Month: August 2026

Street Queens

  By

★★
“Respect the hustle.”

This gets an extra half-star, simply for trying to go in some unexpected directions. I’ve seen enough of these urban flicks to know the template from which they are largely stamped. Now and again, this doesn’t so much colour outside the lines, as forget about the lines entirely. It doesn’t always work. God knows, it doesn’t always work. Still, I respect the attempt. It used the word “duplicitous” inside the first minute, and you get a voice-over saying things like, “The crimson stains of her actions seemed to fade momentarily, offering a fleeting illusion of absolution. A fragile attempt to reconcile the duality of her existence.” That’s some fancy-ass, hi-falutin’ language for a film in this sub-genre. 

Unfortunately, it also manages to be an incoherent mess. Perhaps it makes sense to those involved in the production. I note that, on the IMDb, there are six writers. Okay, technically, one “created by”, one writer, a story editor, two story consultants AND a “screenplay by”. It feels as if they were all operating independently, and only met each other at the movie’s premiere. Because I cannot offer much more insight to the plot than the official synopsis. To wit, “Three formidable women, Nia (Lindsay), Bella (Hankerson), and Dragon (Love) rise to power in the male-dominated realm of organized crime.” Even here, I have questions. For it’s not exactly ‘male-dominated’ – the subject of gender barely crops up. 

Indeed, it seems the trio’s biggest threat is also a woman, the very strange Goldie (Rosario J Anglin), who also goes by another name. “I love blood, that’s why they call me the Stallion,” she says. Um, what? I can see that leading to a nickname like the Tiger, or Wolf. But a male herbivore? Though I will say, she might be the best character here, simply because she acts permanently off her face on pharmaceuticals. It’s disconcerting, and if I’m not sure I’d call it good acting, you will remember it. The basic idea is that our heroines decide to get in on the drug trade, after first robbing a high-stakes gambling night. However, the illusion there is rather fragile, given it seems to be taking place in a studio apartment.

Anyway, they use the seed money obtained there to bribe Dr. Martin (Barnhardt) into supplying them with opioids. Lots of opioids. This doesn’t go down well with a number of people, eventually leading to the trio becoming the target of a robbery themselves. Things seem to get sorted, until a “Six months later” caption, further violence, and we are informed that Street Queens 2 will be coming soon. I’m unsure whether this is a threat or a promise. The coolest thing here might be the animated, comic-book style opening credits; it’s certainly the last point at which much of this makes any sense. It did keep me watching – more or less. Just do not ask me probing questions about anything that transpired. 

Dir: Jibril Haynes
Star: Madeline Lindsay, Khristee Love, Gloria Hankerson, Malik Barnhardt

Saints, Spies, and Six-Gun Outlaws: Outlaw Women of Arizona, by Mike Gavin

  By

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

This is a slim little book – more of a booklet, really, coming in at only 74 pages in length. But since it combines both our topic of discussion and local interest, because I live in Arizona, it was an easy decision to pick up a copy, after Dieter brought it to my attention. It does use quite a loose definition of “outlaw” – it is something only really discussed in the book’s epilogue, dividing them into three categories. Most obviously, are the ones Gavin calls “The Breakers of Law”, such as stagecoach robber Pearl Hart, whose exploits were dramatized in The Woman Who Robbed the Stagecoach. “Their crimes were against the statutes of the state.” 

As well as Hart, this covers Eva Dugan, the only woman executed in Arizona, who was hung in 1930 [Not-so fun fact: the executioner misjudged the drop, causing Dugan to be decapitated!], and the state’s most notorious killer, Winnie Ruth Judd, “The Trunk Murderess”. Are these latter two what I’d call “outlaws”? Or just criminals? There is a difference, albeit perhaps more so in perception than dictionary definition. Although there is also uncertainty as to whether both Bugan and Judd even committed the murders of which they were convicted. It is kinda disappointing that, in the true sense of the word, one woman who committed one (1) robbery, is about all Gavin could find in the history of the state, and back to when it was a territory.

Nor am I entirely convinced they “stood against power”, as Gavin claims. That feels more like an attempt to force post-feminist ideology onto them, though it might be more applicable to his third category, “The Breakers of Power… Women whose very existence challenged the authority of the state itself.” In this, he puts Apache warrior Lozen (whom I’d first heard of in the Warrior Women series hosted by Lucy Lawless); entrepreneur China Mary of Tombstone; and Teresa Urrea, the “Saint of Cabora.” who became a Joan of Arc-like figure for Mexican freedom fighters, on both sides of the border. But, again: Lozen is the only one whose “challenge of authority” seems like it was a conscious act. 

