Tag: assassin

Silent Dove

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★★★
“Flips the bird at the bad guys”

While obviously cheap, and occasionally laughable, the straightforward nature of this helped it remain generally entertaining. It’s not over-burdened with unnecessary plot complexities and this gives it a clarity of focus that works to its advantage. Dove (Atkins) is an assassin for the mob, but her boss, Teddy (Mensoza) wants her and her handler father (Sanford) out of the picture. So he begins setting Dove up to fail, giving her bad intel on a job, hoping that will lead to her death. She survives the unexpected scenario, so on her next hit, Teddy “forgets” to mention the presence of a young child, whom Dove ends up shooting as well as her target. That gives Teddy the excuse he needs to unleash his dogs on her and her father. But Dove is not going to be easy to eliminate, especially after Teddy makes it considerably more personal than business.

It’s the kind of film which would be quite easy to pick apart. The relationship between Dove and her father, for example, is so scantily drawn, you wonder why they bother at all, and there is also an odd flashback sequence to Dove being tortured. Was this some kind of origin story? It’s purpose is never made clear. There are gaffes and mistakes to be found, if you try. After killing the child, Dove’s gun suddenly vanishes between shots, and later there’s a bizarre moment where she sews up a wound in her arm through a bandage. As you do…? Most of the mobsters are hardly convincing in their roles, lacking the necessary sense of threat you’d expect from them, and quite why Teddy feels so compelled to get rid of Dove, since she’s clearly more competent than any of his operatives, is not explained to any satisfactory level.

And, yet…. Probably the biggest compliment I can give this is, if I made a girls-with-guns flick, it would probably look not too dissimilar to Silent Dove. For example, the script is not lumbered with any unnecessary romantic angles. Atkins’s performance, while so low-key as arguably capable of being called flat and disinterested, somehow seems perfectly fitting for her role, capturing someone who appears to be emotionally dead inside (which may be part justification for the flashback sequence?). Though relatively long, at 105 minutes, there didn’t feel as if there was any real amount of slack, in the way of unnecessary scenes, and it has at least one memorably imaginative kill, involving a significant quantity of sulphuric acid.

The bottom line is, I was always kept watching, and was never bored, even if it was generally fairly obvious where things would end up. It more or less does, though there’s a pleasant final twist that I did appreciate. Filmed in ten days on a budget of $15,000, the makers have put the whole thing up on YouTube, and I’ve certainly seen far worse movies given away for free there.

Dir: Paul Dupree
Star: Chelsee Atkins, Johny Mendoza, Gary Brumett, Malcolm T. Sanford

Code Name Banshee

  By

★★½
“Daddy issues.”

This looked considerably better in the trailer, which makes it look like quite an action-packed extravaganza. The reality is much less interesting, with a murky, and confusing plot, and what action there is, is often filmed in a murky and confusing way. It begins with an agent, code name Banshee (King), quitting the government agency for which she works. The handoff of an asset went wrong: one of the colleagues involved was her father, who vanished entirely. The other was Caleb (Banderas), who went off the grid thereafter. Five years later, Banshee is a private assassin, but her latest job is interrupted by Greene (Flanagan), who wants her to give up Caleb’s location. 

Naturally, she won’t, and tracks down Caleb herself to warn him and his teenage daughter, Hailey (Davis) – as well as, hopefully, find the truth out about what happened to her father. Before she can do so, Greene shows up, with an apparently infinite supply of minions, who appear remarkably oblivious to concepts such as “taking cover”. To get to this point, you will have to endure a script that doesn’t bother explaining almost any significant point. I’m not sure why Greene is suddenly and energetically going after Caleb, half a decade later. Or why Banshee also waited so long to visit the only man who knows what happened to her father. Then there’s the facile ease with which she is able to track down Caleb, based entirely on a fragmentary conversation from a long time previously. Mind you, running a bar is not exactly what I would call “going off-grid”…

It is a bit of a pity, since I liked most of the characters, and the actors do a fairly good job of bringing them to life. King and Davis have good chemistry, and  Banderas brings an effective world weariness to his role, as a veteran who now just wants to be left alone. The highlight though, is likely Flanagan, who hits the right balance, creating a larger than life villain, without going too far into the chewing of scenery. The lack of apparent motivation – we never know who he’s working for, or why – does limit his effectiveness. 

