Author: Jim McLennan

Marilia, the Warlord, by Morgan Cole

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

This is a fairly classic “rise from nowhere” story, yet is well-executed and done in a world which is interesting for its differences. The heroine is – surprise! – Marilia, whom we first meet on the battlefield, about to face an opponent of superior numbers. We then flash back to her childhood, growing up in a Tyracian brothel. Her mother was one of the “painted ladies,” but after she dies, Marilia and her brother Annuweth are on increasingly thin ice. Their effort to run away is unsuccessful, yet does bring them a chance at a new life. While it’s here that Marilia discovers her tactical savvy through board games, it’s not without its downside, the siblings being split up after Marilia enters an arranged marriage in another territory.

Yet that, too, has its pluses, for her new home of Svartennos is a little more liberated in terms of gender equality. This matters, especially after her husband dies and she inherits his responsibilities, which include war. There’s also a somewhat convenient prophecy about their warrior queen Svartana: “That someday, when the island is in peril… the spirit of Svartana will return in the form of another, to lead out people to victory and save the island.” No prizes for guessing, this is something which Marilia can leverage to her advantage, especially when combined with her genuine tactical wits.

There are a number of other threads woven into the plot, such as her relationship with her brother, and their joint passion for revenge on the warrior, Sethyron Andres, who killed their (absentee) father. That he’s known as “The Graver” gives you some idea of what to expect, and awkwardly, he’s now part of the forces on their side for the war. The resolution of this will bring them both back to Tyrace, and the very house where they grew up. This provides one of the rare bits of meaningful action for Marilia. While she is well-practiced with the sword, she discovers there’s a big gap between that and the hellish realities of the battlefield: it’s something Cole does not soft-pedal, to good effect.

I was quite surprised to realize the book is almost five hundred pages long, as it feels considerably shorter: I’d call this a good sign. It does take some time to get going, with the second half definitely moving at a quicker pace, compared to the first, which is more concerned with Marilia’s upbringing. Turns out, she’s gay – not that the book makes anything out of it, and even the heroine doesn’t quite know what she is (I’m guessing the culture doesn’t acknowledge it). It’s just a “Why do I want to spend my time with that woman?” thing. The first volume offers a nicely self-contained story, without many dangling elements, except the ultimate fate of The Graver. I suspect I may well end up finding out what happens there, in due course.

Author: Morgan Cole
Publisher: Self published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in the Chrysathamere Trilogy series.

Furies

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★★★½
“If you don’t want men to push you around, be stronger than them.”

This is a prequel of sorts to Furie, partly telling the story of how its villainess, Thanh Soi (Toc) came to be (also: not to be confused with The Furies). However, it’s more the saga of Bi (Quynh), the daughter of a rural prostitute who makes her way to the city seeking her fortune.  There, she joins Thanh and Hong (Rima) under the protection of the Svengali-like Jacqueline (Ngô), who trains and indoctrinates them towards their eventual mission. This involves bringing down the leader of the city’s underworld, who has been exploiting women for years, in addition to other unsavoury activities. 

He goes by the descriptive and fairly accurate name of Mad Dog Hai, and his underlings are little more sane. When the trio of women make their presence felt by sabotaging a drug deal, Hai is not happy, and from there, it’s an escalating series of tit-for-tat attacks. We also discover that Jacqueline’s motives are not purely altruistic, being considerably more personal then she originally admits. There’s an argument, which the movie does not explicitly address, that she’s exploiting the three young women herself, albeit in a different way from Mad Dog. Rather than physical abuse (of which the film is certainly not short), hers is a psychological approach, taking their anger against men and focusing it against Hai, as well as sharpening it to a particularly fine point.

At 109 minutes, it’s arguably a little too long, and the film generally works better in action, then when pushing the more melodramatic elements. The makeover montage of Bi, for example, is superfluous and too obvious. If the editing during the fights is perhaps slightly too frenetic, it isn’t too much of a problem. This is more than made up for by the high-impact nature of the combat, with all three characters (and Jacqueline, by the end), going full force into an endless slew of faceless minions, thrown at them by Hai. There’s also a motorcycle chase/fight, apparently inspired by John Wick 3, though the execution is painfully green-screen. Would it have hurt the makers at least to get a wind machine, and create the illusion of movement?

