Author: Jim McLennan

Eve of Destruction

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★★★★
“Known as Terminator Woman in Spain, I can see their point.”

While undeniably a product of its time – which would be 1991 – this has stood the test of time very well, and remains a solid piece of action SF. Eve Simmons (Soutendijk) is a researcher working for the US government on creating life-like robots for surveillance missions, and her creation, Eve VIII, not only looks like her, but has her memories and psychology too. When on a test run in San Francisco, Eve VIII is caught up in a bank robbery and a bullet sends her off the grid, and on her own mission. Jim McQuade (Hines), something like a proto-Jack Bauer, is brought in to track down the lost little robot, who has all of her creator’s complexes, but none of the social restraints, leading to a fondness for automatic weapons, which she uses with abandon as she works out her psychiatric issues [cheaper than counselling, and a good deal more fun]. Oh, and Eve VIII also has a nasty little surprise package tucked away inside. It’s up to McQuade and Simmons to stop the killing machine before things really get out of hand.

Former pop-video director Gibbins [he did Wham’s Club Tropicana] makes a smooth transition to the action genre, and keeps things moving at a fine pace. It’s Soutendijk’s first European role – or rather roles, since she plays both human and cyborg, and she does a good job of splitting and defining them. Eve VIII has the kind of unfettered approach that’s fun to watch, wielding a Mac-10 with delightful abandon, and the image of Soutendijk in her red leather jacket, blazing away, is justifiably an icon of the genre. I particularly recall seeing the cardboard standee in the video-store which advertised the film. Sure, there are a number of convenient plot-holes [it’s never quite explained how Eve VIII tracks down her father through an army associate] and occasionally the budget and effects don’t prove quite up to the ideas the script wants to express. The subplot involving Eve’s son learning about genitals should probably have been removed entirely too: in these more-sensitive days, it comes across as creepy rather than anything.

But as a straightforward B-movie, it works nicely, with Hines having a nicely sardonic wit: “A spinach lasagne, in a light tomato and basil sauce,” is the reply, when Simmons asks dubiously what is McQuade’s “specialty” as a government agent. I’m still trying to work out if the film is feminist or chauvinist: you could read it either way, with the ‘liberated’ (if robotic) woman a free spirit, though the ending firmly puts Even back in her place, to say the least. She also emasculates one man, somewhat familiar territory for Soutendijk, who previously wielded a scissors to leg-crossing effect in The Fourth Man. Gibbins, meanwhile, died in the 1993 Hollywood fires, while trying to rescue a cat. Guess there’s never an unstoppable robot around when you really need one.

Dir: Duncan Gibbins
Star: Renee Soutendijk, Gregory Hines, Michael Greene, Kurt Fuller

The Golden Compass

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★★★½
“While feeling incomplete, still a good primer for young action heroine fans.”

There aren’t that many decent action heroine films for kids: much as I love Bloody Mallory or Kill Bill, they aren’t really child-appropriate. At the other end, films like the Harry Potter or the Narnia series, while containing female characters of some importance, sideline them in favor of the boys. That makes this a refreshing breath of fresh air, in that the heroine is firmly front and center as she goes through her adventures. It’s set in an alternate universe where people’s souls take the form of animals that accompany them everywhere, known as daemons. Childrens’ daemons shapeshift, but adults’ ones are static in form. Things are run by an authoritative group called The Magisterium, but Lord Asriel (Craig) who has found “dust” in a far Northern land, that could challenge the established order – the Magisterium have been kidnapping children for use in human experiments to counter dust. Into this is dropped Asriel’s niece, Lyra Belacqua (Richards), who is given the last golden compass, a device able to answer any question in the right hands. she is about to head North with Mrs. Coulter (Kidman), only to find she has a central role in the kidnapping – as Lyra’s best friend has now vanished, she bravely heads off, initially on her own, to rescue him.

It’s a pretty cool adventure tale, with some stirring sequences and memorable characters – not least the armoured polar-bear (voiced by McKellen), who becomes Lyra’s protector. He doesn’t just sit around drinking Coke, let’s say, though the entirely bloodless nature of the battle sequences lessen the impact significantly, though is likely an inevitable result of the PG-13 certificate. It is satisfyingly full of strong female characters, on both sides: as well as Lyra and Mrs. Coulter, the witch queen Serafina Pekkala kicks almost as much ass as the polar-bear. But the film fails badly to tie up the ends, particularly Lord Asriel, who is kidnapped in the middle and then vanishes, almost without further mention, until a quick reference at the end. Admittedly, while there are decent reasons why – it was intended as the first in a trilogy – we are less concerned here with excuses than actuality. And in actuality, it peters out.

