Jim McLennan, Author at Girls With Guns

Assassin’s Run

By Jim McLennan November 2, 2015 May 6, 2020 Review

★★★
“Killer dance moves.”

Prima ballerina Maya Mason (Skya) has it all: great career, billionaire oil-magnate husband Michael (Slater), loving daughter. But it all comes tumbling down when Michael is assassinated in an apparent coup d’etat of his business empire. The final piece is a set of documents, bearer shares that confer control of the company to whoever has them, and the players behind the predatory takeover bid, think Maya knows where these essential certificates are. She insists she has no clue, but is not believed, and to apply pressure, she is framed for drug trafficking and thrown into jail: not where anywhere wants to be, least of all a classical dancer. Worse is to follow, when they kidnap her daughter, but that’s a step too far, and Maya vows to use her very particular set of skills, skills she has acquired over a long career, to make her a nightmare for the people concerned. Or, if you want the one-word version: ballet-fu.

If you came into this expecting anything at all like the cover, you’re in for a surprise, as it is likely the most utterly misleading of all time. Neither Slater nor Hauser are actiony types at all in this; rare though it is for a film to undersell the action heroine element, for our purposes we’re all the happier with the end product! It’s certainly a new style, even if we remember that Michelle Yeoh, for example, learned ballet well before martial arts, beginning at the age of four. It’s a shame it’s not put to significant use until the second half, starting with a prison fight after another inmate decides she wants Maya’s ring. This is finished off with a barrage of spin-kick after spin-kick after spin-kick, and is pretty awesome. There’s also a good brawl in a bathroom, but you’re left wishing for more, since it’s something deserving of greater use, and Skya’s flexibility is awesome. Yes, she can kick behind her head, thanks for asking.

She proves herself somewhat multi-talented here, also co-directing and singing the poignant song over the end credits – Chris decided she wants it played at her funeral, but if we played every song she had decided to use, it would be a three-week event… There are some aspects of the plot that don’t make a great deal of sense – why do the villains bother to frame Maya, when they could just kidnap her and torture the certificates’ location out of her? And, I have to say, her darling little daughter is much more whinily irritating, rather than the “adorable” for which the film is clearly aiming. Some of the other performances come over a little bit “English as a second language” – including Hauser as Maya’s former boyfriend – yet it moves along briskly enough, and Skya sells both the dramatic and physical aspects with enough credibility to make for a decent 90 minutes of fun.

Dir: Robert Crombie + Sofya Skya
Star: Sofya Skya, Christian Slater, Cole Hauser, Angus Macfadyen
a.k.a. White Swan

Girls With Guns Calendars 2016

By Jim McLennan November 1, 2015 August 15, 2016 Feature

Welcome to our fifth annual round-up of girls with guns calendars! This year brings the return of some old friends, but there are also some new entries to be considered. Below, you’ll find prices, sample images and links to purchase for all the calendars we could find. We’ll add more as we find them, since there’s still three months left in the year…

