Author: Jim McLennan

El Jardinero

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★★½
“Better late than never”

Well, that only took… twenty-one years. Back in 2003, I watched and reviewed El Jardinero 2, with the help of Chris, because it came on a Mexican DVD with no English subtitles. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I booted up Tubi the other day, and found its predecessor streaming. No English subs – but there were Spanish ones. Nowadays, Google Translate offers a half-decent ability to convert into English, even if I ended up having to apply a lot of polish to the idiom. At least I didn’t have to bother Chris. Still, here we are, and… Well, it probably wasn’t worth all the effort, to be honest. It is another cheap slice of Mexploitation, with too much talk and not enough action, though like its successor is reasonably entertaining.

It turns out I misspoke in the sequel, when I described Pablo Moreno (L. Reynoso) as the husband of Lilia Gallardo (Herrera). It’s a bit more complex. Lilia returns from abroad to her home town in rural Mexico to discover her father has been murdered by drug dealers. Worse, her mother has taken up with the head of the clan, Adan Moreno. Lilia is unimpressed, and in the resulting fracas, shoots Moreno dead before fleeing. The family kinda blames their rivals, and Mom goes to her grave rather than implicate her daughter, despite brutal treatment at the hands of the gang’s enforcer, Mario Argumedo (Pineda). Dismissing the concern of her godfather, Lilia decides to infiltrate the family, do as much damage as possible and take her revenge.

Vengeance is a long time coming, shall we say. She has to befriend Pablo, posing as an out-of-towner (I guess she must have been abroad for a long time, since he doesn’t recognize her), and using her womanly charms to get an invite to stay on the ranch. She then uses this access to figure out where their poppy fields are located, and recruits her godfather to set them on fire one night. There’s also dissent in the ranks between Pablo and his brother Gabino (H. Reynoso – no clue if the actor is related to his on-screen brother), with the latter unhappy about the influence Lilia is having on his sibling. It doesn’t stop Pablo from inviting her to help out in the family business.

And this is how we eventually get back to where we came in for the sequel, with a gun-battle between the two sides, roughly eighty minutes after the first time we see Lilia shoot Adan. It feels more like a feature-length telenovela, with all that implies. I’d be hard-pushed to call this good, yet it did manage to keep my interest, with things like how the small country towns is basically run by the Moreno cartel, with the police chief utterly in their pocket. None of the locals seem bothered. It’s certainly a bit different, though much as with the sequel, I wish Lilia had been as much of a bad-ass as the cover again implies.

Dir: Enrique Murillo
Star: Lorena Herrera, Salvador Pineda, Luis Reynoso, Héctor Reynoso

In the Eyes of the Prey

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★★½
“The eyes have it.”

New rule. If ever I become an evil, kidnapping overlord, I shall be sure not to leave potentially lethal power-tools left lying easily accessible, around the place where the abductee is being kept. This is just one of the many mistakes made by the criminals here, in what could be an instructional guide on how NOT to execute a kidnapping. Admittedly, they weren’t aware that their victim suffers from multiple personality disorder. The alternate version is more than happy to wield the aforementioned power-tool – specifically, a nail gun – with extreme prejudice. It helps that these grown men and hardened criminals make it remarkably easy, for a 110-lb woman to overpower them in various ways.

Let’s rewind though, because it takes a while to get to the nail gun carnage, the reason why we’re here. Laura (Calamassi) is the victim, having been kidnapped by a gang led by Santiago (Massaria). These are the usual mix of tropes from this kind of movie. There’s the nice one, Benedetto (Badea); the pervy one, Lupo (Potenza); the fiery hot-head, and so on. Meanwhile, we get far too much back story about Laura’s mental health history. This includes an assault on an art teacher, sessions of therapy, and childhood trauma where she saw her mother gunned down in front of her. Exactly how this triggers the splitting off of PsychoLaura is unclear. I suspect the film is equally reliable in the fields of aberrant psychology, and as a “how to kidnap” manual.

If the script is flimsy and not very interesting, the film does rebound somewhat in the performances. Calamassi delivers good work when going Full Gollum, tussling with her internal demons, and if the supporting cast aren’t given much to work with, they do what they can. Things liven up when PsychoLaura takes full control, but here the limited budget (only fifteen thousand Euros) comes into play. That’s why we only get told one of her victims suffered 90-100 stab wounds and has a saw sticking out of his forehead. Or when someone else is decapitated with wire… it’s nowhere near as cool on screen as it sounds. Pro tip: if you can’t afford to show it, don’t include it in your script. 

