Author: Jim McLennan

Kidnapping in the Grand Canyon

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★★★
“Not grand, but adequate.”

Despite my relentlessly commitment to sit through any film with an action heroine that strays across my radar, I’ll admit to suppressing an inward wince, when the film started and the ‘Lifetime Movies’ logo popped up. This origin was news to me. However, I was literally a captive viewer, since I was sitting on a plane to Mexico, so couldn’t exactly pop up and put on something else. At least it did mean I wasn’t going to end up uncomfortably trying to hide my screen from fellow passengers. This has occasionally happened previously, after an ill-considered choice of in-flight entertainment. Inevitably when I’m occupying the middle seat. Say what you like, Lifetime TVMs are safe. 

And to my surprise, in this case, reasonably entertaining. Admittedly, expectations were low. However, this kept my attention. Not that I could exactly walk out. But it keeps things simple, and is the better for it. To mark the twentieth anniversary of their friendship, pediatrician Brooke (Vitori) and photographer Chandra (Rosita) decide to do something special and hike the Grand Canyon. They bump into guide Nate (Boyd), who convinces them to go off trail and see hidden delights. As the title suggests, big mistake. For he is actually in need of a doctor who can tend to a nasty, infected leg wound suffered by extremely reluctant fiancée Tara (Bailey), and won’t take no for an answer, from any of the three women. 

Nothing new in the plotting here (there’s another Lifetime film with a suspiciously similar premise, Vanished in Yosemite),  but it does a decent job of avoiding character idiocy often needed in many of this sort of thing. Chandra is established early on as the risk-taker, so it makes sense when she immediately accepts Nate’s offer, over the objections of the much more cautious Brooke. This, too, is understandable as she lost her husband in a climbing accident two years previously. Yet despite the disparate personalities, the friendship between them is sold by the actresses’ performances. It gives a solid foundation, so that the occasionally rocky plotting doesn’t end up causing the whole endeavour to collapse. By the end, both have clearly changed and moved towards the middle, a nice acknowledgement of moderation being the best policy. Boyd does his part too, initially making Nate seem charming, until the inevitable – for anyone who has seen a man in a Lifetime movie, anyway – heel turn. 

I do suspect not all of it was actually filmed in the Grand Canyon. The stuff at the rim, certainly. But they’re shown entering the National Park, before arriving at the Sugar Loaf Lodge, which is actually in Sedona, a good hundred miles south. Some of the scenery looks more like Utah as well. However, you can’t go wrong with the Grand Canyon. It looks as majestic and imposing as ever, adding value to the production. Weirdly, it ends up being the second film I’ve seen this week, after Deep Fear, where a flare gun is wielded for offensive purposes. What are the odds?

Dir: Derek Pike
Star: Gina Vitori, Philip Boyd, Katrina Rosita, Ryann Bailey
A version of this review originally appeared on Film Blitz.

The ‘Angels of Vengeance’ trilogy

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The history of action heroines can’t be told without a chapter on China and Hong Kong. When we watched Michelle Yeoh kick butt in Yes, Madam, did we ever think she’d be an Oscar winner? She’s just the best-known product of a system which also gave us the likes of Moon Lee, Cynthia Khan and Maggie Q. The golden era for Hong Kong Girls With Guns films, was arguably the late eighties, but it’s never died away entirely. In the past few years, I’ve been finding a rich vein of recent Chinese GWG movies on YouTube. Streaming films took off there during COVID, with makers churning out a high-volume of films, in the action, horror and SF genre. Naturally, some fall under our remit.

Though researching them has been a bit problematic. Certain… “unofficial” channels, shall we say, will post the films with titles which are largely useless in terms of finding cast, crew, or even the film’s name. For instance, I discovered this franchise via a post titled, and I quote, “【FULL MOVIE】The beautiful police officers compete with criminal gangs in a battle of wits and courag”. In the comments, someone revealed it was called Angels of Vengeance 2. I thought I’d found part one on YT… But despite having the title Angels of Vengeance, none of the synopsis or cast info matched up. It turned out to be a mis-titled copy of Angel Warriors.

This issue actually feels like a throwback to the eighties, when the In the Line of Duty series, for example, had almost different titles in every country. Similarly, you’re sometimes dealing with subtitles that are less than optimal, and as we’ll see, audio is a sadly common problem too. However, after some further research, I eventually hit the mother lode, finding all three movies with English subs on Youku’s YouTube channel. The Chinese title of the franchise is 辣警狂花, which according to Google translates as “Hot policeman crazy flower.” I guess Angels of Vengeance will do under the circumstances.

