Author: Jim McLennan

Assassination Nation

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★★★½
“Girls just wanna have fun…”

I don’t often get political here. Really, I watch movies to escape from that kind of thing. But in this case, since the movie itself is basically a cinematic manifesto, I’m going to wade a little bit out into the cesspool of contemporary politics. You have been warned. :)

There’s something called “The paradox of tolerance” which I’ve been hearing about a lot over the past couple of years. This says that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant will eventually be destroyed by the intolerant. This is frequently used by the left, for example, to justify punching Nazis (or those they say are Nazis): if you don’t stand up to the intolerant, it will destroy you. However, there’s a reason it’s called a paradox – because it makes no logical sense. To me, it is hypocrisy in action, demanding tolerance for the people you say deserve it, while refusing it to those you consider unworthy.

That’s what you have here. One cast member called it, “A war on toxic masculinity, at all costs.” The moral problem is, the cost shown here is little if any better: toxic feminism, if you like. The heroines are four teenage girls: Lily (Young), Sarah (Waterhouse), Bex (Nef) and Em (Abra), living in the town of Salem. Someone starts leaking the private data of citizens, beginning with the homophobic Mayor, who turns out to be thoroughly gay himself. He ends up committing suicide at a press conference, Budd Dwyer-style. That’s just the first case: half the townspeople are similarly exposed, and when the evidence points at Lily as the culprit, the witch-hunt goes into top gear, in a style more reminiscent of The Purge. If the girls are going to survive the night, they’ll need to fight fire with (gun)fire.

There are moments where the style overwhelms the substance. Sometimes, this isn’t a bad thing. A single take of a home invasion, shot from outside the house, and swooping around, up and down, is quite amazing and incredibly effective – it reminded me of Dario Argento at his best. On the other hand, a party where Levinson uses split-screen implodes into incoherent confusion. Truth be told, most of the scenes with the girls interacting with each other or their contemporaries, are a bit of a mess. This is far more on point when it offers a scathing critique of social media, and there are moments when it is refreshingly incorrect. For example, the introduction features a litany of “trigger warnings”, for everything from transphobia to the male gaze.

Of course, it isn’t as smart as it thinks it is, being a one-sided argument, apparently largely formed in a bubble of Occupy Democrat Facebook posts and /r/politics. I’ll admit, I rolled my eyes at things such as it taking place in Salem – ‘cos witch-hunts, y’get it? –  and that’s often the level of subtlety you get here. Still, this complete lack of nuance can only be admired, especially when it results in heroines who watch Delinquent Girl Boss: Worthless to Confess for fashion inspiration, as shown above. Politically, it may be highly problematic – though it had its moments, such as a trans character who is not used as a banner of the film-maker’s progressive attitudes. And it’s not so overbearing that I couldn’t appreciate its merits. Even from the point of view of my impeccably “male gaze”, it remained entertaining trash, though if you take any of it seriously, you’re probably making a huge mistake.

Dir: Sam Levinson
Star: Odessa Young, Suki Waterhouse, Hari Nef, Abra

Dance of Death

  By

★★★★

“Not backwards in high heels, yet still highly impressive”

This one might sound familiar, as I did previously review it about four years ago. But it deserves, and gets, a fresh analysis, due to my having recently had the chance to watch it in a way much closer to how it was originally meant to be seen. This version was purely subtitled, rather than dubbed, and in particular, had a 2.35:1 ratio print, rather than the previous 4:3 atrocity which meant that half the time, one or other fighter in the (numerous) battles was cropped off the side of the screen. This made it feel such a radically different movie, it took an hour for me to realize I’d actually seen it before. And it was all the better for the new look.

There were aspects which still befuddle me, such as most of the plot. Why, exactly, is Angela Mao pretending to be a boy? It’s completely unconvincing, and entirely unnecessary to the story-line. No-one ever discovers her true gender: it’s almost as if this were originally written for a man, then they got Mao, and in all the excitement, forgot (or, alternatively and equally credibly, couldn’t be bothered) to change the script. The rest of it is an odd mix. It’s partly vengeance with Fei Fei (Mao) out to pick up enough martial arts skill to take revenge on those who killed her family. Yet this sits alongside slapstick comedy which you’d not expect given the title, such as the two kung fu masters – one drunk, one stoner – whom she tricks into sharing her talents, or the villain with the world’s tiniest fan whom she defeats on her way to the big bad.