The first bit of action may be the best elevator lobby fight since The Matrix, and does a good job of establishing Banshee’s credentials, even if there isn’t much else of a similar standard the rest of the way. Indeed, as far as Banshee goes, there’s not much at all, until Greene’s curiously incompetent henchmen start to show up at Caleb’s house, attacking in small, conveniently handleable groups. For… reasons, it’s largely down to Banshee and Hailey to hold them off, the latter proving that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. So, two action heroines for the price of one. Yay. Just do not expect to learn the truth about what happened to dear old Dad, or you will be sadly disappointed. Actually, you may well be disappointed anyway…

Dir: Jon Keeyes
Star: Jaime King, Antonio Banderas, Tommy Flanagan, Catherine Davis

Mr. and Mrs. Smith, by Cathy East Dubowski

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆☆☆

This book is the official novelization of the 2005 movie of the same name, starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. I don’t share the idea that movie novelizations are by definition trash, devoid of any possible literary quality. Like movies based on books, they take a work in one art form and endeavor to translate it (hopefully faithfully!) into a different one. Whichever direction the translation goes in, it requires genuine artistry to do well; IMO, either way, it has the potential of creating something worth watching or reading, and even something that’s seriously good artistically. Each attempt ought to be judged individually, on its own merits.

That said, in this case, neither the original movie nor its novelization are ever likely to be viewed by many people as stellar achievements in either of their respective forms. I thought that the film had significant gaps in logic, which I hoped the novelization might address. In fact, it doesn’t; the plot holes, logical problems and murky areas in the original are as glaring, illogical and murky here. That’s the primary reason that my rating for this book isn’t higher.

As most readers will know going in (and the cover copy will tell you that much, if you don’t!), our title characters here are both professional assassins. Neither of them knows that fact about the other. As it happens, they work for unnamed organizations, both seemingly U.S.-based (the main setting appears to be New York City), which are hostile to each other for totally unexplained reasons (did I mention “murky?”). They’ve been married 5-6 years (a running gag is that they can’t agree on which), having met in Bogota, where they’d both been sent to carry out hits on various local malefactors. At the time, they were strongly drawn to each other, quickly forming a deep emotional connection, and married after a whirlwind courtship. Since then, however, their marriage has deteriorated to the point that they’re hardly communicating at all, and are just going through the motions, nursing various unexpressed grudges and frustrations. Not far into the book, they’re both assigned by their respective organizations to dispatch the same mark. The resulting confrontation will set the stage for the ensuing developments.

Cathy East Dubowski is a professional writer, who apparently specializes in both YA and grown-up movie novelizations. This is apparently her best-known one (and my only exposure to her work). To her credit, she attempted a fresher approach here than simply re-telling the screenplay in third person. The movie used the frame device of the couple’s visits to a marriage counselor. Here, the author begins the book with the counselor’s notes and transcripts from his initial sessions with the Smiths, both together and separately; the main body of the story is their alternating journal posts which the counselor asked them to write, without necessarily showing the text to anyone else. IMO, this works well; we get inside both their heads, and understand them and their feelings. (One reviewer complained that the technique makes for “repetition,” but I didn’t find this to be a problem. While they’re often describing the same events, their different perceptions of them are very revealing, and as such anything but boring.)

Dubowski follows the movie fairly well (I could spot some minor differences, but though my memory of the film isn’t as sharp now as it was right after watching it seven years ago, I could also recall a good many scenes and lines of dialogue). The main difference is that the bad language in the book is much worse than in the original. There, I don’t recall it as very noticeable (and I would have picked up on that sort of thing), though the PG-13 rating is in part for “brief strong language.” Here, it’s not brief, and there’s a lot of it, including the f-word and religious profanity; I found most of this gratuitous. (Otherwise, the content issues aren’t problematical; there’s implied –actually, stated– sex, some of it premarital, but nothing explicit, and while the violence level is through the roof, it’s not really gory and is so over-the-top it’s hard to take seriously.

The same could be said for both the movie and the book in general.) A lot of plot points aren’t really credible; it’s difficult to go into detail without spoilers, but I didn’t think any of the decisions by the couple’s superiors were believable, Benjamin Danz’s role didn’t logically make sense, and I couldn’t imagine any real-life assassins reacting to the situation of discovering another hitter targeting the same mark the way this pair did. Also, the carnage in the highway chase scene would have resulted in police attention long before it concluded; and I thought the ending was way too pat. The causes of the couple’s estrangement over the years also aren’t really brought out and explained.

Objectively, given all of these shortcomings, in terms of its literary worth the novel doesn’t deserve more than two stars. Three was a gift; but it’s one I’m subjectively willing to give, just because I honestly did like the book, to a degree. The reason I did is for the strength of its depiction of a couple who honestly do love each other, and who are willing to fight both external dangers and their own inner anger and misunderstandings, in order to hang on to and recapture the bond that drew them to each other in the first place. And it’s made clear that a big part of doing that is learning to be honest with each other, to be themselves without playing a role, to communicate and give your entire commitment to the relationship. That aspect of the book, even though the story is told with a significant leaven of humor, is in itself as serious as can be, and applies to all marriages, whether the partners both happen to be contract assassins or not. And despite their faults, I had the sense that both main characters were essentially decent human beings, whom I did care about and want to see succeed in their married life.

