Month: February 2020

Wildflower Bride, by Mary Connealy

  By

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

Barb and I discovered evangelical Christian author Mary Connealy through her Sophie’s Daughters trilogy, partially set in Montana in the years from 1878 to 1884. Several characters who figure in her earlier Montana Marriages trilogy, of which this novel is the third, also play important roles in the later one. So we were interested in their back stories; and when I found this book in a thrift store, it was a natural purchase! (We’ve also just started reading the second installment; long story!) This means we’re reading the trilogy in reverse order; so we started with much more knowledge of the characters’ future than the original readers would have (the read was more like a visit with old friends). However, I’ll avoid spoilers in this review. (Obviously, though, it might contain “spoilers” for the earlier Montana Marriages novels.)

This tale opens in late spring/early summer, 1877, as young Wade Sawyer is awakened by gunfire as he’s sleeping in his small cabin high in the Montana Rockies. The shots come from the nearby small Indian village, which is being massacred by four masked whites. Arriving too late to prevent the deaths of most of the inhabitants, Wade manages to wound one of the fleeing murderers, and finds Glowing Sun, a young woman raised for the past dozen years by the Salish (called Flathead by the whites), ever since they found her alone at about the age of eight after disease killed her white family, still alive. (One of the killers had tried to abduct her, but she slashed his face with her knife and escaped.) Her white name, as she recalls, is Abby, and she and Wade have met previously (as recounted, apparently, earlier in the trilogy), last fall –and were in fact attracted to each other; but she had an Indian fiance at the time, through an arranged engagement. He’s now dead; and when she’s cast out by a surviving matriarch who never liked her (and who blames her for attracting the massacre, assuming that the attackers’ motive was rape), she’s left alone in the world again. Soon after, Wade’s summoned to the bedside of his estranged rancher father, injured and maybe dying; and since he won’t desert Abby, and she believes responding to the summons is his duty, she comes along with him.

Like all Connealy novels, this is a clean “romance” (in the modern-day book trade sense); but it has more going for it than romance (otherwise, I wouldn’t have read and liked it!). For one thing, it’s a perceptive exploration of cross-cultural romance, of the specific clashing cultures of whites and Indians in the late 19th-century West, and an ethically-aware indictment of the former’s treatment of the latter. (Abby doesn’t have much use for the attitudes and practices of a white culture she’s mostly long abandoned, though she hasn’t forgotten the language, and a lot of her criticisms strike home.) It’s also a hard look at the dynamics of a dysfunctional, abusive family –because Wade’s estranged from his dad for good reason!– at co-dependency and how insidious it can be, and what does (or doesn’t) contribute to familial healing. There’s also a decided helping of Western-style mystery, because there’s intrigue afoot on the Sawyer ranch. Who’s behind the outbreak of cattle rustling in the area? And who were the attackers of Abby’s village, and what was their real motive?

Connealy’s a Christian author, whose world-view influences her writing. Christian characters are common in her novels (Red Dawson, a supporting character here, is a lay preacher as well as a rancher). Wade has a sincere Christian faith, as does Abby, fostered in her case by the missionary activity of real-life Jesuit Pierre-Jean De Smet (1801-1873) and his colleagues, who really did have considerable success in their work among the Salish, and whose treatment here is very positive. (The author’s approach to Christian faith is –commendably, IMO– nondenominational, though sectarian rivalries and animosities weren’t nonexistent in the real 19th-century West.) It’s seen here as a genuine source of moral reformation, courage in adversity, and guidance and help in daily life; but though it’s referred to more here than in the later trilogy, I wouldn’t describe this one as “preachy.”

