Month: October 2018

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

Miss Bala (2011)

  By

★★★
“Beauty (queen) and the beasts.”

Pageants and drug cartels may not seem like topics that combine, but in South and Central America, they’re perhaps closer than you’d think. El Chapo’s third wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, was a Mexican beauty queen. In 2013, the previous year’s winner of the “Sinaloa Woman” pageant, Maria Susana Flores, was killed in a clash with police. According to USA Today, she “died like a mobster’s moll, carrying an AK-47 assault rifle into a spray of gunfire from Mexican soldiers. Hit below the neck, she dropped into a dirt field and bled to death, her carotid artery severed.” And then there’s the (loose) inspiration for this story: Miss Mexico International 2009, Laura Zuniga, was stripped of the title after being detained on suspicion of drug and weapons violations, in circumstances best described as murky.

The heroine here, Laura Guerrero (Sigman), is portrayed as mostly innocent, or at least a victim of unfortunate circumstance rather than deliberate intent. An aspiring candidate for Miss Baja California (the film’s title puns off this, translating as “Miss Bullet”), her nightclub trip with a friend turns into a more of a nightmare, as it’s the scene of an assault by La Estrella cartel on the DEA officers there. Trying to find out if her friend survived gets her kidnapped by La Estrella’s leader, Lino (Hernández), who decides that Laura can be useful. With her father (Zaragoza) and kid brother held hostage, Laura has little option except to agree. Her tasks will include couriering money across the border, helping uncover a DEA infiltrator within the gang, and acting as a honey trap to ensnare General Duarte, a leading light in the government’s forces.

It certainly shines a harsh light on the whole “narco culture” south of the border, coming over as an uncomfortable mix of telenovela and action film. Which may be the point. The director brings a very static, almost disinterested style to proceedings. The camera sometimes sits fixed, either in front of or behind the characters as events unfold – it feels almost like a video-game occasionally. At other momets, its eye pans slowly across unfolding events, for example gliding down a hallway during a home invasion, or across a beach as an informant is executed. This offers a clinical contrast to the passionate family loyalty driving Laura: her father and brother come first, last and always. Unfortunately, Lino knows that, and it provides an easy key with which she can be manipulated.

Despite the unflattering portrayal, this managed to become Mexico’s official Academy Award candidate, though didn’t make the list of nominees. I’d prefer the heroine to have been more pro-active, rather than the reactive character she is for much of this, though again, I sense this is an entirely deliberate choice, reflecting the lack of control most of the Mexican people have over their fate in this lethal war. Perhaps this is something which will be addressed in the pending Hollywood remake, directed by Catherine Hardwicke – best known for the first Twilight film, though let’s try and not hold that against her – with Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez in the lead. But the previous track record of such remakes, suggests disappointment is probably more likely.

Dir: Gerardo Naranjo
Star: Stephanie Sigman, Noé Hernández, José Yenque, Javier Zaragoza

Fair Game (1986)

  By

★★★
“Time to back out of the outback…”

First off, this is not to be confused with the other Australian film of the eighties by the same name, made four years previously. This is considerably more sparse, and likely the better for it. Jessica (Delaney, who went on to marry John Denver, and have a highly acrimonious divorce from him) runs an animal sanctuary in the outback, but discovers someone has been hunting the local fauna on it. Suspicion falls on three local yahoos: Sunny (Ford, reminiscent of a young Sam Neill), Ringo (Sandford, doing some impressive stunts) and Sparks (Who – no, really, that’s his name), a trio of hunters targeting kangaroos – regarded as vermin by the farmers – for their meat. They don’t take kindly to being confronted, and begin an escalating campaign of terror against Jessica. But even a peaceful animal-lover can only be pushed so far before she breaks. Turns out that line is likely being strapped to the hood of their Jeep and driven topless across the countryside. Or thereabouts.

While I doubt the maker of Revenge saw this fairly obscure film, it does seem somewhat similar, with three men pursuing a lone woman through a desert wilderness, before the tables are turned on them. Quentin Tarantino has also spoken glowingly aout this piece of Ozploitation, and you have to wonder if the scene described above was perhaps one of the inspirations for Death Proof, in which the similarly Antipodean Zoë Bell spends a good bit of time on the bonnet of a speeding car – albeit more clothed and of her own volition [Though amusingly, one of the video covers for the film opts to depict a rather more chaste version of the scene] If so, I can see why he opted to lift only that sequence, as the film as a whole is rather… jerky, for want of a better word. By which I mean, the narrative feels like it consists of a series of unconnected sequences, rather than ones which flow into each other.

There is still a certain sense of escalation, and for once, there isn’t actually a sexual assault. The thugs’ actions begin with petty bullying, and escalates through stalkerish activities, like taking a Polaroid of Jessica while she sleeps, but bypass the obvious rape, which is refreshing. However, it still takes a bit too long to get to the meat of proceedings, with Jessica turning her farmstead into a series of home-made, yet increasingly lethal, traps with which she can defend herself. I’d like to have seen this stretched out, rather than compressed into a frantic final 15 minutes. She’s the hunted rather than the hunter for the majority of the time, and as usual, the former is the less interesting part of the equation. Cinematographer Andrew Lesnie went on to become Peter Jackson’s favorite cameraman until his death in 2015, and does a nice job of capturing the wild beauty of the Australian wilderness.