Author: Cathy East Dubowski
Publisher: Harper; available through Amazon, currently only as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Agent Kelly

  By

★★★
“Not your typical assassin.”

Seeing this described as “an experimental thriller,” set my alarm bells ringing. I’ve seen enough “experimental” film in my time, to realize it’s typically a code-word meaning “incoherent rubbish.” The above rating is thus partially a reflection of my relief that this did not fall into that category. You still, very definitely, have to manage your expectations here. If you go in expecting a slick, Jason Bourne style adventure, you will be sorely disappointed. For this is a no-budget entity, largely guerilla filmed by a one-man crew, and with a lead actress who has no real experience. It has already significantly surpassed all my expectations, simply through not being a total disaster.

It’s the story of Kelly (Spence), a 50-year-old assassin, with a particular fondness for the use of poison, who has gone rogue after her protege, Mia (Mills) is tortured and killed by… Rivals? Associates? Like a fair bit here, the details are vague. It seems safe to say, others in the same line of work. Driven by an unprofessional urge for revenge, Kelly has already killed one of those responsible, and is now on the run from the remaining three, with her only ally a voice on the other end of the phone, Ed (Bergtold), who is… Her boss? Partner? Again: vagueness. She high-tails it to hide out in the South of Spain, where she has to fend off the remaining hunters, making them become the hunted.

Initially, I confused this with Assassin’s Target, the other “Hitwoman in Spain with a fondness for poison” movie. Really: what are the odds? This is sparser, yet perhaps more effective. It certainly puts over the utter loneliness of Kelly’s life: there’s not a single face-to-face conversation in the film, everything being told in phone-calls and voice-over. [This may be to help avoid audio issues, the frequent bane of low-budget movies, as much as a stylistic choice!] In lieu of human interaction, there is a lot of footage of her riding buses, walking the streets, sipping drinks, etc. The action is definitely at the lower level; a few foot chases in those same streets or on the beach, and one brief hand-to-hand fight. That’s yer lot.

As noted, there’s a lot which is never explained, such as how Kelly suddenly finds herself in the middle of an apparent plot to blow up a Spanish bank, how the hunters track her down, or she tracks them [she calls one up, and is even explicitly asked, “How did you get this number?”] Normally, I’d find this kind of thing an irritating indication of lazy writing, yet for some reason it did not annoy me here, fitting the murky world for which the makers seem to be aiming, largely successfully. Spence, who also wrote the script, is not a glamorous female assassin either, being on the edge of menopause and with a drinking problem: credit due there. Even an ending definitely falling into the noncommittal camp seemed appropriate to what had gone before. While clearly rough around the edges, there was enough novel here to keep me watching – much to my surprise, I will admit.

Dir: James Smith
Star: Caroline Spence, Ed Bergtold, Chris Sanders, Mia Mills

Cold Blooded Killers

  By

★★
“In severe need of warming up.”

A confusing mess with some redeeming features, we first see the titular assassin – in either title – Rose (Rose) taking out an entire family in their home. This is notable in two ways. First, how the wife keeps an arsenal of weapons under the sink. Second, how Rose kills the young daughter, after the little girl vows to take revenge when she grows up. This is, unfortunately, as good as it gets. Before long, coherence is left by the wayside. The basic plot involves Rose’s sister Misty, being kidnapped by Hank (Sheridan), in revenge for her killing of his brother. She heads out, accompanied by her sister’s boss Becky (Williams), in search of Hank and Misty.

But there are also a slew – far too many for the script to handle, truth be told – of other assassins, on Rose’s tail, working through some kind of phone app for hitmen. It’s difficult to keep track of them all, and even the movie can’t manage it. For example, at one point, another killer is clearly introduced as Anita, but the on-screen caption calls her Marilyn. I read reports there were issues in production, with control being taken away from the director, and all manner of extra footage shot. That would go some way to explain this jumbled mess, and why it wasn’t released until three years after the initial shoot had finished. Though, of course does not excuse it.

I will say, the final battle is somewhat amusing. Albeit, more for Becky going berserk with a chainsaw, than Rose firing hundreds of bullets at her target, who drops with a feeble three or four blood squibs on his chest. If the film had concentrated on that pair, it might have amounted to something, as their scenes have a rough edge to them that is entertaining to watch. And, let’s face it, the amount of cleavage on view from both is not exactly a detriment. I’ll also acknowledge the presence of legendary scream queen Brinke Stevens, which is never a bad thing, even in little more than a cameo, as here. 

