Month: January 2017

Underworld: Blood Wars

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★★★½
“Game of Vampires”

At this point, five movies into the franchise, it probably becomes churlish to complain about the aspects that have sustained the series thus far. You’re watching an epic war, waged down the centuries, between vampires and werewolves. It is, literally, non-sense. This, however, is separate and independent from any entertainment value, and despite some issues, this is perhaps the best in the series since the original [some may argue for the third entry, but that appears to have strayed in from a different franchise entirely, containing only peanut-allergy level traces of Selene].

Wisely, it begins with a “previously on Underworld” synopsis: it has been four years since the last installment, and neither Chris nor I could remember much of it without checking Wikipedia. Brief précis: Eve, the daughter of Selene (Beckinsale), is the key to determining who wins the vampire-lycan war; Selene has abandoned Eve and wiped her own memories to avoid being used to track her down. Now, moving into the current edition: word of this doesn’t appear to have reached the powers that be. For both her own team, under Thomas (Charles Dance, occupying the “British thespian” role previously occupied by Bill Nighy), and the rising werewolf overlord, Marcus (Menzies), want to use her to their own ends. After a bit of slaughter and betrayal, Eve and Thomas’s son, David (James) are forced north, to seek refuge in the last vampire coven, with Marcus and his pack in hot pursuit.

By this stage, Selene is clearly a character that gives precisely zero fucks. She’s lost her family, her one true love and her daughter in earlier installments, and the bastards still won’t leave her alone. By the end of this one, she has made some gains, in the shape of slutty blonde highlights and powers resulting from one too many sessions playing Mortal Kombat. I find myself endorsing both of these. It’s apparent the writers here are also big Game of Thrones fans: the Northern vampires are a cross between the Night’s Watch and Daenerys Targaryen. The whole back-stabbing familial stuff is cut from that cloth as well, and Dance isn’t the only Thrones face to show up. No, not Peter Dinklage, though the idea of him as a were-corgi appeals greatly.

It comes in at a remarkably brisk 91 minutes, a pace from which certain other movies could learn [I’m looking at you – and my watch – Rogue One], and there’s not much slack. Nor, admittedly, is there much of a complete plot: the ending opens more doors than it closes, particularly with regard to Selene’s new abilities. There are some elements that appear more style than substance, such as the heroine drinking her own blood to remember things. Wouldn’t it be easier to… ah, just remember things? I can only imagine a vampire going, “Now, I know there was something I had to do today. What was it?” [gnaws on wrist] “Oh, yeah: take the garbage out. Anyone got a Band-Aid?” It’s on much safer ground sticking to the hack-and-stabbage, though we could have done with some better lighting there. Disclaimer: we watched the 2D version, theatrically. Your mileage may vary in more dimensions, or at home.

On the plus side, we get a couple of bonus strong female characters. Lara Pulver makes a good impression as the scheming vampire, and Clementine Nicholson does a fine imitation of a low-rent Emilia Clarke, playing the Nordic Coven’s leading warrior, Lena (maybe another GoT nod in that name?). On the downside, the CGI werewolves still look awful, particularly during their transformations, and there’s another (sigh) vampire-werewolf romance, which works out as well as they always do i.e. not very. You’d think people would have learned by now. Then again, this is a universe where Kate Beckinsale is basically the same as she was in 2003 when the first film came out, and is still capable of kicking ass while being easy on the eye.

Interestingly, this entry was directed by a woman. Foerster makes her feature debut, though she has helmed episodes of Outlander, a show set just a few miles from where I grew up in Scotland. Sorry, that’s not relevant to anything – what probably is, is that Menzies played that series’s main villain. Foerster also did second-unit work on Aeon Flux and was director of photography on White House Down, so has action experience. Hard to say if this makes any particular difference to the tone here, but I generally  support more women directors in our genre, as they can potentially offer an alternative perspective. Here, though, it’s simply another entry in the franchise. If it’s unlikely to lure in or convert any new fans, those who appreciated the previous four entries are probably not going to come away feeling short-changed.

