Tag: g

Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl

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★★½
“In plane sight.”

This is the story of Gunjan Saxena (Kapoor), one of the first women to be admitted into the Indian Air Force as a pilot. Near the beginning is a rather effective scene in which she’s taken up to the cockpit of the jet on which she is flying with her father (Tripathi). The look of wonder on the young girl’s face as she sees the flight deck does a better job of putting over the sheer joy of flying than all the many montages that will be crammed in over the next 110 minutes. It’s a “Miyazaki moment”, if you are familiar with the work of Hayao Miyazaki, which often features sequences that capture the same joy.

She wants initially to be a commercial pilot, against the wishes in particular of her older brother Anshuman  (Bedi) and her mother. But her father is encouraging and sympathetic, even when her career diverts Gunjan into the Air Force, part of the first batch of female recruits. The rest of the film is notable most for its well-crafted and polished predictability. She has to overcome barriers, both physical (she’s too short to become a helicopter pilot – fortunately, she has long arms. No, really: that’s literally the get out) and those of a military culture which is not yet prepared to treat women as equals. Inevitably, there’s a commanding officer who takes the recruit under his wing, and Gunjan overcomes her own self-doubt, with the help of her father’s encouragement.

She is sent into battle as part of the Kargil war in 1999 (more of a spat, really, lasting a couple of months on the border between India and Pakistan), but public concern over her possible fate as a POW forces her removal from the front lines. It all ends up looping back to the scene at the beginning where, equally inevitably, an emergency gives her the chance to redeem herself, on a mercy mission to rescue injured colleagues who are under enemy fire. Apparently, disobeying orders in the Indian military gets you feted for your initiative, which would seem to be something more likely to happen in movies about the military, than the actual armed forces. 

There have been significant complaints about this being an unfair depiction, with the Air Force writing to the Indian censors objecting to the way it was portrayed. That may explain the lengthy pre-film disclaimer, including this odd paragraph:

The producers, directors, artists or others associated with this film are all law-abiding citizens and have not created this film to incite any disorder or lawlessness.

Saxena herself said she never experienced discrimination at the organization level, only from individuals. Obviously, I can’t speak to that, and my concerns are more about the very obvious and cliched nature of the script. There is a good point to be made, about the importance of chasing your dreams, in the face of adversity, and Kapoor’s depiction is winning and likable enough. I certainly can’t complain about the technical aspects, especially in the flying sequences, which are also well constructed. It’s just that the “woman overcomes the adversity of being a woman” story is a cinematic dead horse, and this has little or nothing new to add to it.

Dir: Sharan Sharma
Star: Janhvi Kapoor, Pankaj Tripathi, Manav Vij, Angad Bedi

Golden Arm

  By

★★★½
“Arms and the (wo)man.”

The sport of arm-wrestling has been featured in the movies before, most notably the Sylvester Stallone vehicle, Over the Top. But that wasn’t a comedy – at least, not intentionally. This entry, as well as switching to the distaff side, also has its tongue in cheek, while still sporting a strong message about female empowerment, that never becomes a lecture. If you’re looking for an inspiration I’d saw the first season of TV series GLOW is very much a touchstone. As there, we have a woman who becomes involved in a sport at a difficult time in her life, only to find herself… well, finding herself as a result of her new endeavour.

The heroine is Melanie (Holland), a mild-mannered cafe-owner whose enterprise is almost out of business. Her pal, truck driver Danny (Sodaro, sporting one of the worst haircuts in cinema history), takes part in women’s arm-wrestling, but just had her wrist broken by the infamous Brenda the Bone Crusher (Stambouliah).  Seeking revenge, she eventually convinces Melanie, who has a natural talent – the “golden arm” – to enter the national championships in Oklahoma City. The goal is to win the crown, and fifteen thousand dollars that go with it, to save Melanie’s business and take down Danny’s nemesis. But the path towards that title will go through not only Brenda, but over a number of other hurdles for the rookie athlete, both physical and mental.