However, the flaws are considerably more numerous. Even though our heroines are fun, we’re never given any real reason to care about either of them. The same goes for the other characters: Hank’s impact is almost entirely limited to his facial hair, and Anita/Marilyn to her costume choices. There is little or no structure, with the grand finale coming out of nowhere, and delivering a twist which neither was a surprise, nor made much sense. I’m also not a fan of copious CGI, which appears to have been used for a lot of the gunplay, and in a sloppy way at that. The end result is something which would probably make a very good trailer, yet would leave any viewer of said trailer, hugely disappointed. For this is 10 minutes of decent content in a 90-minute movie.

Dir: Rickey Bird Jr.
Star: Felissa Rose, Dave Sheridan, Caroline Williams, Steven Chase
a.k.a. Killer Rose

Too Hot to Handle

  By

★★★
“If you can’t stand the heat…”

Director Schain had already worked with his wife Caffaro on the Ginger trilogy, in which she played (per Wikipedia), “a tough and resourceful bed-hopping private-eye and spy.” Here, the character isn’t too different, though her day job is rather more morally questionable, being a professional killer. “Samantha Fox” (Caffaro) is the identity she has adopted, as she works on a series of hits in the Philippines. On her trail is the local chief of detectives, Domingo De La Torres (Ipalé), who first views Samantha as a suspect, but their relationship quickly becomes more intimate. It feels almost like a precursor to Basic Instinct, in that there’s a cop obsessed with someone he’s supposed to be investigating, and really doesn’t care whether or not she’s a murderer.

The film does aim to make Samantha quite a sympathetic character, in that all the people we see her kill, as ones without whom society is better off. But there are a couple of moments where she seems clearly psychopathic, to Villanelle-esque levels. For example, she takes pleasure in sitting and watching her first victim slowly suffocate to death. This is not by accident. When Domingo takes her on a shooting trip, she states, “It’s much more of a turn on to watch something die slowly. Even then, the greater the distance, the less the fun.” It’s an attitude we see in action, at a cock-fighting event which is apparently her idea of a date night (I’m pleased to report Chris is perfectly happy with dinner and a movie). While watching animals fight to the death, she is simultaneously dreaming about having sex. This seems… not exactly normal.

Yet, Samantha is still depicted as nicer than her victims: it’s not as if her twisted fantasies hurt anyone else. Well, except for her victims, anyway. I did like the way she rarely used physical means to take them down, outside of a duel against an operative De La Torres sends to the boat where she lives. Mind you, that scene is functional rather than impressive, and so it makes sense for the film-makers to script it so that she relies on her smarts. She’s fond of disguises, whether it’s pretending to be an art journalist, or going full brownface as she pretends to be a local maid. Caffaro clearly also has no inhibitions about shedding her clothes, though her figure is on the lighter side for my tastes.

Less effective in general is Ipalé, who became well-knows twenty years later, as Pharaoh Seti in The Mummy and its sequel. It feels as if he learned his lines phonetically, and he makes little overall impression here. I was more excited to see veteran Philippino actor Diaz as De La Torres’s lieutenant, for once getting to play a good guy. Overall, while nothing particularly special, this is reasonably entertaining, and considerably more twisted than I expected in terms of its protagonist and her psyche.

Dir: Don Schain
Star:  Cheri Caffaro, Aharon Ipalé, Vic Diaz, Corinne Calvet

The Long Kiss Goodnight – 25 years on

  By ,

★★★
“We have a mommy who slays the monsters for her daughter – but the monsters are real.” — Shane Black“

As mentioned in my review of Kate, I was startled to discover I had never reviewed this, since it is one of the most well-known entries in the action heroine genre of its time. Since its time was almost exactly 25 years ago  – the movie was released on October 11, 1996 – now seems as good a point as any to rectify the omission. It was the second collaboration in our field between Renny Harlin and then-wife Geena Davis. The first was Cutthroat Island, a film whose troubled production and spectacular failure we have previously covered. But that did not dissuade either Harlin or studio New Line Pictures from trying again, albeit without the troublesome period setting and sea-going. As a result, the budget here was $65 million, a third lower than Cutthroat.

