The film revolves around the life of a Nigerian-American Malian youth who appears to be dealing more assertively. This young man fights daily for love, family and drug addiction, but his ambitions are now to direct him to a new criminal path.
The Price is best when it lets the characters breathe and exist in space, often with little to no dialogue... Sadly, there's a rhetorical hammer to be swung in The Price, and at times Onah doesn't pull back enough.
But the complex overall themes here are dealt with in such abrupt fashion that their treatment ultimately feels superficial. Still, you can hardly indict Onah for trying to make complex themes briskly palatable.
The large amount of plot poses two problems for the fledgling director, in that it's hard to fit all the character and story development into the 90-minute runtime and, as the film progresses, he also finds it difficult to decide where his focus lies.
Overall Dara Ju still delivers on its promise of sharing a piece of the immigrant experience that needs to be told, but much like the film's ambitious protagonist, it loses track of some of the details along the way.
Sure, it's an ages-old dilemma and there are moments that feel very much like a first film. But the strong lead performance by Aml Ameen ("Sense8") lends shading and depth to Onah's story.