There’s very little new here in terms of plotting. Everything unfolds exactly as you’d expect, right down to the final which pits – surprise, surprise! – Melanie against Brenda in a best-of-three battle. Still, the joy here is in the characters and performances. There appears to be, if this film is to be believed, a significant overlap between arm-wrestling and pro wrestling, with the participants here adopting personas and cutting promos to intimidate their opponent. Melanie, for example, begins as a masked wrestler called “Freaked Out”, after the ring announcer mistakes a comment as her name. But she eventually becomes The Breadwinner, complete with a dusting of flour on her cheek.

However, the greatest pleasure is the Melanie-Danny relationship, which builds over the course of the film. They’re total opposites – “Please don’t say ‘twat'”, begs Melanie repeatedly – but there’s still such chemistry, you can see how they’d be fast friends. It’s so good, in fact, that the romantic angle between Melanie and referee Greg (Cordero) seems entirely superfluous. It actually drags down the rest of the movie, and provides nothing of substance except for an explicit reference to The Natural. That’s another apparent inspiration, in its story of a sports star rising above injury at the moment they need to most.

This is thoroughly foul-mouthed, albeit for comic purposes, and I will say, it doesn’t all quite work. For example, there’s an extended discussion over the female equivalent of “going balls out,” that’s frankly a bit cringe. However, the sheer heart on view throughout is undeniable: that powers this through the flaws, and will likely leave you with a big, goofy grin on your face.

Dir: Maureen Bharooch
Star: Mary Holland, Betsy Sodaro, Olivia Stambouliah, Eugene Cordero

Girl

  By

★★½
“Axe me another question.”

Thorne appears dedicated to destroying the wimpy image created by her role as the heroine in Twilight. A little while ago, we reviewed Chick Fight, in which she played the bad-ass nemesis at a female fight club. Now, she’s the unnamed heroine (whom I’m going to call Girl, as the credits do), who shows up back in her home-town of Golden after a prolonged absence. She has returned to protect her mother (Lavallee) from her estranged father, only to find someone beat her to the punch. Dad is dangling, lifeless, in the shed, and those responsible are after a stash of cash which he supposedly squirreled away. Not helping matters, those responsible are led by the local sheriff (Rourke), and they are convinced Girl knows where the money is. Fortunately, Girl has acquired some unusual survival skills of her own, in particular, throwing a mean axe, as suggested by the poster.

I would say though, the film would have benefited from more axe-tion, as it were. While it’s established early on that’s she’s packing in this department, you have to wait a good while before the payoff comes, and it’s merely adequate. Until then, there’s the feel of a modern Western, not least in the lack of people – if the streets here don’t quite have tumbleweeds rolling across them, they might as well have. Into this, moseys the lone gun-slinger (or axe-slinger) into a town both controlled and terrorized by corrupt leaders, seeking to right a personal wrong, with the side benefit of cleaning up this here territory. The locals give what support they can, yet are too scared to actively fight back, leaving the heavy lifting to Girl.

While a convincing depiction of small-town America as hell, there’s also a curious lack of tension here. Golden is the kind of place which feels like it would be ground zero for the opioid crisis, yet that seems to have infected the film, with most scenes feeling like they have taken Oxycontin. There’s just such a lack of energy in all the performances. Even Rourke, whom you would expect to bring a certain swagger to the role, as lord of his domain, opts for largely understated, to the point of gently soporific. Of course, as expected, deep-buried family secrets end up getting revealed, not least concerning the relationship between the sheriff and  Girl’s mother.

Thorne gives a decent performance, as someone who has clearly been through a lot, and come out the other side embodying the phrase, “That which does not kill you, makes you stronger.” It feels as if director/supporting actor Faust is aiming for Winter’s Bone, and probably comes up short, perhaps because Girl is too abrasive to be sympathetic. She’s the kind of girl whose sports the chip on her shoulder as ostentatiously as the piercing through her nose, and that’s probably not the kind of character with which I want to spend time. And similarly, if I never go back to Golden again, I’m probably fine with that.

