Author: Jim McLennan

Split Lip

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★★★
“Split decision”

Definitely a mixed bag in this independent work about an assassin on the run from her employers after she botches a contract. Seay is thoroughly compelling as Set, proving that less can sometimes be more when it comes to dialogue. She’s a woman of few words, yet the strength of her emotions still comes through in her performance. I think it’s the eyes. Unfortunately, the makers appear not to have had enough confidence to let her silence stand on its own. Instead, they fill the gap with the inane burblings of Samuel (Laballe), a young man who sees Seay, and decides she’s a battered woman in need of rescue.  He quickly discovers that isn’t the case, as she ends up rescuing him from one of the killers sent on her trail. However, his sister Dana (Cné) is unimpressed with her brother’s new friend, and turns Set in to her boss, Karlton (Brown).

There’s some nice stuff floating around the fringes as well. In most action films, the hero or heroine takes little more than cosmetic damage over the course of proceedings. That isn’t the case here: every encounter leaves Set more banged up, with the titular injury being just the start. The make-up department has a field day, shall we say. I also liked the occasionally chivalrous conduct and hierarchical structure of the assassins’ “guild”, with its different factions and approaches. In his opening monologue, for instance, Karlton makes clear that the services in which he specializes. are all about getting up close, personal and messy – “What we have to offer, is a message.” And, of course, being shot partly here in Phoenix is always a plus for me, though there’s not much in the way of local atmosphere to speak of.

Yet there are just as many problems, not limited to my strong desire to strangle Samuel every time he opened his mouth. In particular, Set’s actions largely seem illogical, and occur only because they are necessary to the plot e.g. staying in the same hotel room after her location has been discovered. Right from the start, it’s clear the only possible resolution involves either her death or tidying up the mess she created. Running off to Phoenix makes no sense in either direction – especially when her destination is at the suggestion of her boss, who makes no attempt at concealing his intention to have her hunted down. Only after an hour and twenty minutes and several entirely unnecessary tanks of fuel, does our heroine finally do, what made obvious sense from the very beginning.

The action is plentiful and quite well-staged, with the general absence of guns (save for an Indiana Jones-like moment near the end) making sense, given Carlton’s apparent distaste for them. Credit to Seay for doing her own stunts, and everyone else for making it look like she knows what’s she’s doing with her fists, despite a lack of size that becomes something of a running-joke. All told, this is a decent and worthy indie effort, which held our interest – though one undeniably in need of a better script.

Dir: Christopher Sheffield
Star: Dorée Seay, Chris Labadie, Maryam Cné, Dejean Brown

Widows

  By

★★★½
“Widows piqued.”

This is based on a TV series from Britain, which ran for two seasons in the eighties – I’ve seen it, but for some reason never got round to writing about it. The show would have been right in our wheelhouse, being written by Lynda LaPlante, who also created Prime Suspect. This version transplants the action from London to Chicago, and retains the basis story at its core. When their husbands die in connection with an attempted armed robbery, the wives of the late participants decide to take up the mantle of criminal enterprise, using a dossier of plans left behind. However, the motive is different here. The money stolen, and subsequently destroyed, belonged to crime boss Jamal Manning, who demands Veronica Rawlings (Davis), wife of the robbers’ leader, repay it back. All two million dollars of it.

It ups the ante compared to the British version: there, it was largely a desire by Mrs. Rawlins, simply to follow in her husband’s footsteps. It probably makes Veronica more sympathetic, though she’s not quite as hard-ass as Dolly was, across the pond. Less effective is the desire to add various political and social subtexts to things. For Manning is standing for office in a local election, seeking to disrupt things by going up against Jack Mulligan (Farrell), the scion of a long-standing dynasty. While it turns out both the original robbery and Veronica’s planned crime play into this power struggle, it does divert from the main story. And don’t even get me started on the Rawlings’ son having been killed by the police, an entirely pointless thread. [Except when shooting people, the cops here are notable by their absence] With considerably less time available than in the original, which ran for six, hour-long episodes, this is problematic.

It’s especially so when it comes to depicting the rest of the widows beyond Veronica, who are given scant attention in term of their characters. This is a shame, especially in the case of Alice Gunner (Debicki). The actress cuts a striking figure, not least because she’s 6’2″ – or one inch shorter than Brienne of Tarth. :) Rodriguez is similarly wasted, in a role that doesn’t make much use of her presence. Fortunately, Davis is up to the task, and is just as impressive as she was in Lila & Eve. [Though despite some efforts, Chris still hasn’t got me to watch Davis in How to Get Away With Murder!]

