Author: Jim McLennan

Cold Hell

  By

★★★
“Hell is other people.”

This an interesting entry, with a complex lead character who is quite some way from being conventionally “likeable”. Özge Dogruol (Schurawlow) is a Viennese taxi driver, who is harsh, abrasive and has severe anger issues. Indeed, anger is arguably among the least of her issues. She practices Thai boxing as an outlet. Or did, until a sparring session goes wrong, and she ends up breaking her partner’s nose in two places. One night, from her apartment, she sees the dead body of a woman in the opposite building, and the killer (Sheik) standing over the corpse. Unfortunately, he also sees Özge. The police won’t provide protection, and soon after, her cousin is murdered, in an apparent case of mistaken identity.

For a variety of reasons – some valid, such as her abusive father, others more self-inflicted – Özge has burned all her other bridges, both with friends and family. Having nowhere else to turn, she consequently ends up staying with Christian Steiner (Moretti), one of the detectives working on the case, which spans killings in several different countries. He has problems of his own, having to take of his elderly father (von Thun), who has dementia. Özge and Christian begin a relationship (which seems a bit of a violation of police ethics – maybe things are different in Austria), and she vows to kill the killer. But will Özge be able to carry out her goal before he gets to her?

There’s a saying: you will meet assholes in your life, but if everyone you meet is an asshole… you’re the asshole. I kept being reminded of this by Özge, who definitely has an asshole problem. Yet, despite having so many characteristics which would, in reality, make her someone I would actively avoid, I still found myself somewhat rooting for her, in a Dragon Tattoo kind of way. Partly, this is because there aren’t many better people in the film. Christian is likely the closest. But even he is far from perfect – even discounting the whole “sleeping with the main witness in a case of multiple murder” thing. It does end up relying on some fortuitous coincidence, and as heroines go, Özge is remarkably flame-resistant, shall we say.

This plays into the killer’s philosophy. He skins and burns alive Muslim prostitutes because he wants them to experience what hell will be like. Özge has a Muslim background, though is hardly devout, and the film does lean a little heavily into the sexism, racism and anti-police angles, especially in the early going. It gets more nuanced in some areas as we get deeper in, though I’d be quite surprised if Özge actually learns any valuable life lessons. Although not all the choices here are successful, I do have to respect the effort to try and do something a bit different in the genre. I certainly won’t deny I found the ending highly satisfying, and appropriately fiery.

Dir: Stefan Ruzowitzky
Star: Violetta Schurawlow, Tobias Moretti, Sammy Sheik, Friedrich von Thun
a.k.a. Die Hölle

Agent Zero

  By

★★½
“Shaky, in a number of ways.”

Alma Siracine (Vacth) was a black ops agent for the French government, until an assignment in Syria went pear-shaped, and she resigned her position. Seven years later, she’s living quietly with her policeman husband in Morocco, until he’s the victim of a drive-by shooting. She finds the attackers and terminates them. Unfortunately, they are the sons of local arms dealer Manour Khoury (Dazi). Not helping, he is under the protection of the French government, being allowed to operate in exchange for funneling information to them about terrorist attacks. Spymaster Joanna Walter (Bercot) decides Alma is a loose end in need of tidying. Alma, naturally, is of a different opinion, and won’t be easy to clean up.

The main problem here is de Fontenay’s fondness for shakycam in the action sequences. Not just one or two. It feels like every time anyone moves at a pace quicker a walk, the camera immediately starts to have some kind of seizure. It’s clearly a tactic designed to instill a sense of immediacy. Paul Greengrass used it to great effect in the Bourne movies. But it isn’t just a case of taking a handheld camera and waving it around. You need an editor who can assemble the footage into a coherent format. Sadly, that’s what is absent here, and the results are usually difficult to follow, and on occasion liable to induce a headache. 