Some aspects were still not exactly cheap. Writer Shane Black was, at the time, a ‘rock star” screenplay author, having written Lethal Weapon – though subsequent efforts The Last Boy Scout and The Last Action Hero had not lived up to commercial expectations. Still, the script for this provoked a bidding war between New Line, Warner Brothers and Columbia Studios, eventually costing the first-named $4 million in July 1994, including a $500K producer’s fee for Black. That was a new record for a spec script, one which would last more than a decade, breaking the previous high of $3 million, paid to Joe Eszterhas for Basic Instinct. This was before filming on Cutthroat Island had even started, so production of Goodnight was put on the back-burner. Consequently, shooting did not begin until 18 months after the script was purchased.

It took place from January-May 1996 in Ontario, Canada, and the conditions posed many issues for the cast and crew. According to Harlin, “The coldest night was when we were working on the bridge in the end sequence. It was a night when the wind was blowing 70 miles an hour and it was minus 98 degrees with the wind chill.” Though it was probably Davis, who had to pretend she was unconscious and lie on the ground, who experienced the worst of it. Harlin had nothing but praise for her: “Geena’s particularly tough. She’s very athletic and very determined. So, if there’s anything she feels that she can’t do, she’ll put all her energies into making sure that she can learn it, and by the time it is needed, she can do it.”

Generally, however, production went smoothly – save for a historic location burning down.  But if you read Black’s February 1995 script, you can see the violence has been significantly toned down by the time it reaches the screen. For example, this line depicting a character, shot in the head in a diner: “Mr. Shotgun dies on his feet. Outgoing matter. Flung. Spattered on the grill where it sizzles along with burnt hamburger.” Ick. A test screening also triggered a significant change. Jackson’s character, private eye Mitch Henessey, was originally intended to die, but the audience reaction was so negative, that Harlin went back and shot additional footage. “That’s right! You can’t kill me, motherfuckers!” now crows Henessey, as he comes back from the dead.

While not the disaster at the box-office which was Cutthroat Island, it wasn’t a great success. In its opening weekend, it came in at #3, well back of fellow new release The Ghost and the Darkness, and even behind The First Wives’ Club, in its fourth week out. By the end of its run, it had taken $33.4 million, though did better overseas, with $56 million. Still, that $89.4 million was not much more than the production budget and after promotion and other costs, profits will have been slim to non-existent. Was it a hang-over from Cutthroat? Poor marketing? Or simply having an action heroine? Black reckons “It might have made more money” with a male lead. That all said, how does it stand up, a quarter-century later?

Truth be told, I’ve seen this several times over the years: it always feels I should like it more than I do, and I come away feeling a little disappointed. Especially now, it is a product of its time, and certainly, pales in comparison to not dissimilar spy movies since, such as Salt or Atomic Blonde. The pacing feels particularly leisurely, with it being close to an hour before Samantha Caine (Davis) gets fully in touch with her inner assassin, “Charly” Baltimore. Charly suffered amnesia after a fall on a mission eight years previously, and had become happy housewife Samantha, complete with boyfriend and adorable little moppet. But a blow to the head reawakens Charley – much to the concern of a number of people, not least of whom are her former employers, to whom she could now become an embarrassment.

Firstly, what is it with Black and hyperviolent Christmas film? Like Die Hard, and much of his output, this takes place over the festive season because… I guess it’s a counterpoint to that hyperviolence. That aside, this is mostly the journey of Charly to rediscover her past, but the terrorist mission she was targeted with disrupting, is about to happen in a couple of days – what are the odds? – as a CIA false-flag operation, under Assistant Director Leland Perkins (Malahide). As leverage against her, Perkins’s minion (Bierko) kidnaps the moppet. Big mistake. Charly storms in and rescues her daughter, before having to stop the planned attack. I must say, the moppet is remarkably resilient, surviving being thrown through a hole in the wall of her house, and a hellacious tanker crash, with barely a scratch.

It might have been more fun to have sustained the housewife/spy duality for longer e.g. having Charly turn up at the PTA, or deal with the thousand and one microaggressions of everyday suburban life. Instead, we get rather too many scenes of her driving round with Henessey. These are kinda fun – there’s an entire film to be made about the shady PI, with his sideline in blackmail – yet in a movie that’s two hours long, feel like needless padding. The bad guys are basically stupid, wasting any number of opportunities to take care of the problem i.e. Charley, and go about their plot in a way that… well, let’s be charitable and say, maybe it made sense in the mid-nineties. That is not the only aspect to have dated poorly. The whole “false flag” thing now has the distinct scent of conspiracy nut to it, since we’ve heard this claimed for virtually every attack since 9/11.