Falling therefore into the category of good, rather than great, it would perhaps have been better to copy the British structure and make this a mini-series – though does anyone still make those any more? Shonda Rimes is, perhaps, the contemporary American version of LaPlante, and the creator of HtGAWM would have seemed an ideal person to do such an adaptation justice. Water under the bridge, however, and if you can overlook the occasionally over-earnest wokeness on display, this is still solid enough, anchored perfectly well by Davis’s fibe performance.

Dir: Steve McQueen
Star: Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Colin Farrell

Maggie for Hire, by Kate Danley

  By

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

Maggie McKay is an inhabitant of two overlapping worlds, courtesy of her genetics and upbringing being a little bit from both. Her father was from the “Other Side,” but her mother was from Earth, and they lived here until Maggie’s awakening talents of her own necessitated a quick departure back to the O.S. She still operates mostly in this realm, hunting down and dispatching the nastier denizens who sneak across: vampires, ghouls, werewolves, etc. This everyday work gets escalated, when she discovers her previously unknown (and not very nice) uncle, Ulrich, has teamed up with a vampire clan, to acquire a pair of artifacts which control portals between the sides, and also allow the vamps to walk in daylight. Unchecked, this could lead to chaos, and it’s up to Maggie and her elf sidekick, Killian, to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Blandly generic urban fantasy, it’s the kind of book I finished reading on Friday, and am struggling to remember much about on Monday. This is not to say it’s bad, and going by the fact that this series has reached 10 novels (not including a trio of holiday specials, with titles like My Maggie Valentine), there’s clearly a market for this kind of non-threatening light action. It just isn’t anywhere near me. It feels as if the writer tossed a hundred other urban fantasy novels into a blender, and poured the resulting smooth, pastel pink concoction directly onto her own pages. For there are hardly any elements here which I haven’t read, probably about a hundred times before. From the world-threatening villain, all the way through to the unresolved sexual tension with the devastatingly attractive (aren’t the partners always?) Killian. Yawn…

It’s all unrepentantly old-school, e.g. the vampires can’t come in to a building unless they have first been invited. Which is fine, except when Danley has Maggie and Killian chased by the bloodsuckers into a motel, where… Well, absolutely nothing happens, because the vampires can only hang around outside, before eventually getting bored and drifting off towards dawn. It’s an entirely pointless incident, and does nothing except bring home how crappy “traditional” vampires are as antagonists. There are good reasons most incarnations of them beef up the threat level considerably. The whole “portal” thing is also kinda confusing and executed somewhat sloppily: Maggie seems to be able to open them up at will… except when doing so would offer an easy escape from a threat.

Trying to carry out a critical appraisal of this is hard; it’s like trying to write 500 words reviewing vanilla pudding. I’ve had to work harder on this piece, than almost any of the other novels I’ve covered, and just knocked half a star off the literary rating as a penalty. Maybe such savagery will teach Ms. Danley a lesson.

Author: Kate Danley
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 10 in the Maggie MacKay Magical Tracker series.

A Daughter’s Vengeance

  By

★★
“S’no good.”

Look, I tried. I really did. When I found my attention had drifted away from watching the film, in good faith, I rewound the film to the point where I’d lost interest, and took up the movie again the following day. After all, maybe it was me. But when I still could barely bring myself to finish this leaden lump of poorly-crafted revenge-fu… No, having gone above and beyond the required effort, it’s really not me. This is lacklustre stuff, to put it mildly, even by the generally low standards of Taiwan.

The heroine (Chen), seems only to be referred to as the Snow Maiden,  and is an orphan, brought up in the mountains by the Snow Woman (Tiu); I kept wanting to call her Mrs. Narwhal, due to her striking snaggletooth, which is remarkably distracting. When the Snow Maiden discovers the truth about her orphanness – namely, that her pregnant mother was betrayed and abandoned by her father – she vows vengeance on the man responsible. While she’s looking, she adopts a “Robin Hood” like persona, rescuing the oppressed and making the oppressors pay for their crimes, in a range of (usually) non-lethal ways.

