Tag: r

Ride Like a Girl

  By

★★½
“Trots, when it should gallop”

This opens and closes with footage and photographs of the real Michelle Payne, who is the subject of the film. Part of me wonders if that documentary approach might have proved a more successful one, rather than the parade of sports drama cliches we get here. Admittedly, quite a lot of them are based in fact. Payne was the first woman to ride to victory in the Melbourne Cup – that’s Australia’s premier horse-race, roughly equivalent in prestige to the Kentucky Derby or Grand National in the US or UK respectively. This alone, is quite an achievement. But she did so as one of ten brothers and sisters, who largely had to bring themselves up after their mother died when Michelle was only six months old. Her father was a horse trainer, and no fewer than eight of his offspring became jockeys, including Michelle of course.

In this version, Palmer plays the heroine, with Neill the ever-tolerant father attempting to steer her career. It’s not easy, with Michelle having to deal with a racing establishment that still doubts women can be as good jockeys as men, before eventually convincing owner Darren Weir (Stapleton) to give her a chance. She also has to come back from an fall that left her with a fractured skull and bruised brain. Then, she almost lost the opportunity to ride her horse, Prince of Penzance, in the big race after being suspended for racing tactics perceived as dangerous, fairly or not. In other words: basically checking off all the obvious impediments, and the film adds little or nothing of note to them, though some of the racing footage is effective enough. [The film, probably wisely, glosses over post-Cup events. Prince of Penzance went lame and had to retire; Weir was charged with cruelty to animals; and Payne got another suspension for amphetamine abuse. Oops]

It works better when it’s remaining grounded, in a way only Australians can be. Neill does a good job of that as the long-suffering father, and it’s a shame he all but vanishes from the second half of proceedings. It does offer amusing moments like watching a posse of nuns (or whatever the collective term is for them!), marching into a bookmakers on Melbourne Cup Day to bet on Payne and her pony. Much credit is also due to the film-makers for letting Payne’s real-life brother, Stevie, who has Down’s Syndrome, play himself in the movie. But it does suffer from what is likely an inevitable problem given the source material: we know how it’s going to end, and how it’s going to get there as well. Given this, taking a few more risks with the approach or the portrayals of the characters might have been warranted. Instead, Griffiths seems intent on taking the safest route she can find between plot-points which are largely obvious. The results are, as you’d expect, little more than feel-good fodder.

Dir: Rachel Griffiths
Star: Teresa Palmer, Sam Neill, Sullivan Stapleton, Stevie Payne

Run Hide Fight

  By

★★★
“School’s out… forever“

My rule of thumb here is, I generally don’t get into politics, beyond what a film itself does. By which I mean, if a movie consciously injects a political theme or agenda, then that’s fair game. But otherwise, I try to review a movie as a movie, rather than seeing it through the lens of any political belief. However, in this case, I can’t ignore the elephant in the room, with Run Hide Fight having acquired an explicitly political subtext, over and about its content, through distribution by right-wing website, The Daily Wire. Yet, just as The Hunt was not calling for the murder of Trump supporters some suggested, neither is this the relentless pro-gun propaganda, you’d think from a few of the more vitriolic reviews. Once again, reality is more moderate than online opinions would have you believe. Who knew?

Director Rankin said (in an interview that’s thoughtful, and definitely worth the read), he wanted the film “to be so that two friends on opposite sides of the political spectrum could go watch this and both feel like it honored them, and they could go out for coffee or a beer, and talk about it.” I’d say he managed to do so, though I’m not certain such equivocation is the best approach, especially when it comes to such a controversial topis as school shootings. I might have had more respect if the film had taken a stance and gone for it. Though that would have taken more bravery – or stupidity! – given some of the reactions to what is a mild, even-handed take. It doesn’t really get more controversial than daring to suggest that sometimes, to stop a bad guy with a gun you need a good guy teenage girl with a gun.

From a moral point of view, my sole qualm was probably that too much time was spent on the chief perpetrator. It plays down the same line as previous entries in the school shooter genre – spending too much time on the killers rather than their victims, which almost regardless of execution, exacerbates the problem. This is something the script does address towards the end, when the heroine says to the ring-leader, “Isn’t it ironic, that after all your goddamn hard work, people aren’t gonna remember you? They are gonna remember me.” This might ring truer, if I wasn’t fairly sure he gets more lines than she does. I don’t care about your motivation. You’re insane. Now, move on.

