Loyalty and Justice Collide in "Offshoot"

Kehinde Bankole’s Modesire battles drug lords, betrayal, and her own rigid ideals in a thriller that tries to challenge the boundaries of right and wrong.

Offshoot is directed by Ayeny T. Steve. It premiered in cinemas on June 28, 2024, and is now streaming on Prime Video. Like. Share. Subscribe.

Kehinde Bankole stars as Modesire Mbakwe, the newly appointed head of the NDA, the national drug agency tasked with tackling the country’s rampant drug issues. As the first woman to assume this role since the agency’s inception—a detail rather inelegantly delivered through an info dump during the opening credits—she faces not only the entrenched insubordination and lack of discipline from colleagues who report to her but also the menacing wrath of the drug cartels whose business she threatens from day one.

Modesire is stoic, unwavering, and sees the world strictly in black and white. Throughout the story, her mother, her husband Dike (Kelechi Udegbe), her daughter Amara, and Tony (Ibrahim Suleiman)—her closest ally at work—each try to nudge her to see beyond her rigid viewpoint. But Modesire remains resolute, unwilling to compromise her ideals or soften her approach, even as her family’s safety is called into question.

Through Modesire’s character, the film tries to grapple with a handful of issues—from family dilemmas as she and her husband clash over the risks her job brings to their home, to the professional strain of navigating a system undermined from within. However, the family drama, in particular, feels poorly scripted, lacking the emotional depth needed to make these conflicts resonate.

Offshoot isn’t exactly boring, but it teeters dangerously close to that line. Characters consistently make bafflingly foolish choices that test patience more than tension—like Modesire deciding to call her husband for a casual chat about her mission while in the middle of a high-stakes raid. The film drags its feet, circling endlessly around the same central point: Modesire is a competent, determined leader being sabotaged from within, and her husband’s resistance is an obstacle to her fully realizing her potential on the job.

There’s an air of mystery at first, which is initially promising, but as the story drags on without truly advancing, that intrigue starts to evaporate. By the time the truth is finally revealed, the narrative has stretched itself thin, leaving me too worn out to care about the big reveal. That said, the ending does manage to land a punch, tying the story together with a twist that brings the household betrayal theme to a compelling head. In the end, Modesire is forced to confront what everyone has been telling her all along: the world isn’t just black and white.

While Offshoot stumbles in pacing and suffers from an overly long runtime, its final moments bring a sense of poetic justice. Modesire’s journey reaches a sobering conclusion, one that forces her out of her rigid worldview and leaves us reflecting on the complexity of loyalty, family, and the blurred lines between right and wrong. It’s a fitting, if imperfect, close to a film that dared to explore themes beyond the typical drug war narrative.

Official poster

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Directed by: Ayeny T. Steve

Written by: Temitope Bolade-Akinbode and Diche Enunwa

Starring: Kehinde Bankole, Kelechi Udegbe, Ibrahim Suleiman, David Jones David, Gregory Ojefua, Bimbo Manuel,