Month: May 2024

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

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★★★★½
“The Fast and the Furiosa”

It was a good run. There was a point, not long ago, when action heroines could do no wrong. In hindsight, the golden era may have started in 2012 when the Hunger Games franchise began, along with Brave. Summers which followed brought us blockbusters such as Gravity, Maleficent and Lucy. Subsequent years covered the entire run of the Hunger Games and the end of the Resident Evil franchises (or, at least, phase 1 for them), and things probably peaked with Wonder Woman in 2017. Thereafter things began to decline, though I’d say returns remained strong through much of 2019. That’s when Maleficent: Mistress of Evil and Alita: Battle Angel each made over $400 million worldwide, finishing in the top 25 movies of the year.

The cracks began to show with Captain Marvel, odd though it is to say, given it made over a billion. But to a large extent I suspect it mostly surfed on the success of Avengers: Endgame. Thereafter, Wonder Woman: 1984 flopped just before the pandemic hit, Black Widow underperformed, and since then it’s been almost entirely a series of failures, with only the arguable Hunger Games reboot reaching even $250 million worldwide over almost three years since. Instead, we had one of the biggest bombs of all time in the The Marvels, followed up by the disastrous box-office of Madame Web. And now the prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, managed an opening weekend in North America of only $26.3 million. That’s forty-two percent below its predecessor’s opening, excluding nine years of inflation.

It’s not all action heroines’ fault (though some on social media are claiming so). This year has been dismal in general. With three midweek days left on the month at time of writing, box-office for May is down 36% on May 2023 – and even that was the lowest non-pandemic May since 2001, again without adjusting for inflation. People just aren’t going to the movies in anything like the same numbers. I can’t say I blame them, when films appear on streaming services as little as three weeks after their theatrical release. Going to the pictures is expensive, and especially with the improvements in home theatre, the overall experience can end up being worse than staying at home, between travel, over-priced concessions, idiots talking on their phones, etc. Why not wait?

The counterpoint is experiences like this, a full-on, bombastic, in your face event that made full use of everything IMAX has in its locker, and surpassed anything I could get at home. Now, your mileage may vary. Poor Chris, in particular, found it too overwhelming, triggering motion sickness which forced her to close her eyes any time things got too kinetic – which was a lot of the time. We probably will not be IMAXing again in future. But the only recent comparable experience for me was Godzilla: Minus One. Re-reading my review of Fury Road, I’m a bit surprised I only gave it four stars. I’ve seen it again since, and I’ve just upgraded it an extra half-star. Put another way, Furiosa is every bit its equal. Different, but equal.

It’s a direct prequel, ending at the point when Furiosa (Taylor-Joy) leads the wives to escape from The Citadel. It begins with a much younger Furiosa (Browne) living in the Green Place, a rare place of plenty in the post-apocalyptic hell which Australia has become, along with the rest of the world. She’s kidnapped from there by minions of Dr. Dementus (Hemsworth), leader of the Biker Horde. Her mother is killed trying to rescue her, and Furiosa becomes the little, mute pet of Dementus, until he trades her to Immortan Joe, who runs the Citadel. Over the subsequent years, she becomes a key part of operations, becoming the partner of Praetorian Jack (Burke), who trains Furiosa and falls in love with her.

Dementus, meanwhile, is working to become the wasteland’s supreme ruler by taking over the Citadel, Gastown and the Bullet Farm. In an ambush at the last-named, Jack is captured and tortured to death, while Furiosa escapes only by tearing off her own arm. She returns to the Citadel, providing key advice to Joe in the ensuing war. But she never loses sight of her final goal: to make Dementus pay for what he did to her and her mother. Given she appears in Fury Road and Dementus does not… Well, you can probably figure out how this is going to end. Though the reported final nature of her revenge is not what you might expect, and has a certain poetic resonance, given what happened previously.

It isn’t quite the same relentless stream of action as Fury Road, and at almost half an hour longer, that’s no bad thing. There’s no shortage of action, but it tends to align with the way the story is broken into chapters. So you get a series of Drama-Action-pause segments – or occasionally for variety, Action-Drama-pause. There were concerns regarding the amount of CGI in the trailer, and I will say, it’s not as almost entirely physical as Fury Road either. However, what’s used is integrated very well, with only a couple of moment wheres the action momentarily seems obviously adjusted digitally. I suspect some of the landscapes were also enhanced: they and cinematographer John Seale’s work is so stunning, I don’t care there.

