Author: Jim McLennan

Red Sparrow

  By

★★★
“The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!”

There was a while there, where Russia dropped out of the top spot as far as being cinematic villains were concerned. No longer the “Evil Empire” of the Reagan era, they had largely been replaced, in the post 9/11 landscape, by Islamic fundamentalism. But now, those pesky Russkies are back as the bad guys once again, following their interference in the sacrosanct and solemn process of Americans electing a president. [I really must figure out a sarcasm font for this site] While this is supposedly set in the present day – I say that, because at one point, cutting-edge computer software is delivered on a set of floppy disks! – this feels more like something born out of Peak Cold War.

Ballerina Dominika Egorova (Lawrence) suffers an accident on stage that ends her career. Living in a Bolshoi-provided apartment and with a sick mother, things look bleak until her uncle Ivan Egorov (Schoenaerts) steps in. He offers her a job as a “sparrow”, honey-potting foreigners in order to obtain intelligence from them. After some qualms, Dominika accepts, and undergoes training designed to remove all her inhibitions. Her first target is Nate Nash (Edgerton), a CIA operative now in Budapest. He had to leave Moscow after an incident involving him and a high-level Russian agent; that agent’s identity is what Dominika has to discover, in her guise as an embassy translator.

The most obvious recent touchstone is Atomic Blonde, which I found considerably more entertaining – even if it is, I would venture, considerably less realistic. This is dour stuff by comparison, almost unremittingly grim in the dehumanizing way the Russians use Dominika, Dominika uses Nate, and Nate uses Dominika. For it’s clear from the start that he is not taken in by her facade and sees the honey-pot for what it is – yet thinks she can still be a useful asset, who can be recruited and turned. Or is that actually part of Dominika’s game-plan, to appear as a potential defector? It’s only right at the end, by the time many wheels have turned, that we discover whose side she’s really on: not much of a spoiler to reveal that it’s her own.

One thing which is clear. is how the film has been misunderstood, reading reviews which say things like, “Red Sparrow is intended to be a sexy thriller.” No, it’s not, any more than Showgirls was. Both are often about sex; yet that doesn’t make them “sexy”, especially when the director depicts the ugly aspects as much as (if not more often than) the erotic. Here, the sexual encounters are weaponized, and are as much about power as anything. Nothing illustrates that better than Lawrence’s nude scene, during a very public training session as what she herself calls “whore school” A classmate who had previously tried to rape Dominika is ordered to have sex with her. But, partly in response to her taunting, he’s unable to perform. If you think it’s supposed to be “sexy”, you’re the problem, not the film.

The trailers may have somewhat betrayed it, making it look like a modern version of Atomic Blonde (or even an origin story for Black Widow!). It isn’t, and you should not expect anything with such gleeful abandon, or such a defiant sense of era and location. Sparrow could easily take place in any Eastern bloc city, at any time since the end of World War II. It’s no less brutal than Blonde, deserving its adult rating for violence and torture as much as the sexual content. The heroine is certainly not as active a participant, though it’s creepy as hell to see Dominika energetically wielding a tool usually reserved for carrying out skin grafts. But it is considerably more serious in intent, though the case could be made (and has been), that it’s ultimately less empowering and more exploitative.

Not sure I’d go that far: I know it’s a great deal less fun, and also which of the two is the only film I’ll have in my collection. This doesn’t necessarily make it a bad movie; especially if you can get past Lawrence’s accent, her performance is worth a look, and as an ice-cold tale of deep-frozen international intrigue, the 140 minutes go past quicker than I initially thought they might. The actress is re-teamed here with Hunger Games director (who is no relation), and I’m not sure he’s the best person for the task, seeming to rely heavily on trotting out tropes of the genre we’ve seen too often before. However, a bigger problem is likely Edgerton as the male lead, who has close to zero charisma, and even less chemistry with his co-star. That, however, may be intentional, since they’re both playing the other as a patsy, with the “real” emotions involved being questionable.