Consequently, I found myself almost dreading the appearance of an action sequence. Not exactly a good thing to experience during an action movie. Whether it was her brutally efficient dispatch of Khoury’s sons, a motorcycle chase through the streets of the seaside town where she lives, or the final battle with Khoury’s men at the port in Casablanca, the approach is the same. It feels like a throwback – and a most unwelcome one at that – to the style of action cinema popular twenty years ago. I thought we had moved on. Apparently not. The film is (literally) on more solid ground when depicting the murky world of international espionage, where pragmatic decisions are made without consideration of the moral concerns. I actually have some sympathy for Walter and her almost impossible situation. 

Outside of the camerawork, the technical elements are generally fine. The film makes decent use of its Moroccan and Middle East locations, and Dazi makes for a decent villain, believing himself untouchable, regardless of what he does. However, the overall structure feels off in some way, and the film just seems to end in a way likely to provoke a “Well, that happened” reaction in the viewer. Vacth has some effective moments, and the film never totally lost my attention. But it did teeter on the edge more than once, especially when it made me feel like I had contracted an inner-ear disorder. Those with a stronger stomach than I might find more to enjoy here. Wouldn’t necessarily bet on it though.

Dir: Guillaume de Fontenay
Star: Marine Vacth, Emmanuelle Bercot, Slimane Dazi, Niels Schneider
a.k.a. Badh

Gone (2011)

  By

★★
“…and quickly forgotten”

If this seems familiar, it’s because we already reviewed the American remake of this Swedish film, Alone, made in 2020. It’s quite rare, in that I don’t often see the remake before the original. It’s usually the other way round, and the remake tends to suffer as a result, often seeming superfluous e.g. Point of No Return. I  carefully avoided reading my opinion of the remake before viewing this, but on a post-watch comparison… it appears I didn’t like either of them very much. They both ended up with the same grade – perhaps for slightly different reasons though. I guess that consistency is slightly better than most remakes, even if it is consistent mediocrity.

Malin (Ledarp) is moving away from the rest of her family after an incident for which she feels responsible, and is driving North, out of the city, with her possessions loaded up in a trailer behind her. However, she finds herself encountering the same driver (Bergqvist) on multiple occasions and gets a bad vibe from him. This feeling is 100% correct, because the man ends up chloroforming Malin. She wakes up in the basement of his very isolated house, in the middle of a Scandinavian forest. Quite what his intentions are is a little vague. But that he says she’s not the first woman to have been there, and that his family thinks he’s on a business trip to the UK, do not bode well for her long-term prospects.

To this point, the film was more or less holding its own. However, the ease with which Malin escaped her captor’s cell, using nothing more than a rusty nail, is likely the point at which the movie jumped the shark. Part of the problem is, it sets a standard of competence, which her subsequent actions – mostly filed under “running round the forest like a headless chicken” – are unable to meet. This is an area where the remake did rather better, it seems, though both films end up going in directions which certainly merited a raised eyebrow or two. Here, she ends up teaming with a passer-by and a hunter in the forest. Nobody’s behaviour makes a great deal of sense.

After so much roaming in the woods, this begins to feel more like an orienteering video, we eventually get to the expected, and long-awaited, confrontation between Malin and the evil patriarchy. She has, by this point, managed to get a message to the outside world, where her absence has been noticed, and the authorities do now have at least an idea of the area in which she’s located. It’s just a question of surviving until they find her. This does a ticking clock to proceedings, which I don’t recall quite being as present in the remake. When it happens, the ending comes with a bang rather than a whimper. Though in this case, that’s not a good thing, as the credits role almost immediately, leaving me once more, largely unimpressed.

Dir: Mattias Olsson, Henrik JP Åkesson
Star: Sofia Ledarp, Kjell Bergqvist, Björn Kjellman, Dietrich Hollinderbäumer
a.k.a. Försvunnen

Pink

  By

★½
“Too many episodes, spoil the broth.”

This has something of an interesting history. It was originally 35 episodes of a short-form web series, shown on Hulu, beginning back in 2007, at the time when they were just starting out. That may seem like a lot of content, but each episode was only three to five minutes long. So what you have here is a compilation of all those episodes into a single movie, running about two hours. And… unfortunately, the result is a complete mess, bouncing around in time without rhyme, reason or purpose. It spends too much time on things which don’t matter much, like silly college shenanigans, while galloping past – if addressing at all – matters which feel more important to the plot.

