Author: Jim McLennan

Axira, Episode One, by Odette C. Bell

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

The first volume is free on Amazon at time of writing, but all four are available for 99 cents, so you certainly can’t complain about value. It’s an interesting concept, too. Axira is a “spacer”, a member of an alien race feared to such an extent that they are almost legends. For centuries, she has been mentally chained up by a member of the Kore sects known only as “Master”, and compelled to do his bidding. Which usually involves copious amounts of violence, directed toward his enemies. Finally, Axira is able to break free and regain her independence, and vows to take revenge on Master.

The only force she can think of who can defeat him is the Galactic Coalition – the same force she was pitted against for 450 years. Adopting a completely new identity, Em, and a different species, she switches sides and joins the Coalition as a recruit in their academy. Her skills have the capacity to make her easily a top student there. But after spending so long as nothing more than a meat puppet, her social skills leave a lot to be desired. She’s soon an object of much curiosity, due to her stamina and tolerance for alcoholic beverages. But she is befriended by Elle Singh, another recruit, after helping her get through the first day.

Elle’s mother is the Admiral in overall charge of the whole program. Her brother, Jason, is also present at the Academy, but he’s a graduate on an undercover mission to find and neutralize a spy operating in the area. This leads to the book’s major action set-piece, when Axira and Jason take on a pair of robotic Kore assassins. But Axira’s identity could be exposed, as part of the course involves probing by a telepathic specialist, Kendra. Axira’s reluctance, for obvious reasons, to allow this is a bit of a red-flag. This is a bit of an odd scenario, having someone so old – both in literal and psychological years – showing up to study alongside teenagers. It’s like if Back to School was SF rather than comedy, or if Gandalf became a freshman at Hogwarts.

The narrative switches between the perspective of Axira and Jason, though the big question is: how did Axira escape from her master? It’s simply not addressed. I suspect that may be corrected down the line, but in this volume is a yawning gap, literally left as a “Five years later” heading. It does seem all her subterfuge might have been unnecessary, since it turns out the Coalition is willing to accept people with questionable pasts – though whether that extends to Axira remains to be seen. She’s basically an unindicted war criminal, though that doesn’t necessarily make her a bad person… At less than a buck to finish this story off, there’s a non-zero chance we’ll be revisiting the series at some point down the road.

Author: Odette C. Bell
Publisher: Self-publised, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in the Axira: A Galactic Coalition Academy series.

EFC

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★★½
“Ducks one set of cliches, walks right into another.”

I wanted to like this more than I did, because the makers are aware of the tropes of the mixed martial arts genre, and in the first half, make a concerted (and largely successful) effort to avoid them. However, the movie is much less successful in the second half, and ends up replacing those cliches with a different set. The result leaves the film just as formulaic – albeit not in the direction I expected. It begins in expected fashion, with a title bout in the EFC, between Alexa Star (Aboya) and Cassady Jones (Rose). The former prevails, but the champion is then attacked after the bell by her opponent.

For reasons never quite explained, Star is stripped of the title, and an eight-woman tournament set up to crown a new champion. This event is hotly anticipated, due to the previous events having gone viral. However, sleazy shareholder Frank Russo (Zeppieri) has other plans, to asset strip the federation, in contrast to EFC President Donna Carter (Jones), who wants to make women’s MMA the equal of the men’s version. I was expecting the tournament to progress to the expected Star-Jones rematch, saving the company in the process. Doesn’t happen. For Cassady loses her first round bout, but Carter throws her a lifeline, suggesting that with the business degree, she can be of more help to the federation as a manager, fighting in the boardroom rather than the ring.

This was definitely not what I was expecting, and credit to the script for going in this unexpected direction. However, it feels as if they are much less comfortable in the world of high-finance, television right and leveraged buyouts. These elements never ring true, and there’s a certain point where it becomes easy to predict where things will end up. If you guess this may be with Cassady making an impassioned plea to the shareholders, to elect her to the board and let her take the company to the next level… I can neither confirm nor deny. There’s also a subplot about fighters failing their drugs tests, which gets started, then dropped very quickly, only to resurface out of nowhere as a “gotcha” for Russo.

