Author: Jim McLennan

Two Weeks to Live

  By

★★★½
“Family values.”

If you described this as a dark spoof of Hanna, you might not be so far away. Since the death of her father, Kim Noakes (Williams) has been brought up off the grid by her controlling, survivalist mother, Tina (Clifford). She makes a trip to civilization to scatter his ashes, meets brothers Nicky (Rizwan) and Jay (Taheen Modak), who prank her that the world is ending. Falling for this, Kim decides to take revenge on the man who killed her father, crime boss Jimmy Davies. But in doing so, she kicks of a spiral of events putting her new friends, her mother and herself in severe peril, from the dangerous and smart Alan Brooks (Flemyng).

The comedy here is largely “fish out of water,” with Kim largely unaware of the nuances of modern life – but capable of killing you, eight different ways, with the contents of a drawer. Conversely, the brothers are naive and dumb respectively, and utterly unsuited for the violent mess into which they have become involved, desperately clinging onto normality. Admittedly, their own actions don’t help, Jay lifting a suitcase full of money from Davies’s house. Tina has own agenda too, having gas-lit her daughter in a variety of ways, lies which becomes more apparent to Kim over the course of the six, thirty-minute episodes. It’s all well-written, and I’m surprised it came and went without apparently much fanfare: I stumbled across it by accident, in Tubi’s “British crime” section.

You definitely need a British sense of humour to appreciate this: a lot of the comedy is bone-dry and self-deprecating, with Tina in particular a mistress of that most English form of wit, blistering sarcasm. However, the action proved rather better than I expected given the source and format. This does peak quite early, with a blistering brawl between Kim and Jimmy (above), which is one of the more hard-hitting I’ve seen on British television. [Jimmy is played by genre veteran Sean Pertwee, who is always good value. I could have sworn he was in Game of Thrones as well, which would have reunited him with Williams. But it seems he is the only British actor who wasn’t employed on the show!]

I was slightly sad that nothing thereafter quite reached the same level of hand-to-hand awesomeness. There is still a reasonable quota of action, but it’s more gun-based: the family which stays together, slays together, as Brooks and his henchwoman close in on the two families, and the cash-filled luggage. I found this the sort of unexpected delight which is a pleasure to stumble across. I had no real idea what to expect when I put on the first episode, but by the end, was shot-gunning episodes like they were tequila. While it would be nice to see more – I guess unlikely at this point – things are tidied up adequately, albeit in a somewhat contrived manner, involving a reluctant land-mine. All told though, more hits than misses.

Creator: : Gaby Hull
Star: Maisie Williams, Mawaan Rizwan, Sian Clifford, Jason Flemyng

Who Cares!

  By

★★½
“Hop to it!”

I would have sworn I had seen every example of Hong Kong girls-with-guns movies from the eighties. But this one had managed to escape my attention completely for 35 years, until accidentally stumbling across it on YouTube. It’s perhaps partly because it never seems to have received any kind of post-VHS release, being unavailable on DVD or streaming sites. Which is a little surprising since it combines two genres that have been quite popular in the West: not just GWG, but also hopping vampires, as in the Mr. Vampire franchise. It’s a rather awkward combo, and there’s definitely significant potential wasted. Yet I’m fairly certain it’s going to be unlike anything you’ve seen before.

It begins with a gang robbing a mausoleum of antiques for their boss, Yiang Wei (Wei). However, included in their haul is a pearl, which was the only thing keeping a traditional Chinese vampire (Kwai) pinned down. It’s now free to roam the land, terrorizing the possessor of the pearl, who is the only person that can see it. Meanwhile, a special police squad has been set up to investigate the ring behind the recent slew of antique thefts. In charge of it is Sergeant Wang Wai Shan (Hu), who follows the evidence to Wei, after one of his minions turns up dead, a victim of the vampire. Wang and her mostly-female team then find themselves having to take on both the hopping undead and the criminals.

The results are kinda decent, but it’s not hard to think of ways it could have been better, particularly from the perspective of this site. I was expecting to get a final battle pitting Wang against Wei. Doesn’t happen. I did like how the cops find a way to control the vampire, and I was thinking it was then going to end up as Wang + vampire against Wei. Doesn’t happen either, with Wang entirely sidelined, and replaced with a climax which is simply villain versus vampire (before an ending which is… certainly an ending, and that’s all I can say). Hu deserves better, and so does Sophia Crawford, who is one of Wei’s minions, and gets almost nothing to do. Admittedly, it was only Crawford’s second film.