When sticking to the purely physical stuff though, it’s mostly effective stuff. Nothing ground-breaking, admittedly, yet there are times when sticking to the basics and keeping things simple is probably for the best. It’s not exactly an advertisement for Vietnam: Chris turned to me when it finished, and firmly crossed the country off her holiday destination list. The city does seem a bit of a sewer, to put it mildly, though I must say the cinematography here is all pastel neon colours, and nicely executed. It at least helps lightly paper over the wholesale unpleasantness which is going on. I’m fairly sure this cost a fraction of bigger Netflix originals like Extraction II, yet for entertainment value, it’s not so far behind.

Dir: Ngô Thanh Vân
Star: Dong Anh Quynh, Toc Tien, Rima Thanh Vy, Ngô Thanh Vân

Slate

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★★★½
“A clean slate.”

This is definitely an interesting idea, and potentially the most meta action heroine film I’ve seen.  Cha Yeon-hee (Ahn) has wanted to be a movie heroine ever since she was a child, though it’s an ambition which has always eluded her – in part because of her refusal to work her way up in the industry. She eventually and grudgingly accepts a stunt double position in a historical swordplay film, and shows up on the set for her first day. However, due to circumstances involving a magical clapperboard (hence the title) and an inconvenient portal, she finds herself transported to a parallel dimension. It’s kinda like modern Korea in clothes and speech, but run by warlords and their sword-carrying minions.

This is perfect for Yeon-hee, who adopts the person of Soul Slayer, the character she was supposed to double in the movie, to protect the village from Taepyeongso (Park) and his henchmen. There are only a couple of problems. Firstly, the sword she brought with her is a movie prop, incapable of inflicting any actual damage. Secondly, the real Soul Slayer shows up. At least she’s not the first person from her world to have been carried over, as there’s also a YouTube paranormal blogger, called Ghoster, who “vanished” a few months previously, and is there to help explain what’s going on. Will Yeon-hee make it back to the real world? And will she even want to, or will she prefer to stay in the dimension where she is the heroine she always wanted to be?

It’s a lovely concept. In a story of a downtrodden heroine getting the chance to be all she can be, it’s a little reminiscent of Everything Everywhere All at Once, though there are just the two worlds to occupy here, making this a lot more restrained – not necessarily a bad thing. It’s also a bit like The Wizard of Oz, in that everyone in the “heroine” world has a counterpart in the regular one, be it large or small. For example, Taepyeongso  runs a street stall in our world. There’s a good moral here too, about the value of holding to your dreams, even if the ending may be a little too new age-y for my personal tastes.

However, I did feel they left quite a lot of the potential on the table; it’s not hard to think of further ways Yeon-Hee could have parlayed dramatic skills into use here, yet the movie prefers to concentrate on a power struggle for succession among Taepyeongso’s underlings. Some more action would have been welcome too. If occasionally over-edited, what we get is pretty good, with some sword fights that have real impact, the participants battering away at each other with what feels like full force. While this is an independent Korean film, it looks more than competent on every level, and I’d like to see more from both director and star, down the road.

Dir: Bareun Jo
Star: Ji-hye Ahn, Min-ji Lee, Tae-San Park, Lee Se-Ho

The Hit Producer

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★½
“This hit is a miss.”

Made on a shoestring in Ireland, the nicest thing you can say is probably, this doesn’t look as cheap as it was. If only you could say the same for the script, which seems to be trying to be Guy Ritchie, only to end up nearer to Guy Fieri. It’s not a terrible idea, if rather stretching belief. Katelin Ballantine (Doherty) is a film producer, trying to raise funds for her latest movie. To that end, she is hanging out, unwillingly, with sleazeball businessman, Felim Shaw. What she doesn’t know, is he is deep in debt to local mob-boss Edmund Murren (Fleming). He kidnaps them both, forces Katelin to kill her potential investor, then threatens her family to make her continue in her new career as his assassin, alongside former friend and now Murren associate, Henry Furey (Kealy).

Two years later, she’s splitting time between that and her ongoing film production work. But her underworld identity becomes known to Murren’s rivals, and she is cut loose as a liability. With Henry her only ally, and the police now also closing in, Katelin has to try and survive, keep her family safe and stay out of the authorities’ hands. Only, none of this manages to mesh into a coherent, or even interesting, whole. For example, the film producer angle seems to exist purely for the purpose of the title, and doesn’t add anything of note to the main story. Given this set-up, it might have made sense had it been filmed in Los Angeles, or better yet, Hong Kong, where the overlap between the movie industry and organized crime is well-known. Dublin? Not so much.

As mentioned, I didn’t hate the idea. We used to know someone who… let’s just say, had a not dissimilar, sharp divergence between their day job and main source of income. But the execution here is just terrible, with the makers unable to decide what kind of tone they are aiming for, and even less ability to deliver it. It crams too many characters in, leaving none of them able to make an impact; I simply did not care what happened to anybody. Even Katelin is a botched heroine, in part because the movie skips entirely over the two years where she goes from sniveling wreck, whimpering by the side of the grave she has just dug, to a hard-nosed killer.

I suspect it either needed to give us that transition, or begin with the latter and perhaps fill in the back-story down the pipe. Instead, the film basically ignores what is arguably the most interesting element, in favour of murky betrayal and shenanigans among the Irish underworld. There’s little or nothing here we haven’t seen before, and almost always done better to boot. The action is nothing to write home about either, leaving my attention and interest to peak, more or less at an admittedly stylish opening credit sequence.

Dir: Kevin de la Isla O’Neill
Star: Michelle Doherty, Neill Fleming, Fergus Kealy, Susan Barrett

Kid West

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★★★
“A little heart goes a long way”

I’ve mentioned before the general lack of action-heroine films for the pre-teenage crowd: The Golden Compass is a rare example of one which would play for that audience. This is another, though that is largely where the similarities end. This likely cost considerably less than 1% of Compass‘s $180 million budget, being an independent production out of Minnesota. However, what it almost entirely lacks in spectacle, it largely makes up for with no small amount of heart. The little heroine is 12-year-old Harper ‘Kid’ West (Bair), who has just moved with her Mom from Missouri to Minnesota. Dad, a sheriff, was killed in the line of duty, but right from the start, we see he clearly instilled a strong sense of right and wrong in his daughter.

In their new home town, the big news is the discovery of a key belonging to 19th-century business tycoon Walter Smith, which could hold the… ah, key to hidden treasure. The artifact is stolen from a local museum, and Kid suspects local bully Braden (Reyes) and his gang are responsible. With the help of new pal Angie Little Sky (Quiroz) and the local sheriff (Reyes), she sets out to solve the mystery and earn the reward money her Mom very much needs. However, there was apparently a curse placed on Smith by a medicine man of the local Ojibwa Indian tribe, potentially making the quest all the more perilous.

At 63 minutes, including credits, this is barely a feature film, yet I’m fine with that: more movies should err on the side of brevity, I feel. This plays to the audience’s benefit, since there’s not a lot of slack or downtime here, with the plot continually moving forward. It is, of necessity, fairly simplistic, yet it rarely feels like it’s talking down to the viewer, with enough mature elements to avoid playing as purely a kid-flick. That said, it plays it all super-safe, and will offer no surprises if you are above the age of Kid. Any adults really don’t need to pay attention here, because the plot unfolds right down the line as you’d expect, all the way to Braden learning the error of his ways.

The big plus, which stops it from falling into saccharine excess, is Bair, who delivers a performance which has just the right amount of earnestness. She’s a thoroughly admirable role-model for any young girl: prepared to stand up for what’s right, yet (and this is rarer than you’d imagine) respectful to her elders, with no teen brattiness to be found. despite the rather unflattering sleeve! The rest of the performances are mostly functional rather than memorable, though neither do they stand out in a negative way. The film has some decent BMX/truck stunts, even if the digital effects accompanying the “curse” did not leave me whelmed. All told, I did not hate this, and as family entertainment, you could do considerably worse. It certainly gets the nod over something like Barbie Spy Squad.

Dir: Jesse Mast
Star: Mary Bair, Atquetzali Quiroz, Bruce Bohne, Lorenzo Reyes

Stormy Weathers

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★★½
“Scattered outbreaks of interest.”