I have to say, I haven’t read the book on which this is based, but opinion generally finds the movie to be ‘dumbed-down’, not least for removing the book’s far greater criticism of religion [the Magisterium is a thinly-disguised version of the Catholic Church]. This is likely inevitable, given the film’s $180m budget, but didn’t stop a campaign to boycott the film – which worked rather better in the US than abroad. It took more than four times its US gross overseas – compare, say, the first Narnia film, where the foreign multiplier was only about 1.5. Its relative failure in America has thrown the sequels into doubt, especially in the current economic climate, and that’s a shame: the world could always use some more heroines, and what you get here is painfully and obviously unfinished. Maybe I’ll go read the books instead.

Dir: Chris Weitz
Star: Dakota Blue Richards, Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Ian McKellen

Angel-A

  By

★★★½
“Emotional Battle Angel.”

Andre (Debbouse) is at the end of his tether, owing large amounts of money to at least three separate gangs. He decides to end it all by leaping off a Parisian bridge into the Seine below, but is beaten to it by the tall, leggy blonde, Angela (Rasmussen, who you may remember in a bathroom stall with Rebecca Romijn-Stamos in the opening of Femme Fatale). His suicide forgotten, he jumps in to save her, and as they sit, dripping on the river-bank she vows that she will repay his selfless act by taking care of him. This may not be quite the way he expects; for example, she hijacks a negotiation with one of the mobsters to whom Andre owes money, marches upstairs and emerges not long afterwards, the debt apparently forgiven and with tens of thousands in bonus cash. Just as important as resolving his pecuniary problems are the emotional ones which plague Andre, and Angela is perhaps even more adept at addressing those: his lack of self-confidence, trust issues, an inability to give or receive love and so on. She sees the good person who is buried very deeply, and slowly teases it out. For her name is almost literal: she’s an angel, sent down to save Andre from himself.

After six years where he was involved in writing a dozen film and producing even more, this was Besson’s first film as director since The Messenger. Nice to see him back, and the decision to shoot the entire film in black-and-white adds to the fairytale feel, though sometimes it feels more like a Calvin Klein commercial than anything else. The contrast between the 5’10” Rasmussen, towering over the 5’5″ Debbouse like an Amazon, is also unique, and it’s the former’s attitude that makes it qualify here, in a way reminiscent of Run Lola Run. Angela is as relentless as a force of nature, and will let nothing and no-one get in the way of her mission; in this way, she also reminds me of Leeloo in The Fifth Element, or even Mathilda from Leon.

In terms of action, it’s more understated than I’d like: Angela could certainly kick the ass of everyone else in the film, but never needs to get out of second gear. However, the emotional content of the film is considerable, never more than in a single shot that seems endless, where Angela makes Andre stare into a bathroom mirror and look at himself for, probably, the first time in his life. It’s a beautiful moment of impressive heartfelt exposure, laying bare Andre’s soul and exposing the human heart beating inside the scam artist. If not quite the badass-oriented remake of Wings of Desire I was hoping for, it proves very satisfactory and a unique romantic fantasy. I hope Besson doesn’t forget to showcase his own talents as a director more often in the future.

Dir: Luc Besson
Star: Jamel Debbouze, Rie Rasmussen, Gilbert Melki, Serge Riaboukine

Leila Khaled: Hijacker

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★★★
“Terrorist? Freedom fighter? You decide…”

Khaled became internationally famous in 1969, for hijacking a TWA flight from Rome to Athens, diverting it to Damascus, where it was blown up – after everyone had been taken off [this was a kinder, gentler era of terrorism]. She then underwent plastic surgery to conceal her identity, and the following year tried to hijack another plane. However, air marshals shot her colleague and captured Khaled, who was taken into custody in London, only to be released soon afterwards as part of a prisoner exchange. She returned to the Middle East, her sky-piracy career at an end, but became an icon of the Palestinian movement, and remains active in it to this day, despite travel restrictions. The Guardian wrote of Khaled in 2001,

She flamboyantly overcame the patriarchal restrictions of Arab society where women are traditionally subservient to their husbands, by taking an equal fighting role with men, by getting divorced and remarried, having children in her late 30s, and rejecting vanity by having her face reconstructed for her cause… “I no longer think it’s necessary to prove ourselves as women by imitating men,” she says. “I have learned that a woman can be a fighter, a freedom fighter, a political activist, and that she can fall in love, and be loved, she can be married, have children, be a mother.”

A fascinating and complex character, it can’t be said that much of the complexity – both hers, and the entire Middle East situation – comes across in this documentary, less than a hour long. You get a quick romp through her early history, her family’s departure from then-Palestine just after World War II, both hijackings, and then we leap forward to the present day, where she’s a mother and works for a political group. There are some interesting moments, such as where she draws a line between what she did, and the 9/11 hijackings: “I don’t agree with the murders of civilians, no matter where in the world”, and she’s been consistent in expressing that. More probing questions would have been welcome: instead, Makboul – brought up in Sweden by her Palestinian parents – admits to having been basically a fan. She interviews others involved in the hijacks, such as a stewardess and the crew, and follows Khaled on a trip to the Chatila refugee camp in the Lebanon, but the film ends abruptly, just as she asks Khaled about the negative image of Palestinians as terrorists that she helped create.

Overall, it’s a frustrating documentary, raising as many questions as it can be bothered to answer. It only scratches the surface of an icon from whom a line can be drawn to modern-day female ‘martyrs’ such as Wafa Idris, but leaves me eager to learn more: she wrote an autobiography, entitled My People Shall Live, published in 1973, so I may have to try and track that down. She certainly stands alongside Patty Hearst and Ulrike Meinhof in the ‘Hall of Fame’ for female terrorists; having had a song written about her by The Teardrop Explodes merits some extra cool points. But if you’re interested, here’s a probably better – less disjointed, certainly – interview with Khaled, carried out in 2000 by, ironically enough, the magazine Aviation Security. Leila notes the black humour there, saying she’s “looking forward to finding out what you wanted to know from me about the security of aviation…”

Dir: Lina Makboul

Cat Ballou

  By

★★★½
“They’ll never make her cry…”

Aspiring teacher Catherine Ballou (Fonda), heads home to see her father in Wyoming, but finds him engaged in a struggle over his land with a land baron, and threatened by the villainous Tim Strawn (Marvin). She sends for legendary gun-fighter Kid Shelleen (also Marvin) to come protect them, only to find he is less legendary gun-fighter, and more alcoholic bum, incapable of saving himself. Strawn shoots Cat’s father and, when justice fails to be served, she heads off to a nearby outlaw town, where she vows to bring the land baron down and take revenge herself.

Originally a ‘serious’ novel – the same author, Roy Chanslor, also provided the source material for another proto-feminist Western, Johnny Guitar – this was turned into something light and frothy in tone. It provided a career breakthrough for Fonda, making her a star at age 28, and did much the same for Marvin, whose double role got a Best Actor Oscar, and helped lift him up after decades in TV and supporting roles. Unlike Paint Your Wagon, he wisely leaves singing to the pros e.g. Nat King Cole. This was a precursor to Fonda’s cult role as another fringe action heroine a couple of years later, as Barbarella. As there, she is less action-oriented than I’d like, though we have to bear in mind the era. She unquestionably drives the plot along, but when it comes to things like the train-robbery, she generally steps to one side, leaving things up to her male colleagues.

That said, she shows guts and bravery, as is shown in the scene immediately after the death of her father, where she goes to confront Strawn. It’s a poignant scene, where she realizes that the entire town is against her, and vows “You’ll never make me cry!” – and is in marked contrast to her first encounter with him on the ranch, where Strawn’s mere presence is enough to start her screaming. It’s a nicely-drawn arc, and the ending leaves me wishing there’d been a sequel. Still, nothing quite lives up to the delightfully pre-credit sequence, where the Columbia logo transforms into the rootin’, tootin’, six-shootin’ animated version of Cat Ballou shown below. That would be the movie I want to see.

Dir: Elliot Silverstein
Star: Jane Fonda, Lee Marvin, Michael Callan, Dwayne Hickman

Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)

Fleggard advert

  By

We normally aim to keep things PG-13 rated here, but occasionally we will slide over the line to the territory of ‘Not Safe For Work’. This would be one of those times. We’ll say no more, except that Ride of the Valkyries will never seem the same again. In case you’re curious – Fleggard are a chain of Danish supermarkets.

Taking the Heat

  By

★★½
“Because the more accurate, Taking the Luke-warm, wouldn’t exactly fly off the shelves.”

Michael Norell (Goldwyn) sees mob boss Tommy Canard (Arkin) whacking a debtor, but won’t admit it to the cops. However, when they look at the credit-card transactions, the truth comes out and Detective Hunter (Whitfield) is sent to retrieve the witness; Canard, thanks to a mole, also finds out and send his top hitman to ensure Norell never reaches the courthouse. A heatwave has simultaneously hit New York, leading to blackouts, gridlock and a breakdown in communications, so it’s down to Detective Hunter, back on her old stomping ground, to negotiate her way through the traffic jams and dodge the killers out to get Norell.

The IMDB states this 1993 film is a TV movie. Some language and one brief nude scene seem to argue against that, but with some minor trims, it could certainly play on television, and there are some aspects, such as the Patrick Williams original score, which appear straight out of TV-land. The story is hardly novel – Midnight Run is perhaps the best-known example of the ‘Protect the irritating witness’ thriller, and if you’re looking for a distaff version, In the Line of Duty IV has more martial-arts, courtesy of Cynthia Khan and Donnie Yen, than you could possible want. This isn’t up to the level of either of these, and barely scrapes by as an acceptable way to waste ninety minutes on a wet weekend.

The film does occasionally get away from the pedestrian, but the potential inherent in the scenario, as the city swelters and boils in the heat, turning into an urban jungle, is largely wasted. There are some moments which work quite nicely, such as Hunter and Norell picking their way through a booby-trapped drug den, but it’s largely predictable stuff, with the heroine and her charge initially bickering like cats and dogs, then – over the course of a mere few hours – falling for each other. For most of this, I couldn’t help thinking, Whitfield is no Pam Grier – though in her defense, few people are, and she does well enough, I suppose. If there’s nothing else on TV, it’ll do.

Dir: Tom Mankiewicz
Star: Tony Goldwyn, Lynn Whitfield, Alex Carter, Alan Arkin

Lethal Panther

  By

★★★½
“And then there’s the (Godfrey) Ho…”

Things we learned from this movie:

  • Being a prostitute is a healthier career for women than being an assassin – “unless the men have AIDS”.
  • Your neighbours will never call the police, even when a lengthy gun-battle breaks out on your property.
  • The CIA operates openly on American soil, and has apparently replaced the Secret Service in investigating counterfeit money.
  • The best way to give a woman an orgasm, is to fill a condom with milk, prick a hole in the end, and squirt it onto her panties. Who knew.

Any questions? In the loopy world of Category 3 Hong Kong films, which cover pretty much every bizarre scenario imaginable, Lethal Panther remains on the outer edge. I’m not quite sure how the makers got someone with a decent track record like Sibelle Hu to appear: I suspect she was sent a script for a completely different movie, probably entitled Lady Super Cop Goes to Manilla or something, since she only has about two scenes with the other lead actresses. I would imagine that her reaction, on seeing the finished product, must have been something similar to that experienced by Helen Mirren at the premiere of Caligula – and was presumably followed by a stern note to her agent the next morning.

The story centers on two assassins, one from Vietnam (Yuen), the other from Japan (Miyamoto), hired to come to the Phillippines and kill the head of an underworld gang that’s making a killing with counterfeit dollars. They’re employer is the boss’s nephew, who wants to take over operations: when that mission is accomplished, he then turns the two hit-women on each other, to tidy up the loose ends. They end up injured and recuperating at the home of a friendly prostitute, where they discover they are not so different. However, fate intervenes, in the shape of one’s brother, who returns from France. Meanwhile, a CIA agent (Hu) is looking into the funny money, and when her target is gunned down at a wedding, switches her attentions to the killers.

The formula here is straight-forward: an action scene about every ten minutes and some gratuitous nudity every twenty. And when I say ‘gratuitous’, I mean it; the last item listed in the first paragraph counts as the most bizarre use of dairy products Chris or I have seen in a very long time [Chris is floating Carmen Electra’s milk-bath in The Chosen One as a credible contender, but I don’t recall the specifics there]. None of the other sex scenes reach quite the same level of insanity, but they give the film a sleazy quality that it probably would have done better without.

The action is even more copious than the nudity however, and not bad, though one suspects a fair amount of doubling for the main actresses is going on. Despite Ho’s reputation as a complete hack [some of his films consist entirely of footage spliced together from other movies], he knows the right buttons for action heroine fans, and how to push most of them. On what I strongly suspect was a poverty-row budget – you don’t go to the Phillippines for the scenery – the movie delivers an impressive quantity of action, mixing firearm-toting and martial-arts battles to decent enough effect. All of the actresses get their moments to remember: a massacre in a restaurant and a supermarket shoot-out stand out in particular, as well as the roof-top fight between Hu and Yuen.