My other concern was having Taylor-Joy replace Charlize Theron, who simply has more presence. That does remain an issue, though to the new actress’s credit, to a lesser degree than I feared. It’s also countered by having much more of a real antagonist here in Dementus. The first film was mostly an extended chase sequence: Furiosa was running from Immortan Joe, after helping his wives escape, and they shared very few scenes together. Here, Dementus gives us a stronger “villain,” and the film as a whole is better for it. Hemsworth brings a charismatic power to his character, to the point where you can see why his henchmen follow him, unto death. Furiosa, in contrast, is really not much of a people person.

It’s difficult to pick out any one action highlight, because they are all very, very good. I think the ambush at the Bullet Farm might me the one which sticks most in my mind for now, though this may change on (the almost certain) re-viewing at home. It’s one which offers the most interesting environment, including buildings and smoke stacks, while the others are somewhat limited by operating in a desert. I mean, it is called “the Wasteland” for a reason. However, when Miller puts Jack and Furiosa in their rig, which is being stormed by almost endless waves of raiders, you really do not need a backdrop. Indeed, you could argue that any such would be at best irrelevant, and at worst a distraction.

You would be hard-pushed to argue that the $168 million budget is not up on screen. I lost count of the times when I wondered whether what I was looking at really existed in the physical world, or was matte paintings and CGI. Part of me wants to peer behind the curtain and watch the behind the scenes videos. However, part of me would prefer to sustain the illusion, which was a factor in the sense of wonder that often washed over me during the screening. It’s the quest for that sense of awe which keeps me going to cinemas, even if most of the time, I end up leaving disappointed [I’m looking at you, Godzilla X Kong…]

I also want to praise one other aspect, which may not transfer as well to my home environment (and I admit it is limited in this area): the audio. There are not many times when I can specifically point to this in particular as significantly enhancing the experience. I’m not an audiophile, and generally put what I see considerably ahead of what I hear. But in this case, Tom Holkenborg’s score and the rest of the sound elements were a notable and impressive component. From the rumblings of the engines through to the wind whipping across the Wasteland, the sonic design really worked, and allowed me to feel like I was being brought into the world of Furiosa. Well played

The problem from a business perspective is, it seems all but certain the makers are not going to recoup their investment, making it less likely you will see investments like this going forward. Fury Road probably just about broke even, so this was always going to be a gamble, especially without your leads. And, indeed, outside of the title, entirely without the character who has powered the franchise since its first installment, all the way back to forty-five years ago. In hindsight, a reaction of “What the hell were they thinking?” is probably understandable. But I am glad less-wise heads prevailed. If this is to be the end of the Mad Max universe, it goes out on another spectacular high, and not many franchises are able to say that.

Dir: George Miller
Star: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, Alyla Browne

Atlas

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★★★
“Ripley from the block…”

This was watched, effectively as the B-feature before Furiosa, with expectations along appropriate lines, given that basis. And as such, this is fine. It’s glossy, shiny and well-crafted technically, albeit making little or no emotional impact. This is partly because, in the early going, it feels suspiciously like someone said, “Hey Siri! Rewrite the script for Aliens, replacing xenomorphs with bad AIs, and Sigourney Weaver with J-Lo.” She plays Atlas Shepherd, an AI expert, decades after a revolt of the robots killed millions before it was contained, with leader Harlan (Liu) vanished from Earth. Now he’s been tracked to a distant planet, and a military mission sent to capture Harlan. Atlas reluctantly goes along with the soldiers as an “advisor”.

Fortunately, on arrival, the story heads in its own direction. The force is ambushed and forced down, with Atlas and her AI-enabled mech, Smith (voiced by Cohan) as apparently the only survivor. She opts to forge on with reaching Harlan’s base, a choice which brings her into conflict with Smith, who insists on putting his pilot’s safety first. Complicating matters is the need for Atlas to allow a neural link from Smith into her mind, in order to complete the mission successfully. This is something which she is very loathe to allow. There’s more than paranoia here, with pretty good reasons for her reluctance, connected to Atlas’s past and how it was responsible for the previous AI rebellion. 

