Tag: p

Part-Time Spy

  By

★★★
“Korea careers.”

An amiable piece of light fluff from Korea, while this probably doesn’t need to be 117 minutes long, the time passed comfortably enough. After many years of failing the civil service entrance exam, Jang Young-shil (Kang) finally succeeds and is rewarded with a contract job in the national security agency. However, she’s still mediocre, and is laid off. Fortunately, she overhears her boss (Jo) having been phone-phished out of $500,000 of departmental funds, and is the only agent available to go undercover in the ‘boiler room’ carrying out these scams. There, she recognizes another employee, Na Jung-an (Han) – having seen her take out a pickpocket on the subway, she knows Na is an undercover cop. The two women, of sharply disparate backgrounds and skill-sets, form an uneasy alliance, seeking to take down the charismatic boss of the con company, Min Seok (Namkoong).

The similarities to the Melissa McCarthy vehicle, Spy, extend to more than the title, being a similar combination of goofy comedy and action, with a lead who is far from conventionally pretty [the poster on the right is spectacularly misleading, as far as 50% of the actresses are concerned]. Though neither the comedy nor the action here prove quite as successful. For all Kang’s charms, she lacks the impeccable comedic timing of McCarthy, though her long list of former jobs e.g. dog whisperer provide some amusing moments – as well as coming in surprisingly handy, for example when the villains unleash their canines of war. Han isn’t exactly Jason Statham in the martial arts department either. That said, her anger management issues are a nice touch, making her far from the perfect choice to go undercover at a sketchy call-centre, and she can pull discontented faces with the best of them. Her efforts to seduce Min are delightfully OTT as well.

For an action-comedy, I found this surprisingly eye-opening too. The concept of having to pass an exam to get a job with the government, for instance. Or the entire voice-phishing thing, which seems to be an epidemic in Korea, if this movie is to be believed. In the film’s defense, it is possible that cultural differences such as these may partly explain why some of the humour occasionally falls painfully flat. However, even local reviewers seemed unimpressed with the more slapstick elements, so it probably isn’t just me who was highly underwhelmed by these aspects. It does build nicely, with the finale seeing our two heroines sent to scam an army officer out of $500,000 – money which Jang’s boss intends to “requisition” and replace the money he lost. Needless to say, things don’t quite unfold as expected, especially after another employee overhears Jang and Na talking, and realizes they are not who they claimed to be.

It’s the kind of film I can easily see being remade by Hollywood, perhaps with McCarthy and Sandra Bullock as the tw… Oh, hang on: they already did that, and it was called The Heat. But in most ways, this is its equal: slickly-made and unashamedly commercial, if also largely forgettable.

Dir: Kim Deok-su
Star: Kang Ye-won, Han Chae-ah, Namkoong Min, Jo Jae-yoon

Pink Thief

  By

★★½
“Pink only on the outside”

Lan Hsiao-Tieh (Lu) is one of four illegal immigrants to Hong Kong, who manage to escape from the human traffickers bringing them to the colony – albeit after Lan has been raped by one. She and her friends just about manage to eke out a living on the edge of society, which treats them very unkindly in comparison to legal residents: for example, working as a coolie, they get only a fraction of the wages. As a result, they’re forced into criminal activity. One of the victims of the resultant pick-pocketing is the feared Chief Detective Lu (Lui), who tracks down the gang and makes them an offer: go undercover and help in his investigation of a Triad gang called the Eagles, in exchange for legal status. Lan is doubtful – until she realizes that one of the targets is the man who raped her. With the assistance of training from a retired thief, Lan is inserted as the moll of the gang’s leader, Hao (Tien Feng).

The film leaves a lot of potential on the table. The retired thief angle, for example, is nicely set up: the immigrants initially think he’s a doddering old fool, except that’s just his cover. However, the training through which they go through is never particularly useful once Lan goes on her mission. There’s also an unevenness of tone. It wants to be a sympathetic and serious portrayal of the plight of illegal immigrants in Hong Kong. But the impact of this is rather undone by, for example, the scene where the wife of Lan’s squeeze confronts her. For the pair end up rolling around in a hot-tub, stripped down to their lingerie. While I’m not complaining, it does appear to have strayed in from another film. The same can be said for the soundtrack: I read that it borrows liberally from Planet of the Apes, and I could swear I heard some Rick Wakeman in there as well.