Within ten seconds of Chris having entered the room when this was on, she asked, “Are you watching Moonlighting?” No, I wasn’t – but it’s certainly a valid question. Just a couple of years earlier, Shepherd had finished off a run playing a private eye alongside Bruce Wills on that highly successful show. And here she is, again playing a private investigator on television, with a fondness for cracking wise and showing off her legs. What are the odds? Well, there’s absolutely no doubt the makers of this knew exactly what they were doing by casting Shepherd. Though I also suspect that they were hoping to ride on the coat-tails of the similar V.I. Warshawski, which came out the previous year. Its commercial failure won’t have helped this, and it feels like a pilot that never got picked up.

Samantha “Don’t call her Stormy” Weathers (Shepherd) takes on the case of dishy Italian aristocrat Gio (Beltran), seeking to discover what happened to his elder brother, who vanished in Los Angeles 15 years previously. Their father died recently, and he needs to establish inheritance. He contacts Sam because her late father, an LAPD homicide cop, had reached out at the time and been told the brother was disowned. It was the last case Weathers Sr. worked there, before quitting the force to start the detective agency. Sam discovers the case seems increasingly likely involved in that decision. With the help of trusty hacker Squirrel (Schlatter) and muckraking journo Bogey (Salinger), she discovers a conspiracy stretching across the years and involving Black Power activists, drug-runners and current high political office.

It’s almost entirely predictable, and if you can’t guess who the bad guy is before the big twist, you haven’t been paying attention. Not that I’d blame you for that, as this is as formulaic as it is obvious. However, it benefits from a strong supporting cast with a lot of familiar faces. I spotted Kurt Fuller (Robocop), Roy Thinnes (The Invaders), Zelda Rubinstein (Poltergeist), Tony Lo Bianco (God Told Me To) and Vonetta McGee (Blacula), and they all provide good service. Shepherd is also solid enough, even if as mentioned, the character seems perilously close to Maddie Hayes.

The action is lightly sprinkled, and feels more like a side-dish than the main course. But there’s a decent sequence where Sam is trailed by two goons, only to lure them into a deserted warehouse and dispatch them with surprisingly ruthless efficiency. There’s also a reasonable about of running around and climbing, which – as the poster suggests – seem to be there as much to show of Sam’s gams, as in furtherance of any elements of the story. It is curiously dated in some aspects, from a time where computers and mobile phones were very much in their infancy. What Squirrel does could basically be done by anyone on Google, and the multiple Terminator 2 references also pin this firmly as a product of 1992. I was never truly bored here: on the other hand, I was never very interested either.

Dir: Will Mackenzie
Star: Cybill Shepherd, Robert Beltran, Charlie Schlatter, Diane Salinger

Sheroes

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★★★
“Zeroes to sheroes.”

Twenty minutes into this, I was certain I had made a terrible mistake. These four young women were among the most grating and unpleasant characters I’d seen in a movie. I’m talking actively awful: crass, shallow and entitled. They head off to Thailand for a girls’ getaway on a private jet owned by the father of Diamond (Luss), a film producer. By the time they land, check out their mansion and enjoy the local sights, I was ready to set up the guillotines. Then there’s a luggage mix-up, leaving them with a large quantity of Thai cartel coke, and one of their number is kidnapped, in order to coerce them into returning the goods.

Which is where something unexpected happened. The film became… Well, “good” might be a stretch – plausibility is not the script’s strong suit. But it became considerably more entertaining, that’s for certain. Diamond turns out to have hidden depths, and coaches skater girl Ryder (Day) and actress Ezra (Fuhrman) on what they’re going to do to get their friend Daisy (Skai Jackson) back. They have some help from the mysterious Jasper (Kesy), but they’re mostly reliant on their own skills, at least until the very end. It also nods to other films in an occasionally meta way. For instance, Diamond coaches Ezra to deliver Liam Neeson’s classic Taken speech to the kidnappers. It’s particularly funny, because that was written by Luc Besson, and Luss is best known as the star of Anna… directed by Besson.