Topical for this to come out the week Google’s AI search results suggest using glue to stop cheese sliding off your pizza. Yet, despite the initial scenario, it ends up being rather – some might say, suspiciously – pro AI. Not quite, “I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords.” But definitely suggesting, even haters are going to have to bite the bullet and accept them into their lives. I will say, Smith ends up a likeable character, with an awareness of things like sarcasm, which make him approach human. Some might say, more so than Atlas, and certainly more than one of the other mechs, who insists on informing people of her preferred pronouns. I rolled my eyes hard at that.

Between this and The Mother, Lopez seems to be aiming to carve out a career as a Netflix action heroine. In both cases, the films work better on the action front than the dramatic (Lopez as a boffin is always a stretch). This has some nice examples of mechanized set pieces, as the Atlas/Smith partnership makes its way across a hostile planet towards their goal. It’s refreshingly free of any romance, being unexpectedly close to hard SF. Admittedly, this isn’t a film I’m probably ever going to revisit. But it provided a decent two hours of mindless entertainment, and let’s face it, that’s largely why we still have a Netflix subscription. If J-Lo wants to keep making this kind of thing, I’m happy to keep watching them. Just so long as she doesn’t start singing. 

Dir: Brad Peyton 
Star: Jennifer Lopez, Gregory James Cohan, Simu Liu, Sterling K. Brown

Dope Girls

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★★
“Welcome to the dope show.”

This shouldn’t be confused with the BBC series of the same name announced last year. This is very definitely American, another in the ongoing series of urban crime movies which seem to pop up, with some regularity on the likes of Tubi. I keep watching them, in the hope they’ll be good, but am usually disappointed, mostly due to cheap-jack production values and repetitive story-lines. This is at least watchable in the former department, though is definitely marked down for a startlingly abrupt “To be continued” ending. I hate cliff-hangers in books: they do not work any better on movies, and this isn’t exactly Dune Part One, shall we say. Not least because it runs only 75 minutes, including end-credits.

It’s the story of Dee (Pinckney), who comes out of jail with a grudge, and sets about trying to take over the drug trade in the city where she lives (I think it’s Philadelphia). The first obstacle standing in her way is CJ (Whitehurst); after she succeeds in facing him down, he hires an assassin to take her out. But the assassin is not a fan of CJ’s, so looks to switch sides and play for Dee. In her corner, she also has her cousin, Stephanie (Hicks), and a select group of other women with appropriate skills. The one of most note is Stasha Fields, also known as Star (Feindt), a dirty cop who is looking to make it on her own terms.

These make for an interesting set of characters. The film’s main problem is not doing nearly enough with them. Considering how short this runs, there is an awful lot of sitting around, talking about doing things, and not nearly enough actual doing of these things. Outside of the opening scene, in which Dee goes to confront CJ in his apartment, I’m hard-pushed to think of more than a couple of other significant moments of action. Although someone does get shot towards the end, it’s in a non-lethal manner, which is something of a surprise in this genre, since it usually can be depended on for a significant body-count. Here: not so much. There’s even preciously little dealing of the dope.

You’re therefore left largely to rely on the drama for interest, and that’s a bit of a mixed bag. As mentioned, there does seem to have been some thought put into the personnel. Pinckney and Feindt at least can reach convincing on some occasions, while director Deniro – and I’m wagering that is probably not his real name – knows the value of silence, rather than burying every scene in rap music, another staple of the field. In the end though, we reach the closing caption, without having moved an adequate distance from where we were after the first scene. We know a lot more people, to be sure. But to what extent do we know them? Maybe we’ll find out in Dope Girls 2. Maybe I can be bothered to watch it.

Dir: Black Deniro
Star: Kenisha Pinckney, Eva Lin Feindt, Joaquin Whitehurst, Taria Hicks

The Marsh King’s Daughter

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★★½
“Always protect your family.”

This begins with the young Helena, living deep in the woods with her mother and father, Jacob (Mendelsohn). He’s teaching her the ways of the forest, including hunting and the need to be ruthless, with the top priority expressed in the tagline above. However, things aren’t quite what they seem: it feels like it could be a century ago, yet the tranquil illusion is shattered when a lost stranger on an ATV rides up. Mom makes a break for freedom with Helena, for it seems this is actually a kidnapping which has gone on for a long time. Fast forward twenty years: Jacob is in prison, mom killed herself and Helena (Ridley) is working a dead-end job, but married to Stephen (Hedlund), and with a daughter, Marigold.