I think I might have preferred the results if the film had stuck to the beaten track, because the action sequences are well-staged enough, that they do not deserve to get sidelined in favour of unconvincing business negotiations. All the actresses involved manage to look the part, and at least give the impression of knowing their way around a punching-bag. Less successful is Rose’s transition from MMA to MBA, especially after you’ve heard her character unleash a torrent of F-bombs at Donna for daring to suggest Cassady use her college degree. Her academic credentials should have been established first, with an intellectual fighter in itself being a novel proposition. The overall result is something which I can’t call a success. Yet as failures go, it’s definitely one of the more interesting.

Dir: Jaze Bordeaux
Star: Karlee Rose, Richard Zeppieri, Kathryn Aboya, Stephanie Jones

The Casino Job

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★★★
“Stripper’s 11.”

Make no mistake, this is a cheap and tawdry excuse to show nekkid women, which may well leave you with a more cynical view of human nature. But if you’re going to watch a cheap and tawdry excuse to show nekkid women… You could probably do a lot worse. The main area in which this punches above its weight is in the script, which has had some thought put into it. The viewer may actually leave the film knowing more about Nevada gaming regulations than they did going in: nekkid women and genuinely informative. I did not see that coming. It also has a final twist which will make you rethink much of what has happened.

It takes place in Las Vegas (though the less glitzy resort of Laughlin stands in for Sin City at certain points). Sleazy strip-club and casino owner Barry (Mauro) needs four of his ladies to make a good impression on his business partners, but the evening ends with one woman, Jennifer (Joiner), alleging he raped her. Due to lack of physical evidence, the cops won’t take action, but Jennifer’s friends, led by Amber (Martinez), swear to take revenge, and cook up a scheme that will relieve Barry’s casino of a good chunk of cash. The aim is more than simple larceny, but also to drop him in hot water with the gaming authorities, who require casinos have enough on hand to cover winning payouts.

Doing so requires them to bring on board a friendly blackjack dealer, Scribe (Franke), and also use their womanly wiles to ensure everything goes to plan. That’s what I meant about human nature, because every man here can be easily manipulated to do anything, with the promise of a little action. This is absolutely required by the plot, in order for the heist to work. And every woman is perfectly willing to do the manipulating. By the end, you could argue the case that nobody here, even Jennifer, should be classified as a nice person. And I write as someone who, in my youth, was not unfamiliar with strip-clubs, and so is under no illusions about the illusion, if you see what I mean.

Still, if none of the characters were likeable, the mechanics of the heist managed to keep me interested, along with the way Barry is kept out of touch and unable to deliver the needed funds. He then ends up trying to take revenge on the girl-gang, and it’s that what proves his ultimate downfall. There’s a lovely montage at the end, showing everybody getting laid… ending with Barry in jail, also getting laid. I genuinely LOL’d at that. The women are undeniably easy on the eye, particularly Irina Voronina as the club’s top earner, Paradise. Really, its clear the makers have kept their ambitions here restrained and, I suspect, on those terms, it should be considered a success. Clearly nonsense, yet was I not entertained? Yes: yes, I was.

Dir: Christopher Robin Hood
Star: Amylia Joiner, Dean Mauro, Ilsa Martinez, Jay Anthony Franke

Cadejo Blanco

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★★★½
“…the size of the fight in the dog.”

Cross another country off the map: Guatemala, in this case. I should probably start by explaining the title. The “cadejo” is a dog-like spirit from local folklore, which comes in two varieties. The black (negro) one is malicious, appearing to and trying to kill travellers, while the white (blanco) is benevolent. According to Wikipedia, it “protects people, including drunks, vagabonds, and people with grudges from all evil. Emphasis added, because now and again in this, there appears to be one watching over the grudgeful heroine here, Sarita (K. Martínez). She is on the hunt for her sister, Bea (P. Martínez – maybe they’re real sisters?), who vanishes one night, after the siblings have an argument at a local nightclub.

Sarita had just discovered Bea had been seeing a gang-banger, Andrés (Rodriguez), who worked on the weekend there as a barman. She goes to his home town where he operates, and infiltrates the gang, seeking to find out what happened to Bea. Gaining their trust is not easy: she has to act as bait, luring a rival of the group’s boss into a hotel for an assassination attempt. She then discovers Bea may have been abducted by another gang operating in the area, and volunteers for a more active role in the next murder. What price is she willing to pay, in order to discover the truth about Bea’s fate, and make those responsible pay for their involvement?