Information on the franchise, director or actresses involved is hard to come by. In fact, at the time of writing in late 2024, this would appear to be the first English-language coverage the trilogy will have ever received. I love that: discovering obscurities is, to me, one of the joys of the site, especially when they end up being generally more entertaining than many a better-known production. But to quote the lyrics to the song which close out the third installment.

The resounding song is the sword of justice
Police badges shine with firm faith
Fear no flying bullets, guns in my hands, shield on my shoulder
I’m fearless to any dangers.
We undertake missions, we maintain the faith
Proceeding with firm steps, we keep going
We’re thunderbolts, charging forward
We safeguard the peace by fighting crime.

Can’t say more than that, really. Here are reviews of each film in the series, and a YouTube playlist of the trilogy.

Angels of Vengeance: Blood Trails

★★★½

This introduces us to the main protagonist, Tang Shi-Yu (Yan), a member of a Chinese SWAT team. She is recruited to infiltrate the drug-running gang belonging to Zhao Wen-jiu (Bai), doing so by rescuing Jiu’s younger sister, Ya-Ya (Mu), who is oblivious to her sibling’s criminal activities, from an attack in a nightclub. Tang’s undercover identity is someone in debt to loan sharks, and Jiu offers to take care of this, if she comes to work for him. After proving her loyalty, and also rescuing Jiu from an assassination attempt, she’s successfully embedded in the organization. But things are complicated, due to the reason behind the hit. Jiu killed someone close to his rival, Chen Jia-hua (Zheng), and Chen is out for revenge.

The obvious target for that is Ya-Ya, who is kidnapped, luring Jiu into a confrontation. Eventually, an uneasy peace between producer and distributoris brokered, setting the scene for a major drug deal going down at the docks. Tang informs her colleagues, and plans are put in place for a raid which will sweep up both sets of traffickers. This does a fair amount right, in particular the lead performances of Yan and Bai, which are thoughtful and well-considered. Both come over as smart individuals, and there is a complexity to the gangster which is a little surprising. Indeed, you could argue that, with his relationship to Ya-Ya, and their history, Wen-Jiu is given depth which is largely missing from Shi-yu. She is almost entirely defined by her career.

Tang does an excellent job of maintaining her undercover status, even when drenched in gasoline and threatened with immolation, and takes care of business on the action front when necessary too. I’d like to have seen more from the female members of her support team; outside of a little at the beginning, and a raid on Jiu’s offices, they don’t particularly get to show off their skills much. The ending feels a little underwhelming too, though that may partly be a result of the severely muffled audio during almost the entire sequence [It’s something you sadly need to live with on a lot of Chinese YouTube channels, even the legitimate ones like Youku]

I appreciate the practical effects: especially during the rescue attempt on Ya-Ya, there are real explosions rather than CGI.  It feel like there was good effort put into the script as well, which always keeps moving forward, and Chen’s presence adds an extra twist or two. There’s a great scene when the two gangsters have a meeting in a restaurant; the intensity and tension here is off the charts, and you can sense Tang’s nervousness as she can do nothing except standby and watch. This feels like the kind of film which could easily be remade for a Western audience, and I’d be happy to watch it again. A pretty solid and promising start, delivering a better story and performances than I expected.

Dir: Yuan Shuo
Star: Jessie Yan Jia-ying, Bai Yun-Feng, Mu Lan, Zheng He-Cheng

Angels of Vengeance 2: Top Fugitive 

★★★

This is based around “P2P lending” which was a major thing in China during the mid-2010’s, before the government cracked down on the various dubious pyramid schemes operating under it. A significant number of people lost a lot of money, but going by this relatively contemporary film, it’s still happening, and still problematic. In this case, young women are lured into running up large debts, and when they’re unable to pay, are abducted and sold into sex slavery, to cover the amount owed. I have some questions about exactly how this would operate, but I’m just going to presume the basic scenario makes sense in context for the local audience.