TACGIRLS TacGirls.com – $18.00 “The Tactical Girls® 2015 gun calendar starts in January of 2015 and brings you 13 months of hot girls with some of the world’s most exotic weaponry in realistic tactical settings. It includes gun specifications and trivia from military, law enforcement and firearms history and, of course, the beautiful Tactical Girls Calendar Girls. Fill that 12″ x 24″ empty space on your Man Cave, garage, barracks or tent wall with 13 months of Girls With Guns. The 2015 Tactical Girls Calendar includes the Drake Stalker .50 BMG Sniper Rifle, the Kel-Tec RFB Battle Rifle, and the FNP-45 Tactical Pistol. Also a first for this year, we have an AT4 Anti-Tank Weapon! along with a variety of belt fed machine guns, battle rifles, AR platforms and pistols all with gorgeous models in realistic settings”
WOMEN OF ARMAGEDDON WomenOfArmageddon.com – $TBA Still under way, but being worked on hard ‘n’ fast by creator Michael Zinn. Check out the site and/or their Facebook page for updates on progress, and also the interview with Michael from last year, if you want more information on the overall concept.
LIBERTY BELLES LibertyBellesUSA.com – $15.99, through DRTO.com “The new 2016 Liberty Belles Calendar provides a sexy twist on the world of special operations forces. The sexy women of Liberty Belles are adorned in tactical gear and custom fit bikini uniforms to showcase anyone from US Navy Seals, to US Army Rangers. The calendar provides 12 months of action packed shots that specializes in portraying female tactical operators from a sexy perspective. The Liberty Belles calendar also features a bonus pull out poster! 12″ x 9″ folds out to 12″ x 18″. A portion of the profits from the sale of the Liberty Belles calendar is donated to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation in support of our fallen warriors.”
ALEX SMITS Alex-Smits.com – $20.00 Alex has been writing about action heroines for as long as I have, and is also a photographer. This year, he’s returning to the fray with his own entry into the calendar market, which he has done most years since 2010.
GUNS AND GIRLS GunsAndGirlsCalendar.com – $19.95 “The 2016 GUNS AND GIRLS wall calendar is packed with beautiful pin up models and many of today’s most popular weapons, everything from handguns to AR15s. This 16 month large format calendar is 17″x 28″ when hung up and a perfect gift for any Armed Service Member, Police Officer or Shooting Enthusiast. Also includes a bonus 12 month poster inside giving you two calendars in one package!”
MAGPUL Magpul.com – $16.95 “It’s that time of year again. We loaded up the cars, bikes, and guns and headed a few hours north to Dallas to meet up with an all-star cast of some of the most beautiful women on the planet and put together a calendar that may just be our best one yet. The Texas sun was unforgivingly hot, but we think you’ll agree that the images that Dixie Dixon captured for us were even more so. The on-set work is all wrapped up, and now we’re working on choosing the best shots and formatting to finish out our 2016 calendar.”
PIPE HITTERS UNION PipeHittersUnion.com – $29,99 Participants include Giselle Falla (Owner of Redback One), Alex Rogers (Competitive Shooter), Michelle Viscusi (U.S. Army Vet and owner of Defensive Depot), Brittany Paus (U.S. Air Force Vet), Danielle Harris (Owner of Dragon Fire Armory), Jacqueline Carrizosa (U.S. Navy Vet and Competitive Shooter) and Amanda Furrer (member of USA Olypmics Shooting Team).
GUNS AND CAMO GunsAndCamo.com – $13.95
HOT SHOTS HotShotsCalendar.com – $14.99 “Now in its ninth year the iconic Hot Shots Calendar has gone ‘steam punk’ as we put our unique twist on many famous wars and battles of years gone by. As always our main aim is to raise money and awareness for wounded veteran charities in the UK and the USA while at the same time showcasing the industry’s latest, cutting edge military equipment. As well as some classic items from years gone by. The outfits you see have again been exclusively designed by Caleb Crye. Shot this year in Herefordshire, United Kingdom it’s with great pride that we welcome back legends Rosie Jones, Kelly Hall, Daisy Watts, Emma Glover and Jessica Davies as well as introducing the new girls Georgia Rosella, Joey Fisher and Melissa Cunningham.”
DANGEROUS RAE vi MyShopify.com – $22.00 “Pin up meets Gun Girl in a classy mix of vintage style and modern weapons. Calendars will be printed in November and orders filled first come first served. Autographed on cover page. 10% of proceeds will be donated to a Veteran Assistance Fund.”

Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield, by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

By Jim McLennan October 30, 2015 October 15, 2015 Review

★★

“That is the beauty of being a soldier. Right there in that moment with your rifle propped up against the dirt, knowing that even if you don’t get to be the guy up at the front shooting, you have a sector that is yours and you know in your heart you will shoot any enemy that comes into it. That’s how simple it is.”
— Kate Raimann, CST

While operating in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US Army realized there was a gap in their operation. The entirely masculine nature of their forces hampered intelligence gathering because male soldiers were unable to work effectively with the women and children present on the ground, a result of a culture which severely restricts inter-gender interaction. This was potentially lethal, as the women could also be used hide weapons and explosive. To address this, in 2010 a forward thinking group of the military sought to get around the archaic ban on women troops in combat situations, by creating Cultural Support Teams, formed of women who could accompany the special operations forces on their missions, officially in “support” roles, and question the women who were often the best informed with regard to the movements and actions of local insurgents.