This time, those elements didn’t bother me anywhere near as much, and even if they had, I’m willing to forgive an enormous amount when the fights are so acrobatically inventive – the hand of Jackie Chan, who was a stunt co-ordinator here, might have something to do with this. Yes, it’s almost retro, even for its time. For by this point, in 1976, Bruce Lee’s shooting star had already blazed across the sky of martial arts cinema, and the Peking Opera approach was quickly being replaced by films based on his harder hitting style. Yet the long takes and fluid choreography used here have an undeniably elegant rhythm to them. I previously wrote that this movie reminded me of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and that’s one element which hasn’t changed between these viewings.

The steady progression in Fei Fei’s talents also remains notable, as does the blizzard of different styles of kung-fu, from crane through dragon to monkey, as well as less traditional approaches such as the.. ah, “flatulence fu” which shows up at one point. The graceful skill which Mao demonstrates in virtually all of these – save the intestinal variety, I’m pleased to say! – is truly a joy to behold, especially in this format, which allows you to appreciate it all the better. If there’s a more impressive vehicle for her talents, I’ve yet to find it.

Dir: Chuan Lu
Star: Angela Mao, Shih Tien, Shiao Bou-Lo, Chin Pey

Undercover Law

  By

★★½
“The law of declining returns.”

This one had a good deal of promise, to the extent that even Chris expressed an interest in watching it [she bailed on discovering it was 60 episodes in length!]. However, it almost completely fails to go anywhere much: what you see in the first ten episodes is, by and large, what you get over the remaining fifty. It’s the story of four women, all of whom work as agents in the Colombian police, and are trying to take down the local drug cartel. This had been run by a man called Lerner, before he was killed by the authorities; now, his son Junior has taken over the business. The women seek to infiltrate various parts of his operation, from the jungle manufacturing arm, through the distribution side to the money laundering and finance wing, and discover the identity of the mysterious “Bluefish”, who heads the cartel from the shadows.

Which would be fine, if the show had actually concentrated on this aspect of their lives. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. Each of them have their own soap-drenched subplots, typically involving family members, love lives, or some combination thereof. For example, one has a child whose parentage is uncertain. Could the father be her police partner? Or could it even be Lerner himself? I hope you care, because this storyline is stretched out over the entire duration of the series. Other elements which are similarly used include a junkie sister and her daughter; the search for a long-lost father; and a troubled marriage resulting from the commitment required to be an undercover officer. At times, the whole policing thing seems almost to be forgotten.

Being undercover is clearly going to limit the opportunities for overt action: when you’re pretending to be a cook, a nightclub owner’s wife or a fitness instructor, you’re not going to be kicking down doors and blowing away the bad guys. I understand this. But the characters – and the writers – need to decide what’s important: their personal lives or their work. Too often, the story instead resorts to cliché. For example, when a character gives an impassioned speech about getting out of this dangerous job and settling down, it’s absolutely no surprise they’re killed in a gun-battle, immediately afterward. [Admittedly, this remains one of the show’s few genuinely memorable sequences] Similarly, I’ve seen enough telenovelas to know that when a character is supposedly dead, unless you see their corpse, there’s about an even chance they will return.  And weddings never go off smoothly and without a hitch.

It’s a bit of a shame, since most of the central performances are solid, just deserving better material with which to work. And the commitment to focusing on the side of law, rather than glamorizing the lives of criminals, is laudable. Yet it’s so poorly-written, even the identity of the gang’s “mole” in law enforcement is an opportunity for tension, squandered to the point of being almost completely wasted, and the revelation of “Bluefish” was absolutely no revelation at all. Maybe it suffered by comparison, being watched in the same period as the far superior Netflix series set in Colombia, Narcos. Or maybe it just isn’t very good.

Star: Valeria Galvis, Juana del Rio, Viña Machado, Luna Baxter

Survivor, by Saffron Bryant

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

Nova is a bounty hunter, smuggler and generally survivor of life in the grey areas of legality. In need of a quick buck to fix her space-ship, she takes on the hunt for a couple of escaped fugitives. She locates them working in an archaeological dig being run by the Confederacy – which is odd, since the planet in question was supposedly never inhabited. An unfortunate translation error ends up helping unleash a long-buried race of reptiloid extra-terrestrials, the Ancients – a species with both the inclination and the ability to wage genocidal war on the rest of the galaxy. And Nova is the only one left who can stop them.