The common theme here is everyone underestimating Sarita, and how far she will go to achieve her aims. The most obvious culprit is the first target, who sees in her only a fresh whore to bed. It’s a superbly tense sequence, beginning with an extended single shot of her arriving at and exploring the club where the target is located. It then becomes increasingly fraught as he first wants to take her home rather than the designated hotel – and it turns out he has a room there already. You’ll find yourself holding your breath as Sarita has to improvise: what she may lack in experience, she makes up for in quick thinking. And, by the end, in her utter ruthlessness, again underestimated by her victim.

At 126 minutes, it could perhaps use some tightening. However, it’s rarely boring, simply as a depiction of existence at the bottom of society, where life is disposable. As Andrés’s friend Damian (López) says to Sarita, if any of them die, “Nobody will care. We don’t matter to anyone. They’ll all be very happy we’re dead.” Lerner used a lot of non-professional actors, some of whom had first-hand experience of gang life, and the resulting authenticity powers the film through the choppier waters it sometimes encounters. I would recommend not investing too much in Bea’s fate, since the specifics are never detailed. Yet it isn’t the point. This is Sarita’s story, and by the end, she’s far from the brave innocent we met at the beginning.

Dir: Justin Lerner
Star: Karen Martínez, Rudy Rodriguez, Pamela Martínez, Brandon López

Huntress

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★½
“Ze German WW2 Chainsaw Massacre”

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was fairly notorious in Britain in the eighties and nineties, being famously banned on video. Naturally, this meant I had to see it, and… I was initially underwhelmed. However, I’ve gradually come to appreciate its raw intensity over the years. If I ever doubted its merits, watching this largely shameless knockoff should act as a reminder. Because it shows how flat and uninteresting the premise can be, when executed poorly. This relocate things from seventies Texas to Germany in the last days of World War II. A medevac team is trying to get injured and grumpy officer, Colonel Franklin (Christian) to a hospital before his leg falls off from sepsis.

Along for the ride are nurses Ellie (McDowell) and Annie (Sarah Hawthorne), a pacifist medic, Will (Sohns), and a couple of GIs to provide protection. It’s not long before they run into trouble and out of fuel. Fortunately – or so it seems initially – they encounter friendly, and attractive local, Helga (Savage) who gives them her homemade sausages and says she has plenty of gasoline at her house, just over this way a bit. If you have read the opening paragraph, you’ll be able to work out where the rest of the film is going. Let’s just say, the moral of the story is: do not accept smoked meats of unknown provenance, from strange women in the middle of woods. Truly, words to live by.

Yeah, turns out she is the acceptable face of a family of psychos, along with sister Greta and mother Ursula. Or maybe it’s the other way round, I forget. Naturally, the convoy members enter the house in easily disposed of ones and twos, with an utter disregard for military protocol. For example, another moral might be, don’t drop your guard in order to slow-dance with mysterious veiled women, in the middle of large, spooky houses during wartime. Only bad things can come of it. The consequences are, a great deal of slowly creeping about corridors, which the makers mistakenly think generates tension. It actually generates tedium. I mean, Colonel Franklin has an excuse, having been shot in the leg. Everyone else? Not so much.

It’s not a terrible idea, and the performances are largely serviceable. However, the parallels to Texas become more blatantly apparent, the deeper we get, all the way until a final shot which is utterly a gender reversed clone of that in TCM. But rarely does this come anywhere close to capturing the same sense of unfettered insanity. If you’re going to try and ape a stone-cold horror classic, you have to bring your A-game, because otherwise, the comparisons will do you absolutely no favours. Instead, I was more left wondering how people go from running along a corridor in one shot, to being chased through the woods in the next. This one is a nightmare, alright. Just in all the wrong ways.

