Author: Jim McLennan

Birth of a Savage

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★★
“Not really very savage at all”

This is one of those films where the same person wrote, directed and starred in it, and once again, the results illustrate the problems with such an endeavour. Almost any project will benefit from an external perspective which can offer constructive criticism, but when this is removed, the flaws typically end up multiplied. That said, this isn’t terrible. I think Riches the screenwriter comes out best, with a story which bypasses the usual cliches of urban storylines e.g. gangster rising out of the gutter, and does offer some genuine surprises. Director Riches also gets some points for restraint on the soundtrack front; it’s not comprised entirely of her mates rapping badly. 

It’s as an actress that Riches is weakest. The story has her playing Tiana, a woman whose entirely life has been dogged by poor relationships with men, from a distant father through bad boyfriends, to a controlling and eventually abusive husband, who kicks her and young daughter Erica (Session) out on the street. The only thing keeping Tiana sane is the classes she gives at the local martial arts school, owned by Mr. Lewis (Hoo), and she decided to use these skills to make bad men pay for their behaviour. This comes close to home, because she suspects that her sister, Rochelle (Amor), is also in an abusive relationship. These suspicions prove well-founded, though in one of those genuine surprises, not quite as Tiana believes.

The problem is that Tiana is never even slightly convincing as a bad-ass. Her idea of martial-arts training is, I kid you not, jumping jacks, and most of the fights we see are poorly-staged and/or brief, I suspect out of necessity. It’s the kind of film which needs to go a lot harder than the lead actress is capable of. “Concerned mother” is within her acting range; “angel of vengeance” is not. I did appreciate how the script does not attempt to go #AllMen on us, with a couple of sympathetic male characters. Mr. Lewis is probably the most well-developed, though he does fall right into the wheel-house of the “wise Oriental spouting philosophical insights” trope instead. But he does deliver some unexpected truths.

The structure is either clunky or interesting, and I’m not sure which. It begins with her abducting one of her targets, then leaps back decades to tell Tiana’s story from the very beginning. I’m not certain anything useful is gained by this, and by the time it circles back, we’ve largely forgotten why we are supposed to care. The final act is the best in most departments, including Riches apparently doing one actual stunt which genuinely surprised me, and proceedings that capture a down-to-earth tone, missing in dumb plot threads like Mr. Lewis giving the dojo to Tiana. To be brutally honest, I’d not blame the viewer if they’d bailed by that point, having decided Riches needs to focus her talents on one area.

Dir: Jezar Riches
Star: Jezar Riches, Howard Hoo, Cheri Amor, Dalaini Session

 

High Heat

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★★★½
“Now we’re cooking.”

Reading other reviews, this seems like an exercise in managing expectations. It is, very much, a tongue-in-cheek entry in the action genre. If you’re expecting something serious or even marginally realistic, I can certainly see how you’d be disappointed. But as a dry satire, I found it worked more often not. It takes place on Opening Night at the Etoile Rouge restaurant, where Ana (Kurylenko) is beavering away as head chef in the kitchen, while husband Ray (Johnson) glad hands things in the front of house. Except, both have a secret. Ray’s is that he ran up over a million dollars in gambling debts to Dom (WWE star Page). His creditor now intends to burn down the restaurant and make Ray collect the insurance. 

Ana is not willing to stand by and watch her life’s work go up in smoke, which is where her secret comes in. For she is a former KGB agent, and is more than capable of taking out the low-level goons Dom initially sends in. That forces the gangster to up his game, and hire some bigger guns (literally, even if the mercs demand a catered lunch should the job takes more than four hours). However, Ana has resources she can call on as well, in the shape of former fellow spy Mimi (Doubleday). Though Mimi may not be entirely pleased to get the call from Ana, given the way they previously parted company. Their unfinished business also needs to be resolved. 

