Author: Jim McLennan

Army of One

  By

★★
“Basic, and in need of training”

Husband and wife Dillon (Passmore) and Brenna Baker (Hollman) are out on a camping trip in the Alabama wilderness. They have a brush with some crude locals, led by the mountainous Butch (Kasper), but are saved by his diminutive mother (Singer), who takes no crap from anyone, and whom everyone locally calls Mama. Later, while sheltering from the rain in a deserted cabin, the Bakers stumble across a cache of arms. Before they can do anything, they are captured by the owner – Butch, of course, since his family are involved in a whole slew of criminal activities, including white slavery. Any hopes of playing the innocent tourists are wiped out when Butch finds Dillon’s police ID. Oops. He and his gang dispose of the couple, but do a poor job on Brenna. And, it turns out, she’s a former Army Ranger, who now has vengeance on her mind.

It’s a solid enough idea, albeit nothing we haven’t seen before. Hollman looks the part too, plausible enough in her attitude that she could be a soldier who has gone back to civilian life. The action, in general, is well-enough handled to pass muster. The lead actress was in Spartacus and Into the Badlands, while she is apparently going to be in the fourth Matrix movie (though I’m restraining my expectations for that). She does seem to know her way around a hand-to-hand fight sequence, and the film has some well-staged examples, helped by Durham avoiding editing them to death.

Unfortunately, the plotting is flat out terrible. I think it begins with the couple opting to have sex in the highly grubby cabin, and goes downhill from there. It’s never quite clear how Brenna survives Butch’s murder attempt, she just kinda gets up and starts walking about. Then she returns to the campsite and finds an ax. Yeah, she has a weapon… which she uses to sharpen a branch, then drops the ax back on the ground and wanders off with the pointy stick instead. She waits for daylight to infiltrate the family compound, rather than taking advantage of darkness. Brenna spends days just wandering the forest, rather than getting help or trying to leave. A booby-trapped branch appears, seemingly out of nowhere. The random Aussie guy.

The idiocy on view here goes on and on, and the missteps are so frequent and painfully glaring. They rob the film of almost all its energy, and any chance of real success. They’re too much of a distraction to ignore, and certainly stick in my mind more than the positive elements. There are few surprises as events unfold, with Butch, Mama and crew continually underestimating Brenna, even after she has wiped out half of their number. Rather than putting a bullet in her head, the idea of “breaking” Brenna and making her as docile and submissive as their other trafficked women, is just another example of the dumb writing in which this indulges. By the time the (no more plausible) ending eventually comes, it’s almost as a relief.

Dir: Stephen Durham
Star: Ellen Hollman, Gary Kasper, Geraldine Singer, Matt Passmore

High Kick Angels

  By

★★★★
“Die Hard in a school.”

This was a rather pleasant surprise. I was expecting a pretty naff entity, more interested in titillation than anything else. I actually got a thoroughly entertaining 90 minutes, with considerably better martial arts than I predicted. Sure, the story – as the tag-line above suggests – is hardly original, and the performances are… well, let’s say variable, and leave it at that. Yet this overcomes its limitations with heart and energy. It takes place in a recently abandoned school where a film club have gained permission to make a movie starring Sakura (Miyahara) and Maki (Aono). Shooting of their zombie epic is rudely interrupted by the arrival of a gang of miscreants, led by J-Rose (Morishita). They’re looking for five USB drives hidden in the school, that combine to give access to money embezzled by a previous school head. They lock down the establishment, and won’t let five schoolgirls get in the way.

First off, it helps that at least three of them are genuine martial artists, with a solid background in karate. They’re not pin-up models given a bit of training, and the benefits are obvious. The director has a good handle on making the most of their talents, too. For example, Aono is tall and leggy, so her style involves copious amounts of kicks – including some which appear to border on the physically impossible. Miyahara may be the most well-rounded in terms of all skills including weapons, however. It’s just a shame the bad guys only have one person capable of going up against them in single combat. I was hoping J-Rose would prove a worthy opponent, yet that never happens. Her daughter, a vaguely Gogo Yubari knock-off, is set up as a bad ass; the skills just aren’t there. Instead, let’s praise the slew of faceless minions, who likely endure multiple beatings from the heroines, in a variety of hoodies, caps and masks to disguise their repeat appearances.