It’s certainly not all bad though. Davis is great on both sides of her split personality, eventually merging them into a whole which feels comfortable. There’s no denying her derring-do, and on several occasions, Harlin shoots things so you feel certain it’s a stunt double assembling a gun, or ice-skating, only to pan up and show – nope, it was Geena. The final explosion at Niagara Falls is as spectacular a giant fireball as you could hope to see, and the action scenes in general are top-notch stuff, from a time before you assumed CGI was always involved. However, I think I preferred Cutthroat, not least due to its more consistent tone. Black always wants to seem both hard-edged and jokey; he doesn’t get it right here, leaving each side pointing a finger at the other, in accusatory fashion.

Both Jackson and Harlin speak fondly of the film. Jackson calls Long Kiss the favorite of his own films to watch, and Harlin agrees. Despite the initially underwhelming return, its cult status has helped to feed discussion of a sequel over the years, though Davis – long divorced from Harlin – would not be involved. The director said it would be about Jackson’s character crossing paths with an adult version of Davis’s daughter. Harlin now lives in China, where the film is apparently well-regarded and said that “Several people, producers and financiers, here in China have talked to me about doing either a Chinese remake or doing an English-language sequel.” As of June 2021, he still wants to make a second part.

Will it ever happen? Only time will tell, though given how long since the original movie, it seems doubtful. But we’ll always have that, and the moderate yet violent delights of Geena Davis as a home-maker turned lethal operative.

Dir: Renny Harlin
Star: Geena Davis, Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Malahide, Craig Bierko

Kate

  By

★★★
“Dying to kill you.”

The action heroine plotline of a woman defending a child – sometimes her own, but more often an acquired kid – is a common one. The “Mama Bear”, as TV Tropes called it, was most famously used in Aliens, but shows up with some regularity in our genre. See also Ultraviolet, Furie and The Long Kiss Goodnight (have I really never reviewed that?), while Gunpowder Milkshake was the most recent example. Of course, it’s not just heroines to whom it can apply; indeed there’s another page on TV Tropes called “Badass and Child“, covering the likes of Leon: The Professional. But the pairing of an action heroine with a (usually female) child has particular resonances, that perhaps merit general discussion, before we get into the specifics of Kate.

Firstly, it offers an easy justification for any and all subsequent violence. In Western society, women are not supposed to be aggressive. They are seen as the caring, nurturing gender, but protecting their offspring is one of the few times when they are “allowed” to engage their inner monsters. Again, it’s not limited to the female sex (think Taken), but male characters tend to have a wider range of potential motivations e.g. patriotism, personal power, so you don’t see paternal protection as often. [And that’s quite enough P’s.] In most cases – Ripley being an exception – the mother figure is already something of a bad-ass, so has that “very particular set of skills” necessary. It’s just the specific direction of her targets which is a result of the threat to her offspring. 

There is also, quite often, some kind of emotional resonance, in the cases where the child is not biologically related [when that is the case, you don’t typically need or get any more explanation, blood being thicker than water]. Maybe the kid acts as a surrogate, a replacement for one previously lost (Alien), or the heroine could never have. Or if a girl, the protagonist can perhaps see a younger version of herself. The other common theme is the use of the child as a key, to unlock the adult. Often, the latter has lost her humanity, typically through harsh circumstances, becoming largely a lone figure, with her emotions suppressed. The “childlike innocence” of the young person, to use a cliché, can be used as a psychological crowbar, pricing open the hard shell of the grown-up, allowing them to reconnect with their humanity. The more emotionally-driven immaturity also stands in contrast to the adult’s stoicism, often to an extreme degree. 

Which brings us to Kate, since the film demonstrates most of the above, to a certain degree. It is, to some extent, an unfortunate victim of its own timing. Probably safe to say, I would have enjoyed this more, had it not come out almost immediately on the heels of both Gunpowder Milkshake and The Protégé – films with which it has rather too much in common. All three movies are about female assassins, who find themselves at a crossroads in their professional and personal lives. In Kate and Milkshake, the protagonists find themselves, more or less unwillingly, in charge of a young girl. In Kate and The Protégé, they operate under the guidance of an older, male veteran killer, who trained them since childhood, but may or may not have their best interests at heart. Throw in to this, the “investigating your own murder” plot-line from classic film noir D.O.A., and you’ll understand why this seemed over familiar. 

It begins in Osaka, where Kate (Winstead) takes out a yakuza boss, despite qualms over the presence of his daughter. She tells her mentor, Varrick (Harrelson), she will do one last mission before she retires – yeah, that cliché. But before it happens, she’s poisoned with radioactive polonium, which will kill her in a few hours. Intent on extracting vengeance, she finds it was apparently ordered by Kijima, brother of her previous victim. To try and lure him out, Kate abduct his niece, Ani (Martineau), the girl who was there when Kate killed her father. But Ani becomes a target as well, due to a power struggle within the criminal syndicate, and Kate her unwilling protector. This makes the whole “I killed your father, actually” thing more than a bit awkward, especially as Kate needs Anu’s help if she’s to discover the truth about her own assassination. For that is even more disturbing than she expects.