Otherwise, it is basically Die Hard in a school, and as such, is no more worthy of complaint than any of the many other Die Hard knock-offs we’ve seen. Certainly, saying that educational facilities should be sacrosanct, inviolate and not used as the location for this kind of thing makes no logical sense. To quote Rankin, “There’s an easy answer to, ‘How could you?’ which is also, ‘How could you not?’ This is a major problem in America, so why not make a movie about it?” I would argue it’s in reality perceived as a major problem, largely due to the media hysteria around it. For in 2019, a grand total of just eight people were killed across the whole country on school grounds or during school-sponsored events. [Or, as Chicago calls it, “a quiet weekend.”] For context: lawnmowers kill more than ten times that number annually.

Anyway, let’s move on and discuss the movie, as a movie – because that’s what matters.

It’s almost the last day of the year, Jennifer Hull (May) is in her school cafeteria bathroom, when Tristan Voy (Brown) and his cohort of Columbine Mafia wannabes crash a van in through the window and take the students hostage. The authorities are slow to react, in part due to diversionary tactics, in part due to bureaucracy and in part… because it’s necessary to the plot, allowing Jennifer to scurry into the air-ducts and discover what being a TV dinner feels like. Having escaped the initial onslaught, her first instinct is to flee the scene, but fortunately for the movie, she decides to go back into the building, alert others to the reality of the situation and, eventually, face down the perpetrators.

You can largely pencil in the obvious plot points as they unfold, and the script offers very little in the way of surprises. Probably the biggest is that, as a Die Hard copy, it’s very restrained, with Jennifer responsible for the demise of only two (2) of the attackers. To put it into oughties video-game terms, it’s considerably more Metal Gear Solid than Goldeneye, with stealth being the order of the day, rather than rushing in with all guns blazing. It helps her that the attackers are streaming their act live on the Internet, which allows her to keep an eye on where they are. There are also some nice  moments where she make use of the school environment to assist her; I’d like to have seen more of that.

What the film does best is likely the set-up of Jennifer’s character. We first see her deer-hunting with her father (Jane), demonstrating a familiarity with and respect for firearms. It’s also established early that she’s still grieving after the loss of her mother, giving her some darkness. But generally, Jennifer is very much a normal girl, somewhat on the fringes of school life, but by no means an outsider. Mom’s ghost pops up now and again during events, a narrative conceit which I didn’t mind, yet can’t say I felt particularly enhanced things either. Still, she’s a heroine for whom I found it very easy to root.

It does feel like the script doesn’t quite know what to do with her after her first hand-to-hand fight, a messily close-combat affair. She turns her hand to a variety of different things, such as alerting other classes to the fact that leaving the premises is the best option, which feels like a diversion from the main plot. Eventually, of course, Tristan realizes there’s a fly in the ointment, and we get the face-off we’ve been expecting, which harks back to the early deer-hunting. It’s a good job too, as the penultimate climax had felt like a cop-out, with Jennifer teetering perilously close to damsel in distress mode. Fortunately, the real finale proved a good deal more satisfactory.

Much as with the political posturing, the film’s quality lies in the middle. It’s neither a new classic, nor the appalling piece of hackwork – both opinions I’ve seen put forward. It is considerably tamer than I expected, certainly not the outrage to common decency some have suggested (not that I’d have necessarily minded!). It is entirely competent and does a reasonable, rather than exceptional, job both as entertainment and in provoking thought. Not worth the hype, to be sure – yet certainly not worth the vitriol either.

Dir: Kyle Rankin
Star: Isabel May, Eli Brown, Thomas Jane, Thomas Jane

Rearview

  By

★★
“With hindsight, I shouldn’t have bothered.”

I must confess, I was perversely intrigued when I read a review on the IMDb, apparently from one of the directors, disowning this film: “Terrible, and despite it having my name on it, I had no say in the final cut.” While it is true to say that the synopsis – “Based on true events, a girl fights for her life on the Road – Tears Of Souls – chased by a gang of slave traffickers” – is almost entirely inaccurate, it’s not that dreadful. Oh, it’s… not good, to be sure. But I’ve seen worse (hello, Agent Jade Black): it’s not annoyingly dreadful, thanks mostly to a decent central performance by Thomas.