The rest of the supporting cast aren’t bad. Having recently seen Jeremy Irons being criminally wasted in Assassin’s Creed, I was much more pleased with his performance here, though both he and Charlotte Rampling (as a Nikita-esque head of the school for sparrows) have something of the same accent issue as Lawrence. It always seems odd: we are supposed to be able to accept the conceit of non-natives playing foreigners who speak English to each other… only if a fake local accent is applied on top? It’s about as necessary and convincing as the glasses on Clark Kent. Mary Louise Parker also shows up, as a US senator with a taste for booze, whom Dominika opportunistically swipes from another agent.

The makers deserve some credit for making a feature film that is clearly intended for a mature audience, something which we don’t see enough of out of Hollywood these days [why bother, when you can churn out sequels and comic-book movies to greater profit?]. But the result here, while well-crafted, is almost entirely cheerless. It’s hard to engage with a heroine whose initial action are altruistic, yet appears to become, by the end, amost as soulless and propelled by self-interest as the state who recruited her.

Dir: Francis Lawrence
Star: Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Jeremy Irons

The Five

  By

★★★½
“Live organ donor.”

A chance encounter in a convenience store destroys the life of Go Eun-ah (Kim). For her young daughter accidentally sees serial killer Oh Jae-wook (On) abducting his next victim. Realizing he has been spotted, Jae-wook carries out a brutal home invasion, killing both the daughter and Eun-ah’s husband, and leaving her permanently paralyzed. But he has reckoned without Eun-ah’s fortitude. She devotes the rest of her life to tracking down her attacker, and puts together a team of four to help her. All need transplants, for them or their family. So Eun-ah has promised that once Jae-wook has been captured, delivered to her and killed, she will give them her organs. Damn. That’s what I call “fully committed”… But when Jae-Wook realizes he is being hunted, he turns his attentions on the hunters.

Revenge seems to have been a strong theme in the Korean cinema we’ve covered here – Lady Vengeance, Princess Aurora and perhaps most closely, Monster. This perhaps falls a little short of the best of those, but is by no means a bad movie: it’s executed with plenty of style, and the twists and turns keep coming from beginning to end. This was Jeong’s first feature, not that you’d know it, and is based on his own web-comic. This has a very strong concept, and though it may seem implausible, the set-up is done with great care, putting together the elements in a way that it all seems credible. And even though confined to a wheel-chair, Eyn-Ah’s place here is secure, from the scene where she believes she spots Jae-Wook in the street, and wheels herself after him frantically, a long knife in her hand.

The first half is particularly good, explaining why Eyn-Ah came to such a desperate place, and how she linked up with others who are equally desperate in a different direction. It’s certainly consistent in tone, and if you’re looking for some frothy entertainment, you should stay well away: there isn’t much light to be found in this darkness [though I did laugh at the guy Eyn-Ah captures during her investigation who protests, dead-pan, “Madame, two Tasers in one day!” Ok, you probably had to be there…]. This is especially true of the ending, which I must admit, I found the weakest part of the film. It could have been considerably more satisfying, both in the consummation of Eyn-Ah’s revenge and her eventual fate.  At one point it feels as if her old skills – early on, we see her creating a wonderful Rube Goldberg machine for her daughter’s birthday – are going to prove gloriously relevant, and it’s a shame they aren’t.

However, perhaps this is the point. As Eyn-Ah is told by the (very Christian) caregiver, who initially takes care of her on release from hospital, “Revenge may feel sweet before you do it, but he’ll haunt you forever.” Maybe Eyn-Ah’s entire scheme is a way of avoiding this guilt. If so, I can’t deny its ultimate success.

Dir: Jeong Yeon-shik
Star: Kim Sun-ah, On Joo-wan, Ma Dong-seok, Shin Jung-geun

Revenge

  By

★★★★½
“Women always have to put up a fucking fight.”