Y’know I just mentioned the poverty-row budget? Perhaps the area this stands out in most is the soundtrack, which appears to be a combination of stock music, and cues ripped wholesale off from other movies. Ho is far from the first Hong Kong director to do this [I still remember my jaw dropping when a chunk of the Heathers soundtrack showed up in Flying Dagger], but you really wonder, at what point did it seem a good idea to lob John Carpenter’s theme from Halloween into the mix for one scene? And, no, the moment in question does not involve a masked maniac stalking sexually-active teens – albeit probably only because Godfrey Ho didn’t think of the idea. Or, more likely, stored it away for an entire feature on this theme.

It would be easy to dismiss this as exploitative crap. Very easy, and you wouldn’t necessarily be wrong, either. But it kept us entertained, even if a good chunk of the amusement was to be found in the steady stream of sarcasm directed at the screen by Chris and I, as the more ludicrous aspects unfolded. Still, Ho clearly possesses absolutely no pretensions to be anything above what he is, and delivers a B-movie experience that we likely will remember for some time, especially when we head past the milk in the supermarket.

Dir: Godfrey Ho
Stars: Yoko Miyamoto, Maria Yuen (as Maria Jo), Sibelle Hu, Alex Fong
a.k.a. Deadly China Dolls

Offside (2006)

  By

★★★★
“Come and have a go, if you think you’re hard enough.”

Being an action heroine is a rebellious, possibly revolutionary, act against society: what counts, depends entirely on how your society views women. Going to a soccer game, for example, would not qualify you in the Western world – but as in Ancient Greece, sporting events in Iran are strictly male-only, and a woman who attends one and gets caught, will find herself handed over to the Vice Squad. It redefines requirements somewhat, to say the least. The film tells the story of a number of women, who dress as men to sneak into a crucial 2005 World Cup qualifier between Iran and Bahrain, only to find their disguises imperfect. They’re held in an area, just out of sight of the game, by a group of soldiers, who really have better things to do themselves.

There’s a beautiful documentary feel; Panahi fooled the authorities into letting him film at the stadium, during the game depicted, by submitting a fake synopsis to authorities (this might have partly led to them refusing permission for the movie to be shown in Iran) and let the outcome determine the end of his film, which may partly explain the somewhat lacklustre ending, feeling in need of a more definitive conclusion. Filmed with non-professional actors, we don’t even know the names of the women, but quick, expert strokes, still give them character, from the tomboy to the wallflower to the one who plays football herself; their only connection is a love of the game and their country, which has led them to break the law. Yet the film is also sympathetic to the provincial soldiers, who would rather be watching the game themselves, and despite the radically-different society, the humanity of everyone involved is Panahi’s main concern.

Particularly outstanding is Irani’s tomboy, who becomes the de facto leader of the group, and continually hassles the guards. The film has a surprising amount of straight-faced humour, such as her riposte when asked if she’s a boy or a girl: “Which do you prefer?” Or one girl’s response when told they can’t go in because the men will be cursing: “We promise not to listen.” Similarly, when another needs to use the bathroom, this poses problems, since naturally there are no women’s facilities. The solution involves the impromptu conversion of a poster into a mask, though this hardly resolves things. Obviously, it’s not a traditional genre piece, and it’s this inaction which stops it from getting a seal. It is, however a fine piece of cinema, regardless of whether you appreciate football or not.

As for why it’s here, the director describes the women as having “entered a forbidden space before the law has given them permission to do so. They don’t have that permission yet, but they’ve gone ahead and entered the territory anyway. They’ve overturned the rules.” That’s what lifts this film into inclusion on this site: it’s about women, refusing to conform to subservient roles enforced on them, and whose behaviour confounds such expectations. Earlier in 2005, seven people were killed in an accident at the same stadium, after a game against Japan: the newspapers only published six photos, and it’s rumoured the seventh was a woman who had snuck in to the game. You can certainly argue, but in their own way, those depicted here are ‘action heroines’ every bit as much as Sarah Connor or Ellen Ripley.

Dir: Jafar Panahi
Star: Shima Mobarak-Shahi, Safar Samandar, Shayesteh Irani, Ayda Sadeqi

Con Licencia Para Matar

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We’ve covered a couple of examples of Mexitrash before, in La Guerrera Vengadora 2, El Jardinero 2 and Perra Maldita: here is a vintage example. This clip comes from a 1968 film called Con Licencia Para Matar, which translates as “With a License To Kill” – I hear the Broccolis preparing a law-suit as we speak. It stars Emily Cranz, Maura Monti and Barbara Angely as three women who have ‘normal’ lives by day, but fight crime and international terrorists by night. It proved popular enough to merit a sequel, Muñecas peligrosas. Now, where can we find the whole thing…?

[Update, December 2013. I now have a source for the whole film, albeit without subtitles. We’ll see what happens in 2014!]