She plays Nicky, who is driving through the English countryside when her car stalls out, beginning an escalating series of misadventures. For this particular area is apparently ground zero for a series of mysterious disappearances of women, who subsequently turn up dead in what the police call suicide. Of course, that’s far from the case, with what appears to be a loose-knit collaboration between a pair of psychos (Sives and Simpson), predating the highways and byways out of a truck-stop, and certain elements of the authorities. Quite where the “slave traffickers” mentioned by the synopsis come in, escapes me entirely. To be honest, on reading that bit, I was expecting this to unfold in the middle East, rather than middle England.

Nicky is likeable enough and does, at least, appear slightly smarter than the average victim in these things. Or, at least, is not required to behave with the idiocy which is par for the course. However, the downside is that the sensible thing – staying locked in her car – is far from thrilling cinema. There is way too much sitting by the side of the road for this to work, even if you take into account the whole “being menaced by a pair of psychos” thing. Eventually, even they get bored with standing around, passing comment, and smash the side window, forcing Nicky out of her relatively safe-space and into the surrounding woods. From where there’s much running around, until we eventually circle back to the opening, in which she covers herself in fuel at an all-night petrol station, and threatens to set herself on fire after the cashier refuses to let her in.

There is only one scene which genuinely sticks in my mind, which sees Nicky strangle one of the people after her. It’s notable largely for the length, being an apparently endless exercise with the victim thrashing around in increasing desperation, trying to escape. The scene is nasty, brutal and tough to watch, which is exactly the way violence like this should be depicted. It also stands in sharp contrast to the pedestrian direction in the rest of the film, which contains little that is memorable or interesting. Maybe we Brits are just too gosh darned polite to do this kind of thing well?

Dir: Avril E. Russell, Orson Nava
Star: Antonia Thomas, Jamie Sives, Jay Simpson. James Floyd

Rogue

  By

★★★
“Because females are the true killers.”

Megan Fox may not exactly be the first name which comes to mind when you think “battle-hardened mercenary leader.” But if you can get past your preconceptions, she’s definitely not the worst thing about this. We’ll get to what is, a little later. She plays Samantha O’Hara, leader of a group or mercs who have been hired by the governor of an African province to rescue his daughter from the Muslim group who kidnapped her. The mission initially goes well, but problems arise. First, the daughter isn’t the only woman kidnapped, forcing Sam to take along multiple civilians. Then, their evac chopper is shot down. Finally, the abandoned house in which they hole up while awaiting extraction turns out to be home to some large, toothy predators of the feline variety, leading to the quote above. Between fending off them and the pursuing kidnappers, Sam and her crew have their work cut out to survive the night until rescue arrives.

I was reminded of the series Strike Back in a number of ways, and it’s no coincidence. Director Bassett worked on the show and Winchester was one of the stars. But there’s also a similarly frantic pace and exotic location, as well as a love of giant fireballs. I’m down with all of those, even if the characterizations here are definitely on the shallow side; the film clearly feels this would be time wasted, which could be better spent on those giant fireballs. Fox is fine, though I’d say definitely should have been made to look less glamorous. There’s barely a shot here, where she doesn’t look as if she wandered onto the African veldt, right off a fashion runway: perfect hair and make-up, with not evern a smudge of dirt on those cheek-bones. However, she hurls herself about with some abandon, and I can’t fault her willingness to go outside the comfort zone of her usual roles.

No, a far bigger problem here is the CGI used for the lions, which is flat-out terrible. I don’t know what the hell happened, but any time it’s properly seen, the flaws are glaringly obvious, and severely detract from proceedings. Which is a shame, because they’re used quite well. We get an attack seen through night-vision goggles that is genuinely chilling, and there’s also the best “out of nowhere” moment since Samuel L. Jackson got sharked in Deep Blue Sea. I suggest looking at the big cats out of the corner of the eye, and they might pass muster. The film ends with an explicit pro-conservation message from the director, which seems a bit odd, given they’ve spent the previous hour and three-quarters showing us what terrifying beasts lions are. But it’s apparently okay, because they had reasons. I don’t see many people sticking around for the morality show: you’re here for Fox in khaki and the maulings. Providing you can get past the ropey CGI, this delivers adequately enough on both counts.