Conversely, the sole female member of the gang is included to no real purpose. She’s initially set up as another victim, yet once the truth is revealed, nothing much happens. The scenery is very nice. Wherever it was filmed, seems like a lovely place to visit – whether or not you happen to be hiding out with a mentally deranged teenage girl you have kidnapped. So when the story doesn’t manage to retain your interest, you can admire the setting. Well, during the second half, when both the film and Laura escape the confines of the house. Everything ends in an uncertain manner. I’d probably have been disappointed in it, if I had felt any more than marginally invested in the final outcome. 

Dir: Leonardo Barone
Star: Laura Calamassi, Gabriel Dorigo Badea, Paolo Massaria, Jerry Potenza
This review originally appeared on Film Blitz.

Hope

  By

★★
“Hope isn’t necessarily good.”

Hope (Larkin-Coyle) is an aspiring vlogger, though has not yet figured out how to make it pay sufficiently to quit her grindingly dull day job, for a boss who perpetually questions Hope’s commitment. She’s not wrong, because Hope’s heart definitely lives in the outdoors, not at a desk or in a Zoom meeting. Her particular niche of content creation is in wilderness adventures, whether that’s going up mountains, diving underwater or – as in this case – scaling a cliff-face. She then posts the videos online, so that others can live vicariously through her experience. She’s excited for her next trip, which will take her back to a part of Ireland by the ocean, which was a favourite haunt of her late mother.

However, a moment’s inattention leads to disaster, with Hope sent plummeting to the rocks below. When she regains consciousness, she finds her shin bone shattered and sticking out of her leg. With (inevitably!) no cell signal, she is thrown back on her own resources, and will have to make her way out of an increasingly precarious situation, entirely by herself. As you can imagine from this synopsis, it puts a lot of weight on the shoulders of the lead actress, and it’s all a little contrived. Initially, I expected there to be much more of her speaking to the camera, documenting events for her online followers. But the film doesn’t really go that way, favoring a more general voicing of Hope’s inner monologue.

In the main, to be blunt, you are basically watching a woman crawl across rocks for an hour, and I’m probably stating the obvious when I say that this is of limited appeal. There are some inconsistencies which seemed annoying at the time, almost as if whole scenes had been removed. One second, Hope is on a beach. The next, she’s swimming in the water – broken leg and all. Then she’s suddenly marooned in a cave. There’s also character stupidity, such as Hope’s ignorance or wilful disregard for basic survival protocols. However, there’s a third-act twist which, to be fair, goes a long way to explaining what had gone before. On the other hand, you’re left wondering if perhaps the film-makers have sabotaged the entire point with it.

A more definite problem is the sense that there simply is not enough happening here. The fall, presumably for budgetary reasons, is a simple fade to black accompanied by a scream. I will say, the sounds Coyle makes when exploring her wound are legitimately harrowing, and help sell her injury as much as the small but effective effects work on her leg. That takes care of about five minutes, leaving… 93 others, which fall well short of possessing the same degree of intensity. It feels as if the makers were looking to paint a psychological portrait, using the frame of a wilderness survival story. As someone who was expecting a genuine wilderness survival story, I’m left feeling distinctly short-changed, and a little bit cheated.

Dir: Bobby Marno
Star: Sadhbh Larkin Coyle

Keisha Takes the Block

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★½
“Talk is cheap, and so is this.”

Reviewing director Profitt’s filmography on the IMDb is an interesting experience. He seems to have started off in the paranormal, drifted through pseudo-reality TV with titles like Untold Undercover Police Stories, and has now found a niche in the low-budget urban gangster field, for which Tubi seems to have an inexhaustible appetite. But the promise very much exceeds the product. Case in point: while the woman on the cover here is the main character, she does not even touch a gun until, literally, the final shot of the movie. Profitt has instead realized that the best way to stretch his budget is to have long scenes of two characters talking to each other.

So that’s what you get here. A lot. It begins with Keisha (Seaton) talking to a fellow “prisoner” in “jail”. Quotes used advisedly, because after an establishing shot of the outside of a prison, the whole scene takes place in an entirely generic corner of a room. No guards. No bars. Could be a community college classroom. This sets the tone for the next thirty minutes, almost without exception: two people have a conversation. Two different people have a conversation. Two people have a conversation outside. Two people have a conversation on a couch. If you can think of a (slight) variation on two people having a conversation, you are likely to see it used here. It almost becomes hypnotic.