Christian ethics, with its basis in the love commands, also raises a serious issue for reflection, when it needs to be lived out in a violent environment, among people some of whom are perfectly willing to kill you, and others, to get things they want. Wade wrestles with this some, as does Abby –in fact, more so, since while Wade wears a gun and can use it, she’s considerably more combat capable than he is. (She’s also a stronger-willed personality than he is, and the more dominant partner in the relationship –okay, that word’s not a spoiler, any reader knows these two are destined for each other!– and Wade’s willing to recognize that there’s nothing wrong with that.) While she’s not into guns (though if she slugs you in the head with one, you won’t get up for awhile), she’s handy with her knife, and it doesn’t leave her person –unless she needs to throw it. Her personality could best be described as hot-tempered and fierce. The conclusion she comes to is that forcibly defending yourself and others IS morally right, but relishing the damage done isn’t; and she’s honest enough to admit that she needs to work on her attitude in that area. So when the chips are down here, the main question may not be, will our hero rescue the damsel in distress? Given their respective skill sets, it might be, will our tough damsel rescue her guy in distress? :-)

Author: Mary Connealy
Publisher: Barbour Publishing; available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Body at Brighton Rock

  By

★★
“Incompetence necessary to the plot.”

Proving not quite able to sustain its running time, this ends up collapsing under its own weight. The lead actress tries her best, and her character is likeable enough, but in her debut leading a feature, isn’t able to carry a film in which she is in virtually every scene. Fontes plays park ranger Wendy, whose duties are typically limited to handing out leaflets and lecturing small children about the dangers of forest fires. To help out a colleague, she takes on a more strenuous task, only to find herself lost in the great outdoors, as darkness approaches. She then stumbles across a body at the foot of a cliff: was it death by misadventure, or something more malicious?

It’s a nice performance from Fontes, who makes Wendy someone you want to see pull through. I enjoyed seeing the heroine have to dig into untapped reserves of self-reliance and bravery, and was rooting for her to make it through the long, dark night. However… sheesh, there are times where it seems the biggest threat to Wendy, is Wendy. She loses her map. She loses her way. She loses her radio. She almost falls off a cliff, taking a selfie. She actually does fall off a cliff. She even manages to pepper spray herself, after mis-judging what way the wind is blowing. I know she’s a novice in the park ranger world, but really… I’m impressed she even managed to get to work without sustaining a life-threatening injury, such is the low level of her everyday competence. There are plenty of natural threats in this environment too; fabricating them as this does, seems needlessly excessive.

After night falls, Wendy more or less loses her way, and unfortunately, so does the film too. I think it’s supposed to be depicting Wendy’s imagination being as much a threat to her, as anything tangible. All we get, is a lot of largely uninteresting thrashing around in the dark, in lieu of meaningful plot development. It’s only when dawn breaks that things move forward once more, though there just isn’t enough meat on the storyline to provide a satisfying meal. In an effort to generate tension which has been largely lacking, the makers drop in an arktos ex machina at the end, though the bear attack which follows would trigger nothing more than derisive snorts from Leonardo Di Caprio.

It’s not the lead actress’s fault, but she is left to bear [pun not intended] the burden of almost the entire film by herself. Relatable she may be – that’s not enough. Though many more experienced thespians would likely struggle with the amount of screen-time here – especially given no-one to act against save some trees, in the vast majority of their scenes. By the time the final twist shows up, it’s not going to trigger more than a shrug, and perhaps a roll of the eyes. Fontes deserves better, and hopefully will find it further into her career.

Dir: Roxanne Benjamin
Star: Karina Fontes, Casey Adams, Emily Althaus, Miranda Bailey

Viking Destiny

  By

★★★
“Low-rent vikings”

The success of Vikings has spawned its fair share of similarly set films, and this isn’t the first such to stray into our purview, following Viking Siege. As there, it’s clear that the budget isn’t anywhere near its television inspiration. As a result, these films have to work harder in other areas, to make up for what they can’t offer in spectacle. Siege did this by mostly taking place in a single location. Destiny tries (and fails) to be at least occasionally epic, but benefits by having a genuine action heroine, front and centre. Not quite Lagertha, perhaps, yet close enough to be a pleasant surprise.

It’s Helle (Demetriou), who was the daughter of King Asmund of Volsung, swapped out for a male child, due to heir-related reasons. However, her replacement has grown up neither interested in, nor suitable for, leadership, while Helle has turned into a bit of a bad-ass. After Asmund’s death, his brother Bard (Nieminen) tries to take the throne, framing Helle for the murder of the official heir. She manages to escape, and with a little guidance from Odin (Stamp, who must have needed a house car TV payment or something), prepares to claim her rightful place on the throne of Volsung. Meanwhile, Bard has some divine guidance of his own, in the shape of Loki (McArthur).

