Author: Jim McLennan

Backyard

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★★★
“The film that could only have been made in Mexico, where female life is cheap…”

The US border is all that separates El Paso, Texas, from Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, but the two cities’ ways of life are worlds apart. On the Mexican side, the bodies of women turn up, almost every week: sexually assaulted, with signs of torture and/or body parts missing. The police barely bother to investigate; the victims tend to be far from home, low-paid workers in the factories which drive Juarez’s employment. Into this comes police captain Blanca Bravo (de la Reguera), who vows to track down the perpetrators. But doing so pits her against the multinationals who could do without the bad publicity; against her commander, who says to her face that “women make good nurses, but lousy police officers”; and state politicians, who are uneasy about exactly what she might uncover.

This is based on a very unpleasant reality, also covered in the Jennifer Lopez movie, Bordertown, but one senses that was sanitized for American palates. This doesn’t soft-pedal anything: the brutality, corruption, sexism and poverty depicted makes for pretty challenging viewing. You may recognize de la Reguera from her role as the nun in Nacho Libre, but this is right at the other end of its portrayal of Mexico: barely controlled anarchy where, if you pick the right person, it’s possible to get away with murder. This is personified by the story, running parallel to Blanco, of a young women, who arrived in Juarez to seek work, and her eventual fate. While harrowing, this angle doesn’t shed much extra light on proceedings, and probably dilutes the film’s focus.

The central performance, however, is solid, with Blanco portrayed as someone willing to put everything she has – her career, or even her life – on the line, to protect those who have little or no protection in the eyes of the law. If the film has little to offer in the way of surprises (especially if you’re a fan of Dexter, you’ll be able to spot the psychopath a long way off!), and nor does it offer much in the way of resolution, it’s a decent, if grim, look at a world just a couple of hours drive from where I’m writing this in Arizona. And it’s a world I’d rather keep at arm’s length if possible.

Dir: Carlos Carrera
Star: Ana de la Reguera, Asur Zagada, Marco Pèrez, Alejandro Calva

No Contest II: Access Denied

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★★½
“Second time’s the not-so charming.”

In many ways, this is a shameless rip-off of a shameless rip-off, trying to recapture the success of the original. It’s not quite as successful, lacking the gleeful sense of energy which help its predecessor overcome its (obvious) limitations. Once more, Tweed plays action actress Sharon Bell, this time filming her latest work in Eastern Europe. She arranges for the film to do some location work in a gallery owned by sister, Bobbi (Heitmeyer), which is just about to open an exhibition, showcasing artefacts that were looted by the Nazis in World War II. The gallery is taken over by Eric Dane (Henriksen) and his crew, who seal the place off from the outside world, intent in stealing a lethal German nerve agent hidden in the base of one of the sculptures. Unfortunately, inside at the time are both sisters, along with the movie director Jack Terry (Payne), who is scouting the place out.

To be honest, the plot makes little sense. Why does Dane – who has apparently had access to the statue for quite some time – wait until it is installed in the gallery, behind a hefty security system, before going after the nerve-gas? And when he does, his subsequent actions and plan seem to be designed more to artificially generate tension for the movie plot, than any practical purpose: for example, his decision to leave one of the canisters, attached to an unstoppable time, in an air-duct, while he is still present in the sealed building. Meanwhile, the heroes prove adept at fashioning tear-gas and lethal blow-darts from everyday materials (or, at least, everyday materials for an art gallery).

If you don’t look too hard, this is still passably entertaining, with the art gallery providing an interesting location for some battles (the cat-fight between Sharon and Dane’s henchwoman comes to mind, ending on a piece of unfortunately-pointy artwork). Henriksen us good value as ever in the psycho role, e.g. shooting people because they can’t deliver Shakespeare to his liking and, while Payne is better known as a villain, he does decent work here in a more sympathetic role. However, the film doesn’t use them as effectively as before, and the film needs to be less obviously stage-managed towards its conclusion, which is obvious well before it happens. The flaws are likely not much worse here – just a little more obvious.

Dir: Paul Lynch
Star: Shannon Tweed, Lance Henriksen, Bruce Payne, Jayne Heitmeyer
a.k.a. Face the Evil

No Contest

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★★★
“No originality, no budget… But no disaster, either.”