The story unfolds entirely through the resulting dialogue. Keisha is seeking to expand her criminal operations, but is facing push-back from the current boss, Quan (Settles). So she recruits his abused girlfriend, Rayna (Yvonne) to provide inside information on his activities. Meanwhile, her pet dirty cop, Ronny (Profitt), also tells Keisha heat will be coming from law enforcement, especially as the cold war between her and Quan heats up. Keisha’s long-time best friend begs her to leave the criminal life before it all catches up to her, and she begins to realize she needs an exit strategy. All of which sounds considerably more exciting than it is, because it’s far, far too dialogue heavy, and even these scenes are flat and largely lacking in dramatic energy.

The performances aren’t bad, and mercifully, Profitt doesn’t lean on the “my friends’ rap music” soundtrack typically used in this genre. Indeed, the lack of music, while probably another money-saving device, is sometimes effective. But there just is not enough going on here to hold the audience’s interest. The supposed battle for territory between Quan and Keisha doesn’t appear to use more than one clip of ammunition. Then again, both sides could probably hold their gang meetings in a phone-booth, such is the lack of resources here.  It is something of a shame, as there are elements here capable of generating dramatic conflict, in the right hands, and as noted, the actresses generally deliver their lines well. But Profitt the director seriously needs to fire Profitt the writer.

Dir: Jeff Profitt
Star: Brandi Seaton, Vicky Yvonne, Bernard Q. Settles, Jeff Profitt

When Women Were Warriors: The Warrior’s Path, by Catherine M. Wilson

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

To be frank, I was expecting rather more action given the title here. Almost all of it, however, takes place “off-screen”, as it were, being described second-hand, rather than experienced. It makes sense in the context of the book, and it’s not badly written. But when you use the word “warrior” or derivations thereof, not once but twice in your title, it would seem fair to expect a higher quotient of… warrioring. I tagged this as fantasy, mostly because it clearly takes place elsewhere and/or elsewhen. It is fairly grounded e.g. no dragons or vampires, but certainly contains elements I would call mystical.

The book tells the story of Tamras, who is sent to join the house of Lady Merin, hoping to progress through the ranks of apprentices and become a warrior woman herself, like her mother before her. Tamras feels too small and weak to succeed, but bonds with another outsider there, Maara, a mysterious woman with no past, who came from the north and whose loyalties are consequently suspected by the others. Maara initially rejects Tamras, but after the warrior is hurt while fending off cattle raiders, it’s Tamras who is largely responsible for nursing her back to health, and the pair begin to forge a relationship. After providing valuable information, Maara wins Merin’s trust, although others in the house still perceive her as a threat.

There is a great deal of sitting around here, though I suspect that might be partly the point. To quote Maara, “Most of a warrior’s days are uneventful” this coming after a month when she and Tamras have been part of a group which spent a month guarding against further livestock theft, without very much happening at all. The nearest to proper action are the reports of the battle where the warriors successfully repel an attack, thanks to Maara’s intel. I liked the setting, this being a world where gender – at least, in this part of the world – is not seen as an issue, with men and women fighting side by side. It’s also definitely lesbian friendly – more so than action heroine friendly, I would suggest.

For there was a point, probably about two-thirds of the way through, that I realized the author really wasn’t interested in providing an adrenaline-packed thrill-ride. This is much more about the relationships between the women – we poor men rarely merit a mention – and in Tamras’s growth as a person. Taken as that character study, it’s by no means bad: Wilson has a good turn of phrase, with some of the more spiritual experiences having particular weight. But at other points, it does feel more like sword ‘n’ soap-opera, and the overall sense of much more interesting stuff happening elsewhere became overpowering before the end. The rating above reflects that; while on purely literary terms, it’s likely better, I was left wanting less talk and more fighting.

Author: Catherine M. Wilson
Publisher: Shield Maiden Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 3 in the When Women Were Warriors series.

Ninja: Prophecy of Death

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½
“I know ninjas are supposed to be silent, but…”

To a certain degree, this should be graded as “incomplete”. Easiest to quote the IMDb on the reason why. “This film was to be shelved by director Kabasinski, when post-production had a lengthy delay and he went on to produce the film Skull Forest. Very happy with the improvements in overall production value of Skull Forest, Kabasinski was going to just take this film as a ‘loss’ having already moved forward. It was not until an editor from Buffalo, NY stepped in and expressed desire in taking on the project. Feeling indebted to the cast and crew for the film and post-production going better then expected, Kabasinski decided on releasing the film.”