Initially, it’s hard to tell this is parody, but it plays not dissimilar to Cat Run. I had my suspicions from the facile way Ray accepts his wife was a Soviet asset. But the comedic aspects really kick in with the arrival of Mimi, her sniper husband and their daughters who feel like teenage versions of the twins from The Shining. They’re as intent on working through their relationship issues – mostly through bickering – as much as helping Ana. The rest of the supporting cast are along the same lines. Larger than life caricatures, yet ones that are amusing to encounter, such as Gary the masseuse, who would rather be anywhere else than storming a restaurant occupied by a pissed-off chef.

Kurylenko still carries herself very well, both looking the part and cracking heads with some style. It’s mostly firearm action until the end, when there’s an extended brawl that offers a decent payoff. Not all of the humour works: Mimi and her husband are a distinctly mixed bag. The structure is also kinda sloppy. Initially, Dom is set up to be the big bad; by the end, he has become almost an afterthought. Yet it’s still a breezy bit of fun. I could have sworn I’d written about this before: however, I’m damned if I can find my review. I’d definitely heard of it, and can’t figure out why it slipped through the net. Although it may have taken two years, I’m glad to have finally caught up with it.

Dir: Zach Golden
Star: Olga Kurylenko, Don Johnson, Dallas Page, Kaitlin Doubleday

Fighter’s Life

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★★½
“Knocked down by the clichés”

If you fed an AI all the sports movies ever made, and then asked it to write a script, what you’d get is likely something close to this. Here’s a challenge: write down ten clichés you find in a film like this, then watch the movie (conveniently embedded below), and see how many show up. I’m willing to bet most of those on your list would be present here. The main saving grace is that the execution is done with a complete lack of self-awareness. It feels as if the writers genuinely had no clue they were treading a path which was more of a groove. Everyone involved in this is so earnest, it just about gets away with it.

Here’s the plot. Let’s count the clichés. Xia Yun (Xia) dreams of a career in MMA (#1). However, she’s stuck working in her family restaurant (#2), run by her father after her mother left them (#3). She gets a chance to enter a prestigious tournament (#4), the prize money for which could clear her father’s debts (#5). However, her trainer comes under pressure for Xia to throw a match (#6). Despite this, she reaches the semi-finals, where she suffers a setback (#7), losing to a Brazilian fighter. It’s subsequently revealed her opponent cheated (#8), giving our heroine the chance to win it all (#9), in front of her mother (#10). Oh, yeah, add a freebie: there might be a life-threatening illness involved at some point as well (#bonus).

The other issue is, there’s a lot of stuff outside the octagon to cram in, especially when the film is only seventy-two minutes long. There’s surprisingly little actual fighting in it: certainly more drama, and possibly even more training sequences, of one form or another. This is a bit of a shame, since Xia Jiao looks more convincing than the actresses in many a Hollywood film. Not least in her quick hands, which suggest she might be a fighter trained to act, rather than an actress trained to fight. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know: if not, then a “well done” to Xia for making it look convincing. Or at least convincing enough to fool my (admittedly, untrained) eyes.

The brief running-time may work in the film’s favour, in that it can hardly be accused of outstaying its welcome. It’s technically solid, and though clearly smaller in scale, doesn’t look cheap. The components are in pace for a decent, quick-paced action film; it’s just that the makers don’t appear particularly interested in delivering one. They seem more interested in the dramatic elements: as noted above, those aspects are absolutely nothing you have not seen, many times before, and the execution does little to elevate them. A hat-tip to Denis for pointing me in the direction of this one: I’m always looking for suggestions, and it certainly wasn’t the worst I’ve seen – even this week. There’s just little here to merit a second viewing.

Dir: Huang Binhao
Star: Xia Jiao, Yu Shan Chuan, Bai Yao, Sarah Chen

Duchess

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★★
“Largely ignoble.”

Marshall has been involved in our genre back to 1998, when he wrote Killing Time. Since then, there have been some classics (The Descent), but the trend has been gently downhill. Of late, he seems to be doing a lot of work with wife Charlotte Kirk (a mere 22 years his younger). The last here was The Lair, which Kirk co-wrote with her husband and starred in. The same is true for this, just to slightly lesser effect, and with even more derivative results. This feels in particular like an early Guy Ritchie film, with larger than life underworld figures, hyper violence and snappy dialogue. Well, those are the goals, anyway. Execution is a different thing, to varying degrees.