In between, we find “the Breakers of Convention… women whose primary crime was a refusal to be caged by the rigid expectations of their society.” These might be the most interesting figures, and it’s here where the limited space perhaps hurts most. While it’s laudable Gavin sticks to facts, without engaging in the speculation often seen around the likes of Calamity Jane, the average space allowed here is barely half a dozen pages. It’s enough to sketch only the basic details of a life, when some of them deserve much greater exploration. Pauline Cushman’s life as a Civil War spy, turned de facto sheriff, certainly merits more detail that her Wikipedia page provides. As a pointer towards some topics for further research, this is adequate. Just don’t expect much more. 

Author: Mike Gavin
Publisher: Self-published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Stand-alone volume.

Barbaric Acts

  By

★★★½
“Revenge has never been so… messy.”

This begins with a caption detailing the horrendous number of gun deaths annually in Brazil, including several thousand per year in police actions. Given the synopsis, I wondered how the film was going to reconcile this with its own subject – would the answer to gun violence be… more gun violence? The answer is, the film doesn’t really bother to try, instead embracing the contradictions in a way that permits no logical conclusion. Indeed, it fails to offer one. The original title translates as Barbaric Times – Act I: Revenge Therapy, hinting at more to come – this explains, if not excuses, the abrupt and unfinished ending.

Carla (Abreu) is a happily married attorney, until her daughter is shot during a botched street robbery. This sends her spiralling down into an increasingly dark place, as it becomes clear there will be no conventional closure, the case simply being one of too many for the authorities. A self-help group doesn’t, and nor does mercenary vigilante justice, the operative in question believing one dead thug is as good as any other. Her husband (Mello) leaves Carla as she won’t let go, and her spiral culminates in an attempt to shoot herself in the same spot as her daughter. Yet this proves a potential turning point, Carla realizing only one person can take revenge for her. But how far up the chain should her quest for vengeance take Carla?

It certainly gets you into the head of its heroine, on her descent into psychological hell. The refusal to take a stance regarding the morality of her position is admirable, and I found myself pulled first one way, then the other. I particularly enjoyed Carla yanking the rug out from under the pacifist proclamations of the self-help group’s leader (Lemmertz), by offering her the murderer of her parents on a plate. I suspect it’s this kind of moral equivalency which led to some of the more sniffy critical opinions in the film’s home country. Me? I acknowledge and respect the position that, yes, sometimes violence is the solution, thank you very much.

Aside from the abrupt ending, it does feel stretched quite thin, and the pacing is a little weird, with the narrative bouncing around in time. It surges with a pulse-pounding chase sequence through the streets after Carla encounters the criminal responsible. Then it circles with a notable lack of aim or purpose for extended periods, before reeling you back in with a change of direction. The overall impact is positive, and occasionally shocking, such as the discovery that in Brazil, buying a car involves casually deciding the degree of bullet-proofing you want. Bernstein intends it to be the first in a trilogy about violence in Brazilian society. On the strength of this, I hope he gets the chance to make further installments, despite clearly being more interested in asking hard questions than providing difficult answers. 

Dir: Marcos Bernstein
Star: Cláudia Abreu, César Mello, Júlia Lemmertz, Alexandre Borges
a.k.a. Tempos de Barbárie – Ato I: Terapia da Vingança

Abandoned: Angelique’s Isle

  By

★★
“Alone: the 1845 edition.”

This is based on the true story of Angelique Mott. In 1845, she and her husband Charlie were part of a prospecting expedition which landed on Isle Royale, an island in the middle of Lake Superior. The objective was to prospect for copper, and when their search was successful, the Motts were left to guard the claim, in the expectation they’d be there for only a couple of weeks, before being relieved. However, nobody showed up, and the couple were left to fend for themselves through a ferocious mid-Western winter. They ran entirely out of food before Christmas, but Angelique was not rescued until May, after more than ten months as a castaway – by which point, Charlie had passed away.

It’s an impressive story of wilderness survival, in the face of incredible hardship, so what went wrong here? It’s mostly the plotting, which manages to squander almost all the tension inherent in the story. As the tagline above suggests, we’re big fans of survival show Alone [albeit while sitting safely on the couch, munching Doritos and passing critical comment on the contestants’ fire-making skills], and I was hoping for something similar here. I mean, it’s reported that one of the ways she survived was “by pulling out her own hair, plaiting the strands, and creating snares with it, by which she caught rabbits.” That’s hard-core, and is the kind of detail which would have brought the move alive. 