From what I could figure out (and I can by no means swear to any of this), the basic plot involves Natalie Cross (Raitano). She was brought up by her single father (Tompkins), who was a special forces operative. Or maybe black ops. It’s all very murky. As a result, she basically got Hanna‘d, learning all the skills necessary to follow in her father’s footsteps. Initially, she tries to be her own person, but while at college was recruited to work for a BLOC: a black ops corporation, private military who handle jobs governments want done with clean hands. After quitting, Nate found herself in prison, but is now back on the outside, having been promised freedom if she completes ten assignments.

That would be fine. Except, for whatever reason, the show spends far too much time and effort with college-aged Nate (Matula), which is very much the least interesting thing the show has to offer. Except possibly her “Gother than thou” room-mate, Rhonda, who naturally is the person to show the sheltered Nate the ways of the world. Well, the ones that don’t involve hunting and skinning deer, anyway. But who cares? If I wanted to watch that kind of thing, I would… Well, I guess I would watch that kind of thing. You get the idea. The series only achieves energy after Nate goes to work full-time for her BLOC, and is given a little apprentice, Bunny (a nice nod back to Nate’s childhood pet).

I get that the show was made in bite-sized episodes, and it might have worked better in that format. Or, alternatively, if they had shuffled them around for this feature version, into something closer to chronological order. Instead, the results here resemble somebody having fed the footage through a shredder, and then arbitrarily assembled it back together. It means on occasion, you’ll have adjacent scenes taking place decades apart, and on different continents. There was a time, fifteen or more years ago, when this kind of thing was seen as the future of entertainment on the Internet. The failure of things like Quibi proved otherwise. Based on the evidence here, it’s a mercy that never came to pass.

Dir: Blake Calhoun
Star: Natalie Raitano, Sheree J. Wilson, Kim Matula, Matthew Tompkins

The Partisan

  By

★★★
“Part-ially effective.”

We have written about some of the women who worked behind enemy lines for British intelligence during World War II. Names like Noor Inayat Khan, Virginia Hall and Vera Atkins deserve to be better known that they are. The attempts to tell their stories so far have been laudable attempts, but have left me feeling underwhelmed, with a sense they haven’t done their subjects full justice. This is another which I feel should be filed in the same box. The subject here is Christine Granville (Polanski), born Krystyna Skarbek, a Polish national who originally worked in her native country, organizing a network of spies and couriers, running information to then neutral Budapest. This included early reports foreshadowing Germany’s attack on Russia.

As with so much in the film here, however, the details are left frustratingly vague. The above paragraph tells you more of her time in Poland than the movie, which mentions a microfilm, but seems more concerned with Granville’s efforts to extract her mother out of Warsaw. It does, however, include an incident where she was being questioned by the Nazis, bit her tongue, allowing her to feign coughing up blood and convince the doctor she had TB, leading to her release. Most of the movie, however, is set during her time in southern France, later in the war. There, she worked with the maquis, the local resistance, in preparation for the looming Allied invasion. 

The best thing this has going for it is Polanski – yes, she is the daughter of director Roman Polanski, though has more of the luminous looks of her mother, actress Emmanuelle Seigner. Granville had a reputation as a hothead: Atkins called her “very brave, very attractive, but a loner and a law unto herself,” and Polanski’s performance puts all those aspects across very well. There are occasionally scenes which do capture the relentless tension of operating in a scenario like this too, where a single slip could mean death. For example, she tells a Gestapo officer she’s a teacher seeking employment – only for him to show up at the local school, forcing her to improvise during a conversation with the headmistress. More of this would have been welcome.

Instead, for whatever reason, the makers have opted to make their film at least somewhat non-linear, to no readily apparent purpose. There are points where it becomes impossible to tell when or where you are. A straightforward adaptation of her life would have been perfectly fine, including the several occasions on which she was treated badly by her employers. According to Xan Fielding, an operative she had saved from execution, “a few weeks after the armistice she was dismissed with a month’s salary and left in Cairo to fend for herself.” Even more tragically, she was murdered in 1952 by a lover she had rejected. Again, little of this is mentioned here, beyond being whizzed past in a final caption. Once more, this is a heroine who deserves a great biopic, rather than one merely good enough. 