Dir: M.J. Bassett
Star: Megan Fox, Philip Winchester, Greg Kriek, Brandon Auret

Ravage

  By

★★½
“Harper’s bizarre.”

Wildlife photographer Harper Sykes (Dexter-Jones) is out in the wilderness of the “Watchatoomy Valley” [fictitious, but apparently located somewhere in the Virginias], when she stumbles across a group of men brutally attacking a victim. She snaps a few pics before fleeing the scene, but her attempts to report the incident to the authorities backfire immediately, and she quickly finds herself at the mercy of their leader, the appropriately-named Ravener (Longstreet). He explains the victim was a scout for big business, whose predations would destroy the natural environment, and so had to be stopped. Now, Harper is next in line. However, she is not the innocent and helpless victim they think. Even when she has the chance to escape, Harper decides to stay in the valley, and take vengeance on Ravener and the rest of his clan.

It is an interesting idea. Frequently in the horror genre, the character arc is of the “final girl”, who only resorts to violence when finally pushed too far. That certainly isn’t the case here: indeed, Harper actually fires first, gunning down one of Ravener’s henchmen as soon as she steps from her truck. Yet there’s a reason the trope of the final girl exists, because it pulls the audience along with her. Here, Harper’s actions are unexpected enough they could well disengage much of the audience, coming as they do before we’ve established much sympathy for her. Another problem is her decision to stay and actively look for her revenge isn’t well-enough defined: I was left wondering for quite some time, why she didn’t leave. Some explanation of why she’s so skilled might have been nice: not much, just a quick reference to time in the military, or a survivalist Dad, would have been fine.

The structure is also a tad problematic, with the film being told in flashback, a heavily-bandaged Harper recounting her story to a disbelieving state trooper from her hospital bed. So, we know she will survive, and the early explanations also remove much other tension from subsequent proceedings. If you’ve seen more than, roughly, two of this kind of movie, you’ll also fail to be surprised that the kindly individual to whom the heroine turns for help, ends up being anything but. I could perhaps have done without the lengthy digression into medieval torture techniques and bovine anatomy. Though both do prove at least tangentially necessary to the plot, and the latter in particular, leads to a grisly payoff.

Dexter-Jones does a good job of selling her role, and Harper generally has no compunction about acting, e.g. blowing one of her target’s brains out at point-blank range. Yet, this is at odds with some of her other actions. She literally throws up after watching the initial savagery, and the sight of a dead body later makes her shriek like a little girl. It’s all maddeningly inconsistent, and left me rather annoyed, with too much the potential here wasted through sloppy execution.

Dir: Teddy Grennan
Star: Annabelle Dexter-Jones, Robert Longstreet, Michael Weaver, Bruce Dern
a.k.a. Swing Low

Riddle Story of Devil

  By

★★★
“This class is a killer…”

Another example which illustrates the difference between Western and Japanese approaches to education. For here we have “Class Black”, a group containing a baker’s dozen of female pupils, eleven of whom have been tasked by a mysterious group to assassinate the twelfth, with the person who does it being given absolutely anything they want by the organizers. Yeah, it’s not quite Beverley Hills 90210, is it? Of course, nor is it quite that simple. One of the candidates, Tokaku Azuma (Suwa), is the daughter of a legendary and long-standing family of assassins, but has had enough of her enforced role. Inspired by her mother, she has decided to rebel, and so switches sides. Instead of targeting the intended victim, Haru Ichinose (Kanemoto), she vows to protect her from the other students.