Not to say that Wei is a slouch. I simply preferred earlier scenes, such as Wang and her squad battling the largely invisible vampire around her father’s apartment, with a range of improvised weapons, from crosses – would those really work on a Chinese vampire? – to flamethrowers. It’s fairly refreshing how nobody really mentions the fact a woman is in charge, with everyone apparently accepting Wang’s role, and there’s not too much in the way of dumb slapstick, which can derail proceedings. As horror, it’s certainly light in tone. Perhaps it might have benefited from sticking to one genre or the other, instead of trying to be two things at once, and coming in as largely forgettable in both departments.

Dir: Chiu-Jun Lee
Star: Sibelle Hu, Dick Wei, Kara Ying, Kwai Po Chun

Inspector Sabiha

  By

★★★
“In-flight entertainment.”

Under other circumstances, this six-episode TV series, would potentially be a marginal entry. But, just as I try to take the historical era into account, I think the location from which a film comes should also be a consideration. Some countries and cultures are simply more action heroine friendly than others. What would be groundbreaking in one region, might not even qualify from elsewhere. This is from Pakistan, and is almost the first such entry in our site’s history. [There’s just Hunterwali which… yeah!] I originally saw this in a condensed movie version, at an altitude of forty thousand feet and a ground speed of 555 mph. For I stumbled across it on the in-flight entertainment system while flying back from the UK to Arizona.

It adequately occupied a bit of time on what ended up being a fourteen-hour flight, thanks to an engine issue delaying the take-off. My grumpiness at this was, however, somewhat alleviated by unexpected GWG on the seat-back TV. By Western standards, it would definitely be considered mild, almost to the Lifetime TVM level (which makes sense, basically being a TV movie). But Pakistan isn’t exactly a beacon of empowerment. This female cop was “a giant step for womankind in the Pakistani drama arena”, according to local writers, so we need to cut it some slack. The heroine, Sabiha (the unfortunately named Butt), is the daughter of Inspector Saeed Shah, who was murdered in the line of duty while undercover. She wants to follow in his footsteps – her uncle Akbar (Ehteshamuddin) is also on the force.

He has a nasty revelation: her father, who was also his brother, had gone over to the side of the criminals. This was something covered up to avoid embarrassing the force to outsiders, though it’s an open secret within the police. Sabiha is devastated by this, adding on to problems with her self-confidence as she goes through the training, to the point she is unable to fire her gun, despite the encouragement of a friendly trainer. She eventually is able to cowboy up and persist. Passing the police exam gives her the access necessary to investigate her father’s case, find out the truth about his death, and dispense justice to those who were responsible.

To be honest, Butt doesn’t really look the part – too much make-up for a cop, by Western standards. Nor is she especially convincing in action, though it is cool when she whips off her burqa to reveal her police uniform underneath, and storms the villain’s headquarters. There are some decent emotional moments too. In this area, the heroine is outdone by her mother (Iffat Omar), who is impressively intense, such as when begging her husband not to go undercover. Writer-director Sarwar cuts up the time-line, so we bounce back and forth from Sabiha’s training to her childhood, but it always remains comprehensible. Despite not having seen Gunah, the series to which this is a prequel, it proved good enough to hold my attention. Though considering my location, guess I couldn’t exactly walk out…

I subsequently found all six TV episodes with English subs, and a playlist is embedded below. 

Dir: Adnan Sarwar
Star: Raba Butt, Enteshamuddin, Yasir Hussain, Yasir Nawaz

Sira

  By

★★
“Just deserts.”

Sira (Cissé) is a young African woman, travelling through the fringes of the Sahara Desert in Burkina Faso, on the way to get married to Jean-Sidi (Barry). However, their caravan gets involved in an incident with Islamic terrorists, which escalates into murder, with Sira being abducted by the terrorist leader, Yéré (Minoungou). He changes his mind, raping Sira and leaving her in the desert, because she is “not worthy” to die by his weapon. She survives, and stumbles across the terrorist camp, and takes shelter nearby, sneaking in to obtain food and water. After a group of other kidnapped women show up, to be used as sex slaves, Sira begins to put a plan in motion, with help from an unexpected ally.

