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Viva Riva! Movie Review

Viva Riva! is a 2010 Congolese crime thriller film directed by Djo Tunda Wa Munga and starring Patsha Bay. It’s a genre movie that is very well made, but it’s far from appealing.

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“At the very end, it always kills you“

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With the Democratic Republic of Congo suffering from a gasoline shortage, criminal Riva comes back home with gasoline stolen from his sometime employer, Cesar. Determined to use his new wealth to have a good time, Riva hits the town with longtime friend J.M. At a club, Riva meets gorgeous Nora and steals her away from her gangster boyfriend, Azor. With both Cesar and Azor after him, Riva struggles to stay alive.

The Democratic Republic of Congo doesn’t have the most booming of movie businesses, but they are getting into the habit of making more and more films and this is one of their most respected and best-known efforts, the one that garnered them a lot of praise and attention in the West.

And it’s easy to see why the critics gravitated toward this film as it’s visually sumptuous. Not only is the production design terrific, but so is the cinematography and the eclectic directing and editing. The film is a technical achievement through and through, which is also powered by a wonderful noirish atmosphere to it.

However, I generally tend to appreciate movies more for their ideas, themes and characters than the visuals, and this is one example where the former is infinitely weaker than the latter. Not only is the plot quite pedestrian with way too many plot turns and developments that did not appeal to me and/or were overly violent, but the characters were also very uninteresting.

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Viva Riva! has a lot of steamy sex in it, which will appeal to many viewers, but I personally found them one-note. They were well filmed for sure, but after a certain time I got bored with endless scenes of sex and violence that serve no purpose to the overall story. It’s an overly graphic, unappealing movie that resembles those worst crime genre qualities. It’s a great example of this genre and just why I don’t gravitate toward it personally.