Dir: Chad Faust
Star:Bella Thorne, Mickey Rourke, Chad Faust, Tia Lavallee

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)
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Good Morning, Verônica: season one

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★★★½
“Brazil nuts.”

Verônica Torres (Müller) is a second-generation cop in the Sao Paulo, Brazil police force, though her father left there under a cloud, and in circumstances which are unclear. Torres’s job is as a paper-pusher in the homicide division, but when the victim of a date-rapist kills herself right in front of Veronica, she decides to make a stand. She goes public, asking to hear from other victims, or any abused women, and is contacted by Janete Cruz (Morgado). Her common-law husband, Brandão (Moscovism), is very disturbed, a thoroughly nasty piece of work, and may even be a serial killer. However, he is also a member of the military police and has powerful friends, in a shadowy conspiracy which could have ties to Verônica ‘s father. She’s going to have to tread very carefully if she’s going to get the evidence she needs from Janete, to convict Brandão.

The first of the eight x 45-minute episodes was fairly humdrum, once you got past the shock of the opening suicide, The synopsis made it feel somewhat fringey in terms of the site, perhaps sounding not much more intense than a Hallmark TV movie. But the second part focused on Brandão. The gloves well and truly came off, as we discovered exactly the evil he can do. Rather than a dating site predator, it became clear there were bigger fish in need of frying. While the dating site plotline does proceed, it eventually (and this is a very good thing) takes a definite back-seat to the meat of the series, which is Veronica’s pursuit of Brandão. Fortunately, she is not alone, with help from both a forensic pathologist and the department’s tech guy. But there are those in the department who don’t want her to succeed – though whether purely out of professional jealousy, or for more sinister motives, is one of the issues the heroine has to untangle.

There are some very good performances at the heart of this, which faintly echoes Silence of the Lambs in its pursuit of a serial killer by a rookie investigator. To be honest, I probably found Brandão a more chilling and believable killer than Buffalo Bill (though not, of course, Hannibal Lecter!), with Verônica almost as sympathetic as Clarice Starling. You definitely need to stay the course, as I felt it got markedly better as it unfolded. The last couple of episodes have some shocking twists in the narrative; let’s just say, not everyone you expect to survive, will do so. I also appreciated how, at the end, Verônica is entirely forced to rely on her own abilities, with no help from anybody. It’s her vs. Brandão – again, echoing the end of Silence. The script does a particularly good job of tying up its loose ends, while leaving the door very much open to a second series. If that continues the steady improvement this showed over its course, I’m definitely looking forward to it.

Creator: Raphael Montes
Star: Tainá Müller, Camila Morgado, Eduardo Moscovism, Antônio Grassi
a.k.a. Bom Dia, Verônica

Gripped: Climbing the Killer Pillar

  By

★★★
“Climb every mountain…”

Newbie climber Rose (Maddox) is on her first trip to do some “real” climbing, rather than on a rock wall at her local gym. There, she meets and falls for the insanely rugged good-looking Bret (Lyman, who appears to have strayed right off the cover of a romance novel entitled “Love in the Surf”). After a couple of successfully, but relatively simple climbs, the pair head to take on something more challenging: the infamous “Killer pillar” of the title. Half-way up, a hand-hold used by Bret breaks, sending him tumbling down the cliff-face. Though the rope stops the fall from being fatal, he suffers a torn shoulder and head injury, leaving him unable to lead, and unable to descend. As the poster tagline says, “The only way down is up.” So, it falls on Rose, despite her lack of experience, to take over and forge a route up the near-sheer escarpment, that Bret will be able to navigate in her wake.

The mountaineering stuff here is excellent, and it seems that everyone involved was doing their own climbing. While for much of the time, I suspect they probably weren’t too far off the ground, there are a few shots that should come with a trigger warning for vertigo sufferers. Particular kudos to cinematographer John Garrett, who captures the stunning landscapes of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California – and, I suspect, did his share of climbing to get some of the angles. It just feels like legitimate climbing, in contrast to the Hollywood stuff seen in movies such as Cliffhanger. I note the presence in the supporting cast of notable real climbers, such as Jacki Florine, who in 2006 became the first woman to climb fourteen 14,000-foot peaks in California in 10 days. Another mountaineer, Natalie Duran, whom we recognized from her appearances on American Ninja Warrior, also has a supporting role as a jealous fellow climber.