Then Jacob escapes custody while being transferred, and all hell breaks loose. For Helena has changed her identity, in an effort to disconnect from her past. Stephen is entirely unaware of his wife’s history, until the authorities show up on their doorstep. Helena is naturally concerned that her father is going to make contact, or worse. Inevitably, that’s exactly what happens, and she is going to have to dredge up those long-abandoned skills in order to live up to the standards ingrained in her, when she was living in the woods. It will also require her to return to her childhood haunt, for a confrontation with Jacob which has been several decades in the making.

I suspect the main problem is that we know where it’s going to go, almost from the moment we are told Jacob has broken out of jail. The film, however, insists on dallying around, having Helena’s paranoia ramp up in a middle act that loses all momentum, creeping around at night and hearing the flute-like music which her father used to play. Does this indicate he is near, or simply that the stress is triggering some kind of psychotic episode? To be honest, we don’t particularly care. I kinda lost much sympathy for her, after realizing she had hidden everything from Stephen. You’d think the fact she has more tats than a Maori chieftain might clue you in to something of a checkered past, but that’s apparently just me.

Still, Jacob looms over the entire film even when he is not physically present, since he has, understandably, been living rent-free in his daughter’s head. There is a seasoning of Stockholm syndrome here, in the way the father has impressed his personality on his daughter. Yet none of it is particularly engaging. We’re left just waiting for the face-off which we know is inevitable, where Helena has to decide how far she is willing to go, in order to protect Marigold. Is that further than Jacob is prepared to go, for what he believes is the best interests of his daughter? I feel the answer to that question should be more interesting than this bland exercise in wilderness abuse ends up becoming.

Dir: Neil Burger
Star: Daisy Ridley, Ben Mendelsohn, Gil Birmingham, Garrett Hedlund

Trunk: Locked In

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★★★½
“Difficulty booting up”

This certainly wastes no time. Malina (Martens) regains consciousness to find herself in the trunk of a car stopped at a petrol station. Things get worse, as she discovers her legs are paralyzed, and she has a nasty wound in her lower abdomen. How did she get there? And more importantly, what can she do to escape her predicament? It’s certainly one hell of a hook, and in the way it hits the ground running – as well as its Germanic origins, almost real-time approach and the plucky heroine with a sketchy boyfriend, forced to survive on her own – reminded me of Run Lola Run. Not as brilliantly executed, of course, but well enough done to keep my interest thereafter.

It does require a little suspension of disbelief to get things rolling, such as the way she has a mobile phone. What self-respecting abductor would not ensure their victim is kept well away from portable electronic devices? The fact Malina’s very first call is not to the police also seemed a bit iffy. But once the initial road bumps are overcome, I found myself increasingly drawn in to her predicament. Considering the film takes place almost entirely in a car boot, it works surprisingly well. Schießer uses all the tricks in his cinematic locker to keep the story moving forward, as find out about Malina, and her relationship with boyfriend Enno (Gilz), her father (Rettinghaus) and even the police operator (Helm) who is her best hope of survival.

Gradually, it becomes clear that this is not quite the simple abduction for ransom it initially appears. While her Daddy is certainly rich, why was the poverty stricken Enno apparently abducted too? Is there a connection to a bit of medical malpractice in which Malina, a trainee doctor, was involved? Then there’s the wound in her side, which is not just an accidental gash. Not all of these will end up relevant in the final analysis, and piecing them together is part of the fun. I figured out the key revelation only a couple of seconds before the film announced it, and this propels things forward in a very different direction, the rest of the way.

Obviously, given her circumstances – locked in a car trunk and with limited use of her legs – this is less “action” oriented in the traditional sense. But also given these limitations, I’ve no doubt that Malina qualifies here, having to use all the abilities at her disposal, from her medical knowledge to brute force, to try and survive, as her situation grows increasingly dire, e.g. she crosses the border out of Germany. I feel sure it’s the kind of plot where a less charitable reviewer could probably pick so many holes, it ends up resembling a lace garment. Martens isn’t Franke Potente either, though who is? However, I am prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt, and note that I wasn’t even tempted to pick up my cellphone once. These days, I’ll take that.

Dir: Marc Schießer
Star: Sina Martens, Luise Helm, Artjom Gilz, Charles Rettinghaus 

Hard Knox

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★★½
“Opportunity Knox.”