Lured in by the poster, I was hoping for something along the lines of Revenge, especially in the wake of early dialogue about how the heroine had been trained to take care of herself by her brothers. But this is a very different kettle of fish. I have a bunch of questions, not least over the time frame involved. Sira is living in the rocks beside the camp for the better part of a year. It’s long enough, to go from not being aware of a pregnancy, to giving birth in the same rocks. While it’s certainly a memorable image to have her blazing away with an automatic weapon, her child strapped across her back… It doesn’t make a great deal of sense.

Yéré’s terrorists don’t appear to do anything much for the great bulk of the time either, except sitting around. They do eventually go out on an attack in the final twenty minutes, but the amount of terror they generate is minimal. Indeed, everyone does their share of sitting around since nobody seems particularly bothered by Sira’s long-term absence. The police, and the authorities in general, are notable by their absence until the very end. Though this may be an accurate assessment of the local situation; I can’t say. Jean-Sidi makes a half-hearted effort to join up with Yéré’s forces. The fact he’s a Christian proves a bit of an instant red flag there, and Yéré does not take kindly to the attempt. 

It’s only at the very end things crack open, with the terrorist camp proving to be unexpectedly flammable. It does offer a glimpse into a culture of which I had little experience or knowledge, and Sira is an interesting character, one whose resilience is remarkable, given the circumstances under which she has to operate. This was the first time Burkina Faso submitted a movie to the Oscars (it was filmed in Mauritania for safety reasons), and is technically decent. But for a film over two hours long, it’s in need of significantly greater narrative impetus. It has the shape of a thriller, yet definitely wants to be a drama. At least I get to cross another country off my map of world cinema.

Dir: Apolline Traoré
Star: Nafissatou Cissé, Lazare Minoungou, Abdramane Barry, Nathalie Vairac

Bad Day

  By

★★★
“Not-so fair cops.”

Rebecca Ryan (Goose) is an undercover cop, who has been working for three years as “Margaret”, infiltrating the McCann family, a South London organized crime outfit, with Darius Cruise (Ofoegbu) as her handler. He’s just been given a new partner, Abby Barrett (Air), and isn’t happy about it. Rebecca, meanwhile, has fallen in love with Harry McCann (Calil), but his sister, Marla (Riana Husselmann), recently out of jail, suspects something is up with ‘Margaret’. When an incident appears to blow her cover, and Rebecca returns home to find her daughter murdered, she decides it’s time to make the entire McCann family pay for their actions. As the title suggests, everything subsequently unfolds over the course of a single day.

It’s all a bit wobbly at the beginning, with the director struggling to get all the various plot threads up and running. Trimming them back would have been helpful, such as Abby’s contentious relationship with her former partner; it adds little. Air’s performance isn’t the best either; she’s considerably less convincing as a cop than Goose or Ofoegbu, although the latter is clearly channelling the spirit of Idris Elba as Luther. As a low-rent version thereof, he’s not bad, with the script throwing on copious quantities of cynicism, such as Darius telling his partner, “The only thing I don’t believe in anymore is this job.” Goose is decent too, playing a woman who is teetering on the edge of losing herself, with her daughter providing the sole reliable anchor in her life.

When that tether gets removed, there’s really only one way things can go: downhill, quite rapidly. The problem is, the further in we get, the more likely it is that the McCann’s weren’t responsible (though I have to say, the actual resolution doesn’t feel credible, especially for a British-set movie). But by the point Rebecca discovers the truth, a quote from Lady Macbeth fits the anti-heroine very well: “I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.” It does feel almost Shakespearean, in the sense that tragedy seems inevitable, and the characters are largely powerless to do anything about it.

I’d like to have seen more of Marla, who makes an immediate impression from her first scene. The character has a calculating edge, and a civilized veneer thinly covering a most unfeminine fondness for brutality. I almost wish the makers had gone the whole way, and made Darius a woman as well, to complete the quartet of strong female characters. The low budget does occasionally show through, and some of the action might leave a bit to be desired, though the inevitable brawl between Marla and Rebecca does achieve a satisfactory resolution. However, by concentrating on the women, it does stand out from the slew of “gritty” British crime film to come out in the two thousands. While it’s no Luther, I found myself adequately entertained and surprisingly engaged.