Of course, it is a ridiculously contrived scenario, even given the rules which are laid down at an early “orientation”. The series (twelve x 25-minute eps, plus a bonus one) seems occasionally to be aware of this. It shows up in elements such as the class’s teacher (Sakurai), who is depicted as barely noticing three-quarters of his class has “transferred out” in about a week. But these are strictly assassins who act as necessary to the plot. For example, one attempt consists of strapping a bomb around Haru’s neck… but then giving Tokaku 24 hours to find the four-digit code necessary to disarm it. If I had the promise of whatever I wished, I’d not be as generous. I’m just sayin’…

Admittedly, when the truth is finally revealed over the final couple of episodes, it turns out things aren’t quite as they initially appeared. There are clearly far larger forces at play, pulling the strings from behind the scenes, which help explain some (though not all) of the machinations. I also like the slow reveal of information over the course of the series. We gradually learn about both Tokaku’s own background, and those of her ‘competitors’, which range from professionals to your average or garden psycho killers. Their styles of attack are equally varied: as well as the explosive devices mentioned above, there’s poison and even scissors attempted as methods of dispatch.

I was, frankly, a bit uncomfortable with the depictions of these fifteen-year-old girls. While there’s no actual nudity, the makers seem intent on coming as close as possible. That’s especially true of the bonus episode, in which the class is stranded on a desert island for a Battle Royale-style (though non-lethal) contest. Swimsuits-a-go-go. I’m on happier ground with the action – there’s some of that in just about every episode after the first – and the lack of romance (in part no doubt related to the lack of male characters) is also a plus. In the end, it’s a light enough entry to merit viewing, though I’m less sure about repeat value. It’s perhaps telling that I only finished watching it yesterday, and I already had to look up the heroine’s name.

Dir: Keizō Kusakawa
Star (voice): Ayaka Suwa, Hisako Kanemoto, Yoshino Nanjō, Takahiro Sakurai

Ready, Willing and Able

  By

★★★
“Puts the ‘able’ in disabled.”

This is certainly something of a novelty and/or a gimmick. But it’s none the less reasonably effective for it. Templeton – who is a woman, despite her first name, given to her after the character of Christopher Robin in the Winnie The Pooh books – suffered from polio as a young child. This left her with a badly damaged right leg; despite this, she pursued an acting career, and became a regular on soap The Young and the Restless for eight years. While I’ve seen a few disabled action heroes – Daredevil was blind – as far as disabled action heroines go, it’s basically her and Imperator Furiosa from Mad Max. And Charlize Theron wasn’t genuinely short an arm, so advantage Templeten. Though, sadly, she appears to have passed away in 2011.

She plays Samantha ‘Sam’ Martin, a former CIA agent who is confined to a wheelchair after a mission goes wrong. Back in civilian life, she goes for a job as the manager for at corporate security firm F.R.T.R.I.S. The owner, Lamont Vaughn (Steve DuMouchel), quickly terminates the interview without giving Sam a fair change. As revenge, she seeks to show how the company’s security sucks, by breaking into their HQ. Doing so, she finds evidence indicating that F.R.T.R.I.S are involved in shady business, involving chemical weapons. Attempts to alert the authorities go nowhere, so Sam puts together and leads a team of her old colleagues to find irrefutable evidence of Vaughn’s wrongdoing. However, the CEO quickly becomes aware of her efforts and takes countermeasures.

For the majority of the time, it plays considerably more like a TV movie than a genuine feature, to the point where you can almost see the commercial breaks. Just as I was certain of that, there is suddenly a gratuitous sequence where Sam meets one of her team in a bargain basement rock/strip-club. This, along with occasional spots of non-televisual language, suggest it was more likely straight-to-video. The most laudable thing is how Sam absolutely refuses to let her disability stop or even slow her down. She can take out a mugger or chase after an attacker – though I must admit, the sequence where she zip-lined off the roof of the F.R.T.R.I.S building, in her wheelchair, was probably a bit of a stretch.

The final third becomes more or less a single, extended set-piece, covering the team’s infiltration into the F.R.T.R.I.S lair, and subsequent battle with their operatives. Turns out, in a twist, someone with whom Sam is quite familiar is working for the other team, though I can’t say it’s a particularly stunning turn of events, dramatically speaking. It’s all handled competently enough, though again, is never able to achieve escape velocity from the gravity well of mediocrity. I’d probably rather have seen Sam going solo, and exercising more ingenuity and inventiveness rather than her having to rely on her colleagues as much as here. That said, it’s still something you won’t see every day.