Dir: Matthew M. Howe, J. Christian Ingvordsen
Star: John Christian, Braxton Sohns, Maggie McDowell, Violet Savage

Rogue Agent, by Skyler Ramirez

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

This is a solid, no-nonsense combination of spy and science-fiction. Though, to be honest, it is skewed towards the former genre, with the latter mostly window-dressing. It wouldn’t take much to change the setting from a solar system whose ownership is disputed by a couple of galactic empires, to a city whose ownership is disputed by a couple of countries. The planet is Hudson, claimed both by the Star Kingdom of Prometheus and the Koratan Confederacy. Heather Kilgore is among the best agents of the Promethean King’s Order, and is dispatched to Hudson after the suspicious death of a man who had betrayed the Kingdom, former commander Connor Monroe

Her job is to find out the truth behind the event, but things are complicated in a number of ways. She and Connor had been lovers previously – while part of a mission, it might have been more than that. Also, she’s partnered with her former mentor, Tabitha Lowry. There’s history there as well, the pair having parted on poor terms during a previous case. They’re going to have to put the past aside, in order to figure out who – if anyone – was behind Monroe’s passing. And it quickly becomes clear that certain parties, with the Koratans the lead suspects, have a strong interest in not letting the truth be discovered by Heather and Tabitha, and will do anything to prevent this.

This is 258 pages, but felt shorter, which is generally a good sign, with a healthy quota of action, both given and received. Heather is undeniably able to take care of herself, even against multiple opponents, but is certainly not bulletproof. Indeed, at one point she has sit things out for several days, after getting hurt. She just chills in a remote cabin with a local kid, learning to appreciate the joys of things like fishing; this could have felt like needless padding, but ends up providing the heroine with additional depth. [The cover pic seems an accurate depiction of her as described; Kilgore is not exactly an under-the-radar kind of operative!]

My main complain was pacing. It felt as if the first eighty percent of the book contained eighty percent of the plot. Then the last twenty percent? Well, that contained eighty percent of the plot as well. As well as going from investigation to resolution in what seemed like just a few pages, it’s there where we discover Heather and Tabitha’s history. To be honest, this didn’t add particularly much, and seemed at odds with the very hard-nosed attitude shown by Heather. Since it wasn’t a secret between them, I would have brought it out far earlier. Despite such missteps down the stretch, this was an entertaining read, with a memorable central character, and a story I could see unfolding cinematically in my mind’s eye. The next volume is on my list for future consideration.

Author: Skyler Ramirez
Publisher: Persephone Entertainment Inc., available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 3 in the A Star Nation in Peril series.

Control

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★★★½
“So how do they go to the bathroom?”

This is is a very small-scale bit of science fiction, with barely a handful of speaking parts, and mostly taking part in a single room. Despite this, and some qualms about the use of cinematically convenient amnesia, it works rather well. Eileen (Mitich) wakes to find herself in a room without windows or doors. A disembodied voice (LeBlanc) tells her to move a pencil on the table. She does and is knocked out. Regaining consciousness, the voice repeats the instruction. Except, Eileen is now chained to her chair. And if she doesn’t complete the test quickly enough, Eileen is informed her daugher, Eve (Loiselle) will be killed. OK, the movie has my attention. 

Turns out, Eileen has psychokinetic skills, the ability to move things with her mind. The tests are an escalating series of experiments, designed to force this talent up from her subconscious, to the point where she can control it. Part of the process involves adding her husband, Roger (Tchortov) into the room. Though they’re clearly in there for a lengthy period, leading Chris to pose the question at the top of this review. No answer is ever obtained, and that’s probably the film’s biggest weakness. Not specifically the toilet question, just a tendency to handwave its way past issues. The way Eileen’s lost memories return at the pace needed by the script is also a bit weak, though the validity of these is questionable. 

Despite these weaknesses, there’s a lot here that is done right. The positives begin with Mitich, who hits all the points in a fine performance. She shifts from sympathetic through to scary, as the strength of her abilities becomes apparent, then back to poignant when we discover – albeit through that cinematic amnesia – the truth about her situation. Inevitably (and this is kinda obvious, so barely counts as any kind of a spoiler), the decision to torment someone with paranormal talents ends up with Eileen using them against her captors. This is done mostly in an extended sequence where she walks through the complex at a sedate pace, absolutely unstoppable. The effects are more restrained than, say, Marvel or DC, yet are certainly up to the task. 