I was intrigued by this, mostly due to the presence of Penn, an Australian champion in karate who appeared (albeit, in minor roles) in a number of Hong Kong action movies of the nineties. Her blonde hair made her stand out, as one of the few gwailo women to be seen in the genre. This TV movie, intended as a pilot for a series appears to have been her swing at stardom in the West. After it fell agonizingly short, she seems to have given up on acting entirely. She now appears to be the CEO of Signal 8 Security, a private security company back in Hong Kong – the celebrity clients listed on the company’s website appear to include Jackie Chan, ironically enough.

This is, in some ways, art imitating life, as here she plays Niki Knox, who… runs a private security company. On her wedding day to Jackson (Chong), her father Darrell (Lee Majors) is put in a coma by the villainous Delicious Malicious (Kessell) – yes, that’s apparently her name – who is seeking a trio of gemstones which Darrell has been guarding. As a sideline, Malicious runs a PPV website that streams her blowing up buildings and other acts of mayhem. But the gems are the main thing, and Niki has to stop them from falling into the wrong hands, otherwise… bad things will happen.  She has to manage that with the help of former cop Steve Hardman (Calabro), who is now her employee, and despite the betrayal of someone very close to her.

Just as Cynthia Rothrock’s American movies are not a patch on her Hong Kong ones, so Penn’s action here is a pale imitation of her work in things such as In the Line of Duty V. I don’t know why I expected any more from a TV movie though, especially one making a lackadaisical effort to pass the city of Sydney off as a generic American metropolis (an endeavour largely undone by Penn’s noticeable Aussie accent). It still might have managed to work if it had stuck to a simpler scenario, just pitting Knox against Malicious, the latter chewing scenery to entertaining effect. It’s definitely a case where the sidekick outshines the main villain.

Instead, there are too many supporting characters who serve little purpose, and Calabro in particular sucks the life out of any scene he’s in. There’s no chemistry with Penn at all, and I’d much rather have simply seen this sister doin’ it for herself. As noted, I’m not sure there’s much of a stretch in Penn’s role here, yet she’s reasonably engaging. I might have talked myself into watching the show, albeit only if Steve Hardman suffered a quick and painful death in an early episode. That will remain hypothetical. For while the pilot did get a positive reaction in the United States, it appears that sales in the rest of the world were so weak, the production company was unable to proceed to series, and the project was scrapped. I’d be hard-pushed to call it a great loss.

Dir: Peter Bloomfield
Star: Kim Penn, Thomas Calabro, Simone Kessell, Jason Chong

The whole film is on YouTube, as below

Mother Daughter Traitor Spy, by Susan Elia MacNeal

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Literary rating: ★★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆

It’s often forgotten that America didn’t join World War II until almost three years after it started. In the early days, there was a strong isolationist movement, which saw the conflict as other countries’ problems, from people like aviator Charles Lindbergh and broad groups like the America First Committee. Indeed, there was a surprising amount of support for the Nazi regime: in February 1939, a rally at Madison Square Gardens drew twenty thousand people, and even after the war started in Europe, there was significant activity attempting to keep America out. It’s in this period, between the start of the war and the bombing of Pearl Harbor, that the story told here takes place.

Veronica Grace is an aspiring journalist who has just graduated college when her plans are upended. A dalliance with a married man blows up, resulting in her being blackballed from employment in New York. She and her widowed mother Vi opt to move to Los Angeles instead, but are shocked to discover the local community rife with Nazi sympathizers. Her attempt to report this fall on deaf ears, the authorities at the time being more concerned with the Red Menace. But a friend of her late father, a naval officer, is able to connect the Graces to Ari Lewis, who is running a semi-official anti-Nazi investigation. Their German ancestry make them perfect to go undercover, and they agree to do so, despite the risk, and knowing that exposure would likely mean a brutal fate.

Interestingly, this is based on real characters, with almost everyone having an equivalent in historical fact. For instance, Veronica Grace is based on Sylvia Comfort, a young woman who did indeed become an inside operative, initially as a secretary, working against the German American Bund and their members. MacNeal colours in a lot of the background; there’s no indication the real Sylvia wanted to be a journalist. I am a little uncertain about some historical elements too. For instance, the Nazis all want Wendell Wilkie to beat Roosevelt in the 1940 election. Except Wilkie was, per Wikipedia, “a forceful and outspoken advocate of aid to the Allies”, a stance key in winning him the Republican nomination. Not exactly a “fellow traveller”.