An almost-entirely shameless Die Hard rip-off, this stars Tweed as Shannon Bell, the host of a beauty-pageant, which is interrupted by Oz (Clay) and his gang, who take a half-dozen of the beauty-queens and Bell hostage, up in the penthouse, and demand $10 million in diamonds for their release. Bell manages to slip away and, fortunately, her character is an actress, famous for playing action heroines [yeah, it’s all a bit ‘meta’ – except, it came out in 1992, largely before ‘meta’ became popular…]. So she gets to go all John McClane on their asses, crawling round air-ducts and assisting ex-federal agent Crane (Davi), who was bodyguarding one of the participants, who is a politician’s daughter, but popped outside the building for a fortunately-timed smoke.

The script is hackneyed, certainly, but it’s a stellar B-movie cast, that works well, and largely keeps things entertaining. This is where the thought has gone in. While Oz is undeniably brutal, he is as far from Hans Gruber as can be imagined, a foulmouth sleazeball rather than a suave sophisticat, and Bell, similarly, is the opposite of McClane, despite her action pedigree (one character describes the roles she plays as, “Bruce Lee with boobs”). Endearingly, she bursts into tears after she has to kill someone. Davi, of course, was in the original, playing Special Agent Johnson [“No – the other one…”], and we’ll watch anything with Piper in it, after They Live. It’s clear Tweed is not exactly in the realm of Lee, but does credibly enough to paper over the cracks, action-wise, and perhaps surprisingly, keeps her clothes entirely on.

Things do fall apart at the finale, which is convoluted and strained, to say the least: the film is much better when sticking to its basic premise – or, more accurately, someone else’s basic premise. But, having sat through much the same film with Anna Nicole Smith in the lead, this is an enormous improvement. Certainly, it’s cheap and cheerful, the kind of thing you can imagine seeing in an early 90’s videostore, with an appropriately lurid cover. But it is entertaining, and given the sights of the makers were clearly aimed no higher than that, has to be judged a success.

Dir: Paul Lynch
Star: Shannon Tweed, Andrew ‘Dice’ Clay, Roberto Davi, Roddy Piper

Girls Guns Girls Guns

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Frank, the creator, sent me this one. It’s not a trailer for an actual movie – more’s the pity – and only runs about 35 seconds, but I think you’ll find, even given its brief duration, it pushes all the appropriate buttons!

Monica la mitraille

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★★½
“Bonnie et les Clydes.”

I think this really comes down to a question of managing expectations. Hearing this was a film based on the life of Monica Proetti, Canada’s premiere female bank-robber, responsible for 20+ hold-ups before being gunned down by the cops… Well, seems like plenty of potential for action, doesn’t it? The reality is less concerned with the robberies, than the events which lead up to them. Monique Sparvieri (Bonnier) lives in the Montreal slums, working part-time as a hooker, for fun and profit. Her first husband Michael (Schorpion), is a safe-cracker who vanishes after his planned robbery is snatched from under his nose. She then hooks up with Gaston (Huard), another member of the team, and begins her own life of crime. When he is sent to jail in the mid-1960’s, she is left with limited options to provide for her children, and goes full-bore into the banking business, with yet another lover, Gerald (Dupuis).

It certainly shines light into the “whys” of her life, one that offered little or no hope of escaping the poverty of her upbringing. Crime, of one form or another, was the main way out, and that led to an extremely relaxed attitude towards law-breaking for Monica. The film does take too long to make this point: it’s 125 minutes in total, and could easily lose half an hour off that, though the performances, Bonnier’s in particular, are solid enough not to make it too much of a chore. But the raids themselves are perfunctory. They’re more snatch-and-grabs, with the gang aiming to spend little more than 30 second in the bank. The only one where there’s any real tension is the final robbery, where the gang gets lost in an unfamiliar neighbourhood, while Monica’s previously-jailed confederates huddle round a radio tuned to the police-band, from prison.

What we have here illustrates the tension between real-life and cinematic drama. The two rarely align perfectly, and I get the feeling this example was more concerned about factual accuracy and, inevitably, the entertainment value suffers as a result.

Dir: Pierre Houle
Star: Céline Bonnier, Roy Dupuis, Patrick Huard, Frank Schorpion

Requiem pour une Tueuse

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★★★
“Emotionally chilly, and not as clever as it thinks, but well-acted and shot.”