Dir: Anna Foerster
Star: Kate Beckinsale, Theo James, Tobias Menzies, Lara Pulver

Vendetta

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★★★
“Ripe for a remake starring Zoë Bell.”

vendettaMovie stunt-woman Laurie Collins (Chase) is out for the night with her sister, Bonnie, until the latter accepts the company of a young man. When things get more than a bit rape-y, and Bonnie ends up shooting her attacker dead. She is convicted of second-degree manslaughter, much to the chagrin of her sister. Worse is to follow after Bonnie is sent to prison, as there, she then falls foul of the jail’s top dog, Kay Butler (Martin). Bonnie soon turns up a corpse, with the incident written off as suicide, due to the heroine found in her veins. But Laurie doesn’t believe a word of it, and deliberately commits grand theft auto, among other crimes, in order to be sent to the same prison, where she can find those responsible, and make them pay for what they did to Bonnie.

Starting with a film-within-a-film scene which had me wondering if I was watching the wrong, post-apocalyptic movie, it’s a nice idea to have the heroine be a stunt-woman, and gives a credible explanation for her physical talents. This 1986 film is also ahead of the curve in making, in explicitly making the facility a “for-profit” prison, something which would eventually become an issue almost three decades later. That said, this does appear to be a rather cushy penal establishment, where inmates are well compensated for their work, and there is both a swimming-pool(!) and a video-arcade(!!). It doesn’t skimp on the exploitational aspects, with the shower scenes typical for the genre, and the rape of Bonnie is genuinely nasty.

In this, it shares something of the same look and feel as Reform School Girls, made that year, right down to the presence of an blonde, obvious Ilsa-lookalike in charge, though Collins’s Miss Dice is far more sympathetic  than Sybil Danning’s Warden Sutter. [Coincidentally or not, both films also feature the Screamin’ Sirens’ song, “Love Slave”, during a scene of sexual abuse.] The main weakness here is likely Chase, who seems rather unconvincing in terms of physical presence, though does acquit herself half-decently in the action scenes. Her Laurie just doesn’t quite feel like the kind of character who would go to such elaborate lengths to extract brutal vengeance – and it’s a damn good thing she wasn’t sent to another facility. You can contrast her character with that of Martin, who definitely feel like the kind of scum that would rise to the top inside.

There is a certain bleakness to the ending [spoilers follow]. After Laurie has completed her revenge, with the help of Miss Dice, the warden turns to her and says, “Did it bring Bonnie back?”, then adding, “You have the rest of your life to think about that.” It’s somewhat disconcerting for the viewer who has been brought along on Laurie’s quest, suddenly to have the moral carpet yanked out from under them like this, instead of any closure. If the hairstyles haven’t aged well, this philosophical ambiguity has.

Dir: Bruce Logan
Star: Karen Chase, Sandy Martin, Kin Shriner, Roberta Collins

Neerja

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★★★★
“Sticks to the plane truth.”

Time to set up GirlsWithoutGuns.org, perhaps. For this film brings home that among the most courageous of heroines are the unarmed ones – especially when facing people who are not. Such is the case with Neerja Bhanot, the 22-year-old head purser on Pan Am Flight 73 from Mumbai to New York in 1986. Just before takeoff after a stop in Karachi, the plane was taken over by hijackers from the Palestinian Abu Nidal Organization, who intended to divert it to Cyprus. Bhanot alerted the pilots, allowing them to escape and thwarting that plan. She then discarded the passports of American passengers, stopping the terrorists from targeting them. When they believed Pakistani forces were about to storm the plane, she opened the emergency exits, help shepherd passengers out, and sheltered children from the terrorists’ bullets.

Yep, there are good reasons she became the first female recipient of India’s highest decoration for bravery in peacetime, the Ashok Chakra Award, and the youngest ever. Wisely, the film opts for a largely straightforward retelling of the events of those 24 hours, beginning with Neerja’s exuberant attendance at a birthday party the previous evening, through her trip to the airport and the mundane processes of the early, peaceful leg of the flight, before all hell comes storming up the stairs into her aircraft. Against a solid background, the only element which rings significantly false is the note given to her by a friend at the airport: its clichéd contents perhaps explain the disclaimer before the movie, about “Any resemblance to persons living or dead…”

Otherwise, however, it seems to stick to the truth, as far as my post-film Googling has been able to tell. Yes, Neerja was a part-time model as well as an air hostess. She also had already been through an arranged marriage which failed, to an apparently abusive husband (though here again: “Any resemblance…”). But it’s her amazingly calm, yet smart approach in the face of the four hijackers that is most incredible, with death never more than a hair-trigger’s breadth away. This hellish and escalating claustrophobia of the incident is the film’s strongest suit. Madhvani plays it expertly to a crescendo, as the hijackers become increasingly irritated by what they perceive (not incorrectly) as stalling tactics by the authorities in response to demands for new pilots.