Still, I’m fine with bending history for the sake of a good story. This is at its best when capturing the steadily increasing sense of paranoia as Veronica embeds herself even more deeply, the struggle to maintain her own identity, and the tension between associating with people she has grown to like, and their abhorrent views. As her handler puts it, “Here’s the thing, Veronica. ‘Nice’ isn’t good.” Given the nature of her work, the amount of physical action here is inevitably limited; it’s mostly near the end, and neither Veronica nor her mother are involved. However, it remained an interesting read, with an unusual setting for a spy novel. I was certainly left wondering how things might have turned out, if not for the efforts of people like Veronica.

Author: Susan Elia MacNeal
Publisher: Bantam, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
A stand-alone novel.

Blood Orgy of the Leather Girls

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½
“Amateur hour and a quarter.”

Incompetent on every level, this proves there’s a section of cult fandom which would praise a dog turd to the heavens, if told it had a “feminist” message. The title is probably – scratch that, certainly – the best thing about this, suggesting a throwback to the JD films of the fifties, filtered through the lens of Russ Meyer. “Suggesting” is the keyword here, since the reality is more like the finger-paintings of a developmentally challenged three-year-old. I guess the title is actually inspired by Blood Orgy of the She Devils, a film made in 1973 by Ted V. Mikels, one of the most inept directors ever to pick up a camera. This movie is poor enough Mikels would likely require his film’s name be taken off it.

The plot, such as it is, concerns four girls, who set about taking revenge for one of their number when she’s sorta-kinda-not-actually raped. Though any concepts of justice are fairly loose, since they were already gleefully committing crimes, including murder. Meanwhile, the least convincing detective in film history, Inspector Morton (Silverstein) narrates, offering a moral context with lines like, “When the maternal and creative forces of women become corrupted by the brutality of the every day world, a force of incredible violence is unleashed.” The women are similarly implausible as disaffected schoolgirls, with the gang’s leader, Sarah (Gingold), a Jew who has a shrine to Hitler in her bedroom, and goes to Catholic school. I’m very confused.

No, wait: not confused, just staggeringly bored. For Lucas doesn’t have the barest idea of film-making, such as basic framing. So we get violence that is completely unconvincing, utterly unsexy nudity, and what I can only presume are comedic moments landing like lead balloons. It’s all accompanied by Z-grade surf punk and other flatulent noises, likely provided by the director’s equally talentless mates. There’s one moment where self-awareness is almost achieved. The women go to a drive-in, hunting their last victim. An even worse film is playing, and the narrator – who no longer seems to be Morton, for unclear reasons – declares, “The movie dragged on. And on. And on.” So close to getting it.

Legend has it the director, unable to get her work distributed, committed suicide, only for her brother to take up the movie in her honour. Except she never existed, Michael Lucas making his sister up, in the belief it’d improve the odds of his film being taken seriously. That’s the level of artistic honesty we are dealing with here, and if there weren’t already a myriad of reasons to hate this, I want no part of it. I did sit through to the finish, mostly out of a stoic refusal to let myself be beaten by this piece of pretentious garbage. Trust me, when I say this isn’t even “so bad it’s good,” it’s closer to being so bad it’s unwatchable. Near the end, someone is sodomized with an electric drill. I can’t think of a more appropriate metaphor for the viewing experience.

Dir: “Meredith Lucas” (Michael A. Lucas)
Star: Phillip Silverstein, Robin Gingold, Simoone Margolis, Melissa Lawrence

Run-Off

  By

★★
“Fast, loose and out of control”

It feels as if South Korea is going through all the Olympic sports, making films based on each of them. Indeed, this film’s alternate title makes it a sequel to Take Off, about ski-jumping. I’ve seen two of the previous entries, covering archery (3 Heroines) and table tennis (As One), with the latter the more successful. This one comes up shorter than either. Less due to the technical side, which is always solid and occasionally impressive. However, the “true story” element is riotously inaccurate, the film completely rewriting reality in favor of what is not much more than a series of the most obvious sports movie cliches, for two hours and five minutes of increasingly sappy nonsense.

The story is of the first South Korean women’s ice-hockey team, formed to take part in the 2003 Asian Winter Games. There was basically no women’s ice-hockey in the country, so the team’s core players include a disgraced speed skater, a roller hockey player, a figure skater, and a North Korean defector, Lee Ji-won (Soo Ae). The national committee need to give the impression of trying, to boost Korea’s chance of hosting the games. But they can’t find anyone to coach, so end up hiring alcoholic deadbeat coach Kang Dae-woong (Oh D-s). Fill in the rest of the plot yourself, as the team goes from losing to an elementary school team, to facing North Korea – and Lee’s sister – with a medal at stake.