Dir: Jenni Gold
Star: Christopher Templeton, Rus Blackwell, Steve DuMouchel, Mike Kalvoda

The Rhythm Section

  By

★★★
“Not really worth the wait”

The action-heroine genre has seen its share of high-profile flops in the past. But this long-delayed entry, originally due out in February 2019, is among the worst, setting a record for the lowest ever opening at the North American box-office for a wide release. It took in only $2.8 million from 3,049 theaters when it opened in January, and ended with a worldwide gross below $6 million, against a budget of $50 million. While smaller in scale, that’s a Cutthroat Island level of failure. Did it deserve such a fate? Well, it’s not that bad. It ain’t great. But it seems almost defiantly unlikable, going against cinematic norms in a way that’s brave – and, I suspect, ultimately foolish. The result is something whose commercial demise is unsurprising, beginning with a title that makes only tangential sense, even after you’ve seen the film.

It’s the story of Stephanie Patrick (Lively), whose family died in a plane accident, causing her to go into a downward spiral. Three years later, she’s a crack whore, when contacted by journalist Keith Proctor (Jaffrey). He tells her the crash was actually a terrorist attack, basing this claim on information received from a source with intelligence connections known only as “B”. After Proctor is murdered, Stephanie finds B (Law) and convinces him to help her acquire the necessary skills to become an assassin. Stephanie then goes after all those involved in the attack, including the shadowy figure known only as U-17. To do so, she takes on the identity of Petra Reuter, an assassin killed by B, and uses the resources of ex-CIA officer Marc Serra (Brown), now working as an intelligence broker.

I think viewer expectations may have played a part here. Reading the above, and with the film coming from the producers of the 007 franchise, you are likely imagining a slick, Bond-esque slice of escapism. It’s not that. First off, Stephanie is… Well, let’s be honest, a bit shit as an assassin. When she asks B how long it’ll take for her to become good, he replies, “Your menopause will be a distant memory.” They don’t have that much time, and the results are consequently rough around the edges, not least because she almost completely lacks the necessary killer instinct. She has the motive, just not the method.

Frankly, she’s very, very lucky to survive the first couple of missions, and that’s only one of the aspects which strains credibility. The makers get a demerit for using Ireland to fake the North of Scotland, and it appears remarkably easy to track down international terrorists. Perhaps the book on which this was based did a better job? Given the gritty nature of proceedings, I was expecting a greater level of intrigue and deception. For example, despite being officially “unattached”, I was predicting B or Marc to still be working on behalf of their former employers, manipulating Stephanie towards their ends. Maybe I’ve just watched too many episodes of Homeland.

There are some impressive elements. Probably the most outstanding is a car chase, filmed to look like one take, shot entirely from inside Stephanie’s vehicle as she flees the scene. It’s almost as good as the one from Children of Men, the gold standard for such things. I also did like Lively’s performance: she has rather more to do here than she had in The Shallows, and acquits herself well, both dramatically and in the action scenes (she smashed her hand up badly while filming a fight scene with Law). However, on reaching the end, I found myself unmoved, and given the general lack of spectacle present, this isn’t one I’ve much interest in revisiting.

Dir: Reed Morano
Star:  Blake Lively, Jude Law, Sterling K. Brown, Raza Jaffrey 

La Reina Del Sur: season two

  By

★★★½
“The Queen comes home”

Nine years after the events of the first series, Teresa Mendoza (del Castillo) is no longer in the world of crime. She lives in Italy under a new identity, where she makes marmalade, has a hunky boyfriend and is concerned more with bringing up her daughter, Sofia (Sierra). But where would the telenovela fun be in that? Therefore. it’s not long before Sofia is kidnapped, and used as leverage to drag Teresa back into the murky world of narcotrafico. Except, it’s as much a political game this time, with her previous adversary, Epifanio Vargas (Zurita), is now running for President of Mexico. He orders Teresa to bring down the main rival for that position, by joining the gang of the drug-lord who is backing his rival’s campaign, and finding evidence which can exposie their connection. It’s not even that “simple”, with a lot of people who have long-standing scores to settle with Teresa, and the DEA lurking in the background, pulling strings on behalf of the American government.