Despite the cover, I don’t remember Eileen actually holding a gun at any point. Not with her hands: one of the trials does involve her assembling a pistol from its component parts, purely with her mind (below). Admittedly, she doesn’t need a physical weapon: the telekinetic abilities she has pose more than enough threat. In hindsight, she does go for more spectacular methods of dispatch than necessary: a simple squeeze of the heart would suffice. However, I’m happy to err on the side of style over substance, and by this point, I was sufficiently invested in Eileen’s past, present and future to buy into whatever might happen. If there’s similarity to another slice of Canadian SF, Cube, the better-defined plot here means it’s something I’m prepared to tolerate. 

Dir: James Mark
Star: Sara Mitich, George Tchortov, Evie Loiselle, Karen LeBlanc

Barbie and the Three Musketeers

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★★★
“All for one, in a Barbie world.”

Yes, I went there again. After Barbie Spy Squad, I’ve gone back to the plastic fantastic, for another entry in the crossover action heroine animated industry. This isn’t the first review here to cover a female take on the classic novel. La Femme Musketeer had already gone there, but the major difference there was, as the title implies it only had one woman, who had to keep her sex under wraps. Here, while the setting remains pre-revolutionary France, the wannabe Musketeer is openly a lady. On the high level, it is a fairly loyal adaptation, with teenage heroine Barbie – here called Corinne (Sheridan) – heading to Paris to fulfill her long-held ambition of becoming a Musketeer.

There, she’s initially spurned – albeit more for her lack of relevant experience than her gender – and has to prove herself. Naturally, there are no women Musketeers with whom she can bond, but she literally bumps into other young women, such as Viveca (Tozer), Aramina (Johnson), and Renée (Bell), with whom she finds employment as a maid in the palace. Naturally, she encounters the similarly teenage Prince Louis, and discovers that the skills of her coworkers are not limited to light housework. Together, they have to protect Louis from various attempts on his life, such as a falling chandelier, carried out by those who have designs on the royal power, before Louis ascends to the throne on his imminent eighteenth birthday.

Y’know, I did not hate this nearly as much as I feared I might. Corinne is established early on as smart, athletic and competent, though I could probably have done without her talking animals. But in general, the voice acting is enthusiastic and effective, though the women do sound a bit as if they have interchangeable heads. Bonus points for the unmistakable tones of Tim Curry, playing malevolent regent Philippe, who is next in line after Louis. The animation is… okay, I guess, considering the era. Nobody is going to mistake this for Pixar, yet it does the trick, and on occasion is actually more detailed than I expected (just not on the character’s faces – though, again: plastic, duh).

Messaging is probably considerably lighter than in the live-action Barbie movie. There’s a few statements that “girls can’t be Musketeers” – I mean, this was 17th-century France, it’s not wrong – and the resulting need to prove them incorrect. That’s about it. Instead, there’s a training montage set to the riff from EMF’s Unbelievable, which I did not have on my Barbie Bingo Card. The action is better than I expected, too, though obviously no blood, despite all the pointy objects being energetically wielded, both by the heroines and their enemies. At the final ball, no weapons are allowed in, so they have to make do, with creative use of fans, ribbons, etc. [Weirdly I read one review which said they never get to use swords, which they clearly do.] There’s also refreshingly little romance here. All told, perfectly watchable, to my near-shock.

Dir: William Lau
Star (voice): Kelly Sheridan, Tim Curry, Kira Tozer, Willow Johnson, Dorla Bell

The Sayen trilogy

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I was rather surprised to see the name of Alexander Witt pop up as the director, at the end of the first movie in this Chilean trilogy. He has been a stalwart second-unit director in Hollywood for decades, going back to Speed in 1994. With regard to the site, he fulfilled the same role on Aeon Flux, but is best-known as the director of the second film in the Resident Evil franchise, Resident Evil: Apocalypse. That was his sole directorial credit prior to Sayen, and I must confess… I was today years old when I discovered he was Chilean. I presumed he was German, based off his name and his work on the Berlin-shot Apocalypse. But, no. Born in Chile, albeit of German descent. He returned there to take the helm, almost 20 years later – again with an action heroine story.

Sayen
★★½

This takes place in the Araucanía region, where Sayen Coñuepan (Montenegro) has just returned to her indigenous homeland. Her grandmother is presented with an offer for her land, but a suspicious Sayen discovers it’s a front for a mining company. Things escalate, with Antonio (Piper), the junkie son of the company’s head, Máximo Torres (Arce), shooting the old woman dead. Sayen vanishes into the jungle, with Antonio and his henchmen in hot pursuit, knowing that if Sayen is allowed to go public with what she knows, it could make things very difficult for the company. However, this is very much her territory, and she has skills to make things potentially very difficult for them. 