She is really the glue that holds the film together for the bulk of the running-time, coming over as both smart and capable, and I’d watch her in a franchise. You do have to suspend disbelief in quite a few places, e.g. the trio are capable of using a 3D printer to create a mask which Ezra uses to impersonate someone. [It was a stretch in Mission: Impossible, with all the resources of the IMF] Or Ryder being capable of taking down a trained mixed martial-arts fighter, who’s probably a hundred pounds heavier. Then there’s the final battle, where they take out an entire camp of Thai drug-runners. Yeah: this whole film might as well be titled “I’m so sure…”

Yet, I was able to put that aside, and found myself, surprisingly, being adequately entertained. There’s a lot of value wrung out from the exotic locations, while the cinematography is crisp and well-executed. And let’s be honest, the heroines are easy on the eye and spent more time than is strictly necessary in bikinis. The R-rating seems largely a result of bad language and drug use. I’d like to have seen it embraced in the action elements as well, which could have been more hard-hitting. But as a frothy concoction, this feels as if it is going down a similar line as something like DOA: Dead or Alive. Not quite as good – yet considering how very low my opinion was at the beginning, recovering to a three-star rating is impressive. 

Dir: Jordan Gertner
Star: Sasha Luss, Isabelle Fuhrman, Wallis Day, Jack Kesy

In the Line of Duty IV

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★★★★½
“A thinly connected series of action set-pieces…but what set-pieces!”

Back in the early nineties, I saw a double-bill of this and Jackie Chan’s Police Story at the late, lamented Scala Cinema in London, and it blew my mind. I had literally never seen anything like them before. The only martial arts movies I’d watched previously were crappy American ones, which made little or no impression. That afternoon changed my life, and awakened a love of the genre that persists to this day. But would In the Line of Duty 4 stand the test of time? There are certainly movies I loved from the same era, which are now a bit cringe, to put it mildly. So it was with some trepidation that I hit play…

Nope, it’s still goddamn awesome. Sure, it’s a bit rough around the edges, and both the plot and performances are little more than means to an end. But the end justifies the means, 100%. I can’t remember the last time a film provoked so many exclamations from me. It felt like every other scene, there’d be another terrific feat of physical prowess, agility or simply endurance. It’s amazing to see Donnie Yen, then a young, skinny and rough-edged twentysomething, but clearly with raw talent in spades. It took almost thirty-five years for him to get the recognition he deserved, with his co-starring role in John Wick 4.

According to another review, 42 of the film’s 93 minutes are action. Reading this, my immediate reaction was, “That little?” Because it feels like it’s almost a non-stop procession of set-pieces, a highlight reel in feature form. It’s not just hand-to-hand combat either. There are some great vehicular stunts, such as a motorcycle chase, or a fabulous battle in, on and around an ambulance. It’s clear that we really have Cynthia Khan dangling off the front of the vehicle, in a way that looks genuinely dangerous, and quite probably was [the eighties in Hong Kong cinema wasn’t exactly a poster-child for health and safety!] I do wish they hadn’t undercranked some sequences; they’re impressive enough they don’t need to be sped-up.

For when all is said and done, the fights are flat-out awesome. It’s not just Khan and Yen, though they obviously get most to do. Everyone here is well up to the task, both showing off their own stuff and letting the stars look good by selling for them. On the female front, I want to give special praise to Farlie Ruth Kordica, who fights Cynthia around a lift-shaft in another sequence which feels disturbingly life-threatening. She only appeared in a couple of other films, which feels like a real shame, based on her performance here. It’s a wonderfully inventive scene (bottom), taking full advantage of the potential in the environment. 

There is a case to be made that Yen is the star here, above Khan. The end caption doesn’t even mention her character, Insp. Yeung Lai-Ching, though Khan definitely is not outclassed. But Lai-Ching is the film’s emotional heart, always intent on doing the morally ‘right’ thing, even if it’s not in line with the law. She is the Jiminy Cricket, trying to keep Donnie’s loose cannon in check, while also trying to figure out who’s the mole in her department. The story, incidentally, has aged well: the CIA openly dealing drugs in order to fund Latin American rebels? That’s not something you would expect to see in an American film from that time, the whole Iran-Contra thing being seen as a bit of an embarrassment. Fittingly, it is Khan’s character who delivers the final blow to this Yankee scheme, falling to its doom and taking the American flag with it.

I will admit that the soundtrack is underwhelming: despite two credited composers, it feels like stock tracks pulled at random from the library. There are also times when the plot logic is less than logical, with bad guys and good guys popping up in convenient places for the next showdown, with little or no explanation. Yet this hardly dampens things, because: yep, means to an end. The eighties was an amazing decade for action cinema, from The Empire Strikes Back, through The Terminator, Aliens and Die Hard. I can honestly say that In the Line of Duty 4 deserves to be ranked among those, and remains one of the best examples of Hong Kong cinema, doing what it does best.