The paucity of resources available is most painfully apparent during the final battle for the kingdom, which clearly has little more than a football team (plus substitutes) taking part on each side. Unless Volsung is smaller than San Marino, they shouldn’t have bothered. Considerably more successful are the one-on-one fights, such as Helle’s battle against one of a pair of hulking giant killers (note, no hyphen!), both played effectively by 6’8″ body-builder Martyn Ford. Demetriou has a fast, athletic style in combat, which is a nice contrast to the brute strength used by her far larger opponent. Generally, though, she looks and acts her part very well: as mentioned, maybe Lagertha Lite, yet a worthy shield-maiden, none the less.

The supporting cast may err on the side of panto, Nieminen and McArthur in particular, yet this doesn’t feel particularly inappropriate, given their villainous nature. Rather less interesting are the low-rent hippies with whom Helle joins up in her wandering through the woods. They show up to spout pacifist philosophy and drink fermented turnip juice (!), before mysteriously acquiring weapons and the skill to use them – just in time to slaughter and be slaughtered in the final battle. Pacifism: it’s vastly over-rated…

But when it sticks to the smaller scale, and its heroine in particular, this is by no means terrible, providing your expectations are similarly restrained. In some ways, it seems like a throwback to similar British sword and sorcery flicks of the early eighties. from polished entries like Excalibur, down to the cheap ‘n’ cheerful (yet not necessarily less fun) end represented by Hawk the Slayer. That’s not entirely a bad thing, in my humble opinion.

Dir: David L.G. Hughes
Star: Anna Demetriou, Timo Nieminen, Murray McArthur, Terence Stamp
a.k.a. Of Gods and Warriors

The Woman Prisoner No. 407 series

  By

★★½
“Cat’s entertainment.”

An apparent knock-off of Japan’s Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion and its sequels, there’s some uncertainty about the origins of this. I’ve seen it called Korean, Taiwanese or even from Hong Kong. While the cast suggest Taiwan, the director is from Korea, so that’s where I’m going to tag it. Indeed, it’s not quite clear how connected the two entries are: while they share a director and two leads, the plots don’t seem to connect up. Even the IMDb synopsis go to different countries. For the first, it says: “Kang-hie recalls from her cell how she was used by Japanese detectives to track down and destroy the Korean independence fighters. She manages to escape from prison during a break and proceeds to hunt down her former lover who was a Japanese agent.” The second? “Japan conquers China just before WW2 starts. Chinese women are captured and placed in concentration camps, where they are tortured and humiliated. Some try to escape incurring enormous risks, and death if they fail.” Insert shrug emoticon here.

Disentangling the plot for part one required me to deal with subtitles that barely even approach English, and were frequently vanishing off the side of the screen. I’m still not sure whether Don Wen Yue and Dwarn Tien Yu were the names of two different characters, or just sloppy mis-spellings of the same person’s name. Either way, the IMDb synopsis above seems rather inaccurate, unless you squint considerably. Don is an inmate at a Japanese prison-camp, where she is being harshly treated with the aim of making her give up a microfilm which her captors want to obtain. Her status as the daughter of a diplomat is of no help, apparently. However, help is on the way, as it turns out a newly arrived inmate has actually been inserted into the camp into order to assist Don in busting out – along with quite a few friends. Though escaping is only the beginning of their struggle for freedom.

The first chunk of this is painfully prosaic, with sadistic guards (though for a while I wondered if one of them was Yukari Oshima; certainly looks like her, but the era of the movie makes it unlikely). foiled escapes and generally the kind of shenanigans you would expect from the genre. There’s not much invention, and it’s hardly more than PG-rated. Things actually improve a bit once they escape, and it becomes a wilderness survival film. The women have to avoid the threats, not just of the guards in pursuit, but also crocodiles (or alligators, not that it matters) and even a killer plant which tries to wrap its tentacles around them. I’m a sucker for a good killer plant moment, and have to admit that this scene is likely responsible for about half a star of the rating above. There’s eventually an energetic battle on the beach after some betrayal, though it all feels too little, too late.

Moving onto part two, things have… changed. Part one ended with its sole survivor sailing off in a boat. This opens with its two heroines, Kuan Mou-Hua (Yip) and Kao Chuan Tze (Heo), back running through the jungle, apparently escaping from… something. I actually watched this part first, and initially presumed the specifics were all explained in the previous installment. I can now confidently state: nope. Like so much here, even down to the location, it’s unclear. Perhaps the untranslated captions shed light on this; the dubbing (the version I saw was in German with English subs!) certainly doesn’t.

Their bid for freedom is foiled, and they’re returned to captivity under their Japanese masters. Kuan is a bit of a flight risk, and the warden, Kato (Chen), decides the best thing to do is bump her off. However, rather than direct action, which would presumably cause too much paperwork, he’d rather she be killed in an “accident”. When plans to drop the pair off a cliff during their transfer fail, he tries to entrap them into escaping, drown them in a water tank, and finally burn them alive. [I guess the latter does at least prove somewhat successful, in that multiple prisoners are killed. Just not the ones they want]

With the aid of sympathetic guard , Kuan escapes – albeit without her friend, who commits suicide rather than going through further Japanese torture. Sorry: that probably merits a spoiler warning, I guess. Harried by their pursuers, Kuan and Lee make their way through the countryside – including probably the longest handcar chase in the history of cinema. So there’s that… Rather than slide into obscurity, her burning obsession is to take revenge on Kato. For he is about to escape punishment for all his crimes, including the death of Kao, being in cahoots with the judges. This burning quest to carry out vengeance, while relatively minor (it only plays a significant role in the last 15 minutes), is another element which echoes Prisoner Scorpion.

It’s all blandly forgettable: I watched it on Saturday, and by Monday, I’d forgotten so much, I couldn’t remember enough to write about it, until a swift re-view at 8x speed. This second screening largely confirmed its mediocrity, and the movie is in significant need of more, across the board. In particular, more energy: especially in its central performances, which wants someone like Meiko Kaji, around whom the plot can be anchored. Though I won’t lie, more sex and violence might have been no bad thing either, as it’s almost impressively tame. It has plenty of opportunities for nudity, right from an opening gratuitous swimming scene – it just chooses to pass them by. Viewers would likely be best off doing the same to this movie – and to be honest, perhaps the entire series.

Dir: Shin Sang-Ok
Star: Karen Yip, Heo Jin, Bong-jin Jin, Chen Hung-Lieh
a.k.a. Girl in the Tiger Cage and Revenge in the Tiger Cage

The Dawns Here are Quiet (2015)

  By

★★★
“Back to war”

While initially released as a film, what’s reviewed here is the extended cut, screened as four 45-minute episodes on Russia’s Channel One in May 2016. This is easily available, on both Amazon Prime and YouTube with English subtitles, so seemed more appropriate. However, it’s likely the case that your reaction will be determined largely by how familiar you are with the 1972 version. Having seen and reviewed that recently, this felt solid, but almost entirely superfluous, offering not enough in the way of a new spin on proceedings. But if you haven’t seen its predecessor, then this is potentially a little more accessible. Stemming from the post-Soviet era means it can be more cynical, and does play slightly less obviously as propaganda.

The story is almost identical. War-weary soldier Fedot Vaskov (Fyodorov) is invalided out to an anti-aircraft battery well behind the front lines. After complaining about the drunken and ill-disciplined soldiers under his command, he gets replacements – an all-female platoon. After being initially shocked, he realizes that they, under their leader Junior Sergeant Rita Osyanina (Mikulchina), are actually competent at their job. When one of them spots a couple of Nazi paratroopers in the enormous forest nearby, Vaskov takes Osyanina and four other soldiers into the woods to hunt the Germans down. Only, they discover there were actually considerably more than two, and the hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned Russians have to try and prevent the enemy from reaching their saboteurial objective.

If you’ve seen the earlier adaptation of Boris Vasilyev’s novel, there will be absolutely no surprises here. In terms of plot, this is almost point-for-point identical, and for me, that did rob the film of much tension, since I knew exactly where it was going to go, and who was going to survive. Again, though: that shouldn’t particularly be taken as a knock on this version, and the performances, especially from the two leads are equally as good. The differences are mostly stylistic: while both do use flashbacks in order to tell us about the women’s lives before the war, the ones here feel considerably more grounded, compared to the dream-like sequences in the seventies version. They are also notably harsher about life in Stalin’s Russia, such as one woman’s family being ruthlessly exiled to Siberia.

There are a couple of sequences of gratuitous, albeit entirely innocent, nudity, which I didn’t expect in a TV series. I’ll leave it up to you to decide, whether this is a recommendation or a warning. Personally, I had no complaints. However, I would definitely have preferred it if the makers had been a little more inventive in their adaptation. While going down the same path as the earlier, well-loved movie was probably the safer approach, it renders the entire thing largely pointless. Well-made and still entertaining, don’t get me wrong. But carbon copies [Kids! Ask your parents!] are always going to feel inferior, to the source which they are imitating.

Dir: Renat Davletyarov
Star: Pyotr Fyodorov, Anastasia Mikulchina, Evgenia Malakhova, Agniya Kuznetsova

Lovely But Deadly

  By

★★★
“No, no! Not the chopped liver!”

After her brother drowns while high on drugs, Mary Ann “Lovely” Lovitt (Dooling) goes undercover at his school, Pacific Coast High, in order to root out the dealers responsible for his death. She discovers that the problem is far larger than is admitted, with those involved, and includes not just some of the most revered pupils e.g. star players on the football team (and, on more than one occasion, their jealous girlfriends!). A number of adults are also culpable, including leading school boosters, all the way up to leading local businessman ‘Honest Charley’ Gilmarten (Herd). Fortunately, Mary Ann is an expert in martial-arts, so proves more than capable of defending herself when attempts are made to dissuade her from investigating further.

The first thirty minutes of this are startlingly entertaining, which was a real shock. Sure, Dooling’s fighting skills leave a little to be desired… okay, a lot to be desired, yet her opponents sell the moves with surprising effectiveness. It feels almost like a parody of high-school films, made in the Philippines as a sly comment on President Duterte’s war on drugs, though the soundtrack appears to have strayed in from a Bond film. That applies especially to the title song, I believe sung by Marcia Woods, with its classic lyrics, such as “So low, so low, so low/How low, how low can they go?” And how could you go wrong with a film where, ten minutes in, the heroine force-feeds a dealer his own supply, while telling him a story about an old possum? Or where Mary Ann and her friend (O’Leary) are chased through the school by a pack of people in fencing uniforms?

Unfortunately, it can’t sustain this loopy energy, and loses its way badly in the middle. At least the scene where Honest Charley hits on our heroine is less creepy than you might imagine: Dooling was 27 at the time this came out, so was not exactly a convincing high-school student. She’s not the only one: school football star ‘Mantis’ Manigian is played by Rick Moser who, far from school, was actually a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers at the time. There are still sporadic moments of interest in the rest of the film. The costume party that turns into a cat-fight, leading to the immortal line at the top of this review. Or the extended climax at the docks, where Lovely is helped out by the rest of her kung-fu class, all fetching clad in their matching, zebra-striped karategi.

However, for every one of these, there are two or more scenes of tedium, such as the subplot involving Mary Ann’s boyfriend and his ambitions to be a singer (the actor involved ended up producing David Hasselhoff albums, which should be penance enough for anyone). In the end, while likely remaining more entertaining than most of its ilk, this (probably inevitably) falls short of its alternative tag-line, “James Bond couldn’t… Bruce Lee wouldn’t… They can’t do what Lovely can!!”

Dir: David Sheldon
Star: Lucinda Dooling, Michael O’Leary, John Randolph, Richard Herd

Gears of a Mad God, by Brent Nichols

  By

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

Early 20th-century pulp-fiction author Howard Philips Lovecraft created a substantial corpus of writing, mainly in the short story format and mostly in the form of horrific science fiction which in many ways reads like classic supernatural fiction. The most enduring body of his work has been the novellas and stories making up what has come to be called his Cthulhu Mythos, based on the premise that the prehistoric Earth was dominated by the Great Old Ones, or Elder Gods, malevolent and repulsive, but very powerful and dangerous, alien beings who were ultimately dethroned by another alien race, and whose hidden remnants want to regain their past dominance. A number of Lovecraft works present the idea that these beings have an evil and often murderous cult of human worshipers, handed down from the dawn of mankind, who seek to further their return to power. Numerous later writers have been inspired by HPL’s example to create their own pastiches and spin-offs of the Mythos. Brent Nichols’ self-published Gears of a Mad God novella series (there are six in all), of which this book –set in Canada in May 1921, mainly on Vancouver Island– is the opener, is one of these spin-offs. One of my Goodreads friends gave this one a favorable review; and since I’m a Lovecraft fan and the novella is free for Kindle and relatively short at 98 pages, I downloaded it.

An important point to note is that, while HPL’s Mythos supplies the premise here, Nichols’ prose style is nothing like the older writer’s “purple prose;” his diction is modern, straightforward and direct, with no stylistic embellishment and a minimum of description. Another is that the focus here is exclusively on the cultists of the Great Old Ones, and the effort to counter them; the sinister objects of their devotion are strictly off-stage. (For all that we see here, the Great Old Ones could just as well be figments of the cultists’ imagination.) Also unlike Lovecraft, even though there are a couple of instances here of characters driven mad by exposure to the cult’s secrets, Nichols eschews existential pessimist sermonizing and “morals of the story,” and doesn’t harp on the idea that unvarnished exposure to reality would actually be enough to drive virtually anybody insane. Of course, our protagonist/viewpoint character here is female, something which is never found in HPL’s own work. So despite the inspiration, the effect of reading this is much different from the works of the original Cthulhu canon. The title also misuses the term “steampunk” (it features a heroine who’s mechanically oriented, but that doesn’t make it steampunk!), and the phrase “Gears of a Mad God” makes no particular sense –some machinery here has gears, but they aren’t owned by any Elder God, mad or sane, and they aren’t focal to the story.

On the positive side, the tale is fast-paced, held my interest, and is frequently exciting and suspenseful; I felt that Nichols handles action scenes well. There is a clearly-drawn moral dimension to the conflict; Colleen makes choices that involve putting protection of others before self-interest, and her moral struggles with lethal force are realistic for a young woman with no combat training or experience. She does pick up fighting skill by use, and her mechanical ability is a nice touch (though clock-making and repair actually isn’t as credible a source of physical strength and knowledge of large-scale mechanical processes as say, auto repair would have been).

The plot is linear, with no particular twists (I actually envisioned one I was sure was coming, and was quite surprised when it didn’t materialize!). On the negative side, the character development is not deep (Colleen is the best-developed character, but she’s still not very fully realized), there’s not a lot of texture, and I wouldn’t say there’s a strong sense of place either in her native Toronto or in Victoria. (I did learn that Vancouver, British Columbia is NOT on Vancouver Island –but Victoria is!) But unlike one reviewer, I didn’t find the U.S. Bureau of Investigation agents and their Canadian liaisons ineffectual; and I didn’t have a problem with squaring the arrival of characters on the island with the ferry schedule –I made the assumption that their appearance in the story was not necessarily always virtually identical to their landing time. (But I did have a quibble with the idea that the U.S. President had contacted the Canadian Prime Minister “last year” –the President in 1920 was Woodrow Wilson, who was then pretty much non-functional due to his physical and nervous breakdown.) IMO, the emphasis on the boyfriend’s “antediluvian attitude” (to quote one review) near the end was necessary to set up a significant choice by the heroine.

Overall, I liked this tale. But even though it’s obviously only the beginning of a larger story arc, and the ending, while not a cliff-hanger as such, is clearly meant to lead into further confrontation with the cult, I’m still not captivated enough by the characters or the story to invest in buying the sequels.

Note: There’s no sexual content (Colleen and her boyfriend, at one point, lay down on a bed with their clothes on and get some needed sleep, but they don’t do anything else), and no bad language beyond a d-word and two h-words.

Author: Brent Nichols
Publisher: Self-published; available through Amazon, both for Kindle (free!) and as a printed book.
Book 1 of 6 in the Gears of a Mad God Book series
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

A Good Woman is Hard to Find

  By

★★★★
“Hammer time!”

2020’s first seal of approval goes to this uber-gritty Irish film, starring Sarah Bolger, whose most familiar to us from Into the Badlands. While her GWG creds there are overshadowed by the likes oE Emily Beecham, safe to say Bolger makes up for lost time here. She plays single mother Sarah Collins, who is struggling to come to terms with the recent, unsolved murder of her husband. Barely managing to make ends meet, her life is upended when entry-level criminal Tito (Simpson) breaks in, seeking sanctuary. He has stolen some drugs belonging to top boss Leo (Hogg), and offers Sarah a cut of the proceeds if she’ll act as his safe-house. Very reluctantly, she agrees. Needless to say, it doesn’t go as they plan.

And that’s putting it very mildly. I won’t spoiler it, but there’s a reason she ends up visiting a hardware store, and weighing up whether an axe or a hack-saw is better suited for her “project” [the correct answer, it appears, is both…]. Yet, the character arc from mild-mannered mother who basically won’t say “Boo!” to a goose, into someone capable of going about with a bowling-bag of highly unpleasant content, is remarkably plausible. Because it’s almost all driven by fierce maternal love for her two children, one of whom has been traumatized into muteness by witnessing his father’s murder. Sarah will do anything to protect and provide for them, and as motivation for taking up a criminal lifestyle, it’s a far sight better than we got in the similarly themed Widows or The Kitchen.

It also does not soft-pedal its violence. The extended sequence where Sarah goes over the edge and becomes a killer for the first time, at one point almost teeters into farce with her first choice of weapon. But the further it goes on – to the point of death and beyond, the grimmer it gets. I was reminded of the line spoken by Macbeth: “I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” This is made clear from the opening scene, which sees a gore-drenched heroine taking to the shower, setting the scene for its subsequent savage tone. We only find out the source of the blood later, and it won’t be the last time it gets spilled.

It’s a spectacular performance from Bolger, portraying a woman who is ground down to almost nothing, before finding fate presenting her with an opportunity – albeit one which comes with a frightening cost in terms of her humanity. Yet her portrayal manages to take the audience along with the character on that journey. The rest of the cast pales in comparison, though it probably doesn’t help that non-British audiences may need subtitles for some of the dialogue; even I was going “What?” at some points, particularly for Tito’s lines. Still, neither that nor some suspiciously convenient skill with a firearm (likely a necessary contrivance) are sufficient to derail a thoroughly successful slab of Irish noir.

Dir: Abner Pastoll
Star: Sarah Bolger, Edward Hogg, Andrew Simpson, Jane Brennan

Mind and Machine

  By

★½
“Circuit bored.”

Intelligence without morality to govern it, is psychopathy. So what happens when you create an intelligent machine, but deliberately avoid installing any kind of moral compass? It’s an interesting idea for a film. Not that you’d know it from this unconvincing effort, which sucks the potential out of it. In this near-future – it’s set in 2024, close enough to now, no actual work is required on the part of the makers – androids have become part of everyday society in many roles. Crime boss Isaac Lynch (Restegar) orders technician Leo Cameron (West) to make one without a conscience, so that it can be used as an assassin, saving those pesky hitman fees. Only Leo crafts the robot, Maya (Guerra), in the image of his late wife. On the plus side: he gets to see his wife again. On the other hand: she’s an amoral killer. Didn’t think that through too well, did he?