Speaking of the villains… what is up with their eyes? Of the three top baddies, two have bizarre make-up on just one eye, while J-Rose is sprouting the most extreme eyelash extensions I’ve ever seen. They’re bright blue. Yet despite my concerns – not least the Amazon Prime poster above – this is refreshingly non-exploitative. Yes, there are certainly panty flashes, yet these feel almost inevitable given the heroines’ costumes and their actions, and certainly don’t appear to be contrived in the service of fan service, as it were.  It’s a shame the film-within-the-film is all but forgotten by the end, save for Sakura’s efforts to channel her inner movie star. I was hoping this might end up being a karate version of the glorious One Cut of the Dead, blending reality and cinematic fantasy. Sadly, that’s not the case. Yet there’s still plenty here to appreciate and enjoy. The makers have made the most what they have, to the point where I was so busy being entertained, I even stopped noticing the limited resources to hand. Can’t ask for more than that.

Dir: Kazuhiro Yokoyama
Star: Kanon Miyahara, Kaede Aono, Chisato Morishita, Mayu Kawamoto

Restless (2020)

  By

★★
“Mom on a mission”

Single mother Naomi Harper (Anderson) is devoted to her son, and he to her. In an effort to help Mom make ends meet, he gets a job working for notorious local “businessman”, Noah Oliver (Wilson). When her child turns up dead, Naomi is sure that Oliver had something to do with it. The police, in particular Detectives Emory Kota (Conell) and August Hayes ( Jeziorski), don’t necessarily disagree, but their hands are tied. This is partly due to a shortage of actionable evidence, partly because Oliver’s connections run deep into the local political and judicial establishment in Conyers, Georgia, making it impossible to take action against him. Well, at least officially. Naomi has no such limitations, and this apparently mild-mannered loan officer has a background that may prove of help.

The script here isn’t bad. There are a number of interesting angles, such as the parallel actions of a vigilante, working in same area as Naomi, and targetting those who consider themselves above the law. Naomi isn’t the only strong female character either, with Det. Kota frustrated by the restrictions of her position. Then there’s Sophia (Rachel Burger), Oliver’s right-hand ma… er, woman, who proves capable of handling herself physically as well. Though I probably would have been more impressed had Naomi not done that crappy, gangsta “holding the gun at an angle” thing, as she headed towards her final confrontation with Oliver. Nobody with experience and an interest in being taken seriously would be caught dead doing that.

However, the problems here are most readily apparent in the resources here. Or, to be more accurate, the lack thereof. Even though the film tries to work within the budgetary limitations, these are so severe, they can’t be hidden. For instance, scenes which are supposed to take place in a police station, very clearly don’t. Indeed, there’s very little effort to make it look like anything, except a bare, empty room. The same goes for a number of other locations, where the bare minimum appears to have been done in terms of set dressing. Hardly less glaring are the plugs for local venue, Triplz Lounge. I’m sure it’s a lovely place.

Another weakness is that most of the actors don’t appear to fit their characters. Wilson is probably the worst offender, never being convincing as a mob boss – he’s just not intimidating or threatening enough. But to a lesser extent, the same goes for Anderson. Despite copious flashbacks to a time when her son was alive, she rarely seemed like a distraught mother, pushed into unthinkable acts by the callous and indifferent hand of fate.  She’s not a bad actress, competent enough from a technical point of view. There just wasn’t any reason for the viewer to pay the emotional buy-in to her portrayal. I’d not mind seeing what Jackson and his team could do with more money, and I’ve certainly seen worse. Here though, the challenges prove just too much for them to overcome.

Dir: Rodney Jackson
Star: Tai Anderson, Tavares M. Wilson, Robyn Conell, Will Jeziorski

Perilous Waif, by E. William Brown

  By

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

In the future, humanity has spread across much of the universe, but has also adopted all manner of enhancements, with androids and other artificial creations likely outnumbering the people. This section of the galaxy has become a vast cosmic melting pot of cultures with worlds occupied by everything from religious cults to yakuza gangs. Alice Long is an orphan on the strait-laced planet Felicity, but clearly doesn’t fit in, possessing an unusual range of those enhancements, to go with her leaning towards delinquency. Running away from the orphanage, she rescues a woman from attack, and in exchange for her help, becomes one of the crew of the slightly grey-market Square Deal, under Captain Sokol. However, as Alice blossoms, it becomes clear her obscure heritage has blessed her with artificial talents far outstripping Alice’s new colleagues. 