It all rolls along without anything in the way of surprises, until Lan finds out the time and date when a big deal is going down. This sets up Detective Lu with the chance to bust them in the act – and, naturally, gives our lead the change for revenge on her rapist. This is remarkably formulaic, and there’s hardly anything that makes it stand out from the competition. It’s neither serious enough to merit actual consideration as art, nor trashy enough to be a Cat III classic. Despite the promise of the cover, it’s more tacky than sleazy, in its shots of the heroine’s cleavage, never rising past PG-13 level, with even the sexual assault done “tastefully”. I only watched this three days ago, yet it made so little impression, I had to put it on again for the purposes of this review. And I am still struggling to reach our standard five hundred words.

Dir: Yueh Chien-Feng
Star: Lu Hsiao-Fen, Richard Cui Shou-Ping, Lui Ming

Pieces of Modesty, by Peter O’Donnell

  By

Literary rating: ★★★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

The six stories in this collection of short fiction featuring iconic heroine Modesty Blaise were all originally published in the Australian publication Pix in Jan.-Feb. 1970. O’Donnell intended them to be published in book form with illustrations by Jim Holdaway, then the artist for the Modesty Blaise comic strip; but Holdaway died that year, and the book-form collection wasn’t published for another two years. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieces_of_Modesty .) In the interval, however, at least one of the stories, “A Better Day to Die,” was reprinted in an American magazine (I don’t recall which one), where I read it –I think in the spring of 1970, while I was still in high school. It was my first introduction to the character, and one of very few exposures I’d had in fiction to a kick-butt heroine (they were much less numerous in my youth than they’ve since become). My teenage self was pretty awe-struck by Modesty in action; so that gave me an abiding interest in her fictional exploits, although this is still only the second book by O’Donnell that I’ve read.

While this is the sixth installment of the series, because the stories are strictly episodic and not connected to each other, and are set at various times in the 60s, they don’t really have to be read after the first five novels to be understood and appreciated. (It would probably be best to read the first novel first, just to provide a foundation.) In a couple of stories, references are made to events, and characters reappear, which are probably drawn from the novels; but any information about past events that we need to know is supplied. Five of them are written in third person; “I Had a Date with Lady Janet” is unique in that Willie narrates it in first person, which helps to develop his character more deeply. The settings are mostly British or continental European, with one tale taking place in South America. All six adventures involve Modesty in a wide variety of situations, which illustrate various aspects of her personality and abilities; that may explain the collection’s odd title. (Don’t worry –Modesty is not dismembered!)

O’Donnell writes with a very readable, professional style, and creates captivating story-lines centered around well-developed characters. His plots aren’t overly convoluted, and their various elements dovetail nicely; that doesn’t keep some of the stories from having surprise twists, which grow naturally from the soil of the tale itself, as legitimate surprises should. (I did guess the general outline of one, before the author revealed it.) This is, of course, action-adventure pulp fiction; unusual, extreme and sometimes life-threatening situations are the norm, and our main characters are larger than life. That doesn’t mean the writing lacks literary quality, nor that it’s without realism, psychological and otherwise. Neither of those are in fact lacking; and neither is moral vision, and the ability to evoke serious thought about ethical questions. The author just evokes the kind of thought about them that today’s literary-critical clerisy doesn’t welcome, because he thinks that right and wrong are real categories, and that virtues such as courage, loyalty and justice actually ARE virtues.

In commenting on individual stories, I want to avoid spoilers. I’ll say simply that “A Better Day to Die” presents a serious, balanced and fair debate between absolute pacifism and the position that violent resistance to murderous and other harmful aggression is a legitimate last resort to protect the inoffensive, including oneself. (Modesty maintains the latter, and O”Donnell clearly agrees with her, as I do –but she respects the pacifist position.) “The Giggle Wrecker,” set mainly in East Berlin in the days of the Cold War, brings back the memory of that era vividly, and to my mind refutes the claim of some that there was an absolute moral equivalency between the West and Soviet totalitarianism. Willie’s narrative and “A Perfect Night to Break Your Neck” are noteworthy for their positive portrayal of physically handicapped characters (both of whom not only pull their weight, but enjoy serious romantic relationships with partners who appreciate them as persons).

“Salamander Four” is the only selection here that indicates Modesty’s openness, on occasion, to uncommitted sex (although there’s no explicit sexual content there, or in any of the stories), but the psychology of it is understandable and she comes across to me as misguided rather than callous and selfish –it’s clear that her intention isn’t knowingly to be hurtful or exploitative. Finally, “The Soo Girl Charity” is the most disturbing of the stories, in that (though without being graphic) it provides a look into the dark reality of the exploitation of women by sexual sadists, and into the even darker reality of what pounded-in cultural brainwashing of females to accept patriarchy and male domination actually does to their psyches. (I didn’t feel that the victim here being Asian indicates racism or cultural stereotyping; I think that simply reflects a reality that, at least in the 60s, traditional rural Asian cultures still tended to promote that kind of brainwashing to a greater degree than Occidental ones –even though the sexism of our culture is bad enough.)

One quibble I had with the latter story is that I thought the premise had Modesty and Willie acting (at least, for their current post-Network situation) out of character in a couple of respects. A more important issue was with a comment about a brutal gang rape of a teen girl that occurs in one of the stories. That the incident could realistically be expected to happen, given the mentality of thugs put in a position to dominate unarmed females, I don’t deny (sadly, it would be more unrealistic if it didn’t); O’Donnell doesn’t treat it graphically and clearly disapproves of it. But afterwards he has Modesty thinking, at one point, “Just as well it had been Rosa. She was a sturdy peasant type with nerves like sisal. In a little while she might even begin to relish the cachet of having been raped by guerillas.” To be sure, the author doesn’t suggest that she relished the rape itself. But in the first place, I don’t think being raped carries any cachet, in a culture that sees virginity as a valuable commodity and sees rape victims as “damaged goods.” In the second place, I can’t imagine that this would be a reaction Rosa would ever have, nor that the idea would be one that Modesty (who was a rape victim herself in the past) would ever think. It comes across as the kind of insensitive, emotionally tone-deaf perception a male author might have who doesn’t have any real ability to imagine the actual psychology of a rape victim.

Overall, though, these caveats didn’t keep me from really liking the collection as a whole. Modesty is one of my favorite action heroines, and one whom I see as, on the whole, a pretty good role model –she has her faults, which are recognizable; but if both male and female readers pick up on emulating her virtues, they’d find a great many to aspire to. I’m glad to have spent this interlude in her fictional world, and still hope to read more of the Modesty canon eventually.

Author: Peter O”Donnell
Publisher: Souvenir Press, available through Amazon, currently only as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

The Pact Series Omnibus One, by Alex Villavasso

  By

Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆½

This got off to a frankly rocky start, to the point that a few pages in, this felt like it might become a very rare DNF (Did Not Finish) book. It’s an incredibly clumsy and stilted opening, depicting the internal conversation between Sailor Ray and the demon who inhabits her. Literally, “Why am I reading this?” bad. Still, I persisted: and in the end, the story redeemed itself, though the final third was considerably weaker overall.

Sailor comes from a family of hunters, and after an incident where her father was killed and she was mortally wounded, she made a deal with the demon Vartal. He would save her, and let her take vengeance on those responsible for the death of her parents; in return, once she has had her revenge, he can have her soul. The best thing you can say about that agreement is: well, it made sense at the time. She’s now suffering a hardcore case of buyer’s remorse, and while trying to track down the perpetrators, is also attempting to figure out some way she can renege on the deal.