[Original review] I don’t think I’ve ever seen a HK film with more action; it seems that every five minutes, along comes another breathtaking fight or stunt sequence. Of course, when you have a master at the helm (Yuen did the fights for The Matrix), you expect a little more, but this is fabulous, even by his standards.

Donnie Yen is perhaps the most under-rated martial artist of our generation, and watching him here, it’s hard to see why he hasn’t become a major star, rather than lurking in (effective) supporting roles in Blade 2 and Highlander: Endgame. For speed, agility and skill, his fights are almost without equal, and most female co-stars would be overshadowed. Fortunately, Cynthia Khan, though occasionally clearly doubled, does more than enough to keep on the same lap – the fight atop, alongside, and dangling from the front of, a speeding ambulance is eyepoppingly extreme, while her aerial battle around a lift shaft is also worthy of mention.

The story is clearly secondary to all this, but for the record, Khan and Yen are cops, one from Hong Kong, one from America, who team up to find a witness to a murder. Double-dealing and twists abound, though most are so obvious, you suspect they were just waiting for cast members to get out of hospital. :-) Interesting to see a foreign view of American cops – even Yen is a barely-controlled psychonaut. Khan is more sympathetic, but characterisation never goes beyond the most basic. However, this is an action movie, and as such, it’s near-perfect, with invention, energy and hardcore guts to spare from all concerned.

Dir: Yuen Wo-Ping
Star: Cynthia Khan, Donnie Yen, Michael Wong, Yuen Yat Choh

Charlotte Who? – A Gaelic Football Story in America

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★★★★
“When Irish eyes are smiling.”

I stumbled across this entirely by accident, Tubi’s autoplay feature putting it on after watching some World Cup highlights. But the start was intriguing enough to keep me watching, and turned out to be a really good documentary, even if the story is a bit clichéd. The original title was the rather more forthright, Who the Fxxk is Charlotte? and that sums up the approach here. Any viewers with an aversion to strong language should not apply. It’s the story of the Charlotte, North Carolina women’s Gaelic football team, and their quest to win the national title. Gaelic football? Yes: an Irish sport, which combines elements of football and rugby. In Ireland, it’s close to a religion with fierce rivalries that go back to the 19th century. 

The Charlotte club was formed in 2000, and based on what we see here, is as much a social organization as a sports club. There does appear to be quite a lot of consumption of adult beverages. But there’s no doubt, they take the sport seriously, and recruit from all round the area, both Irish and American players. On North America, teams can bring in experienced players from Ireland, known as “sanctions”, to help grow the sport. But some clubs do that to excess: Charlotte refuse to go that route, putting their team at a potential disadvantage compared to Boston, or their arch-rivals from San Francisco, the Fog City Harps. The film follows Charlotte as they develop their team, and take part in the 2016 and 2017 senior women’s tournament, for the best sides in North America. 

There are absolutely no pretensions here. It’s a very straightforward approach, and that no-nonsense style fits the participants to a T. Unlike some docs, there’s no off-field drama here, be it artificial or genuine. It’s all about the sport, and it’s depicted as a classic underdog story with plucky Charlotte trying to beat their larger, more established and more “sanctiony” opponents. Though in regard to the last, I would have been curious to see actual numbers: how many of their team were Americans, and how does that compare, say, to the Harps? It’s an easy enough sport to pick up for a viewer, though in some of the games, it was occasionally hard to know the exact score. A score bug in the corner would have been useful. 

In some ways, the structure feels like it mirrors that of a classic kung-fu film. The heroine loses the first battle against her nemesis, but this only increases her resolve. She withdraws, trains harder and learns new techniques, in order to prepare for the rematch. That’s what we have here, with the 2016 tournament ending in defeat. The Charlotte coach also retires, his previously pledged three-year term having come to a close. Yet this opens the door for a dual-headed approach, with two managers of different styles. Considering this is a sport about which I knew almost nothing going in, it was all remarkably engrossing. If you’re not cheering by the end, you’ve clearly got no Irish in you.

Dir: David N. Stiles
Star: Aoife Kavanagh, Catríona O’Shaughnessy, Jan Henry, Kevin Tobin