Initially, I really liked this, appreciating the enormous amount of thought which has gone into the universe here. That’s clear from the multiple appendices, explaining technical aspects of how everything from interstellar travel to artificial intelligence works in this setting. I was greatly looking forward to seeing Alice rising from a lowly cabin girl to… well, wherever her skills might take her. Except, it didn’t quire work that way. Her rise is, in fact, super easy, with any impediments barely an inconvenience. For example, this is a universe in which fabricators can be used to make anything for which there’s a recipe, and Alice becomes increasingly over-powered due to all her enhancements. No matter what the situation, it seems she has an app for that. She’s certainly the smartest person in the book, and may well be the strongest, fastest and most lethal as well. Then there’s her heritage, best described as unique. And even if she were to be killed, it’s established that people can get restored from backups into a new body. Death, where is thy sting?

It’s an issue of which the author does seem to be aware, with a mention in one of the appendices of “post-scarcity society”. That seems to be the situation which we have here. Brown spent so much time on the dazzling infrastructure, he forgot to come up with the equally dazzling threats necessary, in a world whose inhabitants calmly discuss the possibility of them surviving a multi-gigaton nuclear blast. There’s absolutely no shortage of action, in particular a final third where Alice has to fight her way off a massive, derelict starship after betrayal by the people they are supposed to be helping. But, while this is currently a stand-alone book, it also has too many loose strands left dangling at the end. My overall feeling is that, while this is a fascinating universe that could serve as the basis for many great stories, Alice Long’s just isn’t one of them. Or, at least, she needs an antagonist of comparable ability and power.

Author: E. William Brown
Publisher: Independently published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book.

The Protégé

  By

★★★
“Q’s the boss?”

It’s nice to see Maggie Q get back into the action genre again. It’s where she achieved renown – most obviously in the second Nikita TV series, but we were already aware of her, thanks to Q’s work in Hong Kong, such as Naked Weapon [let’s just not talk about Model From Hell…]. Of late though, she has worked mostly in other fields; while still genre-friendly, such as Death of Me or Fantasy Island, they’re just not our genre. So, when I heard she was playing an assassin, out for revenge after someone kills her mentor (a role originally given to Gong Li), this immediately got moved to the head of the list, since it seemed like a throwback to why we love her.

While I wanted to really like this, I can only say it’s… okay. This is mostly due to a serious mistep in the second half of the film. I can’t talk about it specifically, for spoiler reasons. But it effectively renders everything which had happened up to that point as irrelevant, and sidelines Q’s character in what had been, to that point, her story. The motivation for the character behaving the way they did seems murky at best. I trust this is all adequately vague. Anyway. Q plays Anna, a Vietnamese orphan rescued during a mission by hitman Moody Dutton, and brought up as his daughter and apprentice. Thirty years later, they have formed a close-knit pairing, until Moody is killed after making inquiries into a long-disappeared person.

Anna vows to find and punish whoever is responsible, and soon finds herself under attack as a result, after persisting despite being warned by the mysterious Michael Rembrandt (Keaton). Their relationship subsequently develops, and these events put Rembrandt’s loyalties under pressure. Unfortunately, this is where the script implodes, in part due to the lightly outlined reason above. But it’s also due to other missteps like an extended flashback to Anna’s time in Vietnam, which do not add anything of significance, and instead divert proceedings, just when things should be accelerating towards a grandstand finale – one that never happens.

If I have major qualms about Richard Wenk’s script, I’ve no real problem with Campbell’s direction. The veteran has a good pedigree, including one of the best Bonds ever in Goldeneye and the two recent Zorro film, and knows where to point a camera. Q doesn’t seem to have lost much speed either, though there is a terseness to some of the killings here. It’s not inappropriate – she’s a professional, after all – but I’d have liked the fights to go longer. As is, the first such scene, where she takes out a mob boss and his bodyguards in about ten seconds, is a good indicator of what to expect. Still, in this area it’s solid stuff, with some moments of intense hyper-violence, such as an opponent going face-first through a sink. That helps lift this to the point where it’s still worthwhile. Yet I can’t help feeling it’s just not as good as it should have been.