As a jumping-off point, this is… okay, I guess. It begins with a po-faced caption which informs the viewer this is going to be an Important Message Movie. The early going is a bit of a slog, leading to me coming to the conclusion, just because something is “traditional” doesn’t necessarily make it any good. Once granny is gunned down, the film shifts gears and gets more energy. However, I was expecting Sayen to go full Rambo, using the environment to her advantage.  She doesn’t really, short of crafting a bow, which she uses one (1) time, and a bit of impromptu first-aid. Meanwhile, the bad guys could hardly be less subtle about their villainy, if they were given wax mustaches to twirl.

Admittedly, this may be necessary to make things clear for the international audience, who may not be up to speed on the intricacies of indigenous politics at the bottom of South America. We need black hats and white hats: keep things simple. Oh, and Chilean rap. Okay. It is interesting how Sayen doesn’t kill anyone – at least not directly. Oh, people die in her wake. Quite a few of them. However, it’s things like death through careless driving, for example. Or pointing a speedboat at a pier, then leaping off. Given the circumstances, surely no jury in the land would convict. After this lacklustre opening, while I can’t say I was keen to get to the next installment, I’m reluctant to quit any story in the middle.

Sayen: Desert Road
★★★

However, I felt the sequel works a little better. It takes place in an entirely different environment, relocating from the southern forests to the Atacama desert, one of the driest places in the world. The enemy remains Actaeon, the predatory industrial corporation headed by Torres, who have built a lithium extraction facility, after bribing their way to approval. Sayen, now with a businesslike crew-cut, is looking to find evidence of this corruption, and gets help from Qumal (Sánchez), a young woman whose father was among those who accepted the money. A SD card contains the required proof, but Acteon and their minions remain hot on Sayen’s trail, and prepared to stop her, by any means necessary.

This is at least somewhat more nuanced and less simplistic. While Torres remains the personification of evil, things are greyer elsewhere. A good example, is Qumal’s father: turns out he used the money received from Acteon to build a school for the town. There’s also one of the minions, Gasper, whose loyalties seem flexible, and who makes good points about the realities of life in the area. Sayen, though, is largely unbothered by these, though still defiantly proclaims herself not to be a murderer, despite what the authorities and media are saying about her. The desert locations provide some good opportunities for vehicular mayhem. I’d say Actaeon should probably look at revamping their driving courses, because some of their employees literally can’t steer to save themselves.

I’m still not entirely on board with Sayen’s mission: I tend not to feel eco-terrorism is better than any other flavour. However, this benefits from not needing to spend time on set-up, though does mean you really can’t watch it without having seen the first part. I was definitely surprised by a couple of twists at the end, where one character I expected to survive into the next movie, ended up dead, and one I thought was already dead, turned out to be alive. This set things up for the third installment, with Actaeon’s parent company Greencorp proving, in the corporate world, there’s always someone bigger and more morally dubious than you. Will Sayen be able to continue her battle, and also maintain her “clean hands” policy? Guess we’ll find out…

Sayen: The Huntress
★★★

There’s a further shift in setting here, the series moving to an urban location, of the Chilean capital Santiago, where Sayen has joined up with a group of activists. They are seeking evidence that Greencorp, under its CEO Fisk (Aarón Díaz), has bribed senators to vote against a bill protecting the country’s water from exploitation. There’s treachery on both sides, with a mole in Sayen’s group bringing heat on their heels, in the particularly interesting shape of female enforcer Jo (Niav Campbell – not to be confused with Neve Campbell!). On the other hand, they receive help from an unexpected source, because it’s not just eco-terrorists who have had enough of Fisk’s shenanigans…

There are some positives here, with the city landscape providing another fresh set of locations for Witt to work in action sequences, including zip-lines, base jumping and cycling. I particularly enjoyed the multiple battles between Jo and Sayen, although the director is still too inclined to go with the quick cuts, as he did in RE: Apocalypse. There’s a decent balance between the action and drama, with the high-level political intrigue working well. On the other hand, the film suddenly drops in a romantic interest for the heroine, which had me wondering where this came from. I wouldn’t worry about it. He isn’t around for long. It all ends a little too neatly, Sayen apparently able to sustain her position on the moral high ground.