The heroine is Scarlett Monaghan (Kirk), rescued from her low-rent pickpocket career by international man of mystery, Robert McNaughton (Winchester), and whisked off to a life of luxury in the Canary Islands. Turns out her new boyfriend is a diamond trafficker, and that’s a very risky business to be in, given the huge profits to be made. While he has a loyal cadre of associates, such as Danny Oswald (Pertwee), not everyone in his circle is trustworthy. After an associate tries to rape Scarlett, and is killed by her, the violence and treachery escalate to the point where she and Robert are left for dead. She isn’t prepared to let it lie, and comes back from the grave to take revenge on those responsible.

Bits of this work reasonably well, with Kirk making a good impression. [Also: you’ll understand why the director married her… I now move rapidly on!] Monaghan is a character with a rough-hewn charm, and a fierce loyalty to those for whom she cares, be that friends, family (with the exception of her father, played by Colm Meaney) or Robert. The big problem here is pacing. The movie is almost two hours long, and barely the last twenty minutes are involved in the interesting stuff: Scarlett’s vengeance. Even when this shows up, it’s hardly The Bride taking on the Crazy 88’s. Indeed, you could argue the most fun action is the opening scene of the movie, which then rolls into a flashback of how we got to that point.

Some of the violence is striking. Scarlett goes to extremes to extract information, and veteran actress Stephanie Beacham, playing Robert’s business partner, goes full Colombian necktie on a minion who tries to steal from her. This does feel at odds with the overall tone. It’s quite light in its atmosphere, populated by larger than life characters – Beacham’s sweary boss is the most obvious example – rather than aiming for gritty realism. This did a barely passable job of holding my attention. It probably should have joined proceedings considerably later, with all Scarlett’s London life largely irrelevant. Did appreciate the Peckham mentions though, having caught the train to work daily from there, back in the nineties. That I was more excited by this than 95% of the film, is likely a warning. 

Dir: Neil Marshall
Star: Charlotte Kirk, Philip Winchester, Sean Pertwee, Colin Egglesfield

The Baztan Trilogy

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The Baztan trilogy consists of three movies, based on the novels by Dolores Redondo. The setting for these is a small area in the Basque country of Spain, not far from the border with France. Much like the small-town English villages such as Miss Marple’s St. Mary Mead, or Death in Paradise‘s Honoré, the murder rate in this charming and picturesque area appears to rival that of a South American war-zone. I guess you can describe the series as Español negro, being a Mediterranean-based version of Nordic noir. Like those, you have a detective with a troubled past, a history that frequently seeps into her current life, They are investigating crimes resulting from what’s unquestionably the darker side of human nature, and the results are uncomfortably close to home.

In this trilogy, the heroine is Amaia Salazar, a former resident of the region who left under circumstances best described as murky. She joined the police force, rising through the ranks and going through a successful secondment to the FBI, where she distinguished herself. Amaia is now back in Spain, with her American artist husband, James. But, as ever in this kind of thing, the pull of her past is strong. She finds herself coming back to the Baztan region in which she grew up. There, the ghosts of history are lurking and ready to pose a challenge – perhaps equal to that of solving the brutal murders which are the reason for her return.

The trilogy includes the books El guardián invisible (The Invisible Guardian), Legado en los huesos (The Legacy of the Bones) and Ofrenda a la tormenta (Offering to the Storm). From 2017 through 2020, the books were made into three movies by Atresmedia Cine and its partners. Five years after the last of the books was published, Redondo wrote a prequel, La cara norte del corazón (The North Face of the Heart), describing Amaia’s youth and her time with the FBI in America. All four novels were optioned to Heyday Films for American adaptations in October 2021, but there has been almost no news since the original announcement. Still, with the Spanish movies all available on Netflix, the need for any English-language versions is questionable in my opinion. Such things rarely improve on, or even equal, the originals.

Hence, below you’ll find reviews of the three Spanish movies in order. Note: I haven’t read the books, so there will be no further discussion of them, or comparison to the films.

