Integrity Journal of Arts and Humanities

The action film is one film genre that has attracted serious attention in scholarship. The hero in this genre is presented in a plethora of challenging situations that primarily revolve around violence, close fights, desperate chases, explosions and other life-threatening physical conditions.  The action film in Nollywood currently focuses only on an infinitesimal aspect of Nigerian life basically revolving around armed bandits, drug organizations and human trafficking amongst others. Given that Nigeria is a country that is replete with a vast history of heroic activities, this study attempts to expand the horizon to the study of the action film genre in Nollywood by investigating its conventional codes from other aspects of Nigerian life, particularly from the communal war experience. The study is guided by the theory of genre as a framework to analyze two purposively sampled films namely: Invasion 1897, and Battle of Musanga. This research adopts the qualitative methodology of textual interpretation of the selected films to arrive at its results.  Among its findings is the fact that apart from the mainstream action film genre in Nollywood, observable features of the genre are copiously found in communal war backgrounds of traditional Nigerian society. This study contributes to knowledge by delineating the codes and conventions that could aid critical discourses on the Communal War sub-generic classification of the action film in Nollywood.  It is, therefore part of the recommendations of this study that more attention is paid to the development of indigenous canons to aid intellectual discourses on the African film.