It’s a bit more of an ensemble piece here, with Tang’s SWAT group in Hanjiang City becoming involved after being called in to resolve a hostage situation at a petrol station. Turns out, the two women were victims in the scheme, but as the investigation proceeds, the criminals involved are covering their traces in no uncertain i.e. murderous fashion. Things become rather personal, since SWAT member Hao Miaomiao (Zhao) has lent money to her cousin, Zhang Le-Le (@@@), supposed for education purposes. Turns out Lele’s boyfriend is part of the gang, but when it comes time to kidnap the victim, an administrative mix-up leads to Miaomaio being snatched off the street, rather than Le-Le.

This pushes Shi-Yu’s investigation into overdrive, because they need to find their colleague before she gets shipped permanently out of the country. After Miaomiao is able to get her hands on a phone, she contacts Shi-Yu and is able to send her location. This allows the SWAT team to tool up, and head to the rescue of their colleague. To be honest, the resulting battle represents a clear majority of the action in this installment. Up until that point, there’s a good urban chase sequence, as the team tries to stop a witness from being offed, but this is probably more of a thriller than an action movie. Although it’s still interesting, because of the cultural differences, there are points where it teeters on the edge of TVM territory.

As noted, there  is a better sense of team here, and you get a feeling for the camaraderie between the various members. Witness the affectionate hazing at the end, when Miaomiao tries to skimp on the “thank you” meal for her rescuers. It’s novel to see SWAT people like Ting actively involved in a criminal investigation. This is presumably how things work in China, rather than the sharp demarcation of responsibility with detectives they have in the West. It could have use additional intensity, for example, a greater sense of threat to the victims, as it’s rather too vague on the specifics to present any real peril. The lack of a well-defined antagonist also keeps this one below the bar set by the first installment. It remains a pleasant enough way to pass 85 minutes.

Dir: Yuan Shuo
Star: Jessie Yan Jia-ying, Zhao Jing, Zhang Zi-Yue, Li Ran

Angels of Vengeance 3: Shadow Repose

★★★½

This gets off to an excellent start, depicting the kidnapping and subsequent ransom attempt of Ni-ni, the daughter of industrialist Yang Shi-ke (Bin). He’s getting instructions from the kidnapper, Li Zi-Xiong (Zhou), by phone in order to shake the tail on him, before the drop. As well as following Yang, Tang and her colleagues try to locate the victim, but neither side of this goes perfectly: while they don’t lose the ransom, there’s a trap which leaves Miaomiao badly injured in hospital, and the team with egg on their face. However, SWAT member An Qi (Zhang) suspects there’s more going on than meets the eye, with elements of Yang’s behaviour seeming suspicious.

As seems common throughout the series, we get more time than I expected spent on the villains. In this case, one of them is killed in the first pick-up attempt, which causes his friend to want to kill Ni-Ni. When Li refuses to allow that, the friend swears vengeance against the cops he considers responsible. No prizes for guessing who that is. This adds an additional wrinkle to what might otherwise be a fairly straightforward (though effective enough) kidnapping plot. Between that and Yang’s murky actions, the story is pretty interesting. We’re kept uncertain whether what Yang is doing, is simply to get Ni-ni back safely. Especially after we learn that Li has a long track record of kidnaps – and that the victims there have not come back alive. 

In effect, we have tension between Yang, who is prepared to do anything to recover his daughter, and the authorities, whose main interest seems to be in arresting the criminals, with the hostage’s health falling under the “optional” category. To what extent this reflects the reality of Chinese policy, I can’t say. It makes for an interesting point of consideration. The action has its moments too: there’s a particularly good brawl in a hotel kitchen. The finale is, at least initially, more stealth-oriented than the second part. The team capture one of the kidnappers during another attempt to collect the ransom, and successfully turn him, reminding him of the death penalty he could face – China does not mess about with punishing criminals!

He then returns to the lair, carrying the ransom, and with Tang, An and third member of the team,Yang Fan (Hong Shuang), hidden in the bag. They’re just able to free Ni-Ni before the deception is discovered, leading to an enjoysble and hard-hitting battle against Li and his henchmen (albeit with an ending which merits an “I’m so sure…” comment from this viewer!). Annoyingly, this film suffers from even worse audio problems than the first two entries, in the version provided by Youku. The sound completely vanishes at points, and when it goes, it takes the subtitles with it. The film is strong enough to survive the issue with most of the entertainment value intact. I can’t help thinking, if there had been a better presentation, this one might well have merited our Seal of Approval. Hopefully, there will be more entries to come.