This French rape-revenge movie is the most blood-drenched GWG film I’ve seen since Kill Bill, Volume 1, and is not for the faint of heart. However, the good news is, it’s not the rape part of the equation which is hard to watch: this is depicted with admirable restraint, occurring mostly off-camera. The director has stressed that the story isn’t about the rape, and I’m delighted with that: it has always struck me as the least interesting element. It’s a plot device, to kick-off what matters. Focusing on it, as some films have done, seems to me like focusing on turning the ignition key, instead of driving the car. This, instead, offers a road-trip to remember.

The victim is Jen (Lutz), a young girl having a weekend in the Moroccan desert with her rich, married boyfriend, Richard (Janssens). He’s also there to do a spot of hunting with his pals, Stan and Dimitri (Colombe and Bouchède). They four have a night drinking and dancing, but the next morning, when Richard heads off to make travel arrangements, Stan rapes Jen. On Richard’s return, he tries to smooth things over. Jen is having none of it, and storms off. Knowing that any legal complaint would destroy his marriage, Richard fakes calling for transport out, then pushes Jen off a cliff. Her landing is… not a soft one. Convinced the problem is solved, the men leave disposing of the body until later. Except, Jen isn’t dead, and when the trio go back, she’s not there. Helped by some impressively strong peyote – in this case, the drugs clearly do work – she patches herself up, and turns the hunters into the hunted.

First, let me address the improbably-resilient elephant in the room. Yes, her survival and pursuit is implausible, with a couple of large holes. Literally: one of the film’s two highly cringe-inducing pieces of self-surgery shows Jen patching up a hole in her stomach. Yet there must, of necessity, be an even larger one in her back. What happened to that? To be honest, they didn’t need this aspect at all: simply surviving the fall would have been hardcore enough. She also goes barefoot through the entire film, without a whimper. In the Arizona summer, I can’t take the garbage out barefoot without leaving singed skin on the drive. One shot of her pulling the shoes off her first victim would have fixed that.

It’s a shame, albeit a minor one, because virtually everything else is perfect. The transition of Jen, from the stuff of Richard’s fantasies, to that of his nightmares – he’s the one who delivers the tagline above – is impeccably handled. Even her good looks transform. At the beginning, it’s a shallow and utterly conventional prettiness – which she has exploited into a weekend getaway to a luxury location. By the end, she has paid a terrible price for this. Yet even as she’s missing minor body parts, disfigured, drenched in blood (both hers and others) and covered in desert grime… she’s glowing. Her inner beauty shines through, increasingly illuminating the bad-ass bitch she has become over the course of proceedings.

For a film lauded for its supposed up-ending of the male gaze, this feels a bit odd, since it could be read as the sexual assault triggering Jen’s blossoming: rape as psychological therapy. She should thank her attackers! [The image of a rising phoenix branded into her skin, due to her impromptu first-aid, is not exactly subtle in its imagery. Then again, the entire film is not exactly subtle, and proudly defiant as such] If that reading is on shaky ground, it’s also amusing to note Revenge utterly fails the dreaded Bechdel Test, despite being brutally empowering, to a degree rarely seen. More evidence – as if it were really needed – of how shitty the Bechdel Test is at evaluating films.

The good thing is that the feature’s entertainment value in no way relies on any kind of Identity Politics 1.0.1. to work. It functions perfectly well as a stripped-down pursuit, which neither asks for, no offers, any kind of quarter on behalf of the participants – for their genders or any other reason. There’s a steady, relentless escalation to proceedings from the moment Jen takes flight, to a final confrontation which redefines “paint the walls blood-red”. That’s a jaw-dropping pursuit round the house where things began, and includes proof that cling film, like duct tape, has a thousand and one uses.

The director says the only previous example of the rape-revenge genre she watched was Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left. Though if true, the proximity of names for the heroine here and in the genre’s most infamous entry, I Spit On Your Grave, is a striking coincidence. That aside, it’s interesting to note that the only other female-directed entry, Baise-moi, was also from France. And in tone, this has almost as much in common with À l’interieur (Inside), which was just as blood-drenched, and similarly gave absolutely no fucks. Much credit to Fargeat for this “take no prisoners” attitude, and delivering a thoroughly uncompromising piece of cinema; kudos for all of her cast as well, in particular Lutz, who go all-in to no less a degree.