She eventually finds the family responsible: in about the film’s only interesting twist, her father is old, feeble, and largely filled with regret about having abandoned Maiden’s mom, which does present her with a bit of an ethical dilemma. Complicating matters further, his son (Wu) falls for Ms. Maiden; despite trying to keep herself emotionally distant, so that she can carry out her mission, she begins to have feelings for him too. So, will love triumph over vengeance? And, more importantly, will anyone care? At the risk of spoiling this for anyone, I can reveal the answer to the second question is a fairly conclusive “No”.

Chen isn’t a bad heroine, with a reasonable degree of screen presence – at least when standing still and glowering at people. And she does this a lot – about the only thing there’s more of in this movie is probably maniacal laughter, which appears to sit just behind Mandarin as the preferred method of communication. However, the novelty of this wears off rapidly, and the feeble excuse for martial arts this offers is a long way short of an adequate replacement. Neither the ability nor the quantity of action is acceptable, and any quality there may have been in the performances is destroyed by terrible dubbing, including atrocities such as the son being given a posh British accent. I would have been better off to cut my losses and not bother, after my first attempt to watch this failed.

[Worth noting, there was a movie released the following year, Vengeance of a Snowgirl – a very similar title to the alternate here. Don’t confuse them: while both are about orphans seeking revenge, the other was the last movie Lo Wei directed for Shaw Brothers, and has a crippled heroine who can’t use her legs. Not that this stops her, naturally…]

Dir: Chou Hsu-Chiang
Star: Chen Chen, Wu Chia Chi, Tiu Shut,
a.k.a. Vengeance of Snow Maid

A Reckoning

  By

★★★
“Much calm before the storm.”

Considering how little actually happens here, I enjoyed this considerably more than expected. It kicks off with 19th-century settler Mary O’Malley (Dietrich) being informed her husband has been brutally slain. Despite the warnings of fellow settler Henry Breck (a small role for Lance Henriksen), Mary heads out on the trail through Oregon for revenge, looking for the serial killer responsible. He’s known as “Marrow” (Makely), for reasons which eventually become clear. She encounters Jebediah (Robinson), a bounty-hunter after Marrow who doesn’t appreciate the competition, and Barley (Crow), a trader who offers and receives temporary companionship.

That’s pretty much it, up until the final, inevitable confrontation between Mary and Marrow, where we are reminded again of firearms’ role as a great equalizer. [Dietrich resembles a middle-aged version of Noomi Rapace, all slightly-built and cheekbones; Makely looks like he might have wandered out of a WWE ring] Read the reviews eviscerating this on the IMDb, and you’ll see a lot of people who appear very disappointed with the pacing and lack of action. For once, I wasn’t one of them. I was somewhat forewarned, wasn’t expecting non-stop gun battles or whatever, and was happy for this to proceed at its own, leisurely pace. I will say, it is probably not something you want to watch late at night, admittedly, as it could prove to be a little… too soothing. This likely worked much better in the Saturday afternoon slot where I viewed it, and could appreciate the landscapes as they unrolled.

It helps that the performances are mostly good to very good, with Dietrich’s performance the epitome of “speak softly and carry a big stick”. The film does a particularly solid job of setting up her character, both by her early interaction with Breck, and a subsequent conversation with Diana Maple (Meg Foster, an equally brief role as Henriksen’s), another settler who encourages and supplies Mary on her quest. However, some characters come off as slightly bland, or in Marrow’s case, over-the-top, and whenever the film is not exploring the countryside, the limited resources are painfully apparent. The “town meeting” at the start, for example, appears to take place in front of a bed-sheet, presumably intended to simulate a large tent of some kind. Given this, the amount of wilderness wandering makes considerable sense.

Lee seems to be a one-man film industry out of the Pacific North-west, with two other movies released in 2018 and two more in post-production. [Not sure I’ll exactly be chasing down Bigfoot pic Big Legend though] This one runs a relatively short 80 minutes, and is probably wise to do so. The film may not even be one to which you need to devote your full attention. The scenery is pretty, the cinematography does it justice, and the music fits in with the whole “chill out in the background” vibe. Pop your head up whenever you hear the sound of gunshots, and you’ll be fine.

Dir: Justin Lee
Star: June Dietrich, Kevin Makely, Todd A. Robinson, Kevin Crow

Cassidy Red

  By

★★½
“Better red than dead. Albeit, only just.”