Dir: Mario Andreacchio
Star: Cassandra Delaney, Peter Ford, David Sandford, Garry Who

The Quick and the Dead

  By

★★★
“Drawn that way.”

1995 possibly marked a recent low for the commercial appeal of action heroines in Hollywood. December would give us one of the biggest disaster movies of all time, in Cutthroat Island and March saw Tank Girl bomb. Together with this attempt to give the Western a female spin, the three movies had a combined budget of $155 million, but grossed less than $33 million. While Westerns were enjoying a return to popularity in the years after Unforgiven, it was almost as if Sony had learned nothing from Fox’s dud in the same area the previous year, Bad Girls. They instead doubled down on something which was not just a Western, but specifically a pastiche of the spaghetti Western subgenre.

In hindsight, its commercial failure was almost inevitable, even though after Basic Instinct in 1992, Sharon Stone was one of Hollywood’s hottest actresses. So when Sony bought Simon Moore’s script the following year, they approached her to star. She not only came on board as the lead actress, she also became one of the film’s producers, and had no hesitation in wielding that power. For example, she insisted that Sam Raimi – then, largely known only for his work on the Evil Dead trilogy – had to direct it, or she would not be involved. Similarly, she went to bat for then largely unknown actors Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio, going so far as to pay the latter’s salary herself. The subsequent Oscars for both men suggest she had a good eye for upcoming thespians.

Moore was eventually fired, with the studio bringing John Sayles on board. However, Moore was re-hired three weeks before shooting was scheduled to start, due to the movie becoming excessively long: he simply discarded all of Sayles’s changes, and Sony accepted what was basically the original version. However, during shooting, Raimi realized he had an issue. “I came to the studio and said, can you find me a writer? I’ve shot this movie, and the end isn’t quite working… They suggested Joss Whedon, who was doing Buffy, so I met Joss and he saw the movie, and he helped me solve this ending in one afternoon,” adding one more name to the list of future stars who worked on the film.

The concept here is pure gimmick. The town of Redemption lives under the iron hand of Herod (Hackman), who organizes an annual gunfight contest he always wins, partly to flush out anyone who might be plotting against him, mostly because he enjoys it. This time, 15 other entrants are drawn by the $100,000 prize, as well as other reasons. The more or less willing participants include Herod’s son (DiCaprio), former partner Cort (Crowe) and a mysterious woman (Stone), named in the credits as The Lady, actually called Ellen. She has a particular grudge against Herod, since his involvement in the death of her father, though things are more complex than you initially suspect. Getting revenge, however, requires Ellen to get through a tournament increasingly stacked against her.

The Variety review at the time nails the main problem: “Given the inevitability of an Ellen-Herod showdown, despite a couple of twists [Moore] has thrown into the last reel, the film quickly becomes hamstrung by the rigid dramatic constraints imposed upon it by the gun tournament format. No matter how many fancy ways Raimi invents to stage the shootouts, the tedium is quick in coming, and there’s nothing else going on between times to build up suspense, character or interest.” Moore has failed to grasp that while Westerns often climaxed in a gunfight, this does not mean that more gunfights = a better film. They are the full-stop at the end of a cinematic sentence. And like. Those, when. You use them. Too often, the. Results are jarring rather. Than effective.

It’s a shame, because the supporting cast is quite stellar, and deserve better. Outside of those already mentioned, there’s also Tobin Bell, who’d go on to become horror icon Jigsaw in the Saw franchise; Lance Henriksen; Keith David; and, although his scenes were deleted, Raimi’s long-time friend, Bruce Campbell. Seeing the talent which gets rushed in and out of the story in about five minutes makes me wonder if a feature film was the best medium for the idea. It might have worked better as an ongoing television series, each episode telling the back story of the participants and ending in their duel. A rotating series of guest stars would have worked very nicely, with the season covering one of Herod’s contests, leading up to the final gunfight in the last installment.

I’m not certain Stone is perhaps the best candidate for the role, since she seems to think staring really hard is the key to dramatic success. You’d think she might have known better, given apparent action heroine ambitions from relatively early in her career. Even before breaking through to stardom in Total Recall, she was in her fair share of adventure flicks – albeit not very successful ones – such as King Solomon’s Mines and Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold. Unlike Geena Davis, however, Stone didn’t seem to persist in her efforts: the critical acclaim she received the same year for Casino, pushed her career back toward more dramatic pastures. This therefore stands out as something of an oddity in her filmography.

Time has perhaps been slightly kinder to this than its companions in action heroine failure for the year. Raimi eventually showed an ability to deliver this kind of comic-book spectacle with his work on the Spiderman franchise, and that may have been a better home for his stylistically excess flourishes than this. Naturally, as an Arizona resident, this film now triggers a certain amount of native pride, having been filmed largely around the state, in particular at Old Tucson Studios [unfortunately, a good portion of which burned down a couple of months after Quick was released, forcing its closure for two years] and Mescal, 40 miles southeast of Tucson.

It may not be the greatest Western – or even a particularly good Western. Yet two decades later, it likely remains the biggest production in the genre with a female lead, and as such, it deserves a certain respect. Especially when the commercial failures in recent years of Jane Got a Gun and Woman Walks Ahead, suggest that position at the head of the class probably isn’t going to be under threat, any time soon.

Dir: Sam Raimi
Star: Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio