Month: May 2020

Pickings

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★★
“Pap fiction.”

I am not a fan of Quentin Tarantino, outside of Kill Bill. Even as early as Reservoir Dogs, I found his style to be self-indulgent, and could never hear his characters speaking in their own voices, only QT’s. He seems to be capable only of cobbling together elements and influences from obscure, yet generally superior movies, and sprinkling them with pop-culture riffs and dialogue that’s so fake-sounding and artificial, it needs a warning label. So, while I appreciate the irony of someone ripping off the master of rip-off cinema, as Morgan does here, it’s not a world into which I willingly travel.

The influence here is palpable from the opening scene, when bar owner Jo Lee-Haywood (Price) is interrogating a thug she has captured and, it turns out, is tied up in a backroom of the bar she runs. Jo ends up talking about motivational speaker Tony Robbins, and how everyone is motivated by pleasure or fear, in a speech which couldn’t be more Quentin Tarantino, if it were licking the heroine’s bare feet. More or less from then on, it seemed painfully apparent this was the kind of film I was going to have to endure, rather than enjoy. And that was largely correct.

Jo, it turns out, is in debt to some rather nasty people, in particular a gangster named Sam “Hollywood” Barone (Urbas). He sends his henchmen to make Jo and her daughter, Scarlet (Vincent), an offer they can’t refuse, involving handing over the bar. Only, Jo is all, “Nah, we’re good, thanks,” and is having none of it. For she is not exactly the innocent bar-owner she seems, but came to the small Michigan town in order to escape a particularly brutal past. This isn’t her first time at the crime rodeo, shall we say – as we find out via another Tarantino-esque device, the needlessly convoluted time-line.

Morgan also appears to be a fan of Sin City, throwing in stylistic flourishes such as switching to rotoscoped animation at random. Most of these are more aggrandisements than art, save for Hollywood always being depicted in black-and-white. That’s a great way of indicating his status as a character straight out of film noir. The rest, though? Style for the sake of it, down to the cribbing of musical cues lifted from Morricone scored spaghetti Westerns, and a character who seems to have wandered straight off those same dusty streets. 

And it’s a shame, as in Jo, the film has a character which could have been a classic – even if the whole “left in a coma” thing is also cribbed from a certain QT film you’ve probably seen. Price plays her character like a velvet glove cast in iron (that’s one cult film not referenced!), and it soon becomes apparent that, when it comes to protecting Scarlet, Jo has no limits. Exploring this aspect, rather than making both story-line and players subservient to the movie’s look and feel, would have helped avoid this coming over like a fan submission to TarantinoCon 2018.

Dir: Usher Morgan
Star: Elyse Price, Yaron Urbas, Katie Vincent, Joe Trombino

Immortal Wars: Resurgence

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★★
“Let there be light!”

First, the good news. Whatever the issue was with its predecessor in the lighting department, it has been corrected. You can actually see what is going on. After spending the entire previous movie peering into murky darkness, trying to work out who was doing what and to whom, this was a blessed relied. Now, the bad news: it still falls some way short of interesting, so merits a mere half-star advance. Indeed, if anything, it’s a bit more tedious, not least because it clocks in at 112 minutes, without having anything like 112 minutes of content.

It does carry on immediately from Immortal Wars, so you might as well consider them as one single movie – watching one or the other would not provide anything close to a complete experience. Heroine Trikalypse (Gerhardy) continues her revolt against the evil Dominion Harvey (Roberts), with the help of her fellow rebel “deviants” – those who possess special powers. Apparently, this involves her escaping from Dominion’s facility… purely so she can break back into it. Not sure what that was all about. It certainly explains the expanded running time, with a lot of traipsing about, both through tunnels and across the (mercifully, well-lit!) desert, as Dominion’s henchwoman Hart (Alayne) tries to stop them.

There is no shortage of action, admittedly. It just isn’t very well-executed action, and for supposedly superpowered mutants, they seem to keep forgetting to use their superpowers much. We also discover the whole “fight to the death” thing from the first film was more true in the spirit than the actual observance, with Trikalypse’s BFF Iro not exactly as deceased as we were led to believe. Of course, as the rebels fight their way towards the inevitable confrontation between Trikalypse and Dominion, there are casualties, though it would be a stretch to say that any of them provided an emotional impact.

It’s all very predictable, such as the way that Dominion, despite his claimed aversion to deviants, has his own platoon of them. Yet, for someone who supposedly rules the entire United States, he can only apparently command a couple of dozen people. His actions also defy simple logic. If ever I become an evil overlord, and know the precise location of a group of my enemies who are coming to attack me, I will not send out a henchwoman to engage in banter and hand-to-hand combat. I’m taking off and nuking the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure…

And, again: Bill Oberst is listed second in the credits, yet barely appears. [He may not appear at all, but I did genuinely doze off for a bit in the middle, so can’t be 100% sure] At least this time, Lujan does have the good grace to provide something of a satisfactory conclusion: another area in which it does improve on the first part. Overall though, the plodding nature of the core narrative largely negates these improvements, and combined with the extended duration, you’re left with something which you need to be in a highly forgiving mood to sit through.

Dir: Joe Lujan
Star: Jackie Gerhardy, Eric Roberts, Ben Stobber, Camille Alayne 

Revenge

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★★★★
“The mother of all vengeance stories.”