Josephine “Joe” Cassidy (Eiland) is promised in marriage to Tom (Jenkins), the son of the area’s richest rancher, but her heart actually belongs to Jakob (Grasl), the Indian who is Tom’s adopted brother. The two lovers consummate their relationship when Tom is away, but  the spurned fiancee hatches a long-term plan to get revenge. Years later, after becoming the local sheriff, he uses these connections to frame and execute Jakob for murder. Word of this reaches Joe, who conveniently for the plot is handy with a firearm, because her father (Cramer) was a renowned bounty-hunter, and passed on the necessary skills to her. Dying her hair red – hence the title – she sets out to take revenge on Tom, only for him to reveal that Jakob is not dead… Not yet, anyway.

The structure here is quite convoluted – rather needlessly, I’d say. Not only does it unfold in several different eras, the entire thing is enclosed in wraparound sections, where the story of Cassidy Red is being told, for inspirational purposes, by a piano-player in a brothel to one of the working girls. It’s definitely a case where less feels like it would have been more, with a straightforward chronological timeline working to the film’s benefit, instead of characters dropping in and out. Perhaps the director felt that might have been too simple, for once you peel away the trapping, this is indeed a very straightforward tale of revenge. Is that necessarily a bad thing, though?

This was submitted for Knudsen’s thesis at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film, and Television, which perhaps explains some of the issues here: on occasion, it certainly does feels as if it was an academic requirement with an earnest Message (capital M used deliberately), rather than wanting to tell its story. The best section is likely the one where Joe is being taught the mechanics of gun-fighting by her father, which is very well written, performed and edited. The result is a sequence that sheds genuine light into the mindset of someone who, for survival, has to be permanently ready to shoot to kill. Given the limited budget here, credit is due for production values which are generally good. It was filmed largely on location at Old Tucson Studios, and that adds authenticity to the 19th-century Arizona setting, which some films wouldn’t have bothered with. 

Other parts, unfortunately, fall short of that, and some are flat-out unconvincing – the scene where Jakob is taken on board as a foster son, for example, seems entirely inexplicable, and they just shouldn’t have bothered, since it’s not something the audience needs to see. It’s a shame, since the central performance is good: however, the two male leads both struggle to be more than forgettable, and that leaves the end result feeling unbalanced on the dramatic level. This sporadic quality is perhaps the biggest problem: there seems a general unevenness of tone and approach, resulting in a film which takes two steps forward, then one back.

Dir: Matt Knudsen
Star: Abigail Eiland, David Thomas Jenkins, Jason Grasl, Rick Cramer

Close

  By

★★½
“…but no cigar”

Rapace appears to be aiming for a niche in the straight-to-video (or, at least, straight to Netflix) action market, this coming on the heels of Unlocked and What Happened to Monday. The results thus far have been rather uneven, and this seems unlikely to move the needle of his career much further forward. Not that the issues here are her fault; more that “being good in underwhelming movies” is not a passport to success. She plays Troubled Bodyguard (TM) Sam, who is hired to act as protection for Zoe (Nélisse), who just inherited a phosphate mining company, after the death of her father. Zoe got a bit too friendly with her last bodyguard, if you know what I mean, so Zoe’s stepmum (Varma) wants a woman this time.

Naturally, there’s a kidnap attempt. which sends Sam and Zoe on the run through Morocco. Is Mom, who was cut out of her husband’s will in favour of the daughter, responsible? Or is it the rival Chinese company, with whom there’s a battle over Zambian phosphate rights? The answer is: who cares? The film certainly doesn’t seem to, dropping elements like Sam’s estranged daughter in, then never doing much with them. See also the shotguns built into the walls of the family mansion. A better movie would have milked this great idea for all it was worth, but here, it’s thrown away in one blast. Instead, we get the inevitable blossoming of the relationship between the two women, who gradually come to understand each other, blah blah blah.

The action is intermittent, and probably not enough – a shooting schedule of barely four weeks likely played into that, chat being easier to film than fighting. There is a cool sequence where Sam battles someone with her hands literally tied behind her back, and a nice opening which establishes her bad-ass credentials, defending journalists from insurgent attack. Otherwise, Atomic Blonde this is not: an underwater combat scene (complete with CGI fish) being more risible than memorable. Rapace holds up her end of the dramatic requirements well enough; Nélisse, unfortunately, less so. Immediately she demands Sam go feed her Pomeranian, her character is tagged with the “rich bitch” label, and never escapes that ghetto.