I’ve been watching extreme films for thirty years or so, and let’s be honest, you get a bit desensitized to it all. We went to see this one at a local art cinema, and from their reactions, it was clear that most of the audience were, let’s say, not as “experienced” in the ways of savage cinema as Chris and I. Their responses merely added to the fun: I’d kinda forgotten how audience reaction can enhance a film (their goddamn rustling of snacks… not so much, but let’s move rapidly on). At the end, after all was said and done, one of the other attendees blurted out loud, “Best ten bucks I’ve ever spent.” I’m not inclined to disagree. Despite its flaws – which I acknowledge and embrace – if 2018 offers a film which packs a bigger punch, I can’t wait to see it.

Dir: Coralie Fargeat
Star: Matilda Lutz, Kevin Janssens, Vincent Colombe, Guillaume Bouchède

Girl Fights Back, by Jacques Antoine

  By

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

I’ve come to the conclusion I prefer bad films to bad books. A bad film can be appreciated and offer entertainment in unexpected ways. I’ve rarely found that to be the case with literature, which just… lies there, dully. If a movie sucks, then you can at least allow it to drift into the background, while you check your phone, play with the cat, or do household chores. A bad book, on the other hand, requires every bit as much effort as a good one: the return on that investment is just a great deal less.

Not that Girl Fights Back is truly bad. There are few books that are the publishing equivalent, say, of Plan 9 From Outer Space. But it is strikingly mediocre, with a heroine whose name might as well be “Mary Sue” rather than “Emily Kane”, since she’s so idealized. I mean, five minutes in the company of this teenage girl, and a hardened professional espionage agent melts like butter: “He must have glimpsed in her eyes just then the immense wellspring of compassion and forgiveness that made its home there, and sighed as his shoulders visibly sagged, perhaps under the weight of the knowledge that she could indeed forgive him.” Damn. That’s a sentence and a half. He’s not the only one: Everybody Loves Emily, it appears, whether it’s her school-friends or lethal ex-CIA operatives.

She is the daughter of George Kane, a man with a murky past, who works as a chauffeur/bodyguard for a former government executive, who also appears to have been involved in his share of previous shenanigans. To cut a long story short, their past comes back to haunt them: the estate where they live is attacked one night, by a group seeking information about a research project into “super soldiers” with which both George and his employer were involved. The attackers think Emily is part of it; fortunately, she is out in the woods that evening, and is able to return later and rescue her father, who clues her in to the situation. So, what does she do, after overcoming the shock of all these traumatic events, to foil those hunting her?

If you guessed, “Return to school, as if nothing had happened,” you are the author of this book.

Seriously. I know she’s a martial arts wizard, and there’s such a thing as “hiding in plain sight.” Still, this ranks as among the most baffling of decisions I can remember a character making. She could have hidden out with the rest of her family, or gone on the run independently. Nope. Back to class and hanging out at the dojo it is. There’s also the striking way in which a major character is suddenly disposed of: “____ died that night, having never regained consciousness.” Well, that’s a shocker, especially since they had been quite chatty over the preceding hours.

The martial arts heavy nature of the action is also somewhat problematic, since this kind of things is hard to describe: reading about kung fu, tends to be a bit like reading about juggling. It’s nowhere near as exciting as seeing it, unless the writer is particularly good. Antoine is not, and we get sentences such as, “Emily slid one hand along her arm, until it became a ridge-hand strike to the side of her headgear, and in the ensuing confusion jabbed to the center of her chest.” Not exactly painting a thrilling word-picture, is it?

The book does possess a philosophical tone, which occasionally hits on some nuggets of interest. I particularly liked this one, on gender differences: “Boys fight for dominance, she thought, which means that at some level they understand they must preserve their defeated enemy. Otherwise dominance will not have been achieved. But girls fight to injure or eradicate. They have no use for a defeated enemy, which makes them much more malevolent than boys, she concluded.” Overall, however, that’s the exception rather than the rule, and I reached the end with absolutely no interest in seeing what happened next.