Dir: Ian David Diaz
Star: Claire Goose, Donna Air, Anthony Ofoegbu, George Calil

Desolation, by David Lucin

  By

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

When the apocalypse comes, if popular fiction is any guide, it’s going to be undead and craving brains. But not far behind in terms of literary popularity, appears to be an EMP. This is a high altitude nuclear detonation, which would unleash an electromagnetic pulse – hence the name – capable of frying anything with a circuit board, continent-wide. It is generally not good for civilization. I think this is the first such book I’ve covered, and I was particularly intrigued, because it’s set here in Arizona. Which is a little weird, because the author appears to be based out of Vancouver, British Columbia. I presume some connection to the state.

It mostly takes place in the northern mountain town of Flagstaff, where Jenn Jansen is attending college when the power goes out, and the world grinds to a halt. Not that it’s exactly a great world to begin with, already teetering on the edge of famine and war, with multiple conflicts around the globe (in particular between the US/NATO and China), while most of the population live in poverty, even in the United States. Jenn’s parents are down in Phoenix, which… the author doesn’t seem to like much, calling it a “desert hellscape” among other things. [Looks out window] OK, he’s not wrong… But it doesn’t get any better after the city gets hit by multiple air-burst nukes. Help is not coming to Flagstaff any time soon.

Jenn has to figure out what to do, though at least initially, basic survival is not too rough. However, she gradually realizes not everyone is willing to pull together, and hard times make for difficult moral decisions. She’s rather better at these than her boyfriend, Sam, who comes from a more privileged background. His family are in Payson – between Flagstaff and Phoenix – and the pair head down there to bring them up to Flagstaff. That pushes Jenn further along her evolution. According to the author, “By Book 4, she’s not the impulsive, bossy, and sometimes annoying girl from Book 1; she is a soldier and a cool-headed leader,” and I can see the early signs of this appearing already, though I never found her especially annoying. 

Action-wise, it is fairly restrained, but there is a sense of escalation, with the book giving us good insight into Jenn’s thoughts. Of note, her reaction to having to use increasing degrees of violence is explored in more detail than I would have expected. It’s not easy or facile, but by the end, the blood on her hands is mounting. I sense that’s only going to increase, as it appears the next part has her becoming part of a reconnaissance expedition to Phoenix. That’s a story I am interested in reading, and not just for reasons of personal familiarity, also to see how Jenn develops. But perhaps my neighbourhood might make an appearance. Even if it’s going to be a bit radioactive.

Author: David Lucin
Publisher: Highway 3 Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 6 in the Desolation series.

Closure

  By

★★½
“The truth is out there. Somewhere.”

Surprising to see a rough, occasionally nasty slice of rape-revenge was funded by the British government, through the National Lottery scheme. Not that I’m complaining: it’s preferable to period nonsense or kitchen-sink dramsa depicting inner-city life. But I would not typically have expected something as unrepentantly exploitative to get money from such a source. The film kicks off when Alice (Anderson) and her boy toy, Adam (Dyer) are on the way home from a party. A road rage incident leads to him being savagely assaulted, and her being gang-raped, leaving both of them severely traumatized by their experience. Interestingly, it’s Alice who is the one most intent on finding the perpetrators and taking revenge.

Turns out her recently deceased father was a soldier, who taught her not to turn the other cheek, and left her a weapon with which she can carry out her vengeance. This makes her considerably more interesting a character than Adam, who now mopes around smoking weed and suffering from erectile dysfunction. Alice locates one of the attackers, Heffer (Calf), and sets her plan in motion. However, things become increasingly complicated, first with the presence of his daughter, and the discovery that his participation in Alice’s sexual assault was not as purely predatory as it seemed at the time. She begins to understand that retribution can be messy; on the other hand, Adam is becoming more gung-ho about the process, and refuses to back down from his revenge.

I guess these two sides of the coin, and their contrast, are key to the film’s message, though the sudden way in which it ends might leave you wondering if there’s any genuine message intended at all. Maybe it was all the fulfillment of some weird, albeit understandable, Gillian Anderson fetish for writer-director Reed (there are a couple of scenes which lean towards that interpretation). She is certainly the best thing about this, and her journey from predatory cougar through to literally predatory cougar would have been worth following. Dyer continuing to get roles remains a mystery, not least because he was at least five years older than his supposed 23-year-old character here, and can’t exactly make up the deficit in acting ability.