Instead, we get almost nothing about the details of how Angelique survives on a daily level. The film also makes it seem Isle Royale was tiny, but it’s actually over two hundred square miles in size – now, it has become the least visited national park in the continental US. Instead, we get a lot of the couple just sitting around, looking sadder and hungrier by the scene. Dramatic tension is limited to Charlie going a bit mad, which apparently did take place shortly before he died. I did wonder if, after his passing, Angelique was going to go all Uruguayan rugby team on him, but she just closes up the shack and moves into another shelter. [The ground was perhaps too hard for burial]

As something of a saving grace, the film does a good job building its characters. Angelique (Jones) is an interesting character, depicted here as a Christian, but one whose heritage was from the Ojibwe tribe. In particular, she’s shown as close to her grandmother (Young),  giving her a mixed cultural identity. Charlie (Carrick) is less well-defined, though does have a very nice beard. The photography also helps, though it appears Thunder Bay in Ontario, stood in for the real Isle Royale. It still captures the terrible isolation and the ferocious climate, which explains why there has never been a permanent settlement established on the island. But this is not the story I wanted to see, and I don’t feel it does justice to the tenacity displayed by the real character.

Dir: Marie-Hélène Cousineau, Michelle Derosier
Star: Julia Jones, Charlie Carrick, Tantoo Cardinal, Aden Young

Night of the Hunted

  By

★½
“The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable”

It has got to the point where ‘A Shudder Original’ has become more a threat than a promise. I was hoping for much more from Khalfoun, who gave us the brilliant Maniac remake. However, here he is hogtied by a terrible script, more interested in providing left-wing political messaging than  entertainment – the very definition of “woke”. At one point, the heroine actually says, “My whole life has been about pleasing men.” Seems like a you problem, honey. But it sums up the tone of this whole misbegotten endeavour. Though to be fair, watching this a week before the Presidential election didn’t help: I reached my annual quota of smug bullshit months ago.

The missteps begin almost immediately, when we’re introduced to pharmaceutical executive Alice (Rowe), who is about to leave a convention, being clumsily reminded by her husband at home that she has a fertility appointment. Seconds later, we discover she’s having an affair with co-worker John (Scippio). “What a great way to get our empathy!” said no audience, ever. On the way home, they pull into a gas-station only to find it’s the bullseye for a sniper (Stanic), who has already killed the sole overnight employee. He’s operating from a nearby billboard (top) which, in one of the film’s few interesting moments, can be read in two, diametrically opposite ways. Paul is quickly dispatched leaving Alice alone, except for a walkie-talkie through which she communicates with the active shooter.

Turns out, he has a laundry list of grudges, with his lines apparently created by a Twitter-scraping bot, or possibly an AI told to parody right-wing talk radio. I certainly can’t believe it took four human writers to come up with this garbage. It’s exactly the kind of scenario where the killer doesn’t need a reason, and all the efforts to give him one backfire completely. Compare and contrast the more effective Downrange, and you’ll see what I mean. It may have had its flaws, going too far into enigmatic. It’s still preferable to having the killer self-identify as “The right-wing nut, the conspiracy theorist, stop the lie, storm the Capitol,  election fraud, domestic terrorist, anti-vaxxer, anti-this, anti-that.” You’ll be forgiven for mentally tuning out mid-sentence.

Things only get worse thereafter. For naturally, the shooter idiotically ends up leaving his position of strength, and wandering around inside the gas station. This is so he can drop vague hints as to the specific nature of his motivation (which seems curiously focused on Alice), but more importantly, allows the heroine to battle him hand-to-hand. Do not expect either of these aspects to approach remotely satisfying, and my reaction when the end credits rolled was “That’s it? Really?” Of all the reasons I watch genre movies, getting political lectures from Frenchmen is pretty far down the list. This has pissed away all of Khalfoun’s goodwill, and a good chunk of that for producer Alexandre Aja too. As for Shudder? I will not be subscribing.

Dir: Franck Khalfoun
Star: Camille Rowe, Stasa Stanic, Jeremy Scippio, J. John Bieler
[A version of this review previously appeared on Film Blitz]

Big Bad Sis

  By

★★★
“Social soap with some punch.”