Dir: James Marquand
Star: Morgane Polanski, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Frederick Schmidt, Piotr Adamczyk

They Will Kill You

  By

★★★
“Ready or Not 3.”

There’s no denying that this is considerably weakened by coming in the wake of Ready or Not 2. There’s just too much similarity for it to be otherwise. A woman having to fight her way through a bunch of Satanists, in order to save her kid sister? Yeah, there’s a strong sense of deja vu, in its most literal meaning. Yet it would be unfair to write this off as some kind of mockbuster. While the “elevator pitch” may be similar, the details and the approach taken are different. This skews considerably more towards the horror elements. Many reviews cite Sam Raimi and Quentin Tarantino as influences, and that’s not wrong. To the point I might have used fewer homages, to be honest. 

The heroine is Asia Reaves (Beetz), who is jailed after trying to protect her sister, Maria (Myha’la) from their abusive father. Ten years later, she gets out of prison, and seeks to be reunited with Maria. The trail leads to The Virgil,  a massive apartment building. Asia gets a job there as a maid, using an assumed identity, under the oversight of building supervisor Lilith Woodhouse (Arquette). It turns out, the building is home to a cult of Satan worshippers, who trade human sacrifices for immortality. But after a decade in the penal system, Asia has the skills to defend herself, and won’t let anyone – or anything – get in the way of her mission to rescue her sister.

Save Kill Bill, I’m not a huge fan of Tarantino. It appears Sokolov is, going by the number of jarring needle-drops and, to be honest, shots of women’s feet. There are points where the style seems to be more important than the substance. However, there are some excellent sequences as well. The use by Asia of a fiery axe is top-tier carnage, and the near-unlimited ability of her opponents to take damage leads to some spectacular gore. They may be immortal: they still spray blood like enthusiastic geysers. When one has her head reduced to the consistency of porridge, one eyeball continues to operate on its own, independent basis.

I do think the immortality thing is a double-edged sword. It robs the fights of much impact, because decapitation is barely an inconvenience. Naturally, there is a solution, and I figured it out, more or less, as soon as it was mentioned. Beetz makes a fierce and unstoppable heroine, no mistake about it. You will also see things you have not witnessed before, especially during a thoroughly unhinged ending. It consequently makes Ready or Not 2 seem positively down to earth and realistic, so the stabs – word chosen advisedly – at social commentary consequently feel misplaced, even more than usual. I note Sokolov’s previous (non-GWG) film was called Why Don’t You Just Die! I’ve a feeling there may be a theme running through his work. Suspect I will still end up checking it out, hoping for the pure and undiluted carnage I didn’t quite get here.

Dir: Kirill Sokolov
Star: Zazie Beetz, Patricia Arquette, Myha’la, Tom Felton

Ready or Not 2 vs. They Will Kill You: Who’s the baddest?

  By

It has been a long while since we have had two such similar action heroine films come out in theatres, so close to each other. The last time I can remember was back in 2006, when vampire GWG movies Underworld: Evolution and Ultraviolet came out just a few weeks apart. But the gap here was less still. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come was released on March 20th, and just one week later, They Will Kill You arrived. Both films also had a number of remarkably common elements. Hollywood has done this before, of course – even discounting the obvious “mockbusters” put out by the likes of The Asylum. “Twin films” have been around for over a century: two versions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde came out in 1920. Since then? Armageddon vs. Deep Impact. Dante’s Peak vs. Volcano. Olympus has Fallen vs. White House Down.

It’s hard to ascertain who came first here. Obviously, the original Ready or Not was the groundbreaker, back in 2019. The sequel was first announced in October 2024, several months after word of They Will Kill You came out in June. But the sequel, involving the heroine’s sister, was not intended as one. Per Wikipedia, “Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett were developing an original movie with a sister story for Kathryn Newton and Samara Weaving to star in. When Searchlight Pictures asked Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett to direct the sequel to Ready or Not, they offered to adapt their original sister story into the Ready or Not universe.” So their idea likely pre-dates the formal announcement in October. I do note that Ready or Not 2 brought its release date forward, apparently to beat its rival to screens.

