a film that comes together with a lot more conviction the more it stays on screen. It’s a troubling, affecting little film that will sneak up and surprise you. It has a lot to say.