The main problem is that the dramatic aspects don’t kick in until after the 50-minute mark, and it borders on the tedious to that point. Lovely scenery can only take you so far, when the romantic relationship at the movie’s heart is thoroughly unconvincing. We don’t need to see the banal process of them getting together, or the development of their interactions. This could, and probably should, have saved time by being an existing couple; Rose could still have been a novice climber, making her debut in the big outdoors. That would even have added a personal motivation to her heroics, rather than it being to save some hunk she met two days ago. Whatevs. They made the movie they wanted too, and it’s not on me to list ways to potential improve it! I’d say you can pay attention here when they clip on their gear, and safely ignore just about everything else.

Dir: Benjamin Galland
Star: Amanda Maddox, Kaiwi Lyman, Megan Hensley, Bryce Wissel

Getaway

  By

★★
“Witch, finder, general.”

This was likely not going to qualify for inclusion here, until a twist in the final 15 minutes. Up until that point, it had been a largely irritating saga, that was considerably more horror than action heroine – and not even good horror at that. I’m still significantly unconvinced about the quality, but must grudgingly admit, this was a twist which I did not particularly see coming (though there is a large clue dropped near the beginning). Three gal-pals, Tamara (Betham), Maddy (Taylor-Compton) and Brooke (Allbright) head for a weekend’s lakeside R&R. On the way, Tamara’s car runs out of fuel, and she encounters the local creeps, but eventually arrives, and joins the other two in scamming drinks out of horny guys.

However, the creeps are lurking, and a drugged beverage leads to Tamara waking, tied up in a farm outhouse. Turns out they’re not just creeps, but have a particular religious bent. They kidnap women, rape them, and then kill them so they can go to heaven and have “angel babies”, because… Look, they’re religious nutters, okay? Yet, that might be their fatal weakness, something Tamara can use against them, as she curses them, claiming to have occult powers. For if she is a servant of Satan, she’s hardly going to be capable of having those adorable little cherubs, is she? This is, actually, a potentially interesting aspect. However, it’s discarded in favour of the twist mentioned above, and even though it brought the film more into our wheel-house, I’m inclined to wish they hadn’t bothered.

The bigger problems start with the characterizations. The three girls are thinly-sketched at best: two are lesbians, because… well, presumably for the same reasons there is a pointless African-American sheriff’s deputy with a crush on Tamara. Not sure. None of the women seem very likeable, and indeed, I’d be hard pushed to tell you much about any of the trio as people: Maddy and Brooke barely serve any purpose, and the film might have worked better with Tamara operating as a lone wolf. The villains are equally shallow: the Wyatt Family from WWE exhibited more complexity and personality. And if you are hoping for gore or nudity, you are respectively going to be largely and completely disappointed.

It is one of those films where it reaches the end, and you find yourself wondering where things will go from there. Now that the little secret is out of the bag, any sequel would of necessity have to be completely different in its approach, yet that might prove to be more successful. However, it would have to work considerably harder to retain the viewer’s interest than the effort put in here. There were a number of occasions where I simply found myself no longer paying attention, and had to crank back the film a few minutes, just to be sure in my role as a conscientious film reviewer, that I had not missed anything. I hadn’t, and my suggestion is that you should probably skip the whole thing.

Dir: Lane Toran
Star: Jaclyn Betham, Scout Taylor-Compton, Landry Allbright, Lane Toran

The Golden Lady

  By

★★½
“The Gun With the Golden Girl”

This British film occupies an odd middle ground between Ian Fleming and Jackie Collins – with a garnish of… The Village People? Yeah, there were points where I genuinely wondered what I’d strayed into. The titular female is Julia Hemingway (Skriver, under the rather laughable screen name of “Christina World”, which seems more like a dubious theme-park), who is a corporate espionage specialist. She accepts a commission to infiltrate the bidding for oil rights in a Middle Eastern country, on behalf of one of the four participants.

