Micro-Budget March: Who Killed Captain Alex? (Dir Nabwana Isaac Godfrey Geoffrey, 1h 8 m, 2010)

There are few films in the cinematic canon like Who Killed Captain Alex. This, after all, is a war/revenge film made for under $200 (some estimates put it at an astonishingly low $85), with amateur actors, doing their own stunts in the slums of a developing nation's capital, during a civil uprising, on a camera that its director sold his possessions to buy, edited on a homebuilt computer which eventual damage during a power surge made Who Killed Captain Alex a lost film were it not for a second generation copy featuring a Ugandan comedian (the one and only VJ Emmie) riffing over it. It is one of the most extraordinary films ever made. It is, without a doubt, one of my favourite films of all time. It is one of the greatest stories in cinema, and one that has seen Nabwana compared to Tarantino, create music videos for American metal band and have his subsequent film, Bad Black, featuring much of the same cast as Captain Alex, screen at film festivals around the world.

So far, we've talked about three films, made for between $7 and $25,000, in relative comfort, where colossal distributors stepped in to do the heavy work of releasing the film. These are films scaled to their budgets, to what their film-makers essentially had to hand. Not so Captain Alex. The third film from Ugandan veritable cinematic production line, Wakaliwood Productions, and their chief director, Nabwana Isaac Godfrey Geoffrey (AKA Nabwana IGG), Who Killed Captain Alex is an explosive, bizarre, joyride of a film. Its ramshackle production style, its charm, its pure joy at the very act of making a film, of telling a story, even one, as the opening titles inform us, that Nabwana never intended to be seen outside his village, is infectious, sublime, this strange, beautiful, funny film a testament to the power of the internet to bring the cinema of other cultures into our living rooms.

Captain Alex, in short and simple terms is a film about conflict and revenge. On one side, the government forces, commanded by Captain Alex (Kakule William), whose death halfway through the film at the hands of unknown forces (even Nabwana himself seems uncertain of who exactly killed Alex), introduces his brother, the fearsome martial artist, Bruce U (Bukenya Charles) into the picture as he swears revenge upon his brother's assumed assassins. On the other side is the Tiger Mafia syndicate, headed by Richard, the film's standout star (Sseruyna Ernest), a volatile and unpredictable figure, whose revenge on the government forces, and attempts to assassinate Alex eventually erupt into violence. All out war between the Tiger Mafia and the Ugandan military follows, ending only with Richard captured, and swearing revenge, martial law declared, and the identity of Alex's murderer remaining undiscovered.

This, however, misses the point of Who Killed Captain Alex. This is not, after all, a film that's narratively sophisticated, and at barely an hour, much of its ancillary plot-i.e. where the film isn't, as VJ Emmie bellows above the sounds of battle "Non-stop deadly actions!"-is largely setup for the action. In the lull before the film's first major action scene we are introduced to Alex's subordinates, and the rag-tag group of gunmen and mercenaries under the Tiger Mafia, including Richard's wives, and a German mercenary. Between this setpiece and the next we are introduced to Richard, fuming over the capture of his brother, Alex dies, Bruce U is introduced, we see him talk to the local Shaolin master (and his mentor), before we begin to build, once more to the film's epicly scaled conclusion, in which all out war is waged between Richard and the Ugandan military, with the body count, and the chaos spilling out of control.

And what action. Fully a third of the film is action scenes, and it is in these that Nabwana's films feel the most comfortable, feel most unique; this is not to deride the more dramatic scenes, passionately acted and well-filmed as they are, but nobody shoots action like Nabwana IGG. Whilst we get our first sense of this in a restaurant brawl where Alex arrives to play peace-maker, the attack on the compound, is a remarkably taut sequence, as Alex's men sneak up on unsuspecting Tiger Mafia soldiers, before the film's true secret weapon arrives. For, as VJ Emmie is quick to inform us, "everybody in Uganda knows kung-fu"-and, whilst there is occasional use of slow-motion, there's something disarmingly impressive that these kinetic fight scenes, especially once Bruce U arrives on the scene, are mostly for real, as actors spar and block and throw astonishing kicks and punches that wouldn't be out of place in the best of Hong Kong cinema.