Author: Jacques Antoine
Publisher: Amaterasu Press, available through Amazon, both as an e-book and a paperback.
Book 1 of 7 in the Emily Kane Adventure series.

Emergency Exit

  By

★★★
“A heroine who stands against heroin.”

Released in 1980, it was only the previous year – as an opening caption tells us – that women were allowed into the Greek police force. So this obscurity [hence the low-quality images, for which I apologize!] was perhaps the first Hellenic entry in our genre. The heroine is Daisy Alexiou (Karlatou, best-known for playing Prince’s mother in Purple Rain), one of the first batch of policewomen, whom we first see in an introductory training montage. Initially assigned to traffic duty, her role in chasing and capturing a bank robber quickly gets her assigned to narcotics. Which is fine with her: she has a strong anti-drug streak, due to the personal impact it has had on her, proclaiming, “It is a disgusting disease, that kills people and rots their society.” Given this, I was wryly amused to see Daisy smokes like a chimney. Hey, it was the eighties…

She gets to see the human face of the heroin problem when she captures a junkie, Tassos Bekiris (Eskenazy), trying to burgle her apartment. Their relationship helps him get clean temporarily, until a relapse sends him back into the arms of mother smack. He ends up shot dead, and the evidence, unfortunately, points increasingly towards Daisy. Before the police net, under the command of her boss, Markos Angelou (Foundas), closes on her, she has to track down the real killer, who is also the kingpin of the local drug trade. Or, rather, queenpin. For the boss is Katia Theohari (Mavropoulou), the owner of a local import-export business, who traffics the dope inside hollowed-out statues.

Considering this is nearer four decades old than three, it has stood the test of time surprisingly well. Alexiou doesn’t mess around, happily hurtling into danger without a second thought, and proves generally competent, save for an ill-advised undercover operation, which ends badly and seems to exist largely so we can see Karlatou dressed as a hooker. Outside of the cigarette use (so rampant it feels like Marlboro were one of the producers), the most dated thing here is probably Daisy and Markos having a romantic relationship, in total violation of every boss-subordinate protocol. But both the story and characters still feel reasonably contemporary, and Karlatou carries herself effectively.

This clocks in at a meaty 123 minutes, though if director Foskolos was not quite so fond of slow-motion, it could well have been closer to 100. He appears also to appreciate gravel-pits, with the bank robbery at the start and the drug buy at the end, both ending up in what looks suspiciously like the same location. The latter does result in an laudably downbeat conclusion, tying back in to why Daisy is so down on drugs. Yet it’s with a twist that makes for an ambivalent ending: while she may have cleared her name of Tassos’s murder, it seems Markos will now be forced to cover up multiple other killings in which his officer was involved. I suspect Daisy’s commendation for bravery might be a while…

Dir: Nikos Foskolos
Star: Olga Karlatou, Giorgos Foundas, Alberto Eskenazy, Gely Mavropoulou
a.k.a. Eksodos Kindynou or Εξοδος Κινδυνου

Avengers Grimm: Time Wars

  By

★½
“Fairy disappointing.”

I was one of the few who didn’t mind Avengers Grimm, appreciating its poverty-row energy, while acknowledging it had little or nothing to do with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With Avengers: Infinity War storming the global box-office, it’s not much of a surprise to find The Asylum going back to the same well. However, despite the same director, and much of the same cast, the script botches the timey-wimey aspects badly enough that the first half, in particular, becomes a slog that’ll test the audience’s endurance.