Dir: Yuan Shuo, Wang Ke
Star: Jessie Yan Jia-ying, Zhou Yan, Zhang Lin, Xue Bin

Women Rescuers of WWII, by Elise Baker

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Literary rating: ★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆

With the somewhat accurate and rather clunky sub-title of “True stories of the unsung women heroes who rescued refugees and Allied servicemen in WWII”, this is a book whose idea I liked rather more than the execution. The core is six chapters, each devoted to a woman or pair of women, who operated before and around World War II, mostly helping refugees to escape the Nazi regime as it swept across Europe. Every chapter has the same structure. Each begins with ‘The Threshold’, describing how they came to take on that role; then ‘The Move’, covering their heroic activities; and finally, ‘The Close’, detailing what happened to them afterward.

These stories are all worth telling, though perhaps not to the same degree. A couple appear more like glorified bureaucrats, and while their roles in facilitating emigration of refugees were important, you don’t get much sense they were in genuine danger. Others, however, such as Irena Sendler, was clearly risking her own life in smuggling Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto, being captured and brutally interrogated by the Gestapo. The same goes for Andrée de Jongh, who ran the Comet Line which allowed Allied soldiers trapped behind enemy lines in occupied Europe, to make their way back to friendly territory. She ended up in Ravensbruck concentration camp: that’s “real” heroism, putting yourself at personal risk, and definitely deserves to be better known.

However, the desire to cram in too much here works against the book. Each chapter typically covers only 20-25 pages, and as a result, you get not much more depth about each woman, than you would find in a well-written Wikipedia article. These are more like an appetizer, and you’ll probably be left hungry to know more about the likes of de Jongh. Baker has an odd tendency to shift from factual descriptions to what reads like dramatic restagings of scenes, an awkward shift that she does not manage to pull off. Rather than letting the stories speak for themselves, she tends to belabour her point about sexism being responsible for suppressing these stories.

It’s somewhat questionable, since many male heroes of WW2 are arguably more unsung: de Jongh, for example, was awarded decorations by multiple countries, including the George Medal, Britain’s highest civilian honour. That’s not “unsung.” I’d rather Baker had used the pages she spends on making such points, to tell the reader more about the women’s stories.  I will admit, I did learn things here, and if you’re looking for a primer – a Cliff Notes on wartime heroism – this and the other books in the series are probably worth a look. But it feels like Baker is only skimming the surface, and the subjects would have been better served by a more in-depth recounting, rather than trying to cover so many different candidates. Sometimes, less is definitely more, and this would be a good example. 

Author: Elise Baker
Publisher: Intrepidas Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book Part of the Brave Women Who Changed the Course of WWII series.

We Kill Them All

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★½
“Kill me too. Please”

It generally makes sense for a film to escalate over its duration. The problem here is, what escalated was my annoyance. It began as irritation, but by the end I was deeply peeved, because the stupidity is strong in this one. It begins with two different strands. In one, former desperado Lee Hughes is visited in his mountain resort by ex-colleague Jimmy Montague (Fafard) and his minions. They want to know the location of two million in proceeds from a previous crime Lee and Jimmy pulled. In the other, lesbian couple Lane (Newton) and Megan (McClay) are busy being lesbionic with each other, because they’re lesbians. Did I mention they are a same-sex couple?

These two threads link up because Megan is Lee’s daughter. When she and Lane head up to visit him, they discover only Jimmy and his henchmen, Tweedledum and Tweedledumber. They think Megan knows where the loot is. And this is where the idiocy becomes industrial strength. I’m not sure who is worse. The bad guys, for repeatedly allowing their captives to escape. Or Megan and Lane, for repeatedly allowing themselves to get recaptured. It doesn’t help the script ties itself in knots, trying to keep any firearms out of the wonens’ hands before the very end. Yes, the liberal agenda™ here seems to extend to gun control. Until it finally gives up and admits that they are, in fact, the best equalizer in a home invasion scenario. 