Despite this being from Hong Kong, I’m actually tagging this one in the “Pinky” category, because in a lot of ways, it feels closer to a pinky violence movie from Japan, being basically the story of a posse of bad girls. Except, this being Hong Kong in the seventies, where even juvenile delinquents were expected to hold down a responsible job. In the case of Fung Ying (Ping), this is working in a massive garment shop. It feels almost like prison labour, not least because of various predatory types, to whom Fung takes exception, becoming an unofficial shop steward. It helps she’s a bit of a bad girl herself, a former gang member.

She teams up with a couple of colleagues, and starts helping her co-workers solve their problems. For instance, one girl has been forced into prostitution to pay off her brother’s gambling debts, or another who was dumped by her sleazy boyfriend after she got pregnant (once you get past the first five minutes, there’s a theme here that, if not all men are scum, all scum are men). Needless to say, Fung’s past comes back to haunt her. The factory owner, who I guess is fairly decent as sweatshop proprietors go, is subject to a hostile takeover attempt by her old boss Dai Goa (Hsieh). When Fung derails this, he’s none too happy, and kidnaps her with the intention of burning her alive.

The middle of this is rather too much social drama for my tastes: if Ken Loach was to make a martial arts movie, the end result might be something like this. Fung and her allies seem more concerned with social equity, forming a union to fight against the exploitation of the working classes, sexist men, and so on. Not quite what I expected from a Shaw Brothers production in the mid-seventies. It all comes off as a bit earnest, though the copious nudity – all female, naturally – makes it a little difficult to accept fully any messages of feminist empowerment. It does, however, act as a lovely time-capsule of Hong Kong in that era, in every area from hairdressing through to home decoration.

While well-made, it’s a bit dull until the end. Fung’s kidnapping is followed by a rescue attempt, which leads to a massive extended brawl on a building site, that’s as good as I’ve seen from any heroine of the era. This takes full advantage of the environment, Fung swinging a shovel as if born to it. Naturally, violence cannot be seen to prevail, so this ends in the moralistic style you would, with the authorities – notable by their absence to this point – showing up. Fung and her old pal Shing (Chen) take responsibility for their actions, and are led off to the cheers of their workmates. This finale goes a long way to redeem things, though it’s still guilty of putting its message before the mayhem.

Dir: Chung Sun
Star: Ping Chen, Chung Wang, Chen Kuan-Tai, Hsieh Wang

Robber Girls

  By

★★
“Desperate Living”

There’s a moment here which is probably a good litmus test for how you’ll react to this overall. The heroine, princess Emily (Bühlmann), opens a locket to look at the picture of her dead father. Only, it’s actually John Waters. If you do not know who that is, this film is probably not for you. If you do know who he is, understand why he is called the ‘Pope of Trash’, and have a limited tolerance for his kind of movies, it is probably not for you either: I fall into this category. I was at least forewarned by the synopsis: “A castle maid-turned-fugitive joins a group of sex workers to create a gang of female bandits that fight against the sexually deviant patriarchy.”

The maid thing is a little confusing. For Emily does bring along her maid Trizi (Muller), after she discovers her family is going to marry her off to an ugly aristocrat for financial purposes. But Trizi is ancillary to proceedings. They take refuge in the woods, and engage in some light highway robbery, before seeking refuge in a brothel which, I must say, is staffed by the most collectively ugly group of hookers I’ve seen. At least one of whom is male. Her mother (Prusa, who may be the best thing about the film) captures her and forcibly brings her back to the impending wedding. Only for her new friends to interrupt the ceremony with a heavily-armed objection to the nuptials.

It’s all heavily and deliberately anachronistic: the setting is almost traditional fairy-tale, but littered with modern technology, and copious amount of contemporary sexual freedom, which is portrayed as being the path to happiness. With the exception of Emily’s poor but noble boyfriend, Jozef (Althaus), who is utterly subservient and completely useless, men are evil swine, typically slaves to their sexual deviancies. Mind you, women aren’t much better: indeed, the feminist collective set up in the woods quickly starts to fall apart over ideological differences. I have to respect the way Monti seems thoroughly cynical about… well, everything. Going by the way things unfold, she seems generally to be in agreement with Chairman Mao: “Power grows out of the barrel of a gun”

The presence of Waters makes sense, because he would appear to be the spiritual father here, as much as he’s depicted as Emily’s actual father. In particular, this is consciously attempting to press the viewer’s shock buttons. Realizing this, largely negates the effort, and in the main, it ends up feeling like an exercise in trying far too hard. I kept expecting Udo Kier to show up; that might have helped a bit. Though as novel ways of death go, being killed by slipping on a severed penis, falling backwards from a window and getting impaled on a gravestone crucifix, certainly scores points for imagination. Again, how you react to the last sentence is a good indication of whether or not to bother with this. It’s probably less fun and more didactic than that makes it sound. 