The Invisible Guardian

★★★½
“It’s never sunny in Baztan.”

I’ve traveled a fair bit around Spain and Mediterranean Europe in my time, and the weather was never as unremittingly grim as its depicted here. Things seem to unfold in a permanent downpour. Seriously: Chris and I pretty much were turning it into a drinking game by the end: take a swig every time a scene takes place in the rain. Only concern for the health of our livers prevented us. Googling tells me Baztan is fairly wet: around 55 inches a year. But it felt like most of that arrived during the 129 minute running-time of this film. I suspect David Fincher and Se7en have a lot to answer for, with rain = dark and foreboding atmosphere.

There’s certainly no shortage of that here, even setting meteorological considerations aside. It begins with the discovery of a young girl’s corpse by a river, stripped naked except for a local cake placed on her crotch. Pamplona detective Amaia Salazar (Etura) makes the connection to a previous murder and is sent to Baztan to take over the case. It’s the town where she grew up, and she still has family there. Though relations are still strained with her sister Flora (Mínguez), who runs a bakery in the town. She feels Amaia abandoned the family by “running off” to the United States. It’s not long before we discover their mother had issues, physically abusing Amaia as a child.

However, the main focus is the murders, with further victims turning up, all young girls whose bodies are posed in the same, ritualistic way. The investigation reveals these may be the latest in a series of killings going back fourteen years, which appear to be some kind of moral crusade by the perpetrator. Amaia gets into trouble with her colleagues, because one of the victims was having an affair with her brother-in-law, and she also conceals evidence connecting Flora’s bakery to the cake. She ends up being replaced on the case by Montés (Orella). If you think that’s going to stop Amaia, you clearly haven’t seen enough of this genre.

It does feel very much like the film could be relocated to the Scandinavian forests with very little trouble. There is some specifically local colour in the form of the “Basajaun”, a legendary – or perhaps not – creature, reputed to roam the woods. I suspect its going to play a larger part in the subsequent movies: while this does tidy up the main case, there are a number of loose ends, such as a cave containing a lot more remains. Etura does a good job of handling both the personal drama and the police elements: you may not agree with some of the choices, yet you can see why she made them. Amaia has been through hell, and that she still made something of her life is an admirable trait. A solid enough opening, which even lured Chris off her phone.

Dir: Fernando González Molina
Star: Marta Etura, Elvira Mínguez, Carlos Librado “Nene”, Francesc Orella

The Legacy of the Bones

★★★★
“Skeletons in the closet”

We jump ahead about a year for the second installment. Amaia Salazar (Etura) has now had the baby she announced she was expecting during the first film, and is adjusting to the need for balance between her career and motherhood, with her husband, James. After completing her maternity leave, she returns to work, and is put on a case of church desecration with cult undertones, at the request of the enigmatic Fr. Sarasola (Arias). This is tied to the Cagots, a historically persecuted group native to the region. Simultaneously, there is an ongoing string of murderers committing suicide, each leaving behind a one-word message: “Tartalo”. It’s a reference to a baby-eating giant from Basque mythology, and seems to be linked to the cave of remains found in the previous film.

Both cases take a deeply-personal turn, reflecting the family of Amaia’s long-standing association with the area. When tested for DNA, the bones left on the church altar are a match for her genetics, and her abusive mother Rosario (Sánchez), now kept in a psychiatric facility, scrawls “Taratalo” on the floor of the room in blood, after attacking an orderly.  Amaia is forced to uncover some very unpleasant truths about the history of her family – and, indeed, the way the region in general dealt with children perceived as unwanted or problematic. Her newborn son becomes part of the scenario as it unfolds, pushing the heroine close to the edge, as she picks her way towards solving the crimes of both the past and present.

This goes into some thoroughly dark places, building on the heavy atmosphere set up in the previous movie. For example, we already knew that Rosario is dangerous, and a patently unfit mother. But what we see her do in this film, goes beyond the mere abuse we previously saw. It’s fortunate that Amaia has a strong support network elsewhere in her family, such as Aunt Tía (Aixpuru), who can offer advice and assistance to help keep her niece on the relatively straight and narrow. To be honest, the revelations here would shake anyone to their core, and it’s testament to the heroine’s strength of character, that she is still able to function as a police detective, while the foundations of her life are being pulled out from under her.