The female soldiers selected for the task needed a particular set of skills – not least an unusual amount of physical fitness, since they would have to keep up in the field with the likes of Army Rangers. But they would also require “soft skills”, such as the ability to draw information from civilians quickly, by establishing a relationship of trust, while also being able to assess the information rapidly for accuracy. Despite the obvious risks and challenges, the program attracted interest from current members of the Army, National Guard and Reserves, intrigued by the possibilities and keen to be part of history. Lemmon tells the stories of a number of these women, going through the selection process and their training, then into their deployments. In particular, she looks at 1st Lt. Ashley White, a woman considered by those over her as “sweet enough to be a Disneyland greeter,” yet who became the first CST member killed in action, and who earned a place on the Army Special Operations Memorial Wall of Honor, despite the lack of full official endorsement for her role at the time.

Unfortunately, the book doesn’t really do White and the other women justice, in part because you’re more than half way through before they’ve completed their training, which is probably the least interesting aspect of their stories. Lemmon’s style is placidly uninteresting too, and fails to paint a picture of the soldiers as individual characters; she may, perhaps, be trying to tell too many stories here, and especially early on, this results in a jumble of faces and names that fail to make much of an impression. Things do improve a fair bit once the women touch down in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Lemmon does generate a good deal of tension telling the stories of their missions – typically in the dead of night – to help the Army Rangers hunt down and capture insurgents. Though, even here, I’d have liked to know more details of who they were targeting, let’s give the author the benefit of the doubt and say that operational security limited the amount of specifics that could be included.

The book doesn’t pull its punches in describing the events surrounding Ashley White’s death, and it’s a sobering reminder of the realities of war, especially a non-traditional one, against a fluid enemy, such as is the case here. You can literally be a step away from death; in this case, White’s translator moved away to adjust her night-vision goggles and so survived the IED blast which took the life of her comrade. Of such fragile choices can life sometimes tilt. But only sporadically does Lemmon capture this, or at the other end, the adrenalin rush eloquently expressed in the quote which starts this piece, and which does more to explain why people serve than hundreds of pages of mostly bland prose, as served up here.

Publisher: Harper, $15.99 (paperback) $14.99 (Kindle), available through Amazon

Hellions

By Jim McLennan October 28, 2015 May 6, 2020 Review

★★★½
“More than a trick, yet just short of a treat.”

hellions Just in time for Halloween comes this atmospherically and spooky tale, in which teenager Dora (Rose) has a day – and a night – to remember. It begins with her discovering that she’s pregnant, news which initially causes her to stay home and brood over her future. She changes her mind and texts her boyfriend to come pick her up; he never shows, and instead she finds herself increasingly tormented by young, masked figures, who repeatedly knock on her door. The doctor (Sutherland) makes a house call, only to discover Dora has gone from four weeks to four months pregnant in just a few hours. Dora is also being plagued by nightmarish visions sacrifice, and it becomes clear that those little figures have some very unpleasant plans for our heroine and her baby-to-be.

The religious symbolism here is not exactly subtle: Dora’s Halloween costume is that of an angel, and once you see one of the creatures dissolve when accidentally exposed to salt, it’s clear they’re from down below (well, clear if you’ve ever watched Supernatural, at least!). It’s an angle I’d like to have seen better explored. The script perhaps needs a Peter Cushing type, to pop up as Reverend Exposition and lay some groundwork, instead of forcing the audience to figure everything out on the fly, such as the rules to the occult universe this inhabity. What it does deliver, is atmosphere by the bucketload, with McDonald drenching the screen in every kind of filter imaginable, creating a world where you’re never sure what’s real, and what’s a product of Dora’s escalating and deranged imagination. It’s helped by a very creepy score from Todor Kobakov and Ian LeFeuvre, which takes the first four notes of Silent Night, and riffs on them to impressively unsettling Carpenter-esque effect.

There’s also something thoroughly striking about the image of a shotgun-wielding angel (as shown), even if the cartridges have been re-loaded with salt, and Rose makes for an engaging heroine, who manages to be smart, without toppling over into Juno-esque slappability. McDonald was also responsible for the off-kilter zombie film, Pontypool, and the film is at is best when Dora is engaged in an Assault on Precinct 13-style – again, more Carpenter – battle against the ongoing siege of the hellions, with the help (or is it?) of a local cop (Patrick). Unfortunately, the story can’t quite sustain that pace, and runs out of steam notably in the final reel, which brings us round to where the film started, with Dora waking up in hospital. You could do worse in terms of a choice for your own Halloween viewing than this; if not quite a full-size chocolate bar, it’s definitely better than a stale Tootsie Roll.