This might have worked better as a limited series – although that territory was recently mined by Bodyguard, for which Richard Madden won a well-deserved Golden Globe. It would have given scope to dig further into Sam’s character, something definitely needed here. Her character was, apparently, inspired by real-life female bodyguard Jacquie Davis, who has been working in the field since the beginning of the eighties, and was the first such in the United Kingdom. There are a million possible stories to be told there, for example, her mission to Pakistan to rescue a pregnant woman kidnapped by her husband. She says, “We had to storm the villa by paying a taxi driver to ram the gates,” and then escaped the country over the mountains with the army in pursuit, because then-President, Benazir Bhutto, had recognized the bodyguard. Compared to that, what we get as a story here falls well short of a thrilling tale.

Dir: Vicky Jewson
Star: Noomi Rapace, Sophie Nélisse, Indira Varma,

Action Heroines in Asian adverts

Video

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Japanese adverts have long been a popular destination for Western actors and actresses, paying very well for quick work. Back in the day, they were safe in the knowledge that the advert would never be screened outside of Japan. so their Western fan-base would not be aware of their commercial shilling, even if it was for a product whose association would raise eyebrows here. Witness, for example, the series of five commercials that Nicolas Cage did for pachinko, a Japanese gambling game similar to pinball. Or the one for an energy drink, out of whose bottle, Arnold Schwarzenegger pops out like a genie, laughing maniacally.

The Internet, however, means that no country is an island. Recently, I saw an advert for collectible card-game Cardfight!! Vanguard, which had Kazuchika Okada going up against Milla Jovovich. Okada is probably the best professional wrestler in the world whom most people have never heard of: in 2017, he was the first Japanese wrestler to be ranked #1 on Pro Wrestling Illustrated‘s list of the top 500 wrestlers in the world. Milla Jovovich is… Well, if I have to explain that, you’re on the wrong website. But it says a lot, that in the card battle between her and Okada, Milla gets her collectible card-butt handed to her!

It’s not Milla’s first foray into Asian advertising, because she had already returned to the former Soviet Union where she was born, in 2014 – just a few countries over and down a bit, from the Ukraine to Azerbaijan. There, she filmed this advert for the dairy company named Milla: no relation beyond the name, apparently, but hard to think of a more appropriate celebrity endorsement. I’m trying to come up with a tasteful advertising slogan. Maybe something about drinking the creamy goodness of Milla… Nope, I’ve got nothing. [There’s also a making-of short about the commercial, with more footage]

But, it turns out, she was not the first action heroine of our acquaintance to make such an advert in Japan. Back in 1986, the unusually-named sports drink Pocari Sweat [would you sink a glass of Sweat?] decided the best way to advertise its product, was to have Cindy Crawford get all Xena-like and sweaty, swinging a gigantic sword around near a black panther at the Sphinx, while a mutant rabbit watches and offers her a can of the drink in question. Who could possibly resist? The same goes for Lucy Liu, advertising Suntory beer [sorry for the potato quality of the video]. At least that one diet beer. Though I would personally have had her as O-Ren Ishii, saying “You may not be able to fight like a samurai, but at least you can drink like a samurai.”

Liu’s isn’t the only Charlie’s Angel to have gone that route, as Cameron Diaz did a commercial for Aeon English Schools, though it’s kinda dull. Then there’s Natalie Portman, whose use of Lux shampoo apparently imbues her with sword-fighting skills just in time for an audition, allowing her as a result to impress the director and win a role as La Femme Musketeer. Or something. I may be making up my own story there. Portman follows in the footsteps of the future Imperator Furiosa, as Theron – with both arms – had previously been a spokeswoman for the product, as had Bandidas’s Penelope Cruz.

And finally, while Korean rather than Japanese, do you really think I’m going to pass up the chance to include The Quick and the Dead‘s Sharon Stone waving a nozzle around in sultry fashion, trading on her Basic Instinct image to sell fuel? Hell, no! Enjoy them all in the playlist below.

Contract: Snatch by Ty Hutchinson

  By

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

Sei is a former assassin, who quit the industry after getting pregnant, then having her daughter stillborn. She has taken up a quiet life in the Belgian countryside, when she’s brought out of retirement by a shocking offer she received over the deep web. Her prospective employer says Sei’s daughter is not dead, and offers information in exchange for carrying out a job: breaking another assassin, the notorious Black Wolf, out of the Turkish prison where he is being held. After confirming with the doctor who was present that the claim of her daughter’s survival is true, Sei accepts the mission. However, it turns out she was set up as a patsy, and finds herself also incarcerated in conditions which seem not have improved much since Midnight Express.