The script does a very good job of keeping the multiple plot-threads functioning, moving each forward in turn, as information regarding the situation is discovered. While avoiding spoilers, it is a little hard to believe Amaia would be so in the dark about the situation in regard to her own family: you’d think Tia might have said something? However, there is an almost relentless grimness of tone here – and a lot more rain as well, with a flooded town being integral to the plot – which pulled me in with the inevitability of a rip tide. It might just about work as a standalone entity, yet you will certainly get more out of this, if you’ve seen the first movie and know where it’s coming from.

Dir: Fernando González Molina
Star: Marta Etura, Itziar Aizpuru, Imanol Arias, Susi Sánchez

Offering to the Storm

★★
“Gale force disappointment.”

Oh, dear. I think it’s probably been a very long while since I’ve been so underwhelmed by the finale of a trilogy. All the pieces were in place, after the first two entries, for a grandstand finish to the series. But the script basically fumbles things in every conceivable way, pushing to the front elements that you really don’t care about, while all but discarding things that seemed of crucial importance. There is an effort to tie everything together, with the various crimes from its predecessors being linked into an occult conspiracy in which members of a Satanic circle sacrifice baby girls, and receive worldly power in exchange. This aspect is okay, Amaia having to go up against a group whose power is embedded at the highest levels of local society. The creepiest element is perhaps that the sacrifices seem to work, though nobody seems too bothered about this. 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t gel well with the elements carried forward from the first two movies, and a lot of the elements that should be shocking or disturbing simple are not. The worst example is the identity of the cult’s “inside man”, which is so painfully obvious, you may find yourself yelling at the screen, and Amaia as she ploughs on with her investigation, completely oblivious to the threat. Little less blatant is the plot thread where husband James (Northover) is going back to America because his father is ill. We’ve seen enough in this genre to know that there is no possible way Amaia is going to end up accompanying him, regardless of how much she promises she will. The film seems convinced it is the first ever to use this device, to demonstrate how its dedicated, troubled detective has her priorities skewed. 

This somewhat ties into the whole fidelity subplot, which did nothing except make us (Chris especially) lose empathy for the lead character. In this installment, Amaia just does not seem as “heroic” as previously. I get that the pressure on her is building. But I would have preferred it to lean into the saying, “Hard times breed strong women.” There’s just too many occasions on which she breaks down and starts sobbing instead. Some of it may be justified: there’s the uncertainty about the fate of her mother, for example, who was last seen plunging into a flood-swollen mountain river. This is resolved. In about the least satisfactory way possible. At least it is addressed. Remember the “Basajaun”? Because the makers here clearly did not.

At 139 minutes, this is the longest of the trilogy, and you’ll be forgiven if you think it feels that way too. Rather than being led by the film, all too often we found ourselves ahead of it, and then having to wait for the plot and characters to catch up with what we had already figured out. We also ended up rolling our eyes heavily at some of the plot developments, such as the mother of a sacrificed baby acquiring some dynamite and using it to blow open the vault where her child is buried. Wait, what? It’s a shame, that after two films which did so much right, the third does goes wrong in so many different ways.

Dir: Fernando González Molina
Star: Marta Etura, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Carlos Librado “Nene”, Benn Northover

Deep Fear

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★★
“Shallow entertainment”

Naomi (Ghenea) is sailing a schooner single-handed in the Caribbean, returning it from Antigua to Grenada so it’ll be ready for a charter customer to take out. Her boyfriend, Jackson (Westwick) has already gone ahead to prepare things there. But a squall diverts Naomi off course, and she then stumbles across boat wreckage to which Maria (Gómez) and Jose (Coppet) are desperately clinging. They tell her there’s still a survivor trapped on the sea bottom, and Naomi dives down to rescue Tomas from his watery tomb. However, on returning to the surface with him, she gets a nasty surprise and finds her work is not over. For the survivors were also transporting 200 kg of cocaine.