Dir: Bruce McDonald
Star: Chloe Rose, Robert Patrick, Rossif Sutherland, Rachel Wilson

Mythica: A Quest for Heroes

By Jim McLennan October 26, 2015 May 6, 2020 Review

★★★
“Dungeons & Dragons. Without dungeons. Or dragons.”

I could virtually hear the d20s rolling for chunks of this one. Not to say that is a bad thing as such; it quite took me back to my college days, when I spent far more time than I should, lurking in the corners of the student union, trying to nurse my ferociously-toasted paladin through another death-trap! The heroine here is Marek (Stone), a slave with a club foot who has higher aspirations, dabbles in magic, and runs away from her master to seek her fame and fortune. She talks her way into a mission no other adventurer will accept, rescuing the sister of haughty high priestess Teela (Posener), who has been kidnapped by orcs, and adds a gruff fighter, Thane (Johnson), and sly thief Dagen (Stormoen) to complete the ~~parade of obvious stereotypes~~, er, sorry, I meant to write “party of adventurers”. They head off to follow the orcs, only to find Teela’s sister is not there, and is apparently with a far bigger, more unpleasant monster, possessing a lot more hit points and higher armour-class.

All my cynicism (which you may just have been able to detect in the above) aside, I actually didn’t hate this, despite its horribly derivative nature and failure to deliver any kind of ending [it being the first in an intended three-part saga coughHobbitcough]. Far from it, actually: if painfully obvious, the characters are still fun to be around, and the actors embrace them with gusto, which help bring them to life. Marek, in particular, has the potential to have a good character arc, since she appears to possess occult talents, which are only scratched here, coming out in dire emergencies – conveniently for the story! She is disabled, but not defined by it. Save a couple of scenes, such as the one where she begs Teela’s to heal her, it’s easy to forget her impediment, and there’s no doubting her courage, wits and loyalty, which make for a winning combination in a fantasy lead.

About the only name you’ll recognize here is Kevin Sorbo, who has basically one scene as Marek’s magical mentor, though I get the feeling he will be back in subsequent parts. Still, if you rent this expecting more based on the promotional material, you’ll be disappointed. Fortunately, I had no such preconceptions, and was able to enjoy what is, in many way, a throwback to the eighties and nineties when, it seems, there was a new one of these out every other time I went to the video-store. [Usually made in Argentina. For Roger Corman] If I can’t say I am anticipating future installments with breathless excitement, I can’t say I will actively avoid them either; mild anticipation is likely about the mark. Coming from someone who has sat through his share of bad genre entries, that’s no mean feat.

Dir: Anne K. Black
Star: Melanie Stone, Adam Johnson, Jake Stormoen, Nicola Posener

Zero Motivation

By Jim McLennan October 21, 2015 May 6, 2020 Review

★★★½
“Inaction heroines.”

While a period of national service in the armed forces may seem a good idea in theory, this satirical Israeli film is likely a good depiction of what it means in practice: a lot of thoroughly unmotivated soldiers, who just want to kill time and GTFO back to civilian life. This may not seem like an inspiring subject for a movie, yet somehow, ends up an endearing and amusing look at life in the armed forces, when your chief responsibility is basically to be in charge of shredding unwanted documents. For there is, it appears, a lot of bureaucracy and shuffling of paperwork in the the Israeli army, and that’s what Daffi (Tagar), Zohar (Ivgy) and their colleagues have to do.

They work in the office of their base, under the wary guise of long-suffering matriarch officer Rama (Klein), who tries to encourage their military habits into concepts such as, “Being a paper shredding NCO is what you make of it.” Of course, being young women, they are more interested in men, personal drama and owning the office high-score on Minesweeper. Or in Daffi’s case, getting out of the desert and being sent to an urban post like Tel Aviv. That requires her completing officer training, but when she does, Daffi discovers exactly why Rama perpetually has that look, and sets up a staple-gun shoot-out (right) with Zohar, after Daffi tries to erase her games.