This omnibus collects the first three volumes in one: Sailor Ray and the Darkest Night, Sailor Ray and the Dark Descent and Sailor Ray and the Beautiful Lie. Though at a total length of around four hundred pages, this is basically not much more than regular novel length. Key to salvaging the book is Sailor, and in particular her savage approach to the demons, with little thought for their human vessels, who are deemed unsalvageable more often than not. She likes to blame this brutality on the insidious effects of Vartal; I think the nasty truth is, it’s as much her own inclinations as “the devil made me do it.”

The first two parts concern her investigation into a drug called Sphinx, which makes the user more susceptible to possession, though the connection to her parents’ deaths is vague. It’s being sold out of a nightclub in her base of Chicago, and her attempt to infiltrate the club leads to multiple deaths of friends and enemies – both on the night and thereafter. The highlight, however, is likely the flashback sequence where she relives the death of her father. This took place during a particularly ferocious battle against devil worshippers and hellspawn called sweepers – described as “a huge, demonized praying mantis/earthworm hybrid.” Damn. It’s very solid action-horror, and feels like you’re reading about the final boss in a particularly malevolent Resident Evil game.

The third volume takes a severely unexpected right turn, with Sailor and her gal-pal Val going on a road-trip. Their car breaks down at a diner; fortunately, the owners take care of them and invite them to stay until the vehicle is fixed. While it’s highly obvious something bad is going to happen, it takes far too long to do so, with the pair sitting around watching television in the meantime. It’s about as interesting as that sounds. Again, Villavasso redeems himself at the end with some crunchy ultra-violence. The overall impact is remarkably uneven, with the very final section almost red-herringing much of what has happened to that point. Yet Sailor is such an abrasively fiery character, I might still want to check in on her progress down the line – at least in a further omnibus.

Author: Alex Villavasso
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, as an e-book only.
Books 1-3 of the Pact series.

Pirates! by Celia Rees

  By

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

Although I haven’t read much pirate-themed fiction, I find the premise interesting; so I’ve had my eye on this historical novel ever since the BC library (where I work) acquired it. It definitely didn’t disappoint! Set mostly in the early 1720s, with some stage-setting in the years leading up to those, this action-packed tale follows the life and adventures of first-person narrator Nancy Kington (b. ca. 1704), the daughter of a Bristol merchant, who finds herself packed off to the family’s plantation in Jamaica at the age of 15, and is subsequently led by circumstances to voluntarily sign articles on a pirate ship.

Pirates, of course, are sea-going robbers; by definition, they forcibly steal other people’s property for their own profit. Obviously, they’re off of the ethical strait-and-narrow path, and in shady moral territory. The piratical profession most naturally appeals to brutal and self-serving types who don’t have any particular moral sense or empathy with their fellow humans. (Some may be more brutal and selfish than others –and some spectacularly evil and sadistic types may find the pirate life an opportunity to gratify their propensities.) Like Robert Louis Stevenson before her, British writer Rees gives full recognition to that reality.

To a greater extent than Stevenson, though, she recognizes that there can be a range of nuanced moral qualities among pirates, with not all of them quite fitting that model –especially in a time and place where patriarchy and male chauvinism, legalized slavery, and institutionalized inequality and injustice greatly constrict many people’s lives and choices, and might render the right side of the law as morally dicey as life under the Jolly Roger. (That’s not unlike the situation in the Old West, or in medieval Europe, where “outlaws” might sometimes be decent people pushed outside the law by others using the system for their own gain.) Personally, I think that pirates who aren’t brutal and selfish as such, and who do have a strong moral sense and a concern for others, can be interesting characters in the ways they navigate the shades of grey that their position necessarily entails; and that’s true of our heroine here. (Yes, a lady who happens to be a pirate can be an honorable and admirable heroine!)