Lane, in particular, is entirely useless for the great bulk of proceedings. Until she is not, suddenly able to escape from being tied up with barbed wire – albeit the kind of barbed wire which leaves no marks in her flesh – and left entirely alone while Jimmy and Megan wander off. Again. Megan does, at least, have some guts. But, really: you are in a kitchen, and the best impromptu weapon you can find is… A chopping board? Meanwhile, the purpose of the whole lesbian thing is revealed. It’s cheap heat, so the bad guys can get all homophobic. Being bad is not, apparently enough. [The film really needs to take lessons from What Keeps You Alive in the department of lesbian relationships]

I honestly feel the whole endeavour would be improved by dubbing Three Stooges sound effects over the top of it. The first half is meandering and not very interesting. The second half does at least have things happening. It’s just that they range from the weakly plotted down to the flat out ludicrous. With little or no reason to care about the characters, who seem entirely defined by their bedroom habits, I was left with no interest in their fate. This, incidentally, ends up being exactly what I expected at the mid-way point. I want to stress, this isn’t a bad film because the heroines are lesbians. There are a lot of perfectly good, unbigoted reasons to find this well below average. 

Dir: Jeremy Drummond
Star: Chloe McClay, Emma Newton, Leo Fafard, Michasha Armstrong

Back in Action

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★★★
“Back to basics.”

The title could very well apply to star Diaz as well, since this is her first movie in over a decade. She retired in 2014 after Annie (which also starred Foxx), to focus on her family. But the actress, who will always be beloved here for her role in the best incarnation of Charlie’s Angels, was lured out for this genre mashup, which combines comedy, action, romance, family drama and thriller elements. She plays Emily, a former spy who retired fifteen years ago, and dropped out of sight. She’s now happily married to partner Matt (Foxx), with two teenage kids – the daughter being particularly obnoxious – and a house roughly the size of Vermont. Espionage must be a very lucrative business. 

This domestic bliss is, naturally, upended after the arrival of former handler Chuck (Chandler) with a warning, rapidly followed by assassins. Turns out, on their last mission, Matt lifted and subsequently hid, a device capable of controlling any electronic system. Everyone now wants to get their hands on this MacGuffin, which he stashed away on the estate of Emily’s estranged mother, Ginny (Close), back in England. Kids in tow, Matt and Emily have to drop off the grid, go there and secure the device before it falls into the hands of the bad guys, who intend to auction it off to the highest bidder. Needless to say, their children are surprised by this development. Not least the daughter, who was just grounded for using a fake ID.

Make no mistake, this is glossy, simple and unchallenging entertainment. But that’s perfectly fine. Not everything has to be significant or deep, and if this is unambitious, it doesn’t make it any less decent as something to throw on TV of a Sunday night. Diaz and Foxx both have charisma to spare, and together, their characters have a relationship which seems genuine. They love each other, while their children are stuck permanently in adolescent eye-roll mode, despising their parents taste in music, etc. It’s a salutory lesson, that in reality, Emily and Matt are far cooler, more interesting and highly skilled than their offspring would ever give them credit. The parent in me nods wisely at this family dynamic.

The action is decent, with some impressive bits of vehicular mayhem, and Diaz showing she can still move. But I particularly liked Ginny – I can only presume Helen Mirren was unavailable, as it’s a clone of her character from RED – and her charmingly ineffectual toy boy, Nigel (Jamie Demetriou). They deserve a franchise of their own. No less than nineteen writers were involved in the script. This has to be close to a record, and to be honest, you can tell, especially in the final act. There, things tend to become awfully convenient, as everybody whizzes around London in pursuit of the MacGuffin. With a bloated budget estimated at over $200 million, I’m just glad it wasn’t my money. I’ll happily take advantage of the results, however. 

Dir: Seth Gordon
Star:Cameron Diaz, Jamie Foxx, Kyle Chandler, Glenn Close

Abigail (2023)

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★★★½
“Heathers: the seventies remix.”

This is now the third film with the same title to be reviewed on the site: no vampires or Russian sorceresses to be found here. This does get an extra half star for genuinely surprising me. In the early stages, I had a strong feeling I knew exactly where this was going to end up going. Men bad, white people bad – and white men? Well, they’re the worst of all. Call it a spoiler perhaps – we’ll get to those – but that is definitely not how this unfolds. It takes place in 1976 Alabama, where teenager Abigail Cole (Cantrell) and her mother Eve (Lynch) have just moved from California. It’s clear this was to get away from “something”.  Exactly what is unclear, but it seems to have had something to do with Abigail’s father.