As you can probably tell, there’s nothing new in the story. This doesn’t mean it’s devoid of merit, for the execution is solid.  Nicolas-Troyan, previously here for The Huntsman: Winter’s War, brings a perpetual neon sheen to Japanese urban life, leaving half the film feeling like cut scenes from Blade Runner. While lovely to look at, this is very much a foreigner’s view of Japan, which makes Kate’s familiarity with the culture a bit jarring; she speaks Japanese, and is obsessed with ‘Boom Boom Lemon’, a (fictional) local soft-drink. The heroine could have done with more of this kind of humanizing quirk; for much of the movie, she seems more like a machine for revenge, rather than a woman clinging to her last hours of life, as the perfectly-machined tool of her body increasingly betrays its owner.

The other positive is the action, which is well-handled, and occasionally savage to an almost extreme degree. The peak is likely an early battle between Kate and a large number of gang members, culminating in Kate stabbing an opponent up under the chin, the blade coming out through his nose. I have not seen that before. However, the keyword there is “early”. The film probably needs a better sense of escalation, and the lack here stands in contrast to the likes of the John Wick franchise. I can’t say I was ever bored here. However, I didn’t feel there was enough to make it stand out from the (recently very sizable) crowd. I suspect this will likely vanish into the crowd of Netflix originals, and quickly be forgotten.

Dir: Cedric Nicolas-Troyan
Star: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Miku Martineau, Woody Harrelson, Tadanobu Asano

The Protégé

  By

★★★
“Q’s the boss?”

It’s nice to see Maggie Q get back into the action genre again. It’s where she achieved renown – most obviously in the second Nikita TV series, but we were already aware of her, thanks to Q’s work in Hong Kong, such as Naked Weapon [let’s just not talk about Model From Hell…]. Of late though, she has worked mostly in other fields; while still genre-friendly, such as Death of Me or Fantasy Island, they’re just not our genre. So, when I heard she was playing an assassin, out for revenge after someone kills her mentor (a role originally given to Gong Li), this immediately got moved to the head of the list, since it seemed like a throwback to why we love her.

While I wanted to really like this, I can only say it’s… okay. This is mostly due to a serious mistep in the second half of the film. I can’t talk about it specifically, for spoiler reasons. But it effectively renders everything which had happened up to that point as irrelevant, and sidelines Q’s character in what had been, to that point, her story. The motivation for the character behaving the way they did seems murky at best. I trust this is all adequately vague. Anyway. Q plays Anna, a Vietnamese orphan rescued during a mission by hitman Moody Dutton, and brought up as his daughter and apprentice. Thirty years later, they have formed a close-knit pairing, until Moody is killed after making inquiries into a long-disappeared person.

Anna vows to find and punish whoever is responsible, and soon finds herself under attack as a result, after persisting despite being warned by the mysterious Michael Rembrandt (Keaton). Their relationship subsequently develops, and these events put Rembrandt’s loyalties under pressure. Unfortunately, this is where the script implodes, in part due to the lightly outlined reason above. But it’s also due to other missteps like an extended flashback to Anna’s time in Vietnam, which do not add anything of significance, and instead divert proceedings, just when things should be accelerating towards a grandstand finale – one that never happens.

If I have major qualms about Richard Wenk’s script, I’ve no real problem with Campbell’s direction. The veteran has a good pedigree, including one of the best Bonds ever in Goldeneye and the two recent Zorro film, and knows where to point a camera. Q doesn’t seem to have lost much speed either, though there is a terseness to some of the killings here. It’s not inappropriate – she’s a professional, after all – but I’d have liked the fights to go longer. As is, the first such scene, where she takes out a mob boss and his bodyguards in about ten seconds, is a good indicator of what to expect. Still, in this area it’s solid stuff, with some moments of intense hyper-violence, such as an opponent going face-first through a sink. That helps lift this to the point where it’s still worthwhile. Yet I can’t help feeling it’s just not as good as it should have been.

Dir: Martin Campbell
Star: Maggie Q, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton, David Rintoul

Gunpowder Milkshake

  By

★★★★
“Jane Wick.”