Unfortunately, and in contrast to the examples above, the market didn’t find room for both, or even pick one to favour. Both films failed to find the hoped-for audience. They Will Kill You failed to cover its budget, taking in $19 million worldwide, while costing $20 million. Ready or Not 2 – perhaps using its advantage of previous name recognition – did better, with a $42 million gross, around three times its production budget. So, after other costs like promotion, it likely made a small profit. However, this was still more than $15 million below the take of the first movie, despite costing over twice as much. Prospects for any further entries in the Ready or Not Cinematic Universe are distinctly uncertain, at best. 

But let’s take a look at each film in turn, and see how they stand up – both on their own, and against each other. 

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

★★★★
“Let the games begi… uh, continue!”

Despite a slightly clunky title, I enjoyed this a little more than the original. It helps that there’s no need for build-up or explanations. We join things immediately after the end of part one, with Grace MacCaullay (Weaving) staggering outside the mansion where she battled and beat the Le Domas family. Understandably, she ends up in hospital and handcuffs, where her sister Faith (Newton) shows up. But it turns out the Le Domas family were just one part – albeit the head – of a larger, Satanic organization, the Council. The remaining families now need to determine a successor. Whoever kills Grace gets to take over, so the siblings are quickly abducted and taken to the Council’s country club complex.

Grace refuses to take part, but using Faith as leverage, they compel her participation. The siblings must battle for survival and, again, try to survive to dawn against a litany of more or less competent adversaries. This was one my main criticisms about part one: the Le Domas members were so inept as to be no threat. While, in some ways, this is true again here, the film does at least lean into the humourous possibilities. The peak is likely reached when Grace has to face off against Francesca, her late husband’s ex. There’s some rocket launcher incompetence, followed by some pepper sprayage, which leaves the two adversaries thrashing about like blind squid, while an 80’s classic tune plays. It’s awesome. 

There is a bit of a lull thereafter, because Faith is again used against her sister. This compels Grace, once more, to don bridal attire, as a means of avoiding further bloodshed. Well, “postponing” might be closer to the truth. The ceremony goes off about as well as a typical wedding held by a professional wrestling federation – though with considerably more blood than even the most hardcore fed. It’s all a lot of fun, with the Council families providing a slew of fun characters, in addition to its lawyer (Wood). It provides an interesting contrast in family dynamics between the MacCaullays and the Danforths, represented by Ursula (Sarah-Michelle Gellar – and, yes, there are some potential Buffy references) and her psycho brother, Titus (Hatosy).

I liked the fact that it kept any actual social commentary very much secondary. What makes the Council evil is not particularly race, class or money. It is that they are freakin’ Satanists. The film’s other main strength is Weaving, who cements her position as perhaps the best of the next generation for action heroines. She runs through the whole gamut of emotions here, and it is extremely easy to root for Grace. But let’s be honest, the actress would be forgiven if she had simply worn a “not this shit again” expression for one hundred and ten minutes. While the poor box-office here means it’s unlikely we’ll see a part three, long may Weaving’s shotgun continue to smoke. 

Dir: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett
Star: Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Shawn Hatosy, Elijah Wood

They Will Kill You

★★★
“Ready or Not 3.”

There’s no denying that this is considerably weakened by coming in the wake of Ready or Not 2. There’s just too much similarity for it to be otherwise. A woman having to fight her way through a bunch of Satanists, in order to save her kid sister? Yeah, there’s a strong sense of deja vu, in its most literal meaning. Yet it would be unfair to write this off as some kind of mockbuster. While the “elevator pitch” may be similar, the details and the approach taken are different. This skews considerably more towards the horror elements. Many reviews cite Sam Raimi and Quentin Tarantino as influences, and that’s not wrong. To the point I might have used fewer homages, to be honest. 