She makes friends with Lucas (Reed-Brown), who lives next door and is the victim of bullies at school. Initially, Abigail’s behaviour is positively heroic, defending Lucas from his tormentors. Though the film never makes mention of it, Lucas is black. You feel this might have been an issue in seventies Alabama, but the insults hurled at Lucas are entirely of the f-word rather than the n-word, an interesting choice. Anyway, Abigail proves more than capable of taking care of both of them, wielding a baseball-bat, fire extinguisher and axe-handle to good effect.

[Spoilers] However, things are entirely upended when further incidents make it abundantly clear that Abigail is not a heroic vigilante, defender of the oppressed, so much as a psychopath who revels in the opportunity to use violence against others. I did not see that coming. From this point on, just about everything is reversed, because the character for whom you’ve been rooting the entire time, is now the villainess. Conversely, the local cop, who seemed the epitome of racist law-enforcement, turns out to be sympathetic to Lucas and his apparent plight. However, things only cascade further into darkness as we continue on. The truth about Abigail’s missing father comes out, and the body count continues to increase, as efforts are made to clear up the previous corpses. [End spoilers]

There are some plot-holes here: given Abigail and Lucas were hauled into the principal’s office for an incident involving one bully, they would (Lucas particularly, even if Abigail was discounted through seventies sexism) surely be prime suspects in his subsequent disappearance. However, I am prepared to cut it some slack, due to the glorious one-eighty pulled off in the middle, which can only be applauded. Credit in particular to Cantrell’s performance: I’m sure if you go back and watch it again, you would be able to spot the clues to her personality in the earlier scenes. However, I’ve a feeling the impact would likely be less on subsequent viewings, where you know what’s coming. This is likely to be a “one and done” for me, which is why it doesn’t get a seal of approval. Albeit a highly satisfactory “one”.

Dir: Melissa Vitello
Star: Ava Cantrell, Tren Reed-Brown, Hermione Lynch, Gene Farber

The Gorge

  By

★★★½
“Falling – in love again.”

This was more entertaining than I expected, and managed in a number of ways to overcome its limitations. From reviews, I was expecting it to be more a romance with occasional monsters. In reality though, it’s more a monster movie with occasional romance. The set-up revolves around a canyon in a remote area, of uncertain location and provenance. Since the end of World War II, the East and West have tacitly co-operated, in a project even their leaders don’t know about, to ensure that what’s in there, doesn’t get out. To this end, automated defense systems have been set up, monitored by one person from each side, on each side of the chasm, and replaced annually.

The latest pair are former US sniper Levi Kane (Teller) and Lithuanian counterpart, Drasa (Taylor-Joy). In what’s probably an accidentally damning indictment about the perils of putting women in front-line situations, Levi ends up zip-lining across the gorge, for a slice of her rabbit pie (if you know what I mean, and I think you do… but also for literal rabbit pie). Heading back, his line snaps, plummeting him into the danger zone below. Drasa immediately goes after him. They subsequently find out what’s in there, the truth about where it came from, and why they are guarding it. It’s not fun. The fate of the man Levi relieved (Dirisu) points towards that, and the presence of Sigourney Weaver as his boss is nicely ironic.

To be honest, the specifics are perhaps a little disappointing, being the kind of human malfeasance we’ve seen in SF/horror too often. After the ominous suggestion it’s a literal gate to hell, the actual answer left me a bit, “Is that it?” However, the makers have done a really nice job of creating the location, which is entirely convincing. The creatures crawling out of it are imaginative and icky too, although I would have like to see some more of the non-humanoid ones. There’s a point where I thought it was going to become that scene in Peter Jackson’s King Kong, which would have been nice. Still, there’s no shortage of mayhem once things kick off, and the 127 mins gallop past.

You could argue Teller is the lead, but I would say they are genuine co-stars: the film needs both of them in order to function. After her turn in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Taylor-Joy definitely seems to be positioning herself as an action heroine. She does well here, although her Lithuanianicity (is that a word?) is a little in question, and overall I still put Samara Weaving ahead of Taylor-Joy. It is a bit of a shame this went straight to streaming, since it has more big-screen presence than many theatrical releases. You’ll perhaps have questions about some aspects, but if you’re like me, you won’t think of these until after the final credits have rolled – a good sign that the film has kept you engaged.

Dir: Scott Derrickson
Star: Anya Taylor-Joy, Miles Teller, Sigourney Weaver, Sope Dirisu 

Buffalo Girls

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★★★½
“Certainly no calamity.”