All told, if you said this was a South American take on The Millennium Trilogy, I would not be inclined to disagree. In both cases, you have a young woman with a grudge against the powerful, who has the skills to make them pay for their unpunished crimes. Sayen is more hands-on than Lisbeth Salander, although the latter could take care of herself. I think the heroine here is probably less unstable: without the death of her grandmother to propel her down this path, you could easily see Sayen living a normal life, getting married, having kids and perhaps opening a legal help centre for the local residents. Instead, she ended up hunting the head of a global corporation, seeking justice for relentlessly putting the quest for profits ahead of everything else.

After a bit of a shaky start, putting the message ahead of the medium, the second and third films made for decent entertainment. They were all close to the ninety minute mark, avoiding the cinematic bloat we see too often in movies that do not need to be two-plus hours, and Witt’s experience in well-staged action is apparent. Having a heroine who won’t directly kill, but who is not averse to cracking heads if necessary, is a tricky needle to thread, and I’m not sure this is always successful. On the other hand, Sayen comes from a fresh and interesting background, and the trilogy as a whole does explore new territory. I can’t truly recommend it, but if you are interested in watching these, nor would I argue against it. You do you, gentle reader – you do you.

Dir: Alexander Witt
Star: Rallen Montenegro, Enrique Arce, Arón Piper, Katalina Sánchez

Apaatkaal

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★★½
“Death Wish, Bollywood style.”

For the first hour and forty minutes, you may well be wondering why this is here. You will need to be patient: it gets there… eventually. However, to start with, it’s the story of the battle between crime boss Nikka Shaitan (Grover) and dogged cop Inspector Sidhu (Kumar). After members of the former’s gang are caught attempting a bullion robbery, Sidhu seeks to leverage them to reach their boss. But Shaitan uses all the power – both legal and illegal – at his disposal, to avoid justice. Initially, a state of martial law (the title translates as “emergency”) gives the cops the edge, but after that is declared over, the balance shifts, culminating in Shaitan’s gang invading Sidhu’s wedding and gunning everybody down.

Shaitan again avoids justice, getting a corrupt politician to give him an alibi, leading to his acquittal. This is where we finally achieve GWG relevance, for the Inspector’s bride, Shikha (Sabah), vows to take revenge on every single person responsible for the death of her husband. She delivers, taking them out in a variety of ways, from shooting repeatedly in the head after removing their tongue, through burning alive, to hacking apart with a sword. It’s certainly enthusiastic, though the execution isn’t nearly as much fun as it should be. It demands a lot more blood. Naturally, Shikha uses the gang’s tactics to escape legal punishment, the film ending in a large caption asking the audience, “Do you agree with this?”

Well, since you ask… It’s a typical early nineties Indian pot-boiler, with all that implies. So, it’s overlong at 144 minutes, stuffed with terrible songs (and I like some Bollywood music – Singh is Kinng is one of only two soundtracks I actually listen to outside the film), and painfully simplistic, rarely approaching any level of delicacy. By most standards, this is not a “good” movie. But I did find it interesting. As depicted here, Indian cops do not give a damn about civil rights; how much of that’s due to the declared state of emergency is unclear (there was such a two-year period in India, but earlier, from 1975-77). On the other hand, the courts are depicted as incompetent and/or corrupt, basically useless at dispensing justice.

The sudden blossoming of Shika in the final act is also surprising. It’s rare for a film to end up with its hero or heroine being one who is barely even a supporting role during the first two-thirds. However, Rao manages to pull the switch off, albeit mainly through killing everyone else who you liked to that point. Shikha, assisted by her friend Razia, as well as another survivor of the massacre, then goes to work after the legal system has failed her, in a way which makes Charles Bronson look like subtle understatement. This is a clarion call to the vigilante inside the audience, about as subtle as a brick, and all the more fun for that. I’d edit this down to eighty minutes and call it a vast improvement.

Dir: V. Subba Rao
Star: Sabah, Gulshan Grover, Kiran Kumar, Aatish Devgan