The heroine is Asia Reaves (Beetz), who is jailed after trying to protect her sister, Maria (Myha’la) from their abusive father. Ten years later, she gets out of prison, and seeks to be reunited with Maria. The trail leads to The Virgil,  a massive apartment building. Asia gets a job there as a maid, using an assumed identity, under the oversight of building supervisor Lilith Woodhouse (Arquette). It turns out, the building is home to a cult of Satan worshippers, who trade human sacrifices for immortality. But after a decade in the penal system, Asia has the skills to defend herself, and won’t let anyone – or anything – get in the way of her mission to rescue her sister.

Save Kill Bill, I’m not a huge fan of Tarantino. It appears Sokolov is, going by the number of jarring needle-drops and, to be honest, shots of women’s feet. There are points where the style seems to be more important than the substance. However, there are some excellent sequences as well. The use by Asia of a fiery axe is top-tier carnage, and the near-unlimited ability of her opponents to take damage leads to some spectacular gore. They may be immortal: they still spray blood like enthusiastic geysers. When one has her head reduced to the consistency of porridge, one eyeball continues to operate on its own, independent basis.

I do think the immortality thing is a double-edged sword. It robs the fights of much impact, because decapitation is barely an inconvenience. Naturally, there is a solution, and I figured it out, more or less, as soon as it was mentioned. Beetz makes a fierce and unstoppable heroine, no mistake about it. You will also see things you have not witnessed before, especially during a thoroughly unhinged ending. It consequently makes Ready or Not 2 seem positively down to earth and realistic, so the stabs – word chosen advisedly – at social commentary consequently feel misplaced, even more than usual. I note Sokolov’s previous (non-GWG) film was called Why Don’t You Just Die! I’ve a feeling there may be a theme running through his work. Suspect I will still end up checking it out, hoping for the pure and undiluted carnage I didn’t quite get here.

Dir: Kirill Sokolov
Star: Zazie Beetz, Patricia Arquette, Myha’la, Tom Felton

As the above suggests, my personal preference was for Ready or Not 2 over They Will Kill You. Checking the scores online, here’s where the two movies stand in various metrics at the time of writing.

  • IMDb rating (/10): RoN2: 6.5 – TWKY 6.3
  • Letterboxd score (/5): RoN2: 3.3 – TWKY 3.0
  • Rotten Tomatoes critics/audience (%): RoN2: 74/89  – TWKY 64/77
  • MetaCritic (%): RoN2: 58 – TWKY 50

Which seems to confirm I’m in line with general opinion, all four sites showing a preference, to varying degrees, for Ready or Not 2. But let’s perhaps break it down a little further, and see which movie comes out ahead.

Lead actress. Samara Weaving vs. Zazie Beets. Yeah, regular readers will know my previously expressed affection for Weaving, so this category might be seen as confirmation bias. However, I think this illustrates exactly why she is among my favorite of the current generation of action actresses. In contrast, Beetz doesn’t yet have as much experience in the genre, and previously had been mostly limited to supporting roles i.e. Deadpool 2 and Bullet Train. She’s not bad here, but if you come for the queen, you’d better not miss. Advantage: Ready or Not 2.

Supporting cast. Both films are strong here. Of course, RoN2 brings us Buffy herself, but you also get Elijah Wood and, a very pleasant surprise, a small role for horror icon David Cronenberg. However, I wasn’t so impressed with Kathryn Newton, who made little impact. TWKY does well here too, with a particularly strong performance from Patricia Arquette, and good support from Heather Thomas. Advantage: Ready or Not 2, although it is very close.

Insanity. This is really why we are here. Both films promise an excess of over-the-top carnage. In RoN2, you get a lot of people exploding, when they break the rules by which the Council operate. That is about it, and while the finale certainly delivers in bulk, it is somewhat lacking in variety. On the other hand, there’s a point at TWKY suddenly decides to push the pedal to the metal, and it rarely lets up thereafter. The flaming axe battle may be my second favorite fire-related fight sequence of 2026. Advantage: They Will Kill You.

Messaging. You pay your money and you take your choice. Do you want the villains to be rich people, who happen to be Satanists? Then RoN2 is for you. Prefer the bad guys to be rich people who happen to be Satanists? Choose TWKY. It’s a small and subtle, but significant, difference in approach. TWKY is a bit more up front with its morality, though you’d have to be severely “anti-woke” to feel it got in the way of the bloody entertainment value. Advantage: a tie, largely because I don’t give a damn about the message in either.