Except, it never happened. 2003 wasn’t even the team’s debut, as they played at the Asian Games in 1999. The results were… rather less heroic than depicted here, where they never lose by more than one goal. In reality, they were hammered in all four games, and outscored by a total of 80-1. Not quite as cinematic. The film ends by proudly announcing the team went on to qualify for the 2018 Olympics. Conveniently omitting the fact they got in automatically as hosts – the same way Team GB qualified for handball in 2012. The more I read about the reality, the worse the taste left in my mouth by the movie’s rewriting of history. There’s artistic license, and then… I’d be embarrassed to be one of the players involved.

Up until this wholesale factual butchery, it had been competent enough. Nothing outside the standard inspirational sports movie, e.g. training montages, clashes of characters, unsupportive families, etc. Yet the games are actually well enough staged, with camerawork that puts you right there on the ice, and it feels like the actresses are doing enough of the skating to pass muster (they had three months training before shooting). It’s just not an honest film. A better approach would have been like Next Goal Wins, covering the climb from embarrassing defeat through to redemption. If only they had waited. For the year after this came out, Korea had a 3-2 shoot-out win over China – the same opponent who had pounded them 30-1, fourteen years earlier. With a story like that, you don’t need to make stuff up.

Dir: Jong-hyun Kim
Star: Soo Ae, Oh Dal-su, Oh Yeon-Seo, Jae-suk Ha
a.k.a. Take Off 2

Til Death Do Us Part

  By

★★
“Bored til death, more like…”

Great poster. Solid trailer. In the light of those, unfortunately, the film can only be described as a significant disappointment. While it’s good, and occasionally very good when in motion, damn, there is a LOT of flapping of lips going on here. It’s clear that writers Chad Law and Shane Dax Taylor, as well as director Woodward, are in love with their dialogue. This is unfortunate, since it’s nowhere near as amusing, informative or entertaining as they think. There’s probably a decent twenty minutes in this, mostly when the lead character – nameless, known only as “Bride”, a conceit shamelessly stolen from Kill Bill – is kicking butt. Since the film runs a hundred and eleven minutes, that is a problem.

Indeed, nobody here gets a “proper” name. The Bride (Burn) decides at the last minute she is not going to go through with marriage to her fiance (Blain), and runs off to her family cabin. Her husband-to-be doesn’t take that lightly, and sends seven groomsmen, under the best man (Gigandet), to bring her back. not with polite discussion to convince her to return. For it turns out everyone involved is part of a shadowy organization of assassins called “The University”. You don’t get to leave, so the Bride has to defend herself from the consequences of her decision, still in her wedding dress. Which as Chris pointed out, is odd, considering it’s her family’s property. No clothing better suited to combat?

Confusing matters considerably further is a flashback (I guess) to happier times on a beach somewhere, whose purpose escapes me, except for providing a nice vacation for Jason Patric. What these lengthy scenes certainly do, is sap the film of any momentum as survival horror. Then again, the film does plenty of that itself, with endless scenes of the characters talking and talking and talking and… you get the idea. It’s a pity, because the violence, when it shows up, is done with some energy. Burn seems to be doing quite a lot of her own stunts, to good effect, and there’s nice use of improvised weaponry. The chainsaw shown on the poster is not just there for show either, providing perhaps the film’s most memorable moment.

Not that there’s exactly a lot of competition, admittedly. I found myself frequently thinking of ways this could have been improved. “Being roughly thirty minutes shorter” would be a good start. Alternatively, could potentially have been fun if the seven bridesmaids had also been assassins, fighting for the Bride. Why is it just the groomsmen? There, it feels like a sure-fire case of diminishing returns, with most of them more annoying than anything else. This is especially true of Gigandet whose character is perpetually droning on about the speech he has to give. Pancho Moler as T-Bone is perhaps the only one to make an impression. It’s all a garbled mess, which seems poorly constructed, and only occasionally delivering on the wildness of its premise. 

Dir: Timothy Woodward Jr.
Star: Natalie Burn, Cam Gigandet, Ser’Darius Blain, Orlando Jones