With the auction about to take place in London, Hemingway brings in three agents (Danielle, Chadwick and Pavel), and tasks each with working on one of the other candidates – not least with their sexual wiles. However, as an increasing number of dead bodies start to show up, it becomes clear that this is not straightforward business. More than one government intelligence agency is highly interested in the outcome, and is prepared to stop at nothing to get the right outcome.

Director Larraz is best known for the cult horror movie Vampyres, and certainly seems out of his element here. There is probably a decent spy thriller in here – there’s a reason Desmond Llewellyn, the long-term Q in the Bond films, shows up in a minor role. Hemingway and her “angels” are all perfectly smart and capable too. Except, just when some momentum builds up, it keeps going off the rails, in a variety of directions. Some of those aren’t so bad: Ava Cadell, later to be a sexy radio host for Andy Sidaris, plays a modestly-priced hooker.

But then there’s the terrible soundtrack, book-ended with songs by The Three Degrees and (gack!) Charles Aznavour. And don’t get me started on the entirely gratuitous nightclub performances by Blonde On Blonde (a pop combo made up of two Page 3 models) and Hot Gossip, a “naughty” dance troupe, who at one point included future Mrs. Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Sarah Breitman, in their ranks. The kindest thing about them I can say is, there may be an alternate universe where these sequences made sense.

The action quotient is about as limited as you’d expect from a seventies British film, even if the ladies occasionally do get to engage in some brief fisticuffs of the limited kind. The best sequence is probably towards the end, when Dahlia (Danielle) is in a low-flying helicopter, blasting away at her target on the ground as they swoop back and forth; it looks rather risky, not least because it appears to be the actress herself present in the cockpit. I was also at least somewhat amused by the use of technology here. I imagine it was quite advanced for the late seventies, though they may want to recalibrate their database. Given the context of their work, I’m not certain that “nymphomanic” really deserves to be classified as a weakness for an agent. But generally, it’s boring stuff.

Dir: José Ramón Larraz
Star: Ina Skriver, Suzanne Danielle, June Chadwick, Anika Pavel

Girls, Guns and Blood

  By

★½
“It’s trying. So very trying…”

Maybe I’m getting too old for this kind of thing. Perhaps there was a time in my callow youth when I would have been grateful for the light-to-moderate amount of gratuitous nudity which this contains. Now, though? Its flaws overwhelm any such merits. Or maybe it was the fact that I watched this while dozed up to the eyeballs on DayQuil, and frankly, coughing up phlegm proved to be a more satisfactory pursuit.

It takes place in a supposed “brothel” run by Monique (Love). Quotes used advisedly, since it looks considerably more like someone’s house. A party of high-rollers are scheduled to be coming in, dropping thousands of dollars: though quite why they want to, escapes me, since the staff here are no more than “somewhat attractive.” You could probably catch better fish with a bottle of Jager in your average night-club on a Friday evening. Anyway, doubts about this aside, it turns out this “party” is actually a robbery, who loot the place after abusing the women. 

Needless to say, they’re not standing for that, so Kitty (Nguyen), Trix (Amber), Beretta (Valentien) and the rest of the girls ride out in hot pursuit, intent on recovering the ill-gotten gains and punishing the perpetrators. Fortunately, the gang have gone their separate ways, which makes it easier for the women to take them down: the old “Let’s split up!” mistake. But perhaps things aren’t quite as cut and dried as they appear. Maybe there’s a snake in the grass, who is quite happy to let her fellow hookers thin out the herd on her behalf, because the fewer slices of the pie there end up being, the better it will be for the survivors.