And that’s the problem here: not much of this makes sense. Not Leo’s actions. Not the way nobody else came up with the idea first; most obviously, the military would be all over this in reality. Not how Isaac’s entire criminal organization consists of about three people, yet is still capable of pushing technological innovation into uncharted territory (and he also kills a customer, rather than letting him pay their debt). Not even the way Maya – and this is so obvious, it’s not a spoiler – eventually rebels against Isaac’s orders. It seems like writer/director Humphrey decided where he wanted the film to end up, but couldn’t be bothered to figure out how it could logically reach that point.

I’ll give Guerra credit for her portrayal of Maya, which is credibly lacking in emotion. Though again. there’s no consistency there, nor any explanation for her decision to revolt, after being made to torture an undercover agent. Why is killing unproblematic for this machine, yet torture represents a breaking point? And the lead actress’s reluctance to disrobe does lead to one of the most embarrassingly unconvincing body doubles I’ve ever seen: Guerra’s hair is black and straight, while that of the woman standing in for her, is brown and wavy. If you can’t do it well, Humphrey should have written it out of his script, since it’s not as if it was necessary to the plot.

Maybe he needed it for running-time purposes. Because this barely qualifies as a feature, lasting a mere 70 minutes, and that includes a slow, slow end credit crawl. It certainly feels considerably longer, and my interest steadily waned, as it failed to provide any interesting answers, or ask any interesting questions. A slowly-developing self awareness and independence, and more focus on Maya, rather than (the thoroughly uninteresting) Leo and Isaac, might have been the way to go. But then, that was Ex Machina, wasn’t it? This is a poor imitation thereof, and one which sporadic bursts of low-rent violence can do nothing to rescue.

Dir: Brock Humphrey
Star: Ariana Guerra, Oryan West, Sal Rastegar, Bobby Hernandez

Prime Suspect: Tennison

  By

★★★½
“Before she was famous…”

Origin stories are all the rage, it appears. Though it’s probably just coincidence we watched this prequel to Prime Suspect the same week that Joker came out. It’s not quite as successful in terms of reinventing an iconic character, or shedding light on how they became who they are. This is largely because lead actress Martini is not Helen Mirren. Though it would unfair to hold that against her – because, let’s face it, who is? While I found it interesting to see some of the early influences which turned Jane Tennison into who she is, what she became is more notable than how she got there. It’s probably more enjoyable if you can separate them, and just enjoy this on its own terms, as a period police procedural.

It’s 1973, and we join the 22-year-old WPC 517, Jane Tennison (Martini), as she tries to find a footing in her first posting, to Hackney Police Station in East London. There, she has to cope with a time where women police officers were largely sidelined to making tea and taking messages. However, one of the detectives there, D.C.I. Len Bradfield (Reid) takes her under his wing, as the investigation begins into the murder of a prostitute, found strangled with her own bra. Meanwhile, long-term criminal Clifford Bentley – against whom Bradfield has a grudge – has barely got out of jail, before he and his family are planning a new robbery. But Jane is about to discover that things are not always as cut and dried as she’d like, and that the law and justice can be different, too.

It’s when the heroine is forced to confront these dilemmas that the show is at its most interesting. For example, when Tennison witnesses a colleague roughing up a suspect in the murder, actions which could allow them to go free. Should she speak up or keep silent? There are no easy answers, and depicting the dramatic tension is where Martini is at her most effective, along with trying to deal with her “helicopter mother”, who doesn’t appreciate her little girl is all grown up. [As an aside, there’s no denying the actress does bear more than a slight resemblance to a young Helen Mirren. Compare the pic on the right to this one of Mirren, from 1972, a year before this takes place]

Of course, if you’ve seen the episodes with Tennison all grown up, you’ll not be surprised by much here. There’s no way, for example, that Jane and Len are ever going to end up happily ever after. That said, the double-whammy in which this is accomplished was undeniably effective. It goes some way to explaining her aloofness in middle-age, as the scars of her early experiences. Being able to hang more personality trains on FutureJane, in a similar way, would have helped link this to what was to come. Instead, it’s just a little too disconnected, though on its own merits, we still were solidly entertained.

Dir: David Caffrey
Star: Stefanie Martini, Sam Reid, Blake Harrison, Alun Armstrong
a.k.a. Prime Suspect 1973