“Do you know what they did after they finished with me? They laughed.” That’s Alice’s chilling explanation of why she’s so hell-bent on making Heffer and his colleagues pay. While I did appreciate the way the rapists were neither your stereotypical yokels nor yoofs, being middle-class and middle-aged, it’s really only when Anderson is on screen that this movie shows credible signs of life, Anderson again proving that she is considerably more than Dana Scully. Even here though, the film manages to fumble things in a final act which feels a severe cop-out, albeit after we are treated to the site of Alice sticking a gun where a gun is not normally expected to go. Take that mental image with you, the next time you buy a lottery ticket.

Dir: Dan Reed
Star: Gillian Anderson, Danny Dyer, Anthony Calf, Adam Rayner 
a.k.a. Straightheads

Agent of Death

  By

★★½
“Multiple personality new world order”

I quite liked the idea here, but the execution just wasn’t quite good enough to do justice to the concept. It feels like a matter of resources to some degree. But I also feel that a few tweaks to things would have paid significant dividends. The heroine is Tara Croydon (Fox), a CIA agent who experiences a crisis after an operation means she’s not around when her father passes away. In her depression, she signs up for a cutting-edge but rather dubious experimental project under the oversight of Hype (Medina). This involves her being given the ability to transform, physically, into one of fifteen different personas which have been implanted into her.

Once she has come to terms with this, it obviously offers a wealth of possibilities for use on missions. However, this is not entirely without a downside, not least the instability of one of the personas, Maeve (Miller). As a result, Tara is cautioned against using Maeve. She also discovers eventually that the whole operation is not as officially sanctioned as she  believed, and there’s an unexpected connection to her father. The ending doesn’t exactly tie everything up, leaving the film too open-ended for my tastes. Clearly, Marder was angling for this to spawn a franchise, but since work on this apparently started in 2018 (it seems to have begun as a series called Shifter, which premiered in November 2019), I suspect everyone involved has more probably moved on to other things by now.

With regard to the resources, it tries to be considerably more global than it can manage. Tara’s first mission post-implants is to the former Soviet republic of Georgia, and this is followed up by one to central Africa. Except, in both cases, it’s painfully clear that the production likely never got outside the TMZ of Hollywood or wherever. There’s no reason things had to take place overseas: I could easily come up with domestic operations that could have used her talent just as well. The other problem is the 15 personas are only somewhat different versions of Tara. It would have been much more fun to see her occupying a broad range of shapes, skills and personalities.

It doesn’t help that the thunder has been stolen by Netflix series, In From the Cold, also about a spy with the ability to shapeshift. That came out in January 2022, while this was presumably sitting on a shelf somewhere. It leaves Agent of Death looking like a knock-off, even though that isn’t the case. Something of a pity, since this contains a decent amount of hand-to-hand action (and surprisingly little gun-play for an American show involving the CIA!), with Fox and the various actresses representing her personas, doing reasonable work. On the other hand, Fox’s acting tends to come over as wooden: for example, she’s never able to sell the death of her father adequately. While the time passed here, it’s telling that the cliffhanger ending neither excited nor annoyed me very much.

Dir: Matthew Marder
Star: Alanna Fox, Hugo Medina, Samantha Grace Miller, Richard Rivera

Candy Land

  By

★★★★
“Remy is feeling a little cross…”

Sheesh, they’ll adapt anything into a movie these days. Hey, I guess if Clue, Battleship and Ouija can become films, why not Cand… Yeah, to be clear I am joking. Do not, for the love of God, mistake this as about the quest for King Kandy. Though I am amused the Wikipedia page for the game specifically says, not to be confused with this film. For it’s actually about truck-stop hookers being stalked by a murderous psychopath. Which could, I admit, probably be adapted into a pretty decent board-game. The central character is Remy (Luccardi), an escapee from a religious cult, who finds herself stranded at the truck-stop, and befriended by Sadie (Quartin) and the other “lot lizards” there.