The villainess here is Magda (Maya), the queen of Atlantis, who storms out of the ocean with her army of soldiers – well, there’s at least four of them, with any more appearing entirely through not very good digital copy/paste. She’s looking for Prince Charming (Marcel), as if he can be convinced to marry her, Magda will become ruler of the land as well as the sea. In her way is Lookingglass, an organization created by Alice (Licciardi) to protect Earth from all these fairy-tale threats. She gets the band back together: Snow White (Parkinson), Red Riding Hood (Elizabeth Eileen) and Sleeping Beauty (Marah Fairclough), the last-named of whom has her own interest in the Prince. Magda isn’t going to let them interfere with her plans of world domination, so throws them through a portal in time and…

Well, not very much. There’s an enormous amount of wandering around thereafter, in what has to be rampant padding to feature length. As just one example, Sleepy gets captured and stuck in a glass case – a situation with which viewers will certainly be able to empathize. While Rumpelstiltskin returns from the first movie, he’s now played by a different actor. And that The Asylum could apparently no longer afford Casper Van Dien, replacing him with someone cheaper less well-known, should probably be considered as a red flag. Confusing matters further, Prince Charming is black and sports a fake British accent. I found one of these things deeply offensive. :)

The main appeal of the original was seeing all these D*sney princess types being bad-asses, to varying degrees, and kicking ass – that appears here in VERY intermittent spurts. For example, Red still uses her bow, yet only on a couple of occasions, to the point it’s more of a token gesture. I’m not sure who’s responsible for the fight choreography here: it seems barely passable at best, and is often feeble. I don’t recall the predecessor being quite as bad in this department, though the mists of time may be working to its benefit. While Avengers Grimm was cheap and an obvious rip-off, it had enough gonzo energy to slide past. Time Wars is merely cheap and an obvious rip-off; as such, it probably has more in common with our other recent Asylum review, Tomb Invader. Not least, in that both sent me off to sleep during the duller moments.

Dir: Jeremy M. Inman
Star: Lauren Parkinson, Christina Licciardi, Michael Marcel, Katherine Maya

BloodLust, by Auryn Hadley

  By

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

Three millennia previously, the Terrans landed on the planet of Ogun, and took it over. The native Iliri, though in many ways superior to the new arrivals in both mental and physical ability, ended up subjugated. They are now very definitely second-class citizens, only remembering vague legends of their once-proud past. One such is Salryc Luxx, a rare pure-bred Iliri who is a private in the army. Despite the fierce prejudice against “her kind”, she gets a try-out for the Black Blades, the military’s elite special forces. Which, it turns out, is a haven for Iliri and their supporters. Sal becomes the first woman in the unit, and her talents – including the ability to shape shift – quickly become an essential part of the team, allowing her to become one of their top covert assassins. However, her presence also causes significant static, not least her relationship with the Black Blades’ commanding officer, Blaec.

Oh, dear. Who knew there was a market for thinly-veiled identity politics crossed with soft porn? But let’s start with the positives, such as the well-considered setting – I liked the way that metal is an extremely rare commodity, helping explain the lack of both firearms and vehicles (though it’s not yet quite clear how the Terrans got to Ogun? Wooden spaceships?). Hadley also has a good hand on the action aspects, with Sal’s missions being tense and bloody. However, Sal is a bit of a Mary Sue, being stronger, faster and just downright better than any man, even including the hand-picked soldiers of the Black Blades. It’s all a bit too obviously author wish-fulfillment.

Still, it is considerably less problematic than the relationships here, not least the idiocy of Blaec. For a commanding officer, he’s as dumb as a log, right from when he has a one-night stand with a woman, and lets her dictate a key element of the test Sal and her two rivals will go through the next day. For the woman is Sal, using her shape-shifting talents. Well played, it has to be said. But he then starts an actual relationship with her, in defiance of all (very sensible) military orders of officers bedding subordinates. And my eye-rolling reached epic levels when it turns out that Sal’s post-operation reaction is to go full-on nympho – hence the title, I guess – in particular, getting sweaty with colleague and fellow assassin, Cyno. Which makes Blaec go all sad puppy.

Everything about these aspects feel just… wrong, on so many levels. From the Goodreads reviews, it appears this is an entry from the “reverse harem” fiction genre, in which, according to UrbanDictionary.com, a single girl is liked and followed by a bunch of handsome men. You learn something new every day, I guess. If this had been mentioned a bit more in the Amazon blurb, rather than being described as, “a powerful and intriguing female lead, the likes of which the fantasy genre hasn’t yet seen,” I might well have skipped it.