It’s all tiresomely amateur. Not least, the feeble attempts at comic relief, such as the gangster kingpin, Kaiser, whose droning complaints about lost money to a ski-mask clad ninja, go on way past what could remotely be considered entertaining. The repeated us of Six Million Dollar Man sound effects also should also have been strangled at birth. The pacing in general is awful, and the lead performances generally reflect the fact that most of the actresses are better known for adult work than their Broadway resumes. Nguyen and Love are, at least relatively credible, capable of walking and delivering lines at the same time. Some of the others? Not so much. Let’s leave it at that.

There were a couple of moments in the action which did actually work. Though I’m not sure how much sense they could be said to make, e.g. one of the women suddenly pulling a flaming sword out of… well, I’m not even going to hazard a guess at that. But when you’re left yearning for the understated subtleties of an Andy Sidaris film, there’s clearly something wrong. It might have succeeded better with alcohol, but that would likely not have combined well with my medications. Not a risk I was prepared to take, at least.

Dir: Thegin German + Robert Rowland
Star: Christine Nguyen, Britney Amber, Kleio Valentien, Rebecca Love

Grand Theft Auto Girls

  By

★★
“Preferred this when it was called Counterfeiting in Suburbia.”

Turns out that The Asylum are not the only company who makes mockbusters. As its alternate name makes clear, this Lifetime TVM is clearly a knock-off of the title mentioned above, down to the same, basic plot. Two teenage girls begin doing crime, largely for the excitement. A teacher becomes aware of their exploits and decides to blackmail them for his own benefit, by making them escalate their activities. This brings them increasingly under the scrutiny of both authorities and criminal elements, not to mention parental disapproval, eventually leading to a climax where all these aspects cross paths. As my review of Counterfeiting mentioned, it wasn’t even a particularly original idea there. As you can imagine, a second-generation copy is not an improvement, even if the idea of a knock-off of a movie about forgery possesses a certain irony. 

The main twist here is that instead of counterfeiting, the crime in question is car theft. Emily (Belkin) is being brought up by her mother, after her father died in a car accident, and is working to restore her late dad’s muscle car, a task which has helped give her certain car skills, including hot-wiring them. She has teamed up with classmate Max (Helt), to boost cars, purely for joy-riding purposes, but the pair decided to make a commercial endeavour out of it, and sell the vehicles to a local chop-shop they know. Their shop teacher, Mr. Curnow (Hynes) finds out about their work, and decides to use them to start stealing high-end cars, to provide seed money for his own business involving exotic sports vehicles. This doesn’t sit well with the chop-shop owner, the cops are beginning to close in, and worst of all, Emily’s Mom is growing increasingly suspicious. When she pays Curnow a visit at his home, she is held hostage to ensure Emily completes one final task, stealing a Hummer belonging to a well-connected local club owner.

This is so painfully bland, it should have been called Barbie and Friends Do Crimes. Admittedly, I was hoping for something like a female version of a Fast and the Furious movies. As I soon as I realized this was a Lifetime TVM, all hopes of that evaporated, but it could still have avoided having less edge than a rusty butter-knife. It shoehorns in a hot teenage boy delinquent (Manley) on whom Emily can crush, largely as a means of filling time, since he serves no real plot purpose. Even the car-stealing scenes, which could have generated tension, are feeble: witness in particular the example which consists largely of one girl starting intently into her handbag, waiting for a light to go green. Hitchcock is turning in his grave. It did manage to leave me yearning nostalgically for a film which only got 2½ stars, so that’s a new experience.

While I have already written more about this than it deserves, I just discovered there is still another TVM going down the same furrow: Smuggling in Suburbia. I’ll just leave its synopsis here. mostly as a warning that the possibilities appear, sadly, endless: “Joanie gets recruited to travel with other girls to exciting cities delivering camera lenses to photographers–and falls in love with Tucker, a partner in the courier business. When she searches the camera case she’s carrying and finds diamonds hidden inside a lens, Joanie realizes she is part of an illegal smuggling ring! She just needs to pay for her brother’s cancer surgery that would otherwise bankrupt the family.” Yeah, I’m good, thanks.

Dir: Jason Bourque
Star: Zoë Belkin, Samantha Helt, Tyler Hynes, Jake Manley
a.k.a. Hotwired in Suburbia