Yeah, it’s kinda like that. As in John Wick, the hero(ine) is an assassin for hire, in a world where there exists a significant infrastructure of support for hitmen and hitwomen. After they fall foul of the wrong people, our hero(ine) becomes the target, but has more than enough skills to be able to fend for themselves, and takes the fight to their aggressors. Oh, yeah, and it also borrows significantly from Leon: The Professional, in that the assassin becomes the protector of a young girl. Hmm. But this leverages those two with very large injections of style. Not quite to the level of Sucker Punch, but heading that way. Thiscand enough original ideas, made it work for me, despite the familiar elements. 

It has been interesting to read the reviews, which seem sharply divisive. Critics appear either to like it or hate it, with not much “It was alright.” I think this is one of those films where you need to buy into the approach as much as the concept. For example, it seems to take place in a world inhabited solely by people in the film. There are few if any bystanders. The location is deliberately vague (it was filmed in Berlin), with a deliberate attention paid to the colour palette used. According to the director, for example, yellow represents death – such as the large, yellow duffel-bag with “I ♥ Kittens” on the side, in which the protagonist totes her weapons. If you’re not down with this approach, I can see how this could annoy rather than amuse.

Said protagonist is Sam (Gillan), a killer with abandonment issues ever since her mom (Lena Headey) walked out on her, fifteen years earlier. Sam is tasked by her employer, Nathan (Giamatti), with recovering a haul of stolen cash. But she finds the thief was coerced into action, after his eight-year-old daughter (“8¾!”, as we are reminded on several occasions), Emily, was kidnapped. Likely reminded of her younger self, Sam takes custody of Emily, though the cash is destroyed in the process. This, and a previous job where she killed the son of a very important person, makes her persona non grata, and the hunter becomes the hunted.

Fortunately, she’s not without allies. In particular, there are the Librarians, three women who run the armoury available to all assassins [like the Sommelier in John Wick]. This trio, played by Yeoh, Angela Bassett and Carla Gugino, have a lot of previous history with Sam and her mother, and opt to take her side in the impendng war. Of course – and the development is so obvious, it doesn’t count as a spoiler – Mum also returns. The 5½ women (counting Emily as the fraction), have to stand their ground, first at the library, then in a final battle at the diner, the neutral ground (coughContinentalcough) where Sam’s mother left her, all those years ago. 

The action is good, rather than great. It is, at least, not over-edited and is definitely helped by Papushado’s dedication to style – it all looks striking, which makes it (literally) punch above its weight. Nowhere is this clearer than an amazing slow-motion pan down the length of the diner towards the end, which is the kind of shot you’ll want to rewatch several times, in order to see everything that’s going on. It does feel as if Yeoh was somewhat underused, though I should probably give up expecting anything Crouching Tiger-like these days. That was over twenty years ago, and Yeoh turns 59 in less than a week. That said, she still holds her own with the less mature actresses admirably – says the man, younger than her, who needs a stunt double to change the batteries in the ceiling smoke detector.

Despite the shot mentioned above, the fight in the library is definitely the film’s highlight and in terms of pacing feels like it should have been the climax. With the women defending their turf, it has the feel of an Alamo-like final stand. Instead, things potter on for a further 20 minutes thereafter, with the makers feeling like they have chosen to coast over the finish line, rather than engaging in a final sprint. I felt another area of criticism was the use of music, which often seemed to reach Baby Driver levels of over-emphasis. I once described that film as “like I was trapped inside Edgar Wright’s iPod, while he hummed along to his own mix-tape,” and if this isn’t quite as bad, there’s even less reason for the songs here. They’re a grab-bag that don’t offer a sense of time or place. I blame Quentin Tarantino.

It is notable that the film is split firmly along gender lines. with every one of the protagonists being women, and every one of the antagonists being men. However, it’s fortunate that seem largely to be about the extent of the messaging, and nobody particularly pays attention to this. Everyone is kept quite busy trying to kill each other. It’s also a bit less of an ensemble piece than I expected from the trailer. Especially in the first half, it’s Sam vs. the World, with the Librarians introduced, and then shuffled off to one side until Sam is ultimately forced to turn to them for help. That’s not particularly a criticism. I like Gillan, who was born about 25 miles from where I was, so is likely the nearest I have to a local action heroine. She can carry a film perfectly well, even if I’d rather have heard her natural Scots accent.

Comparing this to Black Widow from a few weeks ago, both films got four stars, but only Milkshake merited our seal of approval. I think it’s because the latter’s strong sense of visual style does give a rewatchability that the relative pedestrian approach of Widow didn’t achieve. You’ll see things here which you have likely never seen before, and while that originality definitely does not apply to all the plot elements, it does at least have the grace to take those things from some very, very good movies.

Dir: Navot Papushado
Star: Karen Gillian, Chloe Coleman, Paul Giamatti, Michelle Yeoh

Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)