This is fiction in the Romantic tradition –that is, fiction that seeks primarily to evoke strong emotional responses from the reader, sometimes enhanced, as they are here, by extreme situations and exotic settings. The Romantic aim is fully fulfilled here; I was taken captive by this pirate right away, turned the pages as fast as I could at every opportunity, and experienced a wealth of complex emotions throughout the story. (It’s not, however, a “romance novel” in the Harlequin sense –though it has clean romance as one strand of the plot, which I appreciated– and it doesn’t “romanticize” things like piracy, slavery, and the grim realities of ocean-going life in the 18th century). It’s also fiction with serious food for thought, as well as rousing adventure, and a very moving portrait of cross-racial friendship. Like most modern Romantic fiction, though, it borrows Realist techniques, with a concern for verisimilitude and historical accuracy. (In common with some other authors, Rees used the contemporary nonfiction A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, which she and some others attribute to Daniel Defoe, as a key source.) Nancy’s narrative voice is engaging and quick-flowing, with a slightly archaic flavor in word choices and diction for realism, but is much easier to read than an actual 18th-century narrative would have been.

Born in 1949, former schoolteacher Rees is an accomplished novelist, the author of some 19 books, and a History major (she actually had a double major, but History was one). Her publishers market her books to the YA age group (and the BC library put this one in the Juvenile section on that account), in this case probably encouraged by the fact that Nancy and her friend and fellow pirate Miranda are in their teens. Bad language of the d-word sort is present but relatively restrained, rape or attempted rape and prostitution are part of their world but not portrayed in great detail, and while there are some very violent and grisly moments, Rees doesn’t wallow in them. The content here, IMO, wouldn’t be harmful to a healthy teen; and I could see plenty of teen readers of both sexes eating it up with a spoon and asking for more. But it could just as easily have been marketed as an adult novel; there isn’t anything stereotypically juvenile or “kiddish” about it. (Teens in Nancy and Miranda’s day were expected to grow up quickly, and our gals here definitely did –they have far more in common, in their capacities and general attitudes, with today’s adult women than they do with typical modern teens.)

This particular edition of the book has a moderately interesting interview with the author (originally published in a Michigan newspaper), and a few pages of discussion questions and activities, aimed at younger readers, that could be used for common reads in a book club or classroom. At the time it was published, the novel garnered a number of prestigious accolades from the likes of the American Library Assn., the International Reading Assn., etc. For once, I think it deserved every critical recognition it got (and I don’t often agree with the critical community!).

“You may wish me luck, or curse me for a damnable pirate,” Nancy writes near the close of her account. This reader opted for the first choice, without apology!

Author: Ceilia Rees
Publisher: Bloomsbury, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book

Pitbull: Tough Women

  By

★★★
“Still Poles apart.”

Having enjoyed the same director’s Women of Mafia, I thought I’d check out this earlier film, part of his Pitbull series, also about Polish cops ‘n’ criminals. Unashamedly populist, in its home country the featire set a record for opening weekend admissions by a local movie, and topped the overall box-office there for 2016. More surprisingly, it was also a hit when released in Britain, reaching fifth place at the box-office in its first week, due almost entirely to the Polish expat community there. ‘

It’s a similarly sprawling tale to Mafia – perhaps even more so – which covers a range of characters, on both sides of the law. Despite the title, disappointingly, the focus is not particularly on the women. While there are certainly no shortage of interesting female characters, as we’ll see, the central one is ‘Sugar’ (Fabijanski), a member of a biker gang who is tasked with a revenge hit on ‘Majami’ (Stramowski), a cop who shot and killed a fellow gang-member. However, Sugar ends up diverting into a convoluted scam involving smuggling fuel oil. I can only presume this scheme made sense to the Polish audience, because I had no real clue what was going on.

On the “tough woman” front, the focus is on two new recruits to the police force, Zuza (Kulig) and Jadźka (Dereszowska). It doesn’t take long after completing their training,. for the shine to come off, as they realize the harsh realities of law-enforcement work, and the inevitable moral compromise beneath the surface. These are exemplified in Izabela (Magdalena Cielecka), a cop who is more than prepared to bend the law in order to protect it, to put it mildly. Both rookie officers have their issues, in particular Zuza, who eventually ends up having an affair with Sugar, while his girlfriend ‘Drabina’ (Alicja Bachleda) is in jail.

