Why so much hype?

Best movie ever!

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

This is a disappointing film...and I DIDN'T read the book. But while watching it I paused the film and read about Biafra and the Nigerian civil war. This film almost poses that terribly bloody conflict as a severe inconvenience, and as such does it no justice. So that is strike 1.One interesting factor of the film is that it was one of the 2 films of John Boyega's that he made just before he became a shooting star in Star Wars. However, although you see him throughout the film, his lines are limited, so you get no real idea of what kind of actor he was then.Another interesting factor was Chiwetel Ejiofor, who is -- although I can't explain why -- a very interesting actor. There's just something different about him.The other actors do their jobs, but I didn't find any of the performers noteworthy, including Thandie Newton, who is the film's lead. I saw it as a rather flat performance.If I had it to do over again, I'd skip over this film, although I have an idea that under other direction it could have been very good.

Remember to see the end of the review I got to know about this movie when my very good friend told me about it and the actors and I was like what? How can Chiwetel Ejiofor act in a Nigeria based movie,I know the movie has to do with UK and stuff but it was mainly in Nigeria. I know he's a Nigerian but,well I guess he gets paid to act,let's get back to the movie. The movie's talking about what a tribe in Nigeria did in the past just to gain independence and become a republic and how a man and his wife suffered from it and some other stuff going on in their life. I don't really watch Nigerian movies because I have got lot of hate for the country and his people but I wanted to watch this movie BC Chiwetel Ejiofor was in it. The one thing I didn't get is why the hell would you budget N1.60billion on a Nigeria movie that's rubbish,but you got top actors in it tho but it still ain't worth it. Its a really really nice movie for Nigerians and some others not just my type of movie. Its getting a 5+2 for Chiwetel Ejiofor being in it. Must watch Well if you don't agree with my review or you got any arguments,tweet me @iamowomizz

Biyi Bandele's "Half of a Yellow Sun" is the first Nigerian movie that I've seen, and it's an impressive one. The focus is the Igbo people's attempt to establish an independent country, called Biafra, sparking the Nigerian Civil War.This speaks to a broader point about the wars that have plagued Africa's most populous country since its independence. Nigeria, like the rest of the African countries, is a creation of the colonizers. The people who lived there had only thought of themselves as members of their ethnic groups, not as members of a defined polity. Sure enough, the person who became the new leader favored his own ethnic group, which was certain to cause tensions with the others. In fact, it was often the colonizers who defined the ethnicities. For example, the Belgians labeled the Rwandans as Hutu and Tutsi, leading to the 1994 genocide there. The one saving grace of the Rwandan Genocide is that the Rwandan people no longer label each other by ethnicity, they only see each other as countrymen. This probably won't be as easy in the much larger Nigeria, which also suffers terrible corruption.Anyway, I found this to be a very good movie. I haven't read the novel on which it's based, but I'd like to. I hope that Bandele turns out more movies.

Half of a Yellow Sun is a fantastic novel, so any adaptation was going to be very difficult. Adapting a great book should be approached with care and most successful adaptations have focused on one or two key events or characters rather than try to retell the whole story. In this case, the adaptation attempted to tell the whole story and, subsequently, manages to avoid any depth as it simply skims along the surface in order to get the end. Often, scenes which serve no point other than to relay a piece of background information continually appear and it is shocking that such experienced film makers failed to guide the writer/director away from such obvious pitfalls. In order to accommodate as many details as possible from the novel, many superfluous scenes lead only to confusion and rely on the audience either having read the novel or having in-depth knowledge of Nigeria's history. Some characters appear only to serve as expositional devices. This film has one or two excellent performances DESPITE the material but generally the actors appear to be at a loss as to what to do. This is the director's first movie and it could that he wasn't comfortable with the pressures of time and of shooting out of sequence. It is sad to be so 'down' on a movie that has its heart in the right place, and one can only imagine that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie must rue the day that she allowed her beautiful work to be adapted by someone who had little or no grasp of the screen writing process that could have turned out a great film script.