Writer-director Lavie based the script on her own experiences, saying, “Like most girls during their two years of service, we didn’t risk our lives. But we were definitely in danger of dying of boredom.” There’s definitely an air of Private Benjamin here, and in particular Goldie Hawn griping, “I joined a different army. I joined the one with the condos and the private rooms. ” While the conscripts here are under fewer illusions on their way in, it does a wonderful job of illustrating the gap between the broader perception of army life, and the tedious reality, which involves far more meetings, forms and guard duty. And for the last-named, not even the exciting stuff at the gates, but safely inside the base, where the sole “threat” is soldiers who can’t find the canteen.

The film is loosely divided into three sections, and it manages to juggle the comedic and dramatic elements quite nicely, so that some quite sharp shifts in tone are not too jarring. It’s certainly a concept which could easily be extended to a TV series – think M.A.S.H. in the Israeli desert, though I would certainly not have minded some more actual action. As is, the film may be almost the antithesis of what you’d expect in a “girls with guns” movie, yet you’d be hard-pushed to conclude this was a particularly bad thing. What it may lack in pulse-pounding, adrenalin-powered gunplay, is balanced by a selection of quirkily entertaining characters and a sharply-observed script.

Dir: Talya Lavie
Star: Nelly Tagar, Shani Klein, Dana Ivgy, Heli Twito

Dark Angel: The Ascent

By Jim McLennan October 19, 2015 May 6, 2020 Review

★★½
“The devil in the details.”

This is actually a really interesting idea. We generally think of devils as “bad” – but what if they don’t see themselves the same way, and feel they are doing an important part of the Lord’s work, by punishing sinners? That’s the concept here, which sees the demonic Veronica (Featherstone) clamber out of hell through a conveniently unguarded exit, to see what the world above is like – let’s face it, since all she gets are the wrongdoers sent to damnation, her opinion is a little skewed. Apparently unaware of such everyday issues as traffic (and likely more importantly for most male viewers, clothes), she rapidly gets nailed by a truck. In hospital, she is treated by Dr. Max Barris (Markel), who is perplexed by the odd behaviour of his new patient, but she pulls a Satanic version of the Jedi mind trick, and convinces him that she should move into his apartment. There, she watches television, discovers that there are plenty of perfectly-good wrongdoers here on Earth who need to be punished, and begins a vigilante campaign to take them out. This draws the attention of both the local cops investigating the trail of corpses, and corrupt local official, Mayor Wharton (James), who becomes Veronica’s #1 target.

I love films with a different take on the traditional heaven/hell division – Don’t Tempt Me is a personal fave – and this movie also raises some interesting questions, about whether it’s acceptable to do bad things for good reason. An example: generally, ripping someone’s spine out of there back is frowned up in most cultures. But what if they have been caught in the act of trying to rape a young woman? Where is your morality now? This isn’t pulled out thin air, and is actually what happens here; Veronica appears faintly perplexed that the victim doesn’t want the dripping spine as a souvenir of the incident. Of course, her ability to do that Jedi thing certainly makes life easier, even when her actions draw increasing attention – “covering her tracks” should be added to her long list: “Things of which I’m entirely oblivious.” It’s a shame that there isn’t more investigation into the spiritual aspects, like the scene where she meets a pair of nuns, and gets down on her knees for them. The poor sisters are even more confused when the cross they give Veronica bursts into flames…

Instead, the film limps off into something that’s partly a love-story, and partly Veronica stalking the Mayor, neither of which are anywhere near as interesting. It feels as if they came up with the brilliant idea, started filming a movie based on the concept… and only then figured out they didn’t know what to do with it. Things peter out in a disappointing matter, and I suspect the makers (it’s a Charles Band production) were looking to start another of their franchises, alongside Trancers, Demonic Toys, etc. Perhaps future installments could have done a better job of exploring the potential in a universe, which is only hinted at here.

Dir: Linda Hassani
Star: Angela Featherstone, Daniel Markel, Milton James, Michael C. Mahon

The Angry River

By Jim McLennan October 14, 2015 May 6, 2020 Review

★★½
“A bridge too far.”