Dir: Martin Campbell
Star: Maggie Q, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton, David Rintoul

Backstreet Justice

  By

★★½
“V.I. Boreshawski”

It’s difficult to put a finger on exactly what makes this so flat and uninteresting. The individual elements are fine – or, at least, don’t stand out as being particularly troublesome. However, the end product failed to hold my attention, particularly over the second half. It may be a case of the whole being considerably less than the sum of the parts, though if there was a single factor, I’d have to point at the story. This is probably too complicated for its own good, especially in a 90-minute movie: less would likely have been more.

Maybe it’s just the lead actress’s name, but as the tag-line above suggest, I was getting a distinct vibe of V.I. Warshawski from this. That film, starring Kathleen Turner, came out a few years previously, though wasn’t a big success. Still, there’s something similar here, with a female private eye who cracks wise, in a chilly Northern city (here, Pittsburgh; there, Chicago). The main difference is the heroine here, Keri Finnegan (Kozlowski), is burdened by the death of her father. He was a cop who died in the line of duty, but with a severely tarnished reputation, having apparently been on the take. This has hung over his daughter ever since.

As the film begins, she is on the hunt for a serial killer whom the local cops seem unable to catch – initially, it seems he may be a member of the force. However, it increasingly appears not to be some random psycho. Keri uncovers evidence suggesting it’s part of a plot to make the area undesirable; this will then drive down property prices, allowing a local speculator to come in and pick up a bargain. And this isn’t anything new. The evidence points to this kind of thing happening for a very long time – indeed, it appears increasingly like there may be a connection to her father’s death. Needless to say, there are a lot of people who have a very strong vested interest in keeping the past buried.

Kozlowski, best known for her role in Crocodile Dundee, does a decent job as Keri, and seems to embrace the physical aspects of the role, with a fair amount of running, jumping and mild to moderate fisticuffs. The rest of the cast aren’t bad either, though few of them escape the obvious characters typically present in such things. I just didn’t find myself caring enough (read: at all) about what was happening. There wasn’t much of a sense of threat, despite a heroine who has to engage in some Perils of Pauline-esque narrow escapes, e.g. lobbing an explosive device out of the window, just before the timer reached zero. I think it may be that the nature of the threat is kept nebulous and hidden for too long. But the time it became concrete, it provoked little more than a shrug of my shoulders, and I then went back to surfing idly on my phone. It’s all far too forgettable.

Dir: Chris McIntyre
Star: Linda Kozlowski, Paul Sorvino, Hector Elizondo, John Shea

Robowoman

  By

★½
“Roboring.”

Winner of the 2021 award for Movie Least Like the Poster, we have another poverty row production from the man who gave us Nemesis 5: The New Model. And by “gave,” I mean, no-one in their right mind would pay for it. This is little or no better, though likely benefited from being watched the same evening as Hellfire, which made Robowoman look as if it was unjustly overlooked by the Oscars. It was not a good night, shall we say. The only saving grace was Chris being out, otherwise I’d have had to cash in my entire annual allocation of martyr points. Anyway…

It’s 2024 Los Angeles, and black-market surgery offers cures for almost all ills. A dinner date for Vivica Stevens (Heising) goes wrong when she’s raped and left for dead by Jonathan (Nation) and his pals. Dodgy physician Dr. Michaels (Novak) saves her and outfits the victim with a robo-arm and robo-eyes. Vivica returns to life with her housemate, Evangeline (Price), but is overcome by an urge to use her new-found robo-talents to take revenge on Jonathan and the other perpetrators. But at what cost to her humanity?

First thing: Heising is in her late sixties, though dresses like a woman half her age (let’s just say, I don’t think her encounter with Dr. Michaels was the first time she’d gone under the knife…). While respect is due, it still makes the whole rape thing highly suspect, and some other scenes, such as the gun dealer who comes on to her. The action here is also pure, undiluted shit, largely due to Ferguson’s complete inability to film it. Multiple scenes are shot from behind Vivica, with her completely obscuring any action. Or it may even be a stand-in; her head is frequently cut off by the framing too. I repeat: pure, undiluted shit.

I did quite like Price, who has an easy-going nature in her performance, which appears to have strayed in from a better film. There’s also a scene at a self-defense class where Heising actually emotes to semi-decent effect. However, these elements are vastly outweighed by negatives, such as the lengthy scene of the heroine eating a pizza. Or the robo-arm which is obviously just a plastic glove, while her robo-vision looks like a 99-cent Geordi LaForge accessory from Party City. Or even the sense of location being derailed, by the Los Angeles cops that stop and question Vivica and Evangeline, sporting Texas patches on their sleeves.