The French have a decent pedigree of action heroines, going back to Joan of Arc. Cinematically, the likes of Bloody Mallory, Adele Blanc-Sec, and one of the most influential of them all, Nikita, have kept the tricouleur flying. This is closest to the last-named, with Lucrece (Laurent) fed up of the assassin game, but talked into that old standby of the genre, one final mission, by her agent (Karyo, who of course was also in Nikita). This involves posing as a classical singer and taking part in a performance of Handel’s Messiah. For the target is the bass singer (Stills), whose Scottish distillery occupies land an oil company wants for their pipeline. Lucrece is pretty disenchanted with the whole thing, and this may explain why her early attempts mis-fire. Fortunately, the special agent (Cornillac) sent to track her down, is equally as unenthusiastic. But is Lucrece the only killer in play?

The picture is pretty misleading, since Lucrece never touches a gun the entire movie – she’s a poisons specialist. It’s pretty chilly, emotionally, but both Laurent and Cornillac do bring some humanity to their roles, and are both very watchable [there’s one scene between them that is particularly good]. It seems to be aiming for a Hitchcockian twistiness rather than an action-packed thrill-ride; it doesn’t quite pull this off, and you’re left to appreciate the Swiss scenery and the classical music more than the plot. It’s too heavy on the cliches of the genre, and feels more like a lazy effort to tidy up loose ends on a long-running TV series, than a solid standalone work – Lucrece’s relationship with her daughter seems particularly thrown in. A character like Lucrece would certainly have plenty of interesting stories to tell; this doesn’t seem to be one of the more memorable.

Dir: Jèrôme Le Gris
Star: Mèlanie Laurent, Clovis Cornillac, Tchéky Karyo, Christopher Stills

The Vanquisher

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★★
“Coherence? It’s vastly over-rated. Especially in Thailand, it appears.”

Thailand appears to have become a hot-bed of action-heroines in the past couple of years. Jeeja Chocolate Yanin is obviously a key component, but others appear to be leaping on the bandwagon: this one plays like an entry in the Angel series, a Hong Kong classic in its day. Unfortunately, so little effort is put into explaining what is going on, or who is doing what to whom, that the copious action feels like a showreel for participants. Both Chris and I nodded off for a bit in the middle, which is about the worst condemnation any action film can receive. Hence, I turn to Amazon.com for a synopsis.

“After completing a covert mission in southern Thailand, CIA agent Gunja (Sriban) finds herself forced to fight off operatives who’ve been ordered to take her out at all costs. She survives and after two years of laying low, re-emerges in Bangkok to face her old foes and foil a plot to detonate a bomb in the city.” Oh, so that’s what it was. Actually, I seem to recall a good chunk being about trying to capture a renowned terrorist, but that must be the “plot to detonate a bomb” bit. It’s filmed in a clunky mix of Japanese, English and Thai: I can’t speak for the first and last, but the English spoken appeared, far too often, to be of the second-language type. And the non-Caucasians in the cast were even worse. Hohoho.

The action is plentiful enough in the second half, especially compared to a first half that throws characters and plot-lines across the screen, largely without explanation as to purpose. It does improve somewhat in motion, with three kick-ass characters; or at least, who might be kick-ass, if the editing and cinematography ever gave a chance to see them doing so. Instead, it’s about 10% “Oh, that was cool,” and 90% “What happened there?” – in other words, about the same ratio as the plot. A nice idea, than in the right hands could have been an awful lot better.

Dir: Manop Udomdej
Star: Sophita Sriban, Jacqui A. Thananon, Saito Kano, Kessarin Ektawatkul
a.k.a. Final Target

Chai Lai Angels

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★★★
“If you only watch one Thai Charlie’s Angels knock-off this year…”

66% extra free! That’s the major difference here, as five, rather than three, little girls, who get their orders from an unseen “boss” and his faux Bosley, take on a variety of disguises and kick butt, in between romantic dalliances. Of course, with a budget approximately one-eightieth of the Hollywood version, certain economies have to be expected. But there are unexpected bonuses in the lunatic invention department, such as the when the villainous henchmen drops a cage, out of nowhere, onto four of our Angels, only for the fifth to come to their rescue, for no apparent reason either, in a tank. At moments like this, you can only laugh with the film.