Elements of all this work very well. The characters are strong, performances solid, I loved the purely pragmatic approach of the cops (needed to deal with criminals who hardly obey the niceties of polite convention either), and there are some fine moments of pitch-black humour. I was especially amused by the scene involving stepping in a half-dissolved corpse, and the subsequent discussion over protocol, whether or not the poor policewoman should keep her footwear, and forensic pathology:
   “There’s the liver.”
   “A liver’s that small?”
   “It’s normal, but half is on your shoes.”

The problem is largely Vega’s failure to tell a coherent story. I wondered if this might be down to my lack of local knowledge e.g. the fuel scam, perhaps enhanced by not having seen the previous entries in the Pitbull franchise. However, reading some local reviews [all hail, Google Translate!] suggests it’s not just me, with this being a common complaint. I can’t help wishing the writer/director had actually delivered on the potential of his premise: while certainly an equal-opportunity piece, this still falls short of what I wanted. Perhaps Vega knew he had half-assed it, and that’s why he circled back around so quickly for the not-dissimilar Women of Mafia.

Dir: Patryk Vega
Star: Sebastian Fabijanski, Joanna Kulig, Anna Dereszowska, Piotr Stramowski

Prodigy

  By

★★★★
“Hannibal Lecter’s kid sister, crossed with Carrie”

This small-scale production – a cast of little more than half a dozen, and one location, not counting the park scenes which bookend it – packs a wallop significantly above its weight. Psychiatrist Jimmy Fonda (Neil) is brought into a military facility by an old friend, Olivia (Andersen), to interview a young girl, Ellie (Liles), who is being held there. To avoid pre-judging her case, Fonda deliberately avoids reading the documentation about her with which he has been provided. But the stringent security precautions (“In the event the subject escapes the restraints, drop to the floor and cover your head”) under which she’s held, should give him a clue that this is far from a normal nine-year-old. If it didn’t, the conversation with her which follows certainly does.

For Ellie is incredibly bright, and completely sociopathic. Turns out she killed her mother, and also possesses freakish paranormal talents of telekinesis, which is why she’s locked up in this military facility. However, her wilful rejection of all authority has led those in charge – Colonel Birch (Palame) in particular – to the conclusion that euthanasia is the only option available, given the threat she poses. Olivia, who still believes in Ellie’s humanity, called in Fonda as a last hurrah to prove the young girl is salvageable before she is put down. Ellie, however, is having none of it, and seems intent on embracing her fate. Is this just a facade, or is she as incorrigibly dangerous as the authorities believe?

With such a low-key approach, a lot is riding on the performances of the two leads, and both Neil and Liles hit it out of the park. For a film which, for the great majority of the time, is nothing more than two people talking to each other, it’s remarkably engrossing to watch the two fencing for intellectual dominance. The chess game which they play is perhaps rather too obvious a metaphor for what’s going on here, yet it remains fascinating throughout. Even the slightly stilted and artificial nature of Liles’s performance – par for the course in almost any actor of her age – works for the character, because we’re unsure to what extent Ellie is, indeed, delivering a part she has decided to play.

The effects are generally similarly low-key, but used effectively to enhance things, from the first glimpse we get of Ellie’s powers through to the higher-tier unleashing of them. You could argue that the end is predictable; however, the way the set-up is constructed, there are really only two ways this can logically end. Either Fonda succeeds. or he doesn’t. Your mileage may vary as to which you think is more plausible, and whether or not the film-makers agree with you. I’ll confess we differed in our opinions, yet the journey there was still more than entertaining enough to allow me to shake hands and part on very good terms with the film.

Dir: Alex Haughey, Brian Vidal, Nathan Leon
Star: Richard Neil, Savannah Liles, Jolene Andersen, Emilio Palame

Peppermint

  By

★★★
“A case of Miss-Taken identity.”

I’m tempted to award this an extra half-star, simply for pissing off liberal film critics, upset by the fact that most of the film is devoted to a white woman killing Latino drug dealers. Of course, they completely miss all the points, instead complaining – and these are direct quotes – there is “not a word about corporate complicity in the opioid crisis” and that the heroine’s “true enemy is a system of income inequality driven by hyper-capitalism.” Because, of course, if was hyper-capitalism which gunned down the husband and daughter of Riley North (Garner) in the parking lot of a fun-fair. Oh, my mistake: it was Latino drug dealers.