Remy eventually becomes part of the “team,” also including gay-for-pay Levi (Campbell), who service the truckers who pass through the high-altitude location – as well as local sheriff Rex (Baldwin). It’s a tough life, with violence a risk they face on an everyday basis, such as when a trucker shows up in a toilet stall with his throat slit, or someone decides Levi is a bit of rough. However, things escalate considerably, because the problem is: you can take the girl out of the cult, but you can’t take the cult out of the girl. After getting a visit from another member, Remy decides, as she puts it, “We must cleanse the world before we can cleanse ourselves of it.”

No prizes for guessing what that means, as if the poster doesn’t make it abundantly clear. Swab manages to do a decent job of straddling the exploitational and the thoughtful. This certainly doesn’t stint on the nudity, from the first scene which sees Sadie riding her client like she was trying to start a fire, through one of the girls taunting the cult leader by opening her legs in front of him. It’s pretty damn gory as well. But it’s not just mindless sex and violence. For instance, it would be easy for Swab to paint the victims as… well, just victims, but they’re depicted as there, and doing this work, of their own choice and free will.

I did feel that the shift from religious advocate to prostitute to spree killer for Remy was a bit abrupt. A little more time for the transition might have helped, or perhaps making her more clearly dedicated to her lethal cause from the get-go. Yet the way things turn out, perhaps indicate that was the case all along. Credit to Swab for not pulling punches either, with things continuing to escalate and the body count continuing to mount until, literally, the final shot. Hardly anyone here gets out alive, and I was left wondering if the religious fundamentalists had won. There’s a lot of films while look to recreate the bygone grindhouse era. This seeks to look forward instead, and is likely all the better for it.

Dir: John Swab
Star: Olivia Luccardi, Sam Quartin, Owen Campbell, William Baldwin
[This review previously appeared on Film Blitz]

Our Girl, seasons one and two

  By

★★★
“Too much soap, rather than opera.”

Having very much enjoyed the Our Girl movie, I was interested in checking out the TV series version, which ran for four seasons from 2013 through 2020. You’ll notice, however, that only two are being covered here. Part of the reason for that is logistical: only seasons 1-2 are available on any of our current streaming services. That wouldn’t necessarily be an absolute show-stopper. But there were also reasons why we – mostly Chris – opted to draw a line under the second season. Each series tells the story of a different nurse in the British army. The first is about teenager Molly Dawes (Turner), who joins to escape a dead-end life in East London. The second follows established soldier Georgie Lane (Keegan).

The first is considerably more successful, with a better character arc for the lead – it’s basically an extended remake of the film, with all its strengths, including a fine performance from Turner. It goes further into her career, going through her first tour in Afghanistan, where Molly’s relationship with a local girl opens a whole can of worms. There is some soap opera stuff, in a love triangle between her, commanding officer Captain Charles James (Aldridge) and fellow soldier Dylan Smith (Iwan Rheon), but it’s not overpowering. The action side of things is well-handled – South Africa stands in for the Middle East – with the tension of patrols in a hostile environment, where even a child is a potential threat, being particularly apparent.

In the second season, however, the balance tips. Lane has a mission in Ethiopia, where she draws the ire of British jihadist Abu Jasser (Michael James), which continues to imperil her after she returns to Britain. While this strand, as well as the kidnapping and rescue of Georgie which precedes it, is fine, there’s another love-triangle, and this one is much more annoying. Georgie was previously stood up at the altar by a comrade, Elvis Harte (Pasqualino), and is now engaged to Dr. Jamie Cole (Royce Pierreson). However, while in Ethiopia, Harte shows up and begins to work his way back into her affections. It’s this element which caused Chris to lose both sympathy for and interest in the lead character, and eventually, the show.

I can see where’s she’s coming from, because it’s hard to empathize with a heroine whose sense of loyalty appears to be so weak. I get that this angle was injected to add dramatic tension. But Georgie’s eventual, not unreasonable, realization that she’s not the marrying kind, didn’t require her to (and I quote) “slut around.” On the heels of a not dissimilar situation in season 1, the implication is that women in the armed forces will inevitably end up getting romantically involved with their fellow soldiers, which I suspect is not the intended message. Discovering the two further seasons continue to follow Georgie, rather than a new character, was enough to get us to pull the plug prematurely, and move on.

Creator: Tony Grounds
Star: Lacey Turner, Michelle Keegan, Ben Aldridge, Luke Pasqualino