I am sad that neither apparently found the hoped-for audience. Right now, we’re looking at another year where no action heroine film has reached $25 million at the North American box-office. While I’m sure Supergirl will cruise past that, can it provide a flashback to the days when comic-book films were a license to print money? We’ll find out later this month. With Fall 2 the only other GWG film I see scheduled for a wide release between now and the end of the year, there’s a lot riding for our genre on the shoulders of the Girl of Steel. 

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

  By

★★★★
“Let the games begi… uh, continue!”

Despite a slightly clunky title, I enjoyed this a little more than the original. It helps that there’s no need for build-up or explanations. We join things immediately after the end of part one, with Grace MacCaullay (Weaving) staggering outside the mansion where she battled and beat the Le Domas family. Understandably, she ends up in hospital and handcuffs, where her sister Faith (Newton) shows up. But it turns out the Le Domas family were just one part – albeit the head – of a larger, Satanic organization, the Council. The remaining families now need to determine a successor. Whoever kills Grace gets to take over, so the siblings are quickly abducted and taken to the Council’s country club complex.

Grace refuses to take part, but using Faith as leverage, they compel her participation. The siblings must battle for survival and, again, try to survive to dawn against a litany of more or less competent adversaries. This was one my main criticisms about part one: the Le Domas members were so inept as to be no threat. While, in some ways, this is true again here, the film does at least lean into the humourous possibilities. The peak is likely reached when Grace has to face off against Francesca, her late husband’s ex. There’s some rocket launcher incompetence, followed by some pepper sprayage, which leaves the two adversaries thrashing about like blind squid, while an 80’s classic tune plays. It’s awesome. 

There is a bit of a lull thereafter, because Faith is again used against her sister. This compels Grace, once more, to don bridal attire, as a means of avoiding further bloodshed. Well, “postponing” might be closer to the truth. The ceremony goes off about as well as a typical wedding held by a professional wrestling federation – though with considerably more blood than even the most hardcore fed. It’s all a lot of fun, with the Council families providing a slew of fun characters, in addition to its lawyer (Wood). It provides an interesting contrast in family dynamics between the MacCaullays and the Danforths, represented by Ursula (Sarah-Michelle Gellar – and, yes, there are some potential Buffy references) and her psycho brother, Titus (Hatosy).

I liked the fact that it kept any actual social commentary very much secondary. What makes the Council evil is not particularly race, class or money. It is that they are freakin’ Satanists. The film’s other main strength is Weaving, who cements her position as perhaps the best of the next generation for action heroines. She runs through the whole gamut of emotions here, and it is extremely easy to root for Grace. But let’s be honest, the actress would be forgiven if she had simply worn a “not this shit again” expression for one hundred and ten minutes. While the poor box-office here means it’s unlikely we’ll see a part three, long may Weaving’s shotgun continue to smoke. 

Dir: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett
Star: Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Shawn Hatosy, Elijah Wood

The Blind Swordswoman

  By

★½
“Gouge my eyes out, please.”

The rating above might actually be a little charitable, and would be for the film as originally released. The only version in which this is now apparently available, is both badly dubbed and pan-and-scanned to a 4:3 ratio. It certainly doesn’t help the film, when there are points at which all you can see of the participants in a conversation is an elbow, sticking in from one side of the screen. It’s close to unwatchable in this format, although I suspect it would barely pass muster, even in its original language and format. It feels like the Taiwanese makers saw Crimson Bat, The Blind Swordswoman, released the previous year and thought, “That looks easy.” 

In reality? Not so much. It’s the story of the titular, visually challenged practitioner of the fencing arts (Lee), who is called “Elaine” in the dub. The basic plot sees her out for revenge against the evil Mr. Lee, who appears to be responsible for everything bad in the world, from the murder of her father, to her ocular situation. She isn’t the only one, as there’s another woman, similarly deficient in the eye-chart comprehension department, whose family has also suffered at the hands of Lee. She’s called “Sue-Ann” in the dub, and ends up getting sold off to a whorehouse. I suspect Mr. Lee was probably responsible for this too, if you dig deep enough. There’s another swordsman (Kong), who wanders in and out. In a shocking twist, he can see. 