Calamity Jane is one of the larger-than-life figures who populated the Wild West in its later days, as it was gradually becoming civilized. The truth about who she was is hard to determine, with verifiable facts hard to come by. But like Robin Hood, this just makes her raw clay, to be moulded into whatever shape writers and film-makers want. In Jane’s case this means her over the decades being played by anyone from Jane Russell through Doris Day to, here, Anjelica Huston. This version of her story, originally a TV miniseries in two parts from 1995, is based on a book by Larry McMurtry. I’ve not read it, but by most accounts, it’s mostly an elegy to the death of the old West and its people.

This doesn’t feel quite as depressing, though certainly nods to the end of the frontier ways. Jane here is a down-to-earth figure, whom we first see working with the forces of General Custer. Fortunately, she avoids meeting the same fate, though tragedy hits in a different way, with the murder of Wild Bill Hickok (Sam Elliott, basically re-running his Tombstone character). Jane had long held a candle for him, but never managed quite to tell him. However, their relationship leaves her with a child, which she gives up for adoption to a rich family. Years later, she discovers her daughter is back in England, and joins the circus of Buffalo Bill (Coyote), to travel across the ocean in the hope of being reunited.

This thread is fine, with a tremendous cast doing good work, also including Jack Palance, an early role for Liev Schreiber, and Reba McEntire as sharp-shooter Annie Oakley [in my head canon, she’s playing the great-grandmother of her character in Tremors] I doubt how historically accurate it is: while Buffalo Bill’s show did play in London, I’ve not found anything to indicate Jane was with them (Oakley, however, was part of the show), and certainly not shooting up an English pub! But the old saw, “Print the legend” is likely applicable here, and I’m always willing to cut cinematic biography some factual slack, in the interests of making its story-telling more effective.

Less successful is the secondary plot, involving brothel madam Dora DuFran (Griffith), who again did exist, and her true love Ted Blue (Byrne), who did not. I was particularly annoyed how Dora repeatedly refused Ted’s proposals of marriage, preferring to retain her freedom… then got very upset after he married someone else, and even got hitched to someone herself (the short-term spouse being played by Schreiber). Either be with someone or not. They’re not a puppy on a leash for you to jerk around, and your history is not their problem. Every scene with the pair was a waste of time, and I was left wondering if I could create a ninety-minute supercut of the film, which removes them from the film as far as possible. I suspect it would be an improvement.

Dir: Rod Hardy
Star: Anjelica Huston, Melanie Griffith, Gabriel Byrne, Peter Coyote 

Knockout Blessing

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★★★
“Punches above its weight.”

Always a pleasure to cross another country off the map, and this is the first movie we have ever reviewed here from Nigeria. Indeed, entries from anywhere in Africa have been very limited, and in general, I found this a pleasant surprise. In some countries, film-makers appear to be trying simply to imitate Hollywood. That’s not the case here: this feels Nigerian, and is all the more entertaining as a result. What it may lack in hardcore action, was made up for me by the glimpse it provided into local culture. The differences are what gave this flavour – though as we’ll see, it appears we are united by a general disdain for politicians and their behaviour!

It begins in a small village where Blessing (Laoye) is the grand-daughter of a boxer, who has brought her up and certainly passed on his skills, leaving Blessing fully deserving of her titular nickname. However, after she punches out the son of a rich local, who was attempting to force himself on her, and he dies as a result, her father is killed by a mob, and she is forced to flee to the city. There, she falls in with a group of hookers, including Hannah (Meg Otanwa) and Oby (Ejiofor). They end up working for low-level gangster Dagogo (Franklin), honey-trapping men whom Blessing then knocks unconscious so they can be robbed. Her goal is to raise funds which Dagogo says he will use to get her a passport to America.

When this shows little signs of happening, Blessing grows reluctant, so Dagogo says he needs just one last job. It’s a high-risk, high-reward job, to steal some diamonds from the notorious Gowon (Adedoyin). Naturally, as “one last jobs” do, it goes wrong. While they get the case, it instead contains a hard drive, with a very incriminating video, depicting the President of Nigeria… Well, let’s just say, there’s a goat involved. [Told you there’s no love lost for politicians] Needless to say, both Gowon and the President are extremely keen to get the drive back, and will stop at nothing to do so. This leaves Blessing and her pals trying to get it to a friendly journalist and online, before the loose ends they represent are tidied up.