Naomi is now key to salvaging it, whether she wants to be or not. Complicating matters is the presence of a large, predatory shark prowling the area, which makes simply going up and down from the sea bottom a perilous endeavour. Especially after one such encounter, where we get the immortal line, “The shark bit into the bags and now the shark is probably high on cocaine.” Sadly, hopes that this was going to become a sequel to Cocaine Bear never materialized [there is a film out there called Cocaine Shark, but it’s so bad, even a hardened connoisseur of badfilm like I, couldn’t get through the trailer] . Instead, there’s just an awful lot of sub-aqua shenanigans, and there’s really only so much SCUBA-ing I can take.

I will say, it all looks lovely. Malta actually stood in for the Caribbean, and if you’re looking for a picturesque tourist destination, combining beautiful scenery with clear water, it seems a good bet. However, as a thriller, it’s distinctly lacking in thrills, whether it’s a shark whose diet seems exclusively to consist of the bad people, through a cast for whom English is not their native tongue in many cases, to a heroine whose lips appear recently to have encountered a swarm of wasps [I note Ghenea’s credit in Zoolaander 2 as “Hot Shepherdess”]. The pacing is also off, especially early, when irrelevancies like Naomi and Jackson renting an apartment show up, serving no apparent purpose except delaying her arrival on the scene.

Gómez, whom you might remember from SexyKiller, is likely the best element the film has to offer, switching from cowering victim to manipulative sociopath. For instance, Maria conceals her nautical skills because if Naomi realizes she’s surplus to requirements after bringing up the coke, she might not be willing to do so. That kind of smarts is something the film needs to have more, ideally replacing the apparently endless amounts of moist mischief. I did like how the shark attacks don’t hold back on the blood, something you don’t see often. However, the creature rarely feels more than a toothy plot-device, thrown into scenes whenever the film-makers run out of other ways to generate tension. And that is far too often, to be honest.

Dir: Marcus Adams
Star: Mãdãlina Ghenea, Ed Westwick, Macarena Gómez, Stany Coppet

Echo 8

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★★½
“Easier to forget.”

This bills itself as “Australia’s first female-led independent action movie”. Seems a bit of a stretch, considering how many films we’ve reviewed from Down Under previously, such as Avarice. Heck, Agent Provocateur had a similar plot in 2012. However, this has had a lengthy trip to the screen, shooting having started prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. Four years later, it’s finally available, and is clearly a labour of love for those involved, not least Tran who wore multiple heads on the production. Between that and the limited resources, I’m reluctant to pan it savagely, but the truth is, even with a rating which is cutting it slack for these reasons, the end product is still not very good. It’s more “shows some potential” than “would recommend.”

The main problem is a script, which is basically a mix of movie cliches #27, the assassin who defies orders, and #32, cinematic amnesia, which naturally releases information at the exact pace needed by the plot. Echo 8 (Tran) has been brought up since she was a young child to be a trained killer, and now works alongside her partner, Delta 1 (Vuong), under the oversight of boss Agent 5 (Hara). But she’s also experiencing flashbacks of her early life, which are causing her to question what she’s doing. When Echo 8 is ordered to kill local activist Hanh (Chan), who is digging into areas potentially troublesome for the organization, the assassin decides not to carry out her task.

Needless to say, Agent 5 is less than happy at the situation, and Echo 8 finds herself going from the hunter to the hunted. If this sounds familiar, it’s all very much what we’ve seen before: Naked Weapon uses basically the same story, or more recently, so does Thailand’s The Kill List. A well-worn plot isn’t necessarily a problem, if you do well in other areas, be it performances or action. Its something the films mentioned manage, to considerably greater success than Echo 8, which succeeds only intermittently. You have also to get past the idea of killers who walk around dressed like ninjas on Halloween night – hardly inconspicuous – and get into random fights in night-clubs, because that won’t draw attention to themselves either.