This is remarkably gripping for a story which contains little more than two human characters: Nova, and Codon, the Confederacy scientist in charge of the excavations. Everyone else is taken out of the equation quite early; I guess you could marginally include Cal, the Class Four Laborbot, who helps Nova on her ship? Yet it goes to show that, in the presence of a strong story-line, you don’t need a large cast. This pits Nova against the Ancients in straightforward terms, and it seems a one-sided battle – until she’s captured, and is harshly interrogated. The mental torture inflicted on her has a strange effect: I’d be hard pushed to explain exactly what, but it seems to give her some abilities involving the fourth dimension.

It’s not quite time travel: nothing that controllable. Yet it’s along those lines, and is not the only moment at which the story reminded me of an episode of Doctor Who. The whole “one person bravely facing down an alien enemy” is definitely Who-esque. though unlike the Doctor, Nova has no qualms about getting her hands dirty, when necessary. As in any story which plays with time, there is potential for paradox, and I’m not certain this is rock-solid in that aspect. There are a couple of other plot-holes too: for example, the force-field which keeps Nova on the planet, suddenly goes away at the end, for no other reason that it needs to.

Still, it’s a solid page-turner, and I was particularly impressed by the complete lack of any romantic angles. Ok, the only male to be found is Codon, and he’s a bit of a dick, to put it mildly. However, it remained refreshing: I’ve read (and discarded) my share of thinly-disguised romances in action-heroine clothing, thank you very much. Nova, in comparison, seems the real deal. I also enjoyed the sequences where Nova’s reality is on very thin ice: conveying a psychotic break isn’t easy, yet Bryant seems to capture the thoroughly unsettling sense of having no idea what’s “real”. Where will Nova and her uncertain abilities go next? I’m keen to find that out.

Author: Saffron Bryant [a.k.a. “Saff”]
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 10 in the Nova Chronicles. [Amazon calls is 2 of 11, but the first book there is really a prequel, so is #0]

Betrayed Women

  By

★★★
“You’re a nice guy, Mr. Darrell. But here’s the hitch. I ain’t a nice girl.”

First, let me just say: that poster is a true work of art. Seriously, how can anyone look at that and not want to see it? Even knowing there’s no possible way it could deliver on what is promised, it’s among my all-time favourite posters. With that out of the way, we’d better move on, since for a 70-minute film, there’s a great deal going on. Honey Blake (Michaels) becomes the latest inmate at the infamous State Prison, after her gangster boyfriend, “Baby Face”, is gunned down by the law. She’s there barely five minutes, before she’s getting put in solitary for back-talk, etc.

Also in the slammer is Nora Collins (Knudsen), who is due to be released in a couple of months, and is in a surreptitious relationship with prison inspector Jeff Darrell (Drake). He’s trying to improve the lot of the inmates, but is getting push-back from hard-bitten Head Matron Ballard. Finally among the prisoners, is Kate Morrison (Mathews), who holds the secret of where $50,000 in robbery loot is stashed. She’s none too pleased with Honey’s taunts about Kate’s boyfriend having just got married, but after bonding through the traditional cat-fight, the pair plan and execute a daring escape. Taken along as hostages are Nora and Jeff, along with Ballard – who proves to be singularly unsuited for a trek through the swamps, pursued by the authorities and their blood-hounds. Kate’s boyfriend is making a beeline for the same spot, so felons, escapees and the law are all on an inevitable collision course.

The critical and commercial success of Caged in 1950 (including three Oscar nominations), led to a slew of imitators in the years that followed. Most – including this one – were considerably cheaper and more down-market, but this one benefits from the fast pace mentioned above, and also a great central performance from Michaels. It’s obviously a product of its era, and so is considerably tamer than most of its ilk: there’s nothing here which would raise eyebrows even on the Lifetime network. [A WiP film the whole family can enjoy!] However, many of the genre tropes are still there: not just the cat-fight, also the lecherous guard and even a fire-hose, turned on Kate after a failed escape attempt.

Michaels is a joy to watch, and I’ll have to track down some of her other work. How can you resist titles like Wicked Women or Blonde Bait? Her impact here creeps up on you. It was only in the final showdown, as she hunkers down inside a farm-shed with her hostages, surrounded by the police that I realized two things. Firstly, I genuinely didn’t know if she was going to live, or go down in a blaze of glory like her lost love, Baby Face. Secondly, I actually cared about the outcome. And no, I’m not going to spoil it. The star retired from public life the following year, declining all interviews about her career in crime flicks, and eventually died, here in Phoenix, in 2007. Even then, she shunned the limelight, requesting no obituary or funeral service.