This was consistently entertaining. My (admittedly limited) experience of Nollywood left my expectations low, and this surpassed them on most levels: the script, performances and direction are all fine. Credit Adedoyin in particular, whose suit-wearing Gowon becomes a very convincing and menacing villain. It’s never dull, and no special knowledge of Nigerian life and culture is needed here. I did wish more use had been made of Blessing’s pugilistic talents. There’s a significant chunk in the middle, where it feels like the movie forgets about its heroine. Blessing did enough in the early going to win our affections, and she deserves better than to be sidelined. I was still left with an interest in seeing more Nigerian cinema, and that’s not what I expected on the way in.

Dir: Dare Olaitan
Star: Ade Laoye, Bucci Franklin, Ademola Adedoyin, Linda Ejiofor

The Queen of Villains

  By

★★★★½
“Hard-hitting, and hitting hard.”

Not long ago, I tagged Black Doves as the best television of 2024. If I’d seen this before December 31, it would have beaten it out. It’s a top-tier depiction of the world of Japanese women’s professional wrestling in the eighties, weaving truth, fiction and legend together in a way that’s highly effective – probably even if you’re not a particular fan of sports entertainment.  It’s the story of Kaoru Matsumoto (Retriever), who escaped a dysfunctional family to join All Japan Women’s Pro Wrestling (AJW). Initially struggling to achieve success, she found her niche as nightmare villain Dump Matsumoto, feuding with former friend Chigusa Nagoya (Grace), until the pair faced off in a legendary, brutal battle, destined to lead to public humiliation for one of them.

We all know professional wrestling is staged, with the outcomes predetermined, right? [Do not used the word “fake”: I will cut you!] Here, things are… murkier. This treads a delicate line between that and kayfabe, the wrestling term for promoting it as reality, and genuine competition. The stance here is interesting, suggesting that while those in charge, like promoter Toshikuni Matsunaga (Saitoh), can have a result in mind, that relies on those in the ring agreeing to it. This isn’t always the case [one wrestling show I remember attending definitely had a genuine fight, for backstage reasons], and here, Matsumoto is a loose cannon, prepared to go to any lengths to put herself over. Or her character: the lines are certainly blurred here, to the point of near invisibility.

What matters, is that the audience believed it was real, to the point that Matsumoto received death threats as the feud intensified. It’s perhaps hard to understand just how popular AJW was, but their TV shows were getting considerably bigger ratings in Japan at its peak, than WWE or WCW were during the Monday Night Wars. It was a true cultural phenomenon – oddly, with teenage girls at the front of fandom. Nagayo and tag partner Lioness Asuka (Goriki), known as the Crush Gals, were basically Taylor Swift: they actually had a successful music career. Below, you can see the video of the real match mentioned, between Nagayo and Matsumoto. I defy you to find any wrestling bout, anywhere, where the crowd were so utterly into it.

The show does a fabulous job of capturing this, and the bouts as well are very well-staged – the real Nagayo worked as a technical advisor. Wrestling at the time was very different from what it is now, especially for women, and Matsumoto’s brutal style was unprecedented. She could chew up and spit out current WWE champion Rhea Ripley, using her as a tooth-pick. Indeed, it feels as if the final match is the dramatic pinnacle, and should end the fifth and final episode. It doesn’t and it feels like it’s heading for an anti-climax thereafter, until recovering [while not mentioned, it’s caused by AJW’s rule that wrestlers had to retire at age twenty-six!] But the drama behind it also has a great deal of nuance, depicting her troubled family life, and willingness to do whatever was necessary for her career.

This came at personal cost – not least her friendship with Nagayo. But it also affected her relationship with her family, in particular her mother and sister. Matsumoto initially wanted to become a wrestler, so she could protect them from her abusive and alcoholic father, but in the end, even her family were not safe from the ripples of her in-ring “villainy”. It all works on multiple levels, and provoked genuine emotions in me, to a degree rarely managed by any TV show, least of all one based on (lightly fictionalized) reality. Towards the end, the promoter lets a young girl in to see the show, and I was left wondering whether this was perhaps intended to be someone like Manami Toyoya, the greatest woman wrestler of all-time.

Another series, perhaps The Queen of Heroines? We can but hope. 

Creator: Osamu Suzuki
Star: Yuriyan Retriever, Victoria Grace, Takumi Saitoh, Ayame Goriki