It’s a little odd that Sei is described as an assassin, yet doesn’t actually do any actual… assassinating here. Sure, she certainly kills a lot of people, mostly members of Turkish law-enforcement (as well as a wild boar) – just not for money. Might have made more sense to begin by establishing Sei’s credentials in this profession; as is, the reader has to accept her skills on faith. Perhaps the vague hints of back-story should have been fleshed out more. There’s also a large debt to Kill Bill in the driving force of the story here: specifically, the end of Volume 1, when Bill says, “One more thing, Sofie. Is she aware her daughter is still alive?” To my great surprise – sorry, can’t find the sarcasm font – this element is left entirely unresolved at the end of the volume. Indeed, she’s little if any closer to finding the truth than when she leaves the doctor.

While I’ve qualms about the overall structure here, I did actually enjoy the meat of the sandwich more than the bread. That would be the mission to Turkey, including her initial attempt to free the Black Wolf, then Sei’s subsequent escape from incarceration and flight across the country, with evil prison governor, General Rakin Demir, leading an extremely hot pursuit. It’s a crisply paced saga of action sequences, that have an interesting variety to them, from her compromised attempt to free the Black Wolf, through to a climactic race from Cesme across the Chios Strait to Greece. While she’s mostly a solo operator, who prefers to rely on stealth, she ends up teaming with Kostas, a Greek who… well, let’s just say, his connections come in handy, and I predict, likely will do so again in future volumes.

As the review to this point should make clear, I’m in two minds about whether I’ll be going further, because certain elements I liked and others I didn’t. Sei’s a good character, and I appreciated the almost complete lack of romance to get in the way of the “good stuff.” But I get the feeling the saga of her daughter is going to be stretched out beyond the point of tolerance, to deceased equine level. Probably one of those cases where I’ll wait for volume two to be available at a discounted price.

Author: Ty Hutchinson
Publisher: Gangkruptcy Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 5 in the Sei Assassin Thriller series.

Deadly Exposé

  By

★★★
“Cheaters never win.”

After hacktivists expose the identities of users to a dating site, someone starts targeting the victims, murdering them in ways appropriate to their particular sexual fetish. Detective Maxine Peyton (Archer) leads the investigation, but it soon becomes clear that, as well as acting as a moral judge, jury and executioner, the killer has a particular interest in and connection to Maxine. Potential suspects include over-attached boyfriend and college teacher Simon (Hamilton), her cop partner Nick (Beemer),  ex-husband Ryan, or even slutty best friend, Jen (Ochise), who keeps trying to hit on Simon. Might even be e) None of the above. As the bodies continue to mount, Maxine has to find the perpetrator before he/she finds her.

I sense the likely destination for this was probably Lifetime or somewhere similar, yet in this case, that should not be taken as a bad thing. For especially in the early going, this is surprisingly well-written, with a good ear for dry sarcasm which helps flesh out characters that could easily be no more than stereotypes. I genuinely LOL’d at Maxine saying to an interview subject, “Please excuse my partner. He was raised by wolves.” This goes for just about everyone: even relatively minor roles, who have only a few moments of screen-time, appear to be real people. The inspiration is clearly the Ashley Madison data breach, though the company here is called “Adeline Lilly” instead – the hacktivist group responsible is also renamed, being “Incognito” rather than Anonymous. Might have been nice if the script had engaged a bit more with the moral issues here, rather than mentioning them in passing.

The problems, however, are more during the second half, as the story – and its climax in particular – relies heavily on the killer basically wanting to be caught. This is always an irritant, especially after the culprit has shown themselves to be relatively smart and savvy in the early going. It does feel like rather lazy writing, unless there has been some particular justification set up for it e.g. they have accomplished whatever it was they set out to do. In this case, that doesn’t happen, and instead someone close to Maxine is kidnapped in order to lure her in. Again, the motivation for this, and why he/she is so obsessed with her, is left rather too vague to work successfully.

Naturally, things end in a moral way, par for the TVM course: those who are guilty, in one way or another, tend to pay with their lives, while the (relatively) innocent are able to survive. While what follows is a spoiler, I have to say that does not include the killer, who is dispatched with surprising if satisfying brutality, at point-blank range. Despite my criticisms about the way things eventually unfold here, this was still a more than acceptable time-passer. Archer and the rest of the cast deliver engaging performances that were good enough to sustain interest, even when the story could have used some additional writing.

Dir: Chris James
Star: Melissa Archer, Graham Hamilton, Brandon Beemer, Alyshia Ochse