He shouldn’t have bothered. Because it does the Kabasinski brand-name irreparable damage, due to its terrible quality, in one aspect especially. If this had been fixed, it still wouldn’t have been great – it would remain cheap and amateur. But it would not be in the conversation for worst action heroine movie of all-time, as is the case based on what was eventually released. The story is about an assassin, known only as “The Lost One” (Porada), who is part of a sect of ninjas. On a mission, she balks when she is ordered to kidnap a child. This mutiny is not taken well, and she is left for dead by her colleagues. Naturally, she isn’t, and teams up with some Mafia hitmen (Anthony and Poffo) to get her revenge. 

It’s a basic plot, yet not unworkable, especially when delivered with the director’s enthusiastic fondness for gratuitous nudity and gloopy violence. The low budget doesn’t really matter when you are talking nekkid ninja training. But what irredeemably sinks the movie, and why it should have remained lost (or, at best, a bonus feature on another movie) is the audio. Regular readers will know this is a common complaint I have with smaller productions,  and it’s a personal peeve. I don’t use words like “worst ever” lightly either. So you will understand how much of an issue it is that – bold font, please – this is the worst ever audio I have heard on a released film, bar none.

Seriously, the audio is entirely missing for about half the scenes. No music, no background sounds, nothing. This includes the entire opening credits, which feature Mrs. Kabasinski doing more nude sword work. It almost becomes some bizarre form of art statement, like a throwback to the silent era. Even when it’s present, it is poorly mixed and the dialogue sometimes inaudible. It would probably have worked significantly better had Kabasinski nuked all the audio, turned it b&w, added some intertitles to tell us the plot, and thrown ninety minutes of public domain orchestral music onto it. Instead, what you have is a feature-length demonstration about the importance of the auditory portion to cinema. As well as how worthless a movie can be, when the makers simply cannot be bothered to deliver the materials. 

Dir: Len Kabasinski
Star: Renee Porada, Brian Anthony, Lanny Poffo, Darian Caine

Vengeance Turns

  By

★★
“Turnabout’s fair play.”

The film opens with a caption, “The first feature film from Robert Christopher Smith,” and it’s largely superfluous. Because, to be brutally honest, you can tell. It’s filled with choices which virtually scream, movie-making debut. That it’s a passion project for Smith is clear, and the persistence with which he pursued his vision is clear, and highly laudable. Perseverance can only take you so far, however, and is no substitute for skill and experience. It does feels this was a learning experience on the fly, with a palpable improvement over its course, and Smith left the production a significantly better film-maker than he came in, I suspect. At least it does tell a fairly complete story (glares over at Gold Raiders).

We first meet heroine Rebecca Falcon (Luelmo), arguing with other locals outside the town store in the 1876 Western town where she lives with her husband and two children. The topic is the local Kumeyaay tribe, whom most regard as savages, and blame for a series of recent violent incidents. Rebecca disagrees: for her it’s personal, since she’s one-quarter Kumeyaay herself, though few know it. Her home is the next invaded – not by the natives – with Rebecca left for dead, and her family brutally slaughtered. She is rescued by Simon (Vecchio), who is actually the son of the group’s leader Jefferson Coletrain (Gardner). Nursed back to health by the real Kumeyaay, Rebecca vows to take vengeance on Jefferson and his gang.

This was split into two parts for release, but is very much one film. and at two hours forty minutes in total… Yeah, it’s definitely overlong, especially in the first half. While relatively quick to get to the reason for revenge, proceedings then grind to a complete halt while she’s recuperating with the Kumeyaay. You’re left hanging out with characters sporting names like “Delicate Poison” (Jaffer) and – I wrote this down – “Ghost with Silent Knives Protects”. The former is played by a Pakistani-Norwegian actress with a clipped British accent. The weird thing is, Jaffer seems a good performer, just wholly inappropriate for this role, to the point I genuinely felt embarrassed for her.