Author: Ella Summers
Publisher: Spotted Horse Productions, available through Amazon as both an e-book and paperback.
Book #1 of 7 in the ‘Rise of the Iliri’ series.

Diamond Dawgs

  By

★★
“Car trouble.”

It’s hard to believe a film rated two stars exceeded expectations, but when I saw this had scored just 1.7 out of ten on the IMDb, I was braced for something much worse. I mean, cross off the friends of the cast and crew who scored it a “10”, and 72% of voters have given it the lowest mark possible. Make no mistake, this isn’t great. It’s not even good. But this is not quite as irredeemably bad as that score would imply.

The story concerns the car thief gang of the title, including Ciara (Johnson) and Pretty (Manning), who work under the heavy thumb of South Central (Núñez). They target a party being held by rappers High Rollaz, not realizing the trunk of one car lifted contains the only copy of a master tape for the High Rollas latest album. The trio, led by Millions (Green), start to follow the Dawgs’s trail, only for things to get complicated when Ciara and one of the High Rollaz fall for each other.

Made in 2009, the production values here are shaky at best, with the video in particular not having aged well. You could likely record better quality footage on a medium-end phone these days, and the sound might well be improved, too. The story is woefully thin: there are scenes which either stay far beyond their purpose (unless that purpose was to showcase one of the rap songs on the soundtrack), or don’t appear to serve any purpose at all. The action, such as it is, is very poorly-executed: the Dawgs do very little actual crime after the opening sequence. Basically, rob the party and that’s it.

And, yet… On a couple of occasions, the film did surprise me. For instance, there’s one scene where South Central forces one of his minions to play Russian Roulette, and it’s genuinely disturbing. Núñez’s acting experience is apparent, and weirdly, his performance here reminded me of Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s portrayal of Negan in The Walking Dead (which, obviously, it well pre-dates). There’s the same sense he’s entirely unhinged, and could go off into insane violence at any moment. We also get the Most Unexpected Star Trek Reference of All-Time, when a drug dealer says of his product that it will, “Get you high, like Captain Kirk… The young Kirk, the one getting all the alien pussy.” I laughed, anyway.

I’m certainly not the intended audience here, yet I can’t imagine even its target would be able to look past the shoddier aspects, despite what feels like a certain veneer of urban authenticity to the dialogue and characters. It plods on, entirely as you’d expect, to the final face-off, when the High Rollaz try to execute a deal with South Central and his crew, for the return of their tape. I sense the actresses here were chosen more for their visual appeal – it seems most of them were models – rather than their acting ability. Though since they get precious little to do here, it’s very difficult to tell whether or not they have any talent. They do nail the “looking pretty” thing, close to impeccably.

Dir: Chris Rogers
Star: Sherina Manning, Azur-De Johnson, Will Green, Miguel A. Núñez Jr.

Hate Story

  By

★★★
“Hate trumps love.”

After exposing construction company Cementec as involved in corruption, journalist Kavya Krishna (Dam) is surprised to get a call from Siddharth Dhanrajgir (Devaiya), son of the company’s owner. He ends up offering her a job at far above her previous salary, and the two eventually grow into a relationship. However, it’s all a ruse: Siddharth dumps and firing Kayva, saying, “I fuck those who fuck with me.” When she tries to strike back by telling him she’s pregnant, he has her kidnapped and forced to have an abortion, which leaves Kavya permanently unable to have children. She vows to destroy Siddharth and his company, by any means necessary, using her investigative skills – and no shortage of feminine wiles – to get the information required.

An enjoyable pot-boiler, this has some of the traditional aspects of Bollywood cinema, not least a lengthy running-time of 139 minutes. It is, likely fortunately, light on the musical numbers; though the songs clearly play a significant part, there’s only one scene in a night-club which comes close to what you’d expect from Indian cinema. It’s also an odd mix, which I can best describe as “chaste raunchiness”. This is a film, after all, about a woman prepared to go to absolutely any length for vengeance, crammed chock full of sexual situations… Yet the movie contains no nudity beyond the PG-13 level, and not so much as a kiss. Even Siddharth’s trademark line, frequently repeated in English, is far more politely (and inaccurately!) rendered in the subtitles as “I ruin the people who mess with me.”