Dir: Edward L. Cahn
Star: Beverly Michaels, Carole Mathews, Peggy Knudsen, Tom Drake

Chase Step By Step

  By

★★★
“Chase what matters.”

A solid if unremarkable Taiwanese kung-fu film, it’s set in 1887 and focuses on a mission to deliver a thousand taels of gold, which are intended for use in drought relief by another province. (Presumably) To avoid attracting unwanted attention, the delivery is kept very low-key. In fact, only two people are assigned as security for the gold: circus acrobats Lin Ying (Hsu) and Sao Wu (Chow). However, word apparently leaks out, and on their journey, they’re almost perpetually under attack.

These attempts range from the straightforward – two guys they meet at a rest-stop try and run off with their cart – to the more subtle. The wife of an inn-keeper attempts to seduce Sao, for example. Or in the most complex, an incident is staged in which our hero and heroine rescue a young girl. She then invites him to dinner, gets him drunk and… Step 2. ? Step 3. PROFIT. Yeah, it’s a bit vague, since it’s not as if Sao is carrying the thousand taels of cold on him. Anyway, even when they reach their destination, the relief aid isn’t safe, since there are greedy local eyes, intent on diverting it into private hands.

It’s very much a two-hander, with Lin and Sao portrayed as equals, though the poster would indicate Hsu is the star (she’d go on to become a successful producer, including on the Oscar-nominated Farewell My Concubine). Less clear is quite what the relationship is between the pair: Sao seems to take the lead, but Lin is the smarter, and has to rescue her colleague more than once, in part due to his eye for the ladies. Fight-wise, Chow is the better: he gets the final battle against the man bad guy, while Hsu is battling the two minions who are absconding with the gold.

It’s a bit of a shame they don’t make more of the pair’s supposed circus and acrobatic background. This is the focus of the scene behind the opening credits (though quite what the dog tricks have to do with it, I’m uncertain!), then only intermittently references these skills thereafter. There’s a scene where the two have to escape by crossing a chasm on a tightrope, pushing a hand-cart, and a rather cool scene where Sao fights the bad guys while on a pair of impromptu stilts. That’s about it.

Lin does get the movie’s most memorable moment, however. Her opponent hurls a knife as she’s on the ground, which pins down her pigtail. With one flick of her head, she returns it to him, burying it in his chest. [Here’s the animated GIF] They say there’s nothing new under the sun: that kind of lethal hair-fu shows they’re wrong. In comparison, the rest of the film is not as memorable, and offers hardly much in the way of an inventive story-line. Yet it proceeds at a decent enough pace to sustain interest, and Hsu’s facial expressions sell her talents well – perhaps better than her talents do.

Dir: Yu Min Sheong
Star: Hsu Feng, Chow Chung-lim, Ma Cheung, Nam Wan

Lady Psycho Killer

  By

★★½
“Teenage angst with a body-count.”

Ella (Daly) is a shy college student, whose psychology lecturer gives the class an unusual project: break a sexual norm. Unfortunately, Ella is rather confused about the intersection between sex and violence, in part because of genetics, for her father was a serial killer, before abandoning her pregnant mother (Heinrich). As a result, Ella’s attempt to carry out the assignment by auditioning at a strip-club, ends with her slitting the throat of the owner (Ron Jeremy, being appropriately grubby). This awakens the serial killer dormant inside her, and she starts taking out the sleazy men around her. The problem is nice guy Daniel (Andres), whose unwillingness to match her stereotypical opinions of masculinity, triggers further conflicting feelings in Ella, as her acts of murder become increasingly more blatant.

A lack of subtlety is also a problem when it comes to the film’s social commentary, though some credit is due for being a couple of years ahead of the #MeToo movement. Still, the almost constant use of voice-over as a narrative tool is lazily problematic, even if you can get past the ludicrous nature of the plot, or that Michael Madsen plays the least convincing college professor in movie history [Malcolm McDowell fares better as Ella’s creepy next-door neighbour]. The most interesting thing is perhaps the heroine’s relationship with her mother, which plays a little like a suburban version of Carrie, without the religious angle to the over-protective mom. I’d like to have seen this explored further.