Dir: Carla Lia Monti
Star: Nina Bühlmann, Myriam Muller, Alexandra Prusa, Nils Althaus
a.k.a. Räuberinnen

The Doxies Penalty, by Madeleine E. Robins

  By

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

One of my favorite mystery series by a contemporary author is Madeleine E. Robins’ Sarah Tolerance series. I’ve read and reviewed all three of the earlier books (Point of Honour, Petty Treason and The Sleeping Partner), the most recent of those published in 2011 (seven years after the second one). The long gap between books had convinced me that the series was to be a trilogy, so I was delighted when this continuation was published in 2025! It didn’t disappoint.

This series should definitely be read in order; but for the benefit of readers who may be starting it here, the author provides a couple of paragraphs of essential backstory to introduce our heroine, and precedes the text itself with the short notation “October 1811. Another London.” That cryptic note is meant to clue us to the fact that this is a slightly alternate Regency England, in which Queen Charlotte, rather than Prince George, was initially named regent for her husband. But in the third book, her ill-health required the naming of a new regent, so Prince George got the job belatedly; and this book really has no noticeable alternate-world features.

So, for the benefit of readers who haven’t read, or don’t remember, the earlier books or my earlier reviews, Miss Tolerance (born Sarah Brereton) is a scion of a lower-nobility family, which disowned her as a teen when she ran off with her brother’s fencing master. (The pair were in love, and would have married if her father hadn’t forbade it.) After her man died young, Sarah took shelter with the one relative who’d have her, an also-disowned aunt who owns a high-end brothel (fortunately, there’s a small cottage out back); and rather than resort to prostitution like many young women in her situation, she’s created a profession for herself as an “Agent of [discreet] Inquiry.” (She’s smart, inquisitive, able to blend in a variety of social settings and pass as a man if she has to; and since she packs pistols and learned how to fence from her late life-partner, she can handle rough stuff if it’s thrown at her.)

Our tale here begins about six months after the preceding one. My general comments about the previous books in terms of style, writing quality, literary vision, etc. would apply here as well. There’s no bad language as such here (Sarah can cuss at times, when trying circumstances evoke it, but Robins doesn’t quote her), and no explicit sex; but there’s definitely reference to prostitution and other illicit sex –Sarah behaves with a sense of honor, but her aunt’s a madame, her best female friend is a sex worker, and her two clients in this book are retired prostitutes.

One only appears in the first chapter, where Sarah’s recovered some stolen jewelry for her. But the case brought to her by the second one will be more knotty. Elderly Annie Pouter (who used to work for Sarah’s aunt) has invested her life savings in a mysteriously-managed “Fund” that apparently caters to former “ladies of the evening” who have some money put by, and which promised a generous rate of return; but the payments ceased after the first few. But what starts as an investigation into possible financial malfeasance will soon turn much darker….

There will be some bloody violence in this book before the last page is turned; though it’s not made any more grisly than it needs to be, and we get a ghastly look at the ugliest faces of the Regency flesh trade (which may involve pre-teen kids!), opium addiction, the ravages of pre-antibiotic era STDs, and the general depths of moral perversion that fallen humans are capable of. This is definitely not simply a time-marking book; it advances the series narrative in significant ways (and it’s clear by the end that there will be at least one more book). We’re introduced here to greater London’s Roma community (referred to here as “Travelers”), with a couple of characters who I’m sure we’ll be meeting again. More importantly, there are a couple of MAJOR developments in Sarah’s personal life. And at the end, she’s presented with a serious moral decision.

Do I recommend that you read his book, if you like the genre and setting, and aren’t put off by some gritty elements? Absolutely; but I strongly recommend that you read the other three books first!

Author: Madeleine E. Robins
Publisher: Faery Cat Press; available from Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
Book 4 of 4 in the Sarah Tolerance series. A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

A Woman Scorned

  By

★★★
“Hell hath no fury?”

This had a fair number of decent and well-done elements. However, it very much feels like these are balanced by the aspects which fall short of adequate. How you react to this will likely be determined by your ability to overlook the latter, and appreciate the former. The basic idea is lean and mean. Sisters Jas (Purvis) and Laura (Pauley) are on a country weekend, when they encounter a car-load of men led by the particularly sleazy Randy (North). This leads to a home-invasion, a dead Laura, and Jas going on a rampage of revenge through everyone Randy can throw at her. Fair enough there, with enough brutal violence to leave the most blood-thirsty satisfied.