If you have the mental stamina to reach Volume Two, things do improve. Rebecca’s vengeance proves somewhat unfocused initially, though like other threads e.g. her being part-Kumeyaay, nothing much comes of this. It’s clear she is basically deranged, though this is depicted mostly in Luelmo speaking… slowly… and… slurrrrrring her words. Still, things actually happen, and the arrival of batshit crazy Chinese cannibal lady Gloria (Catherine Bo-Eun Song) adds entertainment value. There are technical issues, not least with the audio: one scene on horseback is almost inaudible, between the hooves and the wind. However, there are also scenes that work, such as the brutal interrogation of a prisoner by Gloria and Delicate Poison, or our heroine’s confrontation with an old “friend”. Copious room for improvement, to be sure, yet not without merit. Everyone has to start somewhere.

Dir: Robert Christopher Smith
Star: Paola Luelmo, Azeem Vecchio, Jamald Gardner, Kelsey Jaffer

Don’t Move

  By

★★★
“Suicide hotline stalking”

A somewhat gimmicky but adequately competent Netflix Original, I guess the moral here is that being abducted and stalked by a serial killer is the best kind of therapy. We meet Iris (Asbille) in the remote woods where her young son previously died. She never recovered, and is now standing on edge of a cliff, contemplating suicide. She’s interrupted by the arrival of a stranger, Richard (Wittrock), who talks her down. However, it turns out he has an ulterior motive: he wants to be the one to kill Iris. He tazes her, and while subsequently managing to escape, she has also been injected with a muscle relaxant that in twenty minutes will render her unable to move. 

Obviously, this makes for a perilous situation, as the drug slowly works its way through her system, eventually shutting down almost all conscious muscle movements. As such, it is going to be an “action” heroine film more in spirit than literally. For the vast majority of the film, Iris is unable to do very much more except blink enthusiastically. Naturally, both coming and going, the chemicals operate in exactly the way necessary to facilitate the script, and ratchet up the tension. Need to alert a suspicious police officer (Francis) to her presence? She will be able to move her hand just enough for that purpose, albeit very slowly. However, the script is assembled well enough, these moments feel organic enough to pass muster.

I think the best sequence has her washing up on the land of the reclusive Bill (Treadwell), an old geezer who is initially able to help. However, he is interrupted by the arrival of Richard, supposedly looking for his mentally disturbed wife. Bill can sense this isn’t exactly the truth, but Richard spins a plausible web of lies, all while Iris is inches away, unable to do anything. This generates quite the nervous energy, before it’s suddenly released. Indeed, Bill is an interesting person, albeit by the low standards of “minor characters in serial killer films”. Richard, too, has some surprises in his back-story. An unexpected phone call upends his carefully prepared plans, requiring a quick disposal of Iris, which leads to the movie’s climax. 

This is where it does topple over in terms of credibility, with more than one, “Wait, what?” moment. Apparently, a dunk in cold water is all it takes to reverse any pharmaceutical effects. Didn’t do much earlier, but I’ll say no more. While it’s always an issue if a film can’t stick the landing, Asbille delivers a good enough portrayal to keep me interested. That’s especially so, given the physical limitations imposed on her by the script; there are points where her eyes are the entire performance. Like most Netflix Originals, this isn’t likely to leave a lasting impression. However, unlike some, it did not leave me feeling my time had been wasted. Producer Sam Raimi, his name larger on the poster than the stars or directors, shouldn’t be embarrassed by this.

Dir: Brian Netto, Adam Schindler
Star: Kelsey Asbille, Finn Wittrock, Moray Treadwell, Daniel Francis

Canary Black

  By

★★★
“Gone, and soon forgotten.”

Both director Morel and star Beckinsale should be familiar names around here. The former directed Peppermint, the latter for the Underworld franchise. Indeed, I was a little surprised this wasn’t directed by Mr. Kate Beckinsale, Len Wiseman. But I guess he was too busy getting booted off Ballerina. Morel, who also directed Taken, is a perfectly adequate stand-in. This is more or less what I expected. A forgettable yet adequately amusing spy caper, with Beckinsale kicking moderate ass in pursuit of… [/checks notes] a computer virus which could potentially wipe out the whole Internet in selected countries. As I write this, two weeks before the US presidential election, nuking the Internet seems like a pretty good idea to me.