This is the first Thai TV series I’ve seen, and while I suspect it’s not exactly par for the course, I found it undeniably impressive. Behind a generic title, it’s easily the most intense of the telenovelas I’ve seen, regardless of location. [Note: various sources have different names for the characters: for consistency, I’m giving the ones used by Netflix] It’s a long, extended rampage of vengeance, in which the heroine, Maturos (Panyopas), goes after the perpetrators of a particularly vicious group-rape. The assailants are a local gang, who extract revenge on both Maturos and her daughter, Peung (Ruayruen), following their co-operation with the police. It’s an assault which leaves Matukron almost catatonic, and when half the gang are found not guilty in the subsequent trial, Maturos opts to find her own justice, adopting a variety of characters to get close to them. But the killing comes at the cost of her own sanity, which splits her personality into two: a caring and compassionate half, and an alternative persona which demands ever-more savage vengeance.

The story is told in the context of Maturos’s trial, so we know there’s no question of her getting away with it [that would probably have been a step too far!]. But will she get the death penalty, life imprisonment, or be found not guilty by reason of insanity? The show unfolds in flashback, occasionally interrupted with moments from the trial, telling the story of how she came to be facing multiple charges of murder. It begins with mother and daughter leaving their abusive husband and father. It’s the resulting precarious financial situation, moving them into a flat in a less than desirable neighbourhood, and bringing them into contact with the gang. They accidentally come into possession of a drug stash belonging to the posse, and hand it over to the authorities.

This triggers the brutal punishment on them both, on top of a building during a storm. It’s a lengthy ordeal, which occupies much of episode #4, with Maturos and Peung left lying on the roof. Though the police are able to arrest the suspects, the rain washes away much useful forensic evidence; only three of the seven are convicted, despite the best efforts of Inspector Patorn (Tangtong). He feels responsible for what happened, and had been somewhat involved in a relationship with Maturos before the attack. Afterward, however, that quickly proves to be impossible.

Indeed, it’s not long before Maturos’s alter ego, Roong, starts to show up. At first, she is subservient, appearing only in mirrors, but gradually becomes to dominate, taking control for much of the time. Not helping matters – though it is one of the most interesting angles – is the encouragement of Yuki Fukushida (Amratisha), who rescues Maturos from an abduction attempt by her ex-husband. Yuki runs a “victim’s support group”, for those abandoned by justice. It’s really more to do with helping them acquire the necessary set of skills to punish those who did them wrong. Needless to say, her encouragement doesn’t do much for our heroine’s sanity, instead letting her tap into her inner psychopath. The ex-husband is the first to experience that.

For the four unconvicted perpetrators, the pattern in the following episodes is similar. As shown on the poster (above, right), Maturos adopts a range of disguises – old woman, porn distributor, bar girl, human trafficker, or even a man – in order to get close to them. Having done so, eventually, she strikes, rendering them helpless, most typically with a sedative injection. She makes them record an apology to Peung, before finally dispatching them – albeit only after removing their genitals. Their deaths are never quick or easy, and are depicted at quite some length, as well as with a brutality which I found surprising. Thai TV may have severe limitations on sexual content, but violence is clearly seen as much less of a problem.

As the body count increases, the remaining gang members grow increasingly suspicious, and harder to track. Inspector Patorn is also beginning to put two and two together, and Maturos’s psychiatrist, Dr. Nattha, discovers her patient’s split personality, meeting Roong. Even after Patorn realizes her involvement in the murders, he agrees to let her act as bait to lure in the three remaining gang members, who have escaped from prison and, having reached the same conclusion, are coming for their own revenge.

But Maturos is playing a longer game, and it all builds to a final confrontation on the same rooftop where it began. As the image on the left suggests, she ends up going full Silence of the Lambs, wearing the face of one of her targets as a mask, and her final “disguise”. Though we still have to wait for the court’s verdict on her fate, with the case triggering a national debate regarding the death penalty, in addition to the question of Maturos’s culpability.

As on screen, so in real life, with the series proving a word of mouth hit in Thailand, and sparking similar discussions on the criminal justice system. The show’s ratings improved from as low as 1.3 in the early going, partly due to a late-night slot resulting from its content, reaching 3.7 for the finale. Deservedly so, because it was very effective: a real page-turner in televisual form. It certainly doesn’t pull any punches, and seems to be radically different from the typical “lakorn”, as the popular soap operas in Thailand are known. Though a 2014 study discovered that 80% of them depicted rape or sexual violence, I suspect few did so in such an uncompromising way as here.

It may, indeed, perhaps go too far occasionally. Chris largely lost her sympathy for Maturos, after watching her bring Peung along on one of her murders – even I have to admit, that is fairly questionable parenting, split personality or not. And watching the heroine don blackface in her prostitute character was perhaps something which didn’t transfer well, culturally. However, given the length of the series (24 x 50-minute episodes), such mis-steps are infrequent, and more than balanced out by a great performance from Panyopas. That’s especially so when she’s acting opposite her malevolent self, in a way which feels almost like a maternal version of Gollum.

It’s her portrayal which glues the series together; outside of sensei Yuki, the supporting cast of characters feel more functional than memorable, on both sides of the law. How successful you find the show as a whole is thus likely heavily dependent on how convincing you find her performance. Personally, I was more than satisfied with it, and while this may be optimistic, hope to find similar quality elsewhere in the lakorn genre.

Dir: Sant Srikaewlaw
Star: Lalita Panyopas, Pornsroung Ruayruen, Saksit Tangtong, Rudklao Amratisha
a.k.a. Lah (The Hunt)