But I have questions. So many questions. Why does one sister have an American accent? Why are the villains so utterly incompetent? I mean, they can’t even tie Jas up for ten seconds – never mind taking advantage of the many, many opportunities to dispose of her entirely. Don’t even get me started on the gas canister scene: hello, throw it through the window? How does Jas, who has never been in the area, magically know the location of their headquarters, and so can head straight for it? Where did she acquire that very particular set of skills? All we get is a passing reference to her having taken a self-defense class – all I can say is, these lessons must have been given by John Wick. 

Because Jas goes from zero to stabbing someone in the neck, in about thirty seconds after finding the body of her sister, and takes more damage than a crash-test dummy, without flinching. As for calling the authorities? It’s vastly over-rated. This really leaves her character with nowhere to go for the rest of the film: a slower escalation would probably have been more satisfying. None of the above flaws are necessarily show-stoppers by themselves. The damage criticism, for example, could equally be levelled at the heroine in Revenge. However, they all combine to chip away at this film’s overall entertainment value, in effect leaving it doing the Hokey-Pokey: one step forward, one step back. 

This is before we get to specific elements, like the performances. These are similarly over the place, particularly among the villains. Fortunately, North – who likely has most acting to do, since Purvis’s performance mostly requires screaming – makes for a pleasantly hateable bad guy. There’s some spectacularly bad CGI fire; the practical stuff is fine, with energetic blood spatter, and everyone selling each bit of damage with the enthusiasm of someone auditioning for the WWE. This momentum is sufficient to paper over some of the flaws, though it would be optimistic to say it covers them all, or anywhere close to that. But I am a simple man, with simple needs. Consequently, I’ll always look somewhat kindly on a movie which possesses zero pretensions and a large bucket of red-coloured corn syrup.

Dir: Rebecca J Matthews and Michael Hoad
Star: Megan Purvis, Aaron-Jon North, Hannah Pauley

Gone to Ground

  By

★★½
“Start your engines…”

This one is fairly fringey, in terms of qualifications for the site. But I do feel, any film where a woman picks up and wields a chainsaw with bad intentions… Yeah, that’s pretty much a golden ticket to inclusion. You will have to be quite patient though. Very patient. It begins with a car crash which leaves Magda (De Mol), very much the worse for wear and badly concussed, in a gully off the road. She is rescued by Guy (Breck), an elderly gentleman who lives nearby, and who insists on nursing Magda back to health. However, matters are complicated by some rather dubious people, including Justin (Mills), who are after Magda and/or something in her possession. 

For a large part, this is really more of a relationship drama between Magda and Guy, with the only tension coming from cut-aways to Justin’s attempts at locating her. There’s a gulf in age, life experiences and attitudes between Magda, a Polish immigrant with a bleak past, as well as a murky present, and Guy, a former soldier who now has Alzheimer’s and is struggling against his son’s attempts to put him in a care home. But, probably inevitably, the two begin to discover a mutual understanding and respect. Hands up, anyone who did not see that coming, and pay more attention next time. Though matters there aren’t helped by her being economical with the truth, in part due to convenient cinematic amnesia, until Justin arrives with a truth delivery. 

De Mol does not appear to be Polish, and to be honest, this is often rather too apparent. Her line readings are stilted – admittedly, probably deliberately so – but if there’s any point to Magda’s ethnic origins, it’s outweighed by the clunkiness of the resulting performance. I was also significantly distracted by the logistics of a man with Alzheimer’s, who must be in his nineties (given his stories of flying a Lancaster bomber in World War 2), pulling a full-grown, unconscious woman from her car, out of a gorge, and back to his house – all by himself. My father is in his nineties, and I guarantee you, that ain’t happening. Later, Guy falls over, and can’t even get up by himself, so…

Things definitely kick up a gear when Justin arrives, and we find out a great deal more about the realities of events. We’re over eighty minutes in before that happens, and I do reckon it should have taken place considerably sooner, as there’s only so much passive-aggressive chit-chat I can stand between Ray and Magda. There is one strangely affecting scene right before the end where Magda finally opens up completely and, while it certainly leaves me looking more kindly on the film, I wish this had also happened much quicker. [Its poignancy is enhanced by knowing that Breck passed away in 2022; this was shot back in 2020] While the journey is clearly intended as the thing here, I’d have welcomed a straighter line to the eventual, chainsaw-ish destination. 

Dir: Phil Peel
Star: Melissa De Mol, Alan Breck, Alastair Thomson Mills