Daly’s performance isn’t bad, having to cover a lot of emotional range from naively innocent to stone-cold killer, while also portraying the confusion of transforming from a girl into a woman. It’s a role that would challenge any actress, and hardly a surprise that Daly can’t quite convince across all the necessary aspects. She does fare better than the men in the script, who are given almost nothing to work with beyond “be creepy.” Perhaps this is intended as a sly commentary on the shallow depiction of female victims in many horror films? Let’s charitably assume that is indeed the case, though this could equally well just be more lazy writing.

For it is the script which hampers the film most of all, with almost every development triggering a roll of my eyes. What college professor would really hand out such an assignment? What cop would just let a confessed killer go, without any interrogation or further investigation, simply because a similar murder took place? What mother would affect little more than mild concern – especially, knowing her familial history- when her daughter comes home from a date, covered in blood? By coincidence, the day after seeing this, we re-watched American Psycho, a film which is clearly a significant influence on Oliver, in more than just its title (especially the original one, which omitted the word “Lady”). Its superiority is equally undeniable: he’d have benefited by learning a bit more from the source, especially in the area of writing.

Dir: Nathan Oliver
Star: Kate Daly, Dennis Andres, Meredith Heinrich, Josh Dolphin

Yoga and the Kungfu Girl

  By

★★½
“Your flexible friend.”

I’m trying to figure out if the “the” in the IMDb title used here is superfluous. “Yoga and Kung-fu Girl,” as on the DVD sleeve would make more sense, given the heroine’s martial arts are a combination of traditional skills with extreme flexibility. In some ways, it’s a slightly less exploitative version of things like The Crippled Masters, with its amputee-fu. The heroine here, Phoenix, could similarly make a living as a carnival exhibit, given her contortionist abilities, which are here shoe-horned into use to provide a style of fighting. To say this works with variable success would be an understatement. There are moments when her talents and flexibility are genuinely impressive. However, there are others where her limitations and lack of training are painfully apparent.

The story has Phoenix (Chan) as an orphan, taken in by the formidable Madame Kao, who brings Phoenix up as part of her troupe of martial artists, while providing herbal remedies to the local people [I must say, the transition that had her foster kids flipping across the meadow, to become adults at the far side, was kinda neat] Phoenix’s best friend is Ho Fei (Chi), but he has a bit of a gambling problem, stealing from Madame Kao to fund his habit. Trouble ensues, not helped by a jealous rival trying to frame Kao for bad medicine, and additionally, Ho ends up accused of a murder he didn’t commit. It’s up to Phoenix to lead the charge against the villains responsible.

This appears to have been made as a vehicle for Chen, but it doesn’t seem she ever appeared in anything else after this – whether due to commercial failure or a lack of personal interest. Perhaps wisely, the script makes her character mute, limiting the need for actual acting: she communicates in sign language instead. Her skill-set provides the movie with its sole gimmick, and apart from that, this is largely indistinguishable from any other genre entries of the time. The only area where it makes an impression is the final fight, where Phoenix, Ho Fei and another of Madame Kao’s orphans face off against the big boss.

That it requires three of them to take him down is quite understandable, and it’s about the only moment where Phoenix’s unusual and acrobatic style of kung-fu works, because it’s one ingredient in the recipe for the resulting fight, not the entire dish. When it (or she) tries to stand on its own merits, there just isn’t enough to sustain the interest for more than a few minutes of “Ooh: I didn’t realize spines could bend to such a shape”. It’s possible, had she persevered, that the rather homely leading lady might have eventually managed to go on to develop into someone capable of carrying a feature. However, you would be hard pushed to feel that the world of martial arts movies is a poorer place, because the sub-genre of contortionist-fu never apparently managed to establish a foothold past this singular entry.

Dir: Sun Yung
Star: Phoenix Chen, Chi Kuan Chun, Pai Ying

Sendero, by Max Tomlinson

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

When you think of drugs, terrorism and South America, Colombia probably comes first to mind, thanks to Pablo Escobar and his cartel pals. However, it’s far from the only country in the region with a troubled history. Peru has had its fair share of strife: it produces virtually as much cocaine, and the Marxist guerillas of the Shining Path movement fought a long, bloody war against the government through the eighties. It’s during this time that the novel begins. Young girl Nina has her father killed by soldiers hunting the guerillas in her rural village, and her brother Miguel vanishes to join the Shining Path.

More than two decades later, Nina has grown up to become a cop in Lima, with the dirty war against the Shining Path apparently over – the terrorists have now, effectively, merged with the drug traffickers. She encounters Malqui, the former village priest who spent eight years in prison for protesting the murder of Nina’s father, and mentions knowing someone who had recently met Miguel. However, before she can get any more information, Malqui is picked up by the authorities and vanishes into the dark network of secret prisons. For it seems the dirty war is not as over as is publicly stated. To rescue Malqui – and perhaps be reunited with her long-lost brother – Nina is going to have to get her own hands dirty as well.