The viewer must then deal with a slew of supporting actors who don’t need to give up their day jobs. Tran is okay, and Vuong actually good, with a dry sense of humour that’s welcome. Some others, though, may be delivering their lines phonetically, and the action is similarly mixed. The small scale of the production sometimes comes through, and even within the same fight, you’ll get one punch that seems to have impact, followed by two that clearly miss the mark. There are odd distractions, like the fight where someone is wielding a child’s plastic chair: what is that doing in an underground car-park? The ending is left open and a trilogy is planned. While I’m not averse to giving it a look, I hope those involved learn from this experience and do better next time.

Dir: Maria Tran, Takashi Hara
Star: Maria Tran, David Vuong, Takeshi Hara, Gabrielle Chan

Martingale

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★★½
“Double or – more likely – nothing.”

It’s probably symptomatic of… something, that the film’s title is never explained. With the main character working in a casino, I presume it’s a reference to the Martingale betting system, where you basically double your bet after every loss. It guarantees a profit – unless you hit such a long losing streak you run out of money entirely. Its relevance here is uncertain, and I doubt most viewers would know what a martingale is either. But then, the film is very good at not explaining stuff. Another example would be, what the scam is supposed to be with Andi (Sullivan) collecting left-behind cash-out casino slips and handing them to a collaborator, Whit (Melikhov). These are for trivial amounts, so why bother?

When not bilking her employer out of pocket change, Andi’s main obsession is investigating the death of her daughter, a year previously. She had overdosed in a drug house, but the police were unable to press charges on anyone. Andi is not put off, and is intent on finding the boy whom she blames for her child’s death, and making him suffer in a similar way. Her investigation proceeds with the increasingly reluctant help of local private eye Levi (Adkins), and brings her up against the powerful and evil Harland (Shockley). Turns out, it was his son Robby who was with Andi’s daughter. Neither parent is prepared to back down and give up on their offspring, so eventually, something will have to give.

The tagline on the release poster was changed to “Revenge is a deadly gamble,” which does at least tie in with the title. But the original one of “Revenge is a real mess,” might be more accurate, with Andi stumbling into increasing trouble, and refusing to accept the very sensible advice, just to let it go. While her persistence is the heroine’s most admirable quality, the film itself is also a real mess in some aspects, with plotting which is often as obtuse as its title. While Harland does project a certain menace as the villain, I found it hard to take anyone seriously as a bad guy, when he looks like James May out of Top Gear. 

Nowhere is the vagueness more apparent than at the end. There’s a knock at the door and… That’s it. We never learn who it is. The makers were clearly going for ambiguity, but if you hated how The Sopranos ended, this might well have you lobbing pets, living-room furniture or small children through your television set. If the script leaves plenty to be desired, at least the performances are decent, and a bit like in Adrenaline, you do get a sense of turning over a societal rock, and seeing the less than pleasant results beneath. As a heroine’s journey, it’s a trip into the underworld, though I would be hard pushed to tell you how Andi was changed by her experience. I certainly know I was not.

Dir: Jeremy Berg
Star: Kelly Sullivan, William Shockley, Jason Adkins, Konstantin Melikhov

Adrenaline

  By

★★
“Taking on organ-ized crime.”

You know you’re in for a shaky experience when the film can’t even spell its own title right. That proves a fairly accurate assessment of the overall experience: while not without its merits, these are outweighed by the negatives in the final analysis. The heroine is Victoria Travers (Payne), an FBI agent on holiday with her family in Romania, when she spots a fugitive from justice, John Slater (Mandylor). She attempts to extract him over the border, to where he can be extradited, but while that takes place, her husband is killed, and her daughter snatched by an organ harvesting ring, run by Ivan Raj (Saini). Suddenly, Slater with his local knowledge, is the only hope of Victoria rescuing her child.

It’s all very basic and quite linear. The plot feels almost like it might have been lifted from a video-game, as the odd couple roam Bucharest, working their way up the criminal organization. with the occasional side quest such as rescuing another kidnapped child, freeing hookers, etc.There’s an NPC, in the form of hacker Tony (Hauck), who provides helpful information whenever Victoria and John appear to be at a dead end. The low-budget nature does work for the film, in that there’s an overall scuzzy feel to proceedings which is appropriate, and the location enhances this. It feels like the kind of place where organ harvesting would take place, though I suspect any such organization would, in reality, be more ruthless – and considerably more competent, to be frank.