It’s likely one of those cases where less knowledge may be useful in appreciating it. For I’m sure most of the original Indian audience was already well aware of the story here; in contrast, as someone who hadn’t heard about it before, I found myself holding my breath on more than one occasion, with no clue of how it would end. As we enter the New Year of 2017, it certainly qualifies as one of the strongest entries of 2016, even if – or perhaps because? – the movie goes in a different direction from the more-traditional kind of action heroines, which we usually cover on this site.

Dir: Ram Madhvani
Star: Sonam Kapoor, Shabana Azmi, Yogendra Tiku, Abrar Zahoor

2017 in Action Heroine Films

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It’s always interesting to look back at the previous year’s preview, and see what happened – which films came out that didn’t live up to expectations? And which ones went above and beyond? Looking at the 2016 list, the films being anticipated included Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, The Huntsman: Winter’s War and Ghostbusters. Bit of a mixed bag there, shall we say, and let’s leave it at that! But 2017 looks to be opening brightly, at least, with a first month which gives us the latest entries in two of the longest running action heroine franchises: Underworld and Resident Evil. Let’s take a look at those, and the other potentially interesting movies for the year ahead. Release dates are for North America and are entirely subject to change at the whim of those involved.

47 Meters Down (TBA)

Already out in some territories under the title of In The Deep, this appears to be significantly inspired by The Shallows. Except, where it had one swimmer trapped in the ocean and menaced by sharks, this ups the ante, and has two. Sisters, played by Mandy Moore and Claire Holt, are in a shark cage which separates from its boat and plunges to the sea-bottom. Never mind their delivery as a buffet to the predators, they also have less than an hour of air left. This was originally going to go straight to home release in August, but the plan is now for a theatrical release this summer.

Annihilation (TBA)

“A biologist signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition where the laws of nature don’t apply.” Directed by Alex Garland, it’s based on the SF book by Jeff VanderMeer. If the film holds true to the book, the four-person expedition will be all-female, and looking at the cast list, seems they’ll be played by Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez and Tessa Thompson, which has the makings of a fine action-heroine cast. I started reading the synopsis of the book on Wikipedia, and it certainly seemed highly intriguing, but I stopped because… y’know, spoilers.

The Coldest City (July 28)

Based on a graphic novel, as shown on the right, the film was originally on the slate for this year, this stars Charlize Theron as an MI-5 agent, sent to East Berlin as the Eastern Bloc teeters on the edge of collapse. Per Wikipedia, her mission is “to take down a ruthless espionage ring that has just killed an undercover agent for reasons unknown. She is ordered to cooperate with Berlin station chief David Percival, and the two form an uneasy alliance, unleashing their full arsenal of skills in pursuing a threat that jeopardizes the West’s entire intelligence operation.”

Ghost in the Shell (March 31)

There’ll be plenty of coverage here of the GitS universe nearer the time – I’m currently going through Stand Alone Complex on Hulu. The production is not without its share of controversy, due to Scarlett Johansson’s casting as the supposedly Japanese Major, but personally, casting Takeshi Kitano gets you quite a few points. Director Rupert Sanders gave us the previously mentioned The Huntsman: Winter’s War, so I’m fairly certain this one is going to look good, at the very least (and the trailer seems to prove that). Will it be any more than eye-candy?

The Girl With All the Gifts (TBA)

This British post-apocalypse zombie film has already been released there, but has not yet been fixed to a date in the US. Its focus is Melanie, part of a small subset of the infected who have retained human faculties such as intelligence and the ability to communicate, while still being – in the immortal words of Shaun’s mom – “a bit bitey”. She forms a bond with a scientist researching a potential cure, and the pair leave the complex on a trip through the blasted and highly dangerous landscape which London has become.

The Godmother (TBA)

Principal photography on this biopic of Colombia drug-queen, Griselda Blanco, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, apparently began in November 2015. So I’m a little surprised we haven’t heard anything about it since. It’s certainly not the first such effort – we already wrote about telenovela La Viuda Negra (our full review will be out at the beginning of March). And, apparently after being spurned for the lead here, it was announced in August that Jennifer Lopez will play Blanco in an HBO movie.

