SYNOPSIS:

“If you have tears…prepare to shed them now…” - William Shakespeare - “Pound of Flesh” traverses the full spectrum of emotions. It unfolds with tasteful sentimentality, driven by a powerful score from a proven film composer. As the film opens, eight-year-old piano prodigy, Chinelo (aka Nelo) Nweke, takes delight in the amazement on the faces of shoppers who hear her playing, and believed Mozart has returned from the grave. That same night, Nelo again reincarnates Mozart, as the featured pianist in concert with the Houston Symphony Orchestra. She and the Orchestra play to a packed house. It is her last performance. On their way home from the concert, an accident happens, and Nelo is trapped in the family’s burning car. It is quickly obvious that she will not escape…and is destined to burn to death. A man on the scene, unable to allow the eight year old to die such a horrible death, provides her the only escape possible…death from a single gunshot. The gunman, Dr. Emeka Ofor, who turns out to be Nelo’s pediatrician, is arrested, tried and found guilty of manslaughter for the mercy killing. Thus begins the spirited tale of unseen beings among us…a tale, which moves into the realm of angels, paradoxically, by the less than laudable propensities of the well-to-do Mr. Nweke, Nelo’s father. Mr. Nweke’s grief from the loss of his daughter leads him to seek revenge. Dr. Emeka’s manslaughter conviction is not enough for Nweke, who wants the physician dead. A parallel subplot evidences Mr. Nweke’s greed, as he also lays plan to kill Nelo’s mother, Amaka Nweke, in order to keep all the couple’s sizeable estate while becoming free to marry his long-time girlfriend, Evelyn Warner. Dr. Emeka escapes the first attempt on his life by Mr. Nweke’s henchmen; two county sheriff’s deputies. Enter Rhonda Blue…an eighty-year-old agnostic who harbors the on-the-lam Dr. Emeka and begins to re-think her religious convictions because of the seemingly miraculous way he comes onto her property and into her life.