Mandylor helps elevate proceedings, as he usually does: nice that his brother, Costas, also appears in this, playing Victoria’s long-suffering boss. Shame the Mandylors don’t get any scenes together. Payne is just about adequate as the relentless mother, and much less convincing as an FBI agent. However, she’s still better than certain members of the supporting cast. Some don’t even appear to have English as a second language, but there are others who can’t lean on that excuse.  The action is intermittent, albeit not badly-staged in general. We could have done with more, perhaps in lieu of the interminable scenes of our heroine and hero driving around town, talking to people on the telephone or, occasionally for variety, driving around town while talking to people on the telephone.

I wobbled back and forth for much of this between 2 and 2½ stars. While low-budget, often obviously, it keeps moving forward, and there’s something to be said for simplicity, rather than burdening the viewer with unnecessary subplots. It’s never boring, over its seventy-five minute duration. But the ending is particularly weak, falling well short of providing Constance with an opportunity to face off against a final boss, something the movie undeniably needs. This passed the time adequately, yet I cannot say I was ever engaged, and there’s not enough to make me look into other work by Cerchi, whose talents appear limited to making sure the image is mostly in focus.

Dir: Massimiliano Cerchi
Star: Constance Payne, Louis Mandylor, Adam Saini, Alexander Hauck 

The File, by Gary Born

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

Not many novels come with a ringing endorsement from a former director of the CIA, but Gina Haspel calls this “A thoroughly enjoyable, engrossing thriller.” Argue with her, and she’ll send you an exploding cigar, or something. While it certainly isn’t bad, the rating above reflects its likely moderate appeal for readers here. A general audience might be more impressed, especially with regard to the second half, where the heroine becomes more of a passenger. Things begin at the very end of World War II with a flight out of Berlin carrying documents intended to secure the future of the Reich. It doesn’t reach its destination, crashing in the depths of the African jungle.

Almost eighty years later, a botanical expedition stumbles across the downed plane and its cargo. When word seeps out, various very interested parties converge on the Congo, intent on securing the contents by any means necessary. Surviving the initial onslaught is Sara West, daughter of the expedition’s head, who bails with the documents, and the parties in hot pursuit. In the jungle at least, Sara has more experience and proves eminently capable of turning the tables on her pursuers. After escaping the wilderness, she convinces one of the hunters, CIA agent Jeb Fisher, to change sides, and his assistance becomes increasingly valuable as they head through Africa, into Italy, and eventually to Zurich. There, they make a final stand, in the unlikely location of a venerable Swiss bank.

The above should hopefully explain why this feels like a book of two halves. I really enjoyed the first half, with Sara using all her knowledge, built on years of living in the jungle, to stay one step ahead of the opposition – or sneak up from behind on them. She rarely over-powers her enemies, relying more on stealth, wits and turning their own resources against them. It is still a bit of a stretch to imagine a young woman, untrained in combat, taking out a whole slew of Russian special forces. However, Born certainly sells the illusion well enough to work. The problems arise with the arrival of Jeb, not least the ease with which he disobeys orders to take Sara’s side.

Thereafter, he also becomes the main protagonist. While it makes sense that his skills would become more important outside of the jungle, it results in Sara being somewhat (though not entirely) sidelined. There’s also the almost inevitable romantic dalliance, and I feel that having a Jebina instead of Jeb, might have addressed that, and a lot of the problems I felt hampered the second half. It’s still a decent enough read on its own terms, building nicely towards the grandstand finale – although I can’t imagine even Swiss authorities taking so long to get to a hellacious firefight in downtown Zurich! But I feel it does not do Sara the justice she deserves, especially after the impressive heights reached earlier on.

Author: Gary Born
Publisher: Addison & Highsmith Publishers, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Standalone novel