To be blunt, this is the sort of movie which explains why Taiwanese kung-fu films have such a bad reputation. The original Ocean Shores video was titled Zatoichi, the Blind Swordsman: a shameless conceit this version abandoned. As well as being a blatant knock-off (not that Crimson Bat was exactly original, itself being a Zatoichi knock-off of course), it doesn’t feel as if anyone involved in this can do anything more than wave their weapons in the vague direction of each other. This is not helped by the director’s inability to shoot an action sequence: I’m half-convinced he was blind too. The plot is incomprehensibly murky, and there are too many characters, whose purpose often remains frustratingly vague.

Meanwhile, any sense of nuance in the performances is bludgeoned to death by the English language soundtrack. It feels like the voice actors just got fired for incompetence from dubbing porn movies. Or perhaps were homeless people, pulled off the street into the studio at the last minute. Make no mistake though: this does not manage to make it into the “so bad it’s good” category of chop-socky flicks. It’s simply “so bad”. It might be worth trying to track down should you be after a test of cinematic endurance. If you can go longer than any ten minute period in this, without idly scrolling on your phone, you will be doing better than I managed.

Dir: Lung Chien
Star: Lee Shu, Shen Yi, Kong Ban, Yee Yuen
a.k.a. Golden Sword and the Blind Swordswoman

Lola Colt

  By

★★★
“From stage to stage.”

This spaghetti Western sees Lola (Falana) arrive in the town of Santa Ana with her troupe of dancing girls, after one of them falls ill. They need to stay there while she recuperates, under the care of the local not-quite-a-doctor-yet, Rod Strater (Martell). The town has bigger problems, being ruthlessly squeezed for every penny by El Diablo (Cobos). Lola lost her family to a not dissimilar band of outlaws, and is peeved that the menfolk are utterly cowed by El Diablo, even after Rod explains that the villains has taken hostages and is using them to compel the town’s good behaviour. But after a particularly tragic death, Lola has had enough, and rouses the town folk to action.

In many ways, this is a standard Western, with the lone good guy taking on the villains: hence its subtitle, “Face to face with the devil”. Except, of course, in this case, the guy is a gal. Oh, and Lola is black. I have just mentioned this fact more in the review, than the film ever does, being refreshingly colour-blind. It’s especially remarkable given the era, a good few years before Pam Grier would become a trailblazer back in Hollywood. It’s tempting to read race into Lola being greeted with, “We don’t need your kind around here,” when she steps off the coach. Subsequent events show it’s just the local morality police, who are severely unimpressed with her profession, rather than the shade of her skin. 

In another twist, the villain’s real name is actually Larry Stern, which sounds more like an advertising executive. He’s a businessman who got peeved when his plans for a railroad fell through because the locals wouldn’t sell him their land, and decided to take revenge on them. Falana, though born in New Jersey, was already a star on Italian TV, and also performs a few musical numbers here. Though I did wonder where the music, a full-on jazzy production, was coming from in the town’s saloon, where there are no musicians at all. She certainly brings it with her moves, which are much more Vegas than Old West. And she would indeed go on to become the highest-paid performer in Sin City. 

Until the final assault on El Diablo’s compound, where she demonstrates she does know her way around both ends of a firearm, Lola is more a figurehead to the town’s resistance, encouraging them to break free of their fears.  The physical side of things is mostly left to Rod, who gets a couple of lengthy fist-fights, including one with El Diablo, when he’s not dealing with jealous girlfriend Rose (Schürer). It is this middle section where the film struggles a little, being particularly generic in its elements. But Falana is always compelling to watch, and it’s a shame she wasn’t given many further opportunities in our genre: 1975’s Lady Cocoa was perhaps the closest she came, although it doesn’t quite qualify for inclusion here. 

Dir: Siro Marcellini
Star: Lola Falana, Peter Martell, Germán Cobos, Erna Schürer
a.k.a. Black Tigress