This, of course, quickly gives way to gunfights that blur the line between comic and ultraviolet, as actors lob themselves across scenes, charge around buildings, and fire astonishingly large amounts of ammunition at each other, with both computer generated and real, bullets, blood and explosions spilling across scenes, often from toy, or indeed hand-made guns. It is joyfully, almost gleefully over the top, but whilst Nabwana's almost baroque style of shooting action might make his work feel like that of CGI slugfests of Bay et al, the fact that he uses long-takes, often tracking actors across shots, and cuts only occasionally, give Captain Alex a solidity, with action scenes that one can easily follow, something, in blunt honesty, that's lacking from action movies from films with thousands of times its budget.

Whilst these action scenes, especially the finale which includes an astonishing number of deaths on screen, several helicopters, and a full-blown kung-fu fight and an ensuing battle, do eventually descend into what seems to be the same ten or so extras lobbing themselves around a jungle, it's a joyful chaos in which Nabwana, like George Miller's Mad Max Fury Road, simply throws as much at the camera as his meagre budget can cover. Never do they lose a certain viscerality, and as the final battle spills onto the streets of Kampala, so we begin to see (via both the film's usage of real-life footage of riots and protests, and the increasing use of blood and on screen deaths, a sense of the impact of how far Richard's violent ambitions have dragged not just the military, but the entire country into chaos.

But Captain Alex is more than this. For all its ramshackle nature-its soundtrack bizarrely features a panpipe cover of Seal's "Kiss From a Rose", a MIDI cover of ABBA, and a local rap group, its CGI and intertitles are off the peg, and often clumsily added into sequences or obvious green screen, and most of its costumes, props, sets and makeup are rudimentary, Captain Alex is a joyous film, amateur film-making given a global audience through the internet. Here, we must, of course, talk about the film's use of comedy, the fast-paced action given an almost cartoonishly wicked sense of humour in places, and at points the film leans upon its make-do-and-mend structure, of piecing things together to tell its story.

We need, though, to talk about the film's secret weapon. Without it, this film would simply not exist and its very survival is down to him. Enter Emmie, the film's Video Joker-indeed the film markets itself, at least partly on featuring the first English Video Joker, and whilst this concept is familiar to Ugandan cinema goers, a necessity of a country that speaks forty three languages, a little more explanation is required for English audiences. In short, VJ Emmie acts as a curious mix of commentator, summarising action for the audience, and an off-the wall form of riffing on movies, much in the same way that Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and Abridged Series use an existing film or series to tell jokes, reinterpret characters, and the like.

VJ Emmie, as a result, acts both as comedic prankster and unseen Greek Chorus, and it is he, alongside the film's kinetic action that made the film a hit. Out of his mouth come a set of bizarrely quotable exclamations, from playfully riffing off the rivalry between Wakaliwood and Nigeria's Nollywood, to excitable yelling that "the movie's on", "action is coming" and, of course, that they are indeed watching Who Killed Captain Alex, to utterly surreal moments where exclamations of "Dinosaurs" "Hello!" run side by side with the utterly absurd moment when VJ Emmie begins promoting the then in production Bad Black and other films by the studio. And yet, his enthusiasm, his excitement at watching Captain Alex is infectious, and nimbly bridges the gap between the people who made it, and the countless people who have watched it.

There are few films like it. It is not just an action movie made for under the average Western daily wage in an impoverished and conflict-struck African country, by a man who has never stepped inside a movie theatre before he started making films, where the actors and crew sell a film door to door before it can be pirated, and whose success came about purely by accident. Like few other films I have reviewed before it is singular, an idiosyncratic action movie made with a disarming amount of charm, an impressive set of action chops, and, above all, a sense of humour and of the cinematic that transcends language, borders and proves that, at its best, cinema is universal.

But more than anything, it proves that a film does not need to have colossal budgets, big name stars, or special effects to make an entertaining and enjoyable film. Who Killed Captain Alex? is nothing short of an astonishing piece of cinema, its existence nigh-miraculous, and its popularity better earned than any film I will likely cover, or have covered before. Long live Wakaliwood!

Rating: Must See (Personal Recommendation)

You can visit and support Wakaliwood at their website here: https://www.wakaliwood.com/

Like articles like this? Want them up to a week early? Why not support me on my Patreon from just £1/$1.20 a month! https://www.patreon.com/AFootandAHalfPerSecond