It is certainly quite jet-setty. Perhaps because of del Castillo’s well-documented problems with the Mexican government, I’m not sure how many of her scenes were actually filmed locally. As well as Italy, it bounces around between her old stomping-ground of Malaga, Spain and Russia (reuniting Mendoza with Russian mob ally, Oleg Yosikov (Gil), though eventually settles down with the bulk of the action does take place in Mexico. There, Teresa has to round up some other old pals, to give her the necessary resources to infiltrate her target. Meanwhile, Sofia is proving quite the chip off the old block, and causing no end of problems for her captors – who include someone playing a rather dangerous double- or even triple-game. However, despite the plethora of plot threads – and the above is well short of being an exhaustive list – the script does generally pull off a very good job of delineating them without confusion.

Initially, it seemed like we might be in for a more action-oriented brand of Teresa, the first episode (embedded at the bottom, with English subs) ending with her chasing a car on a motor-bike and a rather spectacular stunt. Sadly, it only sustains this pace intermittently thereafter. To make up, we do get the very impressive Manuela, a.k.a Kira, played by Paola Núñez. A disgruntled former DEA agent, she’s one of those with a grudge against Ms. Mendoza, holding her responsible for the death of some family members. She’s definitely a bad-ass, and it’s always a pleasure seeing her and Teresa go toe-to-toe. There were some aspects of the story I did have issues with. For instance, in about a two-episode spell, we get three different cases of someone who should be dead, turning out not to be. That gets old. But all told, it’s a nicely-paced bit of television, that sustained my interest over its 60 episodes – even if it took me approaching six months to get through them all.

Star: Kate del Castillo, Humberto Zurita, Antonio Gil, Isabella Sierra

Riot Girls

  By

★★
“Two girls, one gun.”

After a disease has wiped out all adults, the town of Potters Bluff has divided into two camps, delineated by the river running through the town. On the west are the Titans, a quasi-fascist order of jocks operating out of the old high school and led by Jeremy, whose motto is “Strength, power, respect.” On the east are the free-spirited remainder, living under and protected by Jack (Bourgeois). However, after hijacking the contents of a Titan truck, Jack is abducted by them and held hostage. A three-person party sets out on a rescue mission: Jack’s sister Nat (Iseman), her best friend  – and painfully obvious lesbian, right down to the mohawk – Scratch (Kwiatkowski), and Sony (Friese), a former Titan who recently defected to the East, and whose inside knowledge is essential to their survival and the success of the mission.

This provides a slightly different twist on the usual post-apocalyptic scenario, though the idea dates back at least to Roger Corman’s 1970 film Gas-s-s-s, in which a deadly gas wiped out everyone over the age of 25. Canadian show Between also explored similar territory, and the conflict-driven nature here brings us almost into Battle Royale territory. Though it’s more of a team sport than an individual pursuit, and natural division instead of artificial construct. But I have to wonder, how did Potters Bluff reach this point? What’s the back story which saw, for example, Jack and Jeremy become leaders of their factions and implacable enemies? I suspect this may have been more entertaining than what we actually get. And why is the soundtrack apparently fascinated with hair metal songs from a long bygone era? [I’m pretty sure it shares one with the 35-year-old Return of the Living Dead…]

After a bright, comic-book styled opening sequence to set the scene, at first it seems this may be building and then subverting expectations. For example, when on a foraging expedition, Scratch is delighted to come across a vibrator… But in a twist, her interest is purely for the batteries it contains. However, the further on it goes, the safer and more predictable everything seems to become. The hurdles Nat, Scratch and Sony have to overcome on their journey, are precisely the ones you’d expect (although there is one eye-poppingly brutal head-shot), and it all inevitably leads to a confrontation with Jeremy and his troops in their high-school gymnasium.

Most irritatingly, it ends up getting too bogged down in class and gender politics. The Titans are largely defined as the bad guys almost purely because they are white, straight and male. Meanwhile, it’s “diversity = good” for the Eastsiders – even if its tenets like affirmative action are a civilized conceit, which wouldn’t last two days in a proper apocalypse. Consequently, it’s absolutely no surprise Nat and Scratch end up as An Item – not minutes after the former has spurned a heterosexual advance, and while Nat’s brother is still in the clutches of his enemies. I guess, for some, the line between free love utopia and devastated dystopia is severely blurred.

Dir: Jovanka Vuckovic
Star: Paloma Kwiatkowski, Madison Iseman, Alexandre Bourgeois, Ajay Friese