I must confess, I confused the title with “sicario,” the drug cartel term for hit-man. Between that and the cover, I was expecting something… different. Turns out, sendero is Spanish for “path” – and those who support the guerillas. Quite whether this includes the heroine is an interesting point. After the death of her father, it seems odd for her to end up as part of the government authorities, yet she becomes part of the “resistance” as she seeks to locate and free Malqui. Though by the end of the book, it’s clear that the remnants of the Shining Path are no more the solution either, with their morality little if any less problematic. The entire novel could be printed in various shades of grey: even Nina is prepared to do bad things for what she perceives as a good end.

As such, it’s a very thought-provoking read, and opened my eyes to the history of a country about which I had never known much previously, and its social and political struggles. If there’s a weakness, it’s probably the way in which Nina ends up taking a seat in the second half, with the story’s focus shifting to Miguel and his colleagues in the Shining Path [though among them, Comrade Inez does partly fill in for the lack of Nina]. It’s a shame, for Nina is an excellent heroine: one who never forgets either where she came from, or where she wants to be, and is willing to risk everything for others, in a highly altruistic manner. Hopefully, the second book is all Nina, all the time.

Author: Max Tomlinson
Publisher: Sendero Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 2 in the Sendero series.

Mardaani

  By

★★★½
“Korma’s a bitch… Uh, I mean KARMA…

Officer Shivani Shivaji Roy (Mukerji) is part of the Serious Crimes Squad in Delhi, whose approach to policing is very much “by any means necessary.” However, she is taken out of her area of expertise when Pyaari. a young girl she has been helping goes missing from an orphanage. Everything indicates the girl has been picked up by a sex trafficking ring, run by Sunny Katyal (Verma) and his partner, Karan (Bhasin), and will soon be sold off to the highest bidder and exported out of the country. Roy has to work her way up the chain to rescue Pyaari, despite opposition both from her boss, because it’s not her responsibility, and from the gang. As she gets nearer to the top, the climb becomes increasingly hard, with the criminals making it clear they won’t take lightly the threat to their lucrative business which Roy represents. It’s also clear they have friends in high places.

There’s a long-standing issue of extrajudicial action by the police in India, known locally as “encounter killings.” This film is far more likely to be the problem than the solution here, with the heroine behaving in a way of which Dirty Harry would certainly approve, yet severely at odds with contemporary Western policing methods. That’s apparent right from an early scene where she publicly assaults a culprit, punctuating a list of his offenses: “Section 143 – unlawful assembly. [Slap!] Section 147 – rioting. [Slap!] Section 132 – abetment of mutiny [Slap!]”, and so on. To see a male police officer do this in a modern movie would be shocking. To see a woman do it? It’s… kinda awesome, especially in India, a country where at the time the film came out, woman represented only 6.6% of the police force.

This comes to a climax at the end,. when she faces off against Karan, and he mocks her, saying his contacts will ensure he gets off lightly. She replies, “They can do it only if you reach the police station. But you won’t reach the police station, because this is India.” Then, when he asks, “Are you going to murder me in front of everyone?”, she responds, “In India, if 50 people take the law in their hands and kill someone, then it’s not called a murder. It’s called ‘Public outrage’.” As a rabble-rousing, cryptofascist call for vigilante justice due to corruption goes… This one certainly doesn’t hold back.

But it still works well, with Mukerji making Roy a well-rounded and sympathetic character. Her mission is driven as much by a semi-maternal rage as the usual macho bullshit, and she relies just as much on intelligence as brute force. Although the film loses steam when diverting attention to the bad guys, who are little more than cartoon caricatures, I especially enjoyed the phone-calls where Karan attempts to intimidate her, and fails completely. For Roy goes all Liam Neeson on him instead: “I don’t know what your name is. I don’t know where you are speaking from, who your boss is, or where you have kept Pyaari. But I’ve figured your type… I will hunt you down in 30 days.” Even the most liberal of viewers would be forgiven a fist-pump at the end when justice, legitimate or not, is served, piping-hot with a side of poppadoms.

Dir: Pradeep Sarkar,
Star: Rani Mukerji, Tahir Raj Bhasin, Jisshu Sengupta, Saanand Verma