I largely tracked this down, because I saw that Hate Story 2 was on Netflix at the time, and not the original.  I feel it’s perhaps the kind of story which would be better served by a Western remake, which wouldn’t have to abide by the strict censorship rules of India. [I’m reminded there is apparently a Bollywood version of Basic Instinct, which I can only imagine!] There may not be anything quite like the poster present in the film, and some of the plot contrivances are, frankly, incredible. For instance, Kayva ends up on the board of Cementec, a position obtained almost solely by making doe-eyes at a cabinet minister for an extended period.

However, it’s still a thoroughly satisfying tale of a woman, abused by a powerful man, turning to strike back at him; a tale of sexual harassment and its reversal like has more resonance now, than when released in 2012. Dam cuts a striking figure, and I thoroughly enjoyed the scheming interplay between Kayva and Siddharth. For example, he sends his investigator to bug her house, only for her to find the audio-visual devices and use them to send disinformation back at him. Then he releases the steamy tapes to the media, framing her for the murder of her lover. I was impressed with the ending, too – it’s moral and grim at the same time. Despite the extended duration, the time sped by: while the sequel is no longer on Netflix, you should still expect a review, sooner rather than later.

Dir: Vivek Agnihotri
Star: Paoli Dam, Gulshan Devaiya, Nikhil Dwivedi, Joy Sengupta

Gia in the City of the Dead, by Kristi Belcamino

  By

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

Gia Valentina Santella is the daughter of a rich Italian family in California. She doesn’t seem to do much with the bountiful hand fate has dealt her: drinking, casual sex and designer labels appear to be her main interests. But her easy life is rudely disrupted after her parents die in a fire at their estate in Switzerland (!). In the aftermath, she is sent a letter from the man who carried out their autopsies, confessing that he was paid off to conceal the real, much less accidental cause of death. As Gia starts to dig into the past, seeking the truth, it soon becomes apparent that it was a good deal murkier than initially appears. And also, that someone has a strong, vested interest in ensuring it stays covered.

Goddamn, this is bland: I finished it only a couple of days ago, and am struggling to recall much more than the basic details. I do recall being rather annoyed, however, that the heroine endlessly quotes gobbets of Budo philosophy… but appears largely clueless when it comes to putting any of her allegedly extensive training into practice. She seems to have endless resources, for example, funding a rather convoluted scheme to make her adversaries believe she has left the company. But these are not matched by her resourcefulness – she then blows the gaff by a ridiculously ill-advised trip to a funeral home. [And don’t even get me started on that particular corpse, which also meets a highly-suspicious end, yet is all but ignored by Gia, at least in this volume]

It just feels as if so many of the incidents here were thrown in without sufficient thought. For example, at one point, someone sets the apartment building where Gia is hiding out on fire, when she’s not in it. Even at the end of the book, when the truth is finally revealed, there’s no logical motivation for this. If it was to get rid of a bit of evidence, then breaking in and taking it would have made more sense. The heroine… Well, she seems to have a good heart in there, somewhere, but this felt more like reading about the misadventures of one of the Hilton sisters: not exactly the smartest knife in the kitchen-block, shall we say.

According to the author, “Gia Santella is my alter ego, the woman I might have been in a different life.” And that apparently unrestrained wish-fulfillment is perhaps a good part of the problem here. For example, there is absolutely no reason why she needs to drive a red Ferrari, yet she does. We get sentences such as, “I spotted five Ferraris, including one Ferrari 458 Italia Spider, three Lamborghinis Gallardo LP 560-4 Bicolores, and even a McLaren MP4-12C.” If I wanted to amuse myself with an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, I would do so. At least The Grand Tour has Jeremy Clarkson being snarky about the sports cars.

Author: Kristi Belcamino
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon as an e-book only.
Book 1 of 4 in the Gia Santella Crime Thriller series.