Not just Angela Mao’s feature debut, it was also the first film produced by then-fledgling studio Golden Harvest, who would go on to become arguably the premier name in Hong Kong Film production, up until the colony’s handover back to China in 1999. Even discounting their work with Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Tsui Hark, Stephen Chow, Donnie Yen, etc. and sticking purely to the action heroine field, Golden Harvest were the company behind She Shoots Straight, the Inspector Wears Skirts series and Naked Killer. Their commitment to our field is apparent right from this inaugural movie, where Mao plays dutiful daughter Lan Feng, whose father becomes one of the victims of ‘Poison Dart’, whose name pretty much explains what he does. Cursed to a long lingering death, the only cure is a rare herb.

Lan sets off to find it, crossing the fiery Angry River, going through the Merciless Pass, and encountering another couple of dangers without names, but we might as well call them the Cave of Really Bad Optical Effects, and the Giant Gecko That Knows Kung-Fu. The latter actually defeats our heroine (though she does save 15% on her car insurance), but impressed by her filial piety, she is given the herb, albeit at the cost of losing her kung-fu skills. She then has to make her way back home, which is even more perilous now she can’t fight, and has to rely on the kindness of strangers to protect her, because there are a lot of other people who are also very keen to get their hands on the mystical plant, whose powers extend beyond being merely an antidote to poison. And when she finally returns to her home, a nastier shock awaits.

Maybe it is just me: I kept being reminded of Homer’s Odyssey, with Mao playing the hero, whose objective, simply to get back home is endlessly diverted and derailed by external forces. I suspect any such similarity is, as they say, purely coincidental, and they just share the same basic plot of the hero’s journey, as introduced by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. But there are elements where you can tell it was a debut film, such as the rubber-suited lizard which, it’s charitable to say, presumably worked better on the page than the screen. It’s also a mis-step to rob the heroine of her powers for almost the entire second-half, leaving her a spectator to her own story – even Odysseus only spent a bit of time tied to the mast. Particularly early on, Mao’s fights feel stilted – punch-pause-block-pause-kick – though there actually is a storyline reason for why she has to be reined in to start with, in order that Mao can go full-throttle at the end [like I said, the herb has other uses…] You can see where they were aiming – slightly to the side of the then-dominant Shaw Brothers studio – yet overall, there’s certainly a lot of room for improvement here. As a first effort, I guess it’s okay.

Dir: Feng Huang
Star: Angela Mao, Kao Yuan, Pai Ying, Han Ying Chieh

Mutant World

By Jim McLennan October 12, 2015 May 6, 2020 Review

★½
“Well, it’s no Sharknado 2. It’s not even Sharknado 3.”

This SyFy original movie takes place mostly after an “Earth killer”-sized meteor has struck the Eastern seaboard of the United States. A group of Doomsday preppers, with slightly more warning than most, are able to take shelter inside their refuge, a former missile silo, and settle down to wait out the apocalypse going on above ground. 10 years later, they’re forced to send a small group back up to the surface as the result of damage to their solar panels. Leading that patrol is Melissa King (Deveaux), whose father Marcus (Kim Coates, whom you will recognize if you’re a Sons of Anarchy fan) was the leader of the group, but was trapped outside their sanctuary when the meteor hit. The patrol discovers that the radiation resulting from the impact has wiped out most of humanity – but the survivors have been mutated by it, and turned into thoroughly unpleasant monsters. Exploring further, they find what appears to be sanctuary, populated by other survivors, only to discover that when the sun goes down, they too are no longer human. Fortunately for them, assistance is at hand in the former of the Preacher (Ashanti), a motorcycle riding, warrior-priestess, who appears to be in contact with the actual remnants of mankind.

Oh, dear. The potential is here, but is buried deeper than a nuclear fallout shelter, because there is hardly any aspect that is not badly botched, right from the start: Coates, the only real “name” in the cast, is barely in the film, the kind of bait-and-switch which is rarely a good sign. The script is just terrible: what’s supposed to be a quick mission up top to fix the power, somehow spirals off into a jolly road-trip, with no apparent regard for the people back in the bunker. While the mutants’ glowing green eyes are kinda cool, that is about as far as both the imagination and the budget goes; there’s no explanation provided either, for why some people are totally mutated, some are only mutated at night (!), and others, like the Preacher, are apparently entirely untroubled by mutantism, despite wearing no more protection than a long trench-coat. And don’t even get me started on Ashanti’s performance, which is about as unconvincing as you’d expect from a singer-slash-dancer-slash-whatever.