She plays Canary Black no, actually, Avery Graves, a globetrotting spy whose husband David (Friend) has no idea of her day job. If that sounds a tad familiar, I refer you to Role Play, which had a similar concept. Then, David gets kidnapped and used as leverage against Avery. She is ordered to liberate the “Canary Black” file of blackmail data, and hand it to David’s abductors, or he will pay the price. Needless to say, her boss Jarvis Hedlund (Stevenson, in one of his last roles) isn’t happy about his best agent going rogue. However, in one of a series of twists – some expected, some not – the file ends up containing the virus discussed above, and Avery must stop it from being released by the bad guys.

This all just about skates by, mostly on the strength of Beckinsale’s charisma. She keeps things watchable, and helps paper over a number of elements that would otherwise have you going, “Hang on a minute…” For instance, when Avery is breaking into a server farm, she flies in on a drone, which for some reason, is lit up like Times Square. The facility also lets you slap in a USB drive without authorization. My entry-level work PC won’t let me do that, and I don’t believe I have access to world-shattering computer viruses, the last time I checked. Naturally, it all ends with Avery rushing towards a computer as the upload progress bar crawls… ever… so… slowly towards a hundred percent. 

Morel handles the action with a professional eye, and considering she’s now in her fifties, Beckinsale isn’t bad. Though watching this the night after The Shadow Strays, the fights here seem like the participants are playing patty-cake in comparison. There’s a nice car chase through the streets of [/checks notes] Zagreb, but most of this is simply reasonably-made and thoroughly generic, and the lack of a memorable villain poses a problem. I couldn’t even tell you the main villain’s name, and his motivation appears to be purely mercenary, which is bad form for a bad guy. While I wasn’t bored, this is destined to be forgotten within a few weeks, and vanish into the black hole which is beyond the front page of Amazon Prime.

Dir: Pierre Morel
Star: Kate Beckinsale, Ray Stevenson, Rupert Friend, Jaz Hutchins

The Shadow Strays

  By

★★★★½
“Dog eat dog”

Director Tjahjanto gave us one of the best action films of the last decade in The Night Comes For Us, a gory and relentless assault of jaw-dropping hand-to-hand mayhem. Follow-up, The Big 4, was a little underwhelming, but I was still stoked to hear about this, in which he puts a heroine front and centre. This is perhaps a step or two short of Night – it’s clear the lead here is not a lifelong practitioner of martial arts like Joe Taslim and Iko Uwais. However, it’s the best film I’ve reviewed on this site in 2024, likely edging out Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, through a combination of sheer force of will and arterial spray.

The Shadows are a sect of assassins, who are basically unstoppable. 13 (Ribero) is a teenage trainee, who screws up a mission in Japan alongside her instructor, Umbra (Malasan), and barely survives. 13 gets put on administrative leave, and her enforced idleness is where the problems start. In a thread strongly reminiscent of Leon, she watches a neighbour get killed by a gang, and takes care of the son, Monji. However, he vanishes, apparently abducted by the gang, and 13 isn’t standing for that. Beginning by turning low-level enforcer, Jeki (Emmanuel), she works her way up the power structure, which goes right to the top of Indonesian political society. The resulting chaos threatens to expose the Shadows, so Umbra is then dispatched to terminate their rogue agent.

This runs a chunky 144 minutes – just a handful shorter than Furiosa – which seems a fair while for a martial-arts film. The Raid 2 and John Wick 4 are the only ones which come to mind as longer. But I can’t say this particularly felt like it; there’s not much slack. We open with the absolutely blood-drenched Japanese operation, which sets the tone early. To be honest, it does such a good job, most of what follows falls slightly short. Ribero is a model and singer, and it feels like Tjahjanto underlights a lot of scenes to help paper over this. But then there’s the final battle, between 13 and Umbra. It’s likely behind only Crouching Tiger as my favorite female vs. female fight ever: utterly relentless, and brutal as hell.

It is a little less impressive in between the fights: originality is, as noted previously, not necessarily the film’s strongest suit. Other threads are set up and them ignored, such as the Shadows’ miraculous serum, which is used by Umbra to resuscitate 13 in Japan, and never mentioned again. Maybe it’ll play more of a part in the sequel, to which the ending strongly hints, bringing in a face familiar to fans of Indonesian action. I’d love to see it, since this is definitely pushing the boundaries of action heroine cinema, in all the right ways. While imperfect, at its best this is enough to make me consider introducing a six-star rating, because it goes places I’ve never seen. When it does, the results are glorious.

Dir: Timo Tjahjanto
Star: Aurora Ribero, Kristo Immanuel, Hana Malasan, Taskya Namya