The past has its way of catching up with us. It’s something Akilla Brown (Saul Williams) has always known, and in many ways, he’s accepted his fate. In Charles Officer’s fast-paced neo-noir, Akilla’s Escape, the director turns his lens on two versions of the same man. In the present, Akilla flies through Toronto’s underworld as a notorious supplier, increasingly wary of his high-risk lifestyle. In the past, Akilla is a 15-year old living in Brooklyn in the ’90s, terrorized by his menacing gangster father, Clinton (Ronnie Rowe), and helpless to help his broken mother, Thetis (Olunike Adeliyi), find a way out.
‘Akilla’s Escape’ forces the past to collide with the present
At 40, the exhausted drug supplier can sense that his time is running out; he just doesn’t quite know when. Though he’s making plans to shutter his Toronto-based marijuana farm to go legit and open a dispensary, his boss and business partners are not on board. Still, troubled by memories of his childhood and determined to move in a different direction than he’s done for the past 25 years, Akilla’s mind made up. Everything changes for him one night when his past comes barreling into him.
Continue reading at Showbiz Cheatsheet.