The film is clearly trying to establish Melissa’s credentials as some kind of a bad-ass, judging by the poorly-choreographed fight she has with the shelter leader, before heading up top [also worth noting: no-one appears to have aged or been changed in the slightest by the passage of a decade, whether underground or on the surface]. Outside of very intermittent moments, it doesn’t work, though in comparison to Ashanti, Coates is positively an Oscar-winner. I did somewhat appreciate the element of role-reversal found here, with the most bad-ass roles given to the actresses. However, good intentions are never enough to overcome execution as horribly flawed as we see here. By the end, I was hoping for another meteor strike, to put both the characters and the viewers out of our mutual misery.

Dir: David Winning
Star: Holly Deveaux, Ashanti, Amber Marshall, Jason Cermak

Hot Pursuit

By Jim McLennan October 7, 2015 May 6, 2020 Review

★★½
“Colombia 1, America 1.”

Your tolerance for this may well depend on your fondness for Modern Family, in which Vergara plays Gloria, who is much the same character: a Colombian spitfire trophy-wife. It works rather better there, as part of the broad palette of distinct individuals, and in an episode that lasts 30 minutes, including commercials. You get the sense she might not be too easy to live with, and the 85 minutes here does sometimes become more a slog than a pleasure, and we speak as big fans of Family. Here, rather than the wife of a closet magnate, Daniella Riva (Vergara) is married to the henchman of a drug lord, who gets gunned down after agreeing to testify against his employer (Cosio), just as the straight-laced Officer Cooper (Witherspoon) arrives to escort them to court. When it becomes clear some corrupt cops are in on the action, Cooper and Riva are forced to strike out on their own, making for an unlikely odd couple, whose spiky relationship grows over the course of their unscheduled road-trip.

It’s certainly far from novel, and the whole concept is so well-worn and utterly predictable, the script might as well have grooves and be mounted on rails. This is not a film to watch if you want to be surprised, in any shape or form; it’s more like a comfy jersey, that you pull on, knowing exactly what to expect. As such, there are some moments which are genuinely amusing, such as when Cooper ends up coked-up by (literal) accident, chattering away like a highly-caffeinated dolphin. It’s not Witherspoon’s first entry here either; back in her early days, Freeway won our Seal of Approval, and more recently, we also reviewed Wild, which had her stepping out into the wilderness. This is a more obvious role, in more ways than one; like the story, Cooper is over-familiar from a hundred other comedies, and making her a woman isn’t sufficient deviation to create interest. Witherspoon certainly tries, and the effort is palpable; however, there’s only so far effort can take you, given such lazy writing.

With Vergara, the problem is almost the reverse; Riva certainly has more of an arc than Cooper, and is given some genuine motivation for her actions, rather than existing purely because the plot demands it. However, if you’ve caught one episode of Modern Family, you’ve already seen all this performance has to offer. It probably says a lot, that Vergara’s turn in Machete Kills offered a more highly-nuanced approach to acting. I’m thinking this is probably the first time Machete Kills and “highly-nuanced” have ever been used in the same sentence. The end result just about manages to skate by on the charisma of its two leads, and I can’t say we were ever bored; that hardly counts as anything even approaching a glowing recommendation, however, and you should be in a thoroughly undemanding mood before approaching this one.

Dir: Anne Fletcher
Star: Reese Witherspoon, Sofia Vergara, Robert Kazinsky, Joaquín Cosio,

★★★ “Killer dance moves.”

TACGIRLS

WOMEN OF ARMAGEDDON

LIBERTY BELLES

ALEX SMITS

GUNS AND GIRLS

MAGPUL

PIPE HITTERS UNION

GUNS AND CAMO

HOT SHOTS

DANGEROUS RAE

★★

★★★½ “More than a trick, yet just short of a treat.”

★★★ “Dungeons & Dragons. Without dungeons. Or dragons.”

★★★½ “Inaction heroines.”

★★½ “The devil in the details.”

★★½ “A bridge too far.”

★½ “Well, it’s no Sharknado 2. It’s not even Sharknado 3.”

★★½ “Colombia 1, America 1.”