Kidnap (March 10)

“Vengeance is a Mother,” is the tag-line here, with Halle Berry starring as a mother who will stop at nothing to free her kidnapped son. There may be distribution problems here, as studio Relativity has been staggering from one financial crisis to another, with complete liquidation still entirely possible. Figuring that out will likely determine its fate: this was originally on the slate for December, but has been pushed back, and even the March date remains tentative. 

Red Sparrow (November 10)

This one is still apparently in pre-production, and has been rattling around since at least mid-2013. It’s based on a novel by Jason Matthew, about Dominika Egorova, a former ballerina who becomes a spy after an injury ends her dance career. She’s sent to get close to a CIA agent, and uncover the identity of the mole he has working inside the Russian system. Egorova is played by Jennifer Lawrence, and it reunites her with the Hunger Games director Francis “No relation” Lawrence, after Darren Arnonofsky left the project in early 2014.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (January 27)

Let’s raise a glass to Alice, who has been kicking zombie ass for close to fifteen years now. This is supposedly the final dance for Milla Jovovich – but I imagine the Resident Evil franchise will continue in some form or other, for as long as they’re profitable [I’ve been reading the RE novels for an upcoming feature, and there’s plenty of potential content there which could be mined]. After a couple of disappointing entries, the last film, Retribution, marked a return to OTT fun, so hopefully Milla will get the send-off she deserves here. 

Scorched Earth (TBA)

“A bounty hunter named Atticus Gage tracks down criminals in a post-apocalyptic Earth.” So what’s it doing here? Turns out that Atticus is actually a woman, and will be played by MMA star Gina Carano, who already made a solid impression with both Haywire and In the Blood, as well as her supporting role in Deadpool. Not much more known to this point, except that it’s set after an environmental disaster has reduced the population by billions. John Hannah will also star in the movie, as Gage’s mentor and confidant, Doc.

Underworld: Blood Wars (January 6)

First out of the gates for 2017 is the fifth entry in the Underworld series, though it has already come out in much of Europe [German friend Dieter, a fan of the series in general, gave it his thumbs-up]. The premise? Vampire death dealer Selene (Kate Beckinsale) continues her struggle against the Lycan clan and the Vampires that betrayed her, with both sides trying to use the blood of her and her daughter to become Corvinus Strain hybrids. After hiding her daughter, Selene and her allies attempt to end the eternal war between Lycans and Vampires, though Selene must take a risk that may cost her her life.

Unforgettable (April 21)

“Where love ends, madness begins…” That’s the tagline on this, which looks exactly like the sort of trashy potboiler we appreciate as a guilty pleasure. Katherine Heigl plays an ex-wife, who becomes convinced that her husband’s new flame (Rosario Dawson) is the only thing standing between her and a reconciliation. As such, the obstacle must be disposed of, by any means necessary. If this does not include a lengthy and hellacious brawl between the two female leads, I will be sorely disappointed. The trailer appears to suggest I won’t be!

Unlocked (March 17)

Another holdover from 2016; by its release, more than two years will have passed since the first pic. Here’s the synopsis: Once the CIA’s best interrogator, Alice Racine (Noomi Rapace) failed to unlock a prisoner in time, prompting her to leave the field. When a suspect believed to have direct knowledge of an imminent terrorist attack is apprehended, Alice is called back in. Successful in ‘unlocking’ the suspect, she gets a call from an old colleague and realizes it’s a set-up. Alice narrowly escapes, and finds herself on the run. as she searches for those responsible and tries to prevent a deadly biological attack on the city. 

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (July 21)

Luc Besson will always have a place in our hearts: he gave us Milla Jovovich and Natalie Portman. This seems closest to The Fifth Element, depicting a massive, sprawling futuristic universe. Per the official synopsis, “Valerian and Laureline embark on a mission to the breathtaking intergalactic city of Alpha, an ever-expanding metropolis comprised of thousands of different species from all four corners of the universe. Alpha’s seventeen million inhabitants have converged over time, uniting their talents, technology and resources for the betterment of all. Unfortunately, not everyone on Alpha shares in these same objectives.”

Wonder Woman (June 2)

Last, but certainly not least, is probably the most important action heroine film of the year, being the first major comic-book adaptation with a female lead since… Well, depending on your definition of “major”, likely Electra or Catwoman. Neither of which exactly ended well, did they? If this succeeds, expect the doors to open for a whole slew of others; if it doesn’t, then the spigot could be turned off almost immediately. The signals have been mixed, with rumblings of problems on-set, but there’s no denying the trailer got me excited for this one. Fingers crossed…