The main complaint though, is it “bought into the political rhetoric that conflates gang members with law-abiding immigrants.” Uh, speaking as a thoroughly law-abiding immigrant: no, it doesn’t. I never felt at all conflated. But then, I never regarded Trainspotting as any kind of indication that all Scottish people are heroin addicts. For that’s the mistake critics like this keep making, going all the way back those who claimed Basic Instinct was homophobic: taking characters in a film as statements about that group as a whole. As one defense of the film wrote, “all too many members of the Left have reacted to Trump allegedly making gang members represent immigrants by, yes, making gang members represent immigrants.”

Enough politics. The important question here is, is this revenge-driven vigilante pic any good? To which the answer is… somewhat. There’s certainly nothing much new or innovative in the story. After the shooting described above, the scumbags responsible get off, and Riley goes on her mission of vengeance, killing not only those directly responsible, but those on both sides of law she feels were culpable. That involves going all the way up the food chain to Diego Garcia (Raba), the drug boss who ordered the hit, though Riley takes no small pleasure in destroying his organization on the way, not least the piñata factory which operates as a distribution hub.

The film seems to leave a slew of opportunities on the table. For example, the five years before Riley’s mission got under way, when she was living off the grid and acquiring the “very particular set of skills” [director Morel also helmed Taken] necessary for the task. Or the way she operates as an “angel” for the homeless inhabitants of Skid Row. Or the social media debate, mentioned in passing, which her vigilante actions against Garcia and his gang has kick-started. Or Riley’s eventual payback against another mother for a long-ago wrong. Expanding on any of these might have offered more interesting ways to go, rather than being mostly a clone of this year’s Bruce Willis vehicle, Death Wish, in itself a remake that added little to the 1974 original.

Instead, we are left with little more than a competent exercise in Garner returning to her Alias roots, though as such it’s entertaining enough. The fights here are crisply handled, reaching a peak on the piñata warehouse assault, I’d say – an environment which offers a great deal of opportunity for innovative carnage. It’s the bits in between which are the problem, setting up interesting angles, then failing miserably to take advantage of them, instead offering almost as much footage of the cops chasing Riley (Ortiz and Gallagher). And at least it’s not Elektra, the film effectively responsible for killing off comic-book action heroines for a decade, as well as putting Garner’s career in big-budget movies on life-support. We can be grateful for that, I suppose.

Dir: Pierre Morel
Star: Jennifer Garner, Juan Pablo Raba, John Ortiz, John Gallagher Jr.

PULSE: The Trial by R.A. Crawford

  By

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

The synopsis starts, “It’s been 100 years since the inter-galactic organization known as PULSE intervened to liberate the women of Earth. Now purged of its male population, the women have embarked on a journey to take their place in the all-female cosmic society.” Wait, what? That seems quite the “previously…” to skip over completely. It is a lightly-sketched universe, and one which perhaps raises more questions than it answers, not least the implication that every solar system has the same concepts of “male” and “female” as we do.

Anyway, taking that as read, the spearhead of this trans-galactic Amazonian army are PULSE, which is short for the Planetary Union of Life-form Salvation and Emancipation. Becoming a PULSE officer is not for the faint of heart, requiring years of training, which culminate in the infamously brutal final test of the title. In this case, the graduating class are dropped on an undeveloped planet, and have to make their way across its surface, to where a ship is programmed to depart at a preset time. But quite intentionally, it’s a thoroughly unforgiving landscape, to the point of lethality. Every step seems to bring a new threat, from native fauna through deliberate traps to the worst of them all – the Huntress, a PULSE dropout whose apparent mission is to ensure the final graduation ceremony can take place in a phone-booth.

