This bold but brief cinematic treatment of gangster life out of West Africa is a DIY crime thriller that makes the most of its scrappy cast of nonprofessional actors and an obvious shoestring budget. Scam Republique is a hyperviolent street-life cautionary tale whose many technical imperfections can’t detract from the raw emotional power at the heart of the film. Set in the dusty backstreets of a Cameroonian village, the film centers on a couple of tech-savvy college-age kids, Kwesi (Felix Kiloso) and Niko (Sony Omar) find themselves caught up in the local criminal underworld of internet credit card scamming.
As it happens, Niko’s mom comes down with a potentially deadly case of dengue fever, and Niko is desperate to find a get-rich-quick scheme to pay for his mother’s expensive medical treatment. So the town alcoholic directs him to the ringleader of a gang of hackers who have devised a seemingly foolproof way to set up fake wire transfers in which they wire other people’s money into their own accounts. As you might imagine, things don’t quite as smoothly as planned, and Kwesi and Niko soon find out that their boss is not just an unpleasant thug but a raving psychopathic murderer when business is less than robust. Although the scenes of violence in Scam Republique are definitely B-movie grade, they’re still menacing enough and even shockingly brutal at times.
The minimal production quality is often an asset, giving the film a seedy documentary quality that ideally suits the rough-and-tumble subject matter. Also giving the film an indelible sense of realism is in its careful depictions of the seedy local Francophone and English-speaking underworld, all perfectly set to a groovy soundtrack of eclectic contemporary Afropop beats (no surprise that director Marco Matheus has a long history of working on music videos). Despite having barely enough running time to make for a full feature, this tough, taut crime film still packs a formidable punch. Recommended.