The plot is a nonsensical as ever. They are assigned to protect little girl Miki, who knows the location of a pearl worth billions of bahts, which also maintains the balance of the oceans [See! It’s a film with an important message!]. When they fail to do so, they then have to rescue her from the evil Dragon, who intends to sell off the pearl to the highest bidder. He has an army of bumbling minions, the main one of whom is a thoroughly unconvincing transvestite, assisted by a cross-eyed underling whose aim poses more of a threat to anyone but the target. Yeah, the humour goes for all the difficult targets. It’s probably funnier to a Thai audience: one senses from the comic timing there are pauses for laughs where no Western audience will find any.

The action is plentiful, if occasionally wobbly. Ektawatkul, as Pouy-sian (Crown of Thorns), comes across best, as you’d expect from an actual Tae Kwon Do champion, but also doing her own stunts in a car-chase sequence. I did appreciate the editing, which manages to keep things coherent even when there are four or five separate fights going on – The Expendables could learn a lot there. Miki might have the best wire-assisted kung-fu moves; she’s a bit like Hit Girl without the swearing. There’s also a fight scene where the Angels are wearing towels, though this is strictly PG-rated. Like the rest of the film it’s harmless but entertaining fluff, at its best when it parodies the conventions of the genre, e.g. when one of the Angels only fires her gun in ridiculous poses, such as through her legs. While not quite enough to become Undercover Brother, it passes the time painlessly enough.

Dir: Poj Arnon
Star: Jintara Poonlarp, Bongkoj Khongmalai, Supakson Chaimongkol, Kessarin Ektawatkul

The Gene Generation

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★★★
“Well, I guess it’ll do until Neuromancer shows up.”

In a dark, grim future, Michelle (Ling) is an assassin, taking out DNA hackers for pay. However, her income is drained as fast as she earns it by her Jackie (Shen), her brother, who has a gambling addiction. To try and pay off his mob debts, he breaks into the apartment of their next-door neighbour, Christian (Newman), a renegade DNA hacker himself, and steals a device on which he was working. The “transcoder” can take a subject’s DNA and, more or less, rewrite it, thereby having the potential to end disease – yet it could also be turned into an enormously destructive weapon. Needless to say, when word gets out that Jackie has this device, everyone wants to get their hands on it.

I liked the visual style, even if it’s so Blade Runner, that Ridley Scott should be cut a fat cheque for its use. And Bai Ling may be in her forties, but is still capable of kicking ass in an impressively competent (and occasionally hyper-bloody) manner: witness the way she disposes of a bunch of evil minions, surrounding her, guns pointed, in about two seconds flat. Let’s just say, Cleric Preston would be impressed. Throw in some impressive industrial beats – VNV Nation leader Ronan Harris provided additional music – and you’ve got something that, at its best, is a very nice slab of cyberpunk.

However, the weaknesses are both severe and obvious. The plotting is clunky and muddied: it’s based on a comic-book (The DNA Hacker Chronicles), but some apparently important points are not explained, while others that appear important are never mentioned again. Jackie is also incredibly annoying; it wasn’t long before Chris and I were wishing a rapid death on this entirely unlikeable jackass. If the film-makers had been wise enough to find another, entirely separate way of bringing Michelle and the transcoder together, we’d have been a great deal happier.

The negatives and positives operate in sharp contrast to each other: the good stuff is really very good, but the bad moments are on the “root canal” level. The unevenness left us with a sense of wasted opportunity; the elements were there for something with definite cult-classic potential. However, they simply succeed in making the failings all the more obvious.

Dir: Pearry Teo
Star: Bai Ling, Parry Shen, Alec Newman, Michael Shamus Wiles

Colombiana trailer

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Zoe Saldana plays a young woman who, after witnessing her parents’ murder as a child in Bogota, grows up to be a stone-cold assassin. She works for her uncle as a hitman by day, but her personal time is spent engaging in vigilante murders that she hopes will lead her to her ultimate target: the mobster responsible for her parents’ death. This Luc Besson production is directed by Olivier Megaton, best known for The Transporter 3. It’s due to be released on August 26th.