After the initial couple of chapters set the scene, it’s almost non-stop action once we reach the planet’s surface, as we follow the paths of a (dwindling) number of candidates. The main focus is on two aspiring PULSE officers, Stella and Faye, who have become a team over their training, using their respective strengths to buttress each other’s weaknesses. But how will they cope after being separated? And what about the other candidates, such as top of the class Miriyada, or Kandis, who was curiously absent for most classes?

It’s a bit odd how some of the women seem keen on sabotaging other candidates. If it were “first 10 to finish graduate”, this might make sense, but everyone who reaches the ship passes, and I’d have said you’d want to encourage co-operation among potential officers. The level of bitchy backstabbing seen here, seems more like high-school than a military institution. There are also a few occasions when Crawford doesn’t have a very good handle on describing the action. For instance, a fight on the side of a mountain takes place; beyond that, I’ve still no real idea what was going on. And it might have been nice to take advantage of having a galaxy to work with, and add more diversity to the candidates; they all seem a bit… humanoid.

On the other hand, I can’t argue with the pace at all: this is one of the most page-turning stories I’ve read in the last year. I wanted to know what happens next, and the clear sense of “anyone can die at any time” created a genuine sense of threat for the remaining characters. The strictly gynocentric approach here leaves no room at all for romance – the bane of the literary genre as far as I’m concerned – so I appreciated that. These positive aspects did a good job of countering the flaws noted above, and although the ending is less cliff-hanger than brick wall, I’d not be averse to seeing where things go from here.

Author: R.A. Crawford
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, available through Amazon as an e-book or paperback.
Book 1 of 2 in the PULSE series.

Perdida

  By

★★½
“Lost cause.”

The film begins with an Argentinian school-trip to a volcanic area, which goes badly wrong when one of the schoolgirls, Cornelia, vanishes. Despite an extensive search, all that’s found is her locket. 14 years later, the missing girl’s best friend, Pipa (Lopilato), is now a cop, channeling the guilt she still feels about Cornelia’s disappearance and her role in it, into work. After a mass to mark the anniversary of the incident, Cornelia’s mother visits Pipa, begging her to re-open the case. Despite initial qualms, she does so, only to find a restaurant-sized can of worms comes along with it. Pipa finds herself facing a serious criminal organization, under the control of a woman known as The Mermaid (Salamanca), whose tentacles stretch both around the world and into the past.

This is based on the book Cornelia, by Florencia Etcheves. Whether the same is true of the source novel, I can’t say, but the film is very clearly influenced by The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and other entries in the Nordic noir genre, right down to the snowy, desolate Patagonian landscapes where the film both opens and closes. Pipa is the typical heroine of such things, far more skilled at dealing with evidence than people, although here subcontracts out any shady technological needs to her Lisbeth Salander-alike pal, Alina (Sabatini). I spotted the main twist early on too, though in the film’s defense, I’m not sure how much it was supposed to be a surprise, since it seemed blindingly obvious in its nature.

A bigger problem is likely what goes around it, with elements that seem to show up out of nowhere: maybe they’re explained better in the book? For instance, Pipa gets a key clue from an inmate at a lunatic asylum, yet I’m not sure how she discovered this. And if the heroine is apparently so guilt-ridden over Cornelia’s disappearance, and was propelled by it to make a career in law-enforcement, why did she not bother to re-open the case for almost a decade and a half? Lopato gives an okay performance, managing to make her spiky, loner character somewhat likeable – another key aspect of Nordic noir. However, I was more intrigued by The Mermaid, and her character arc. How does someone become so indifferent to the suffering of others? There’s scope for a Maleficent like retelling of this story, from her point of view.

This is more of a general observation than a specific criticsm, yet I get the feeling this kind of thing might work better as a TV series. The additional time available would allow an extended period over which viewers can get to know the participants and their quirks. The finale here certainly feels rushed, to the point that you barely have time to go “Hang on, that doesn’t make sen…” before it’s over. A fractured timeline doesn’t help in terms of the necessary building of relationships with these characters, and the final result comes up significantly short of the necessary amount of emotional impact.

Dir: Alejandro Montiel
Star: Luisana Lopilato, Amaia Salamanca, Rafael Spregelburd, Oriana Sabatini