With some adjustments, and a budget in line with the script, this might have passed muster. As is, we have to try and believe that hanging up some decrepit blue tarps makes a room a hospital. That’s more effort than this deserves and if you can manage it: well done. Even a walk-on part for scream queen Brinke Stevens (maybe they should have made her the heroine?) at the end, is unable to elevate this to the level of watchable.

Dir: Dustin Ferguson
Star: Dawna Lee Heising, Sue Price, Jonathan Nation, Mel Novak

Hellfire

  By

★
“Hell would, on the whole, be preferable.”

Ir’s not often that I feel my life has become a tiny bit worse for having seen a film, but Hellfire may just about qualify. It’s such a mean-spirited and unpleasant experience, weighed down further by technical ineptitude and actresses who can’t act. Any potential in the somewhat interesting idea – which makes for a good synopsis, at least – is entirely wasted. Someone is killing young women, apparently in an attempt to protect Father McKenzie, a priest under investigation for alleged sexual abuses of pupils at a Catholic school. Chucky (Mercedes) rounds up two of the girls from her class, tattooist Athena (Peach) and stripper Lilly (Divine). After surviving some attacks from a man in glasses (Hoffman), and a betrayal from a former teacher, they decide to go on the offense and track down the pedopriest.

The first fifteen minutes kinda live up to that, albeit in an obviously cheap way – and Lilly is the worst stripper ever, failing to remove even a single item of clothing. I think the point at which this jumped the shark was the extended scene of the trio smoking weed and dropping acid. Watching other people take drugs is among the worst cinematic sins. Would anyone pay to watch me sink a six-pack of beer? Exactly. It is, admittedly, a drug trip necessary to the plot, since it allows the women to recall their abuse at the hands (literally) of McKenzie. But, especially in a film which runs barely 70 minutes including credits, it’s a waste of time. Things only go downhill from there, with the movie basically killing time as they develop their Catholic schoolgirl vigilante personas. Which isn’t anything like as interesting as it should be, attention being diverted by faux pas like the claim the previous victim’s deaths were made to look like natural causes. Oh, so the woman we see in the opening scene, getting hung from a rope in her shower, tripped on the soap or something?

Then there’s the final attack on their former school, where they face the man in glasses, in what may be the worst fight scene in cinematic history, despite the director’s efforts to jazz things up by throwing bad digital FX and screechy sound on top of it. The three then take their revenge on Father McKenzie, and I guess I have to thank the film for introducing me to a genuinely new experience: feeling sorry for a pedophile. Because the former victims’ behaviour is so vile, and carried out with such an abundance of glee, as to make me lose all sympathy for them. It doesn’t help that, of the lead actresses, only Peach knows how to deliver a line with anything inhabiting the same continental landmass as authenticity. The brief running time turns out to be a merciful release, as I don’t think I could have stood a full 90 minutes of this. Let us never speak of it again.

Dir: Moses
Star: Mercedes the Muse, Knotty Peach, Irie Divine, Shawn Hoffman

Boundary Crossed, by Melissa F. Olson

  By

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

After returning from her time in the Middle East with the military, during which she almost died, Allison Luther – now going by her army nickname of Lex – has difficulty readjusting to civilian life. She’s working nights at a convenience store in Boulder, Colorado, and still troubled by her experiences over there. Things change dramatically, when two low-lives with a baby enter the store, for Lex recognizes the child as her niece, Charlie. The resulting confrontation is highly strange, and opens the door for Lex to an utterly different life. In this world, vampires and witches exist, largely unknown to normals, with their struggle for power going on beneath the surface.

It turns out Lex is a powerful “boundary witch”, one who can see and – with training – manipulate the energy of life and death. Her near-death experience had awakened that ability. Meanwhile, her niece is a “null”, someone whose presence suppresses the magical talents of of both witches and vampires. It’s a very valuable talent, and why Charlie had become the target of a pair of vampires. But who were they working for, and what would they have done with her? Seeking protection for Charlie, Lex agrees to work for Boulder’s head vampire, Itachi, who operates out of a coffee-shop. This puts her in a rather odd place, as a witch working for a vamp – and her skill-set doesn’t make her any friends either.

What we have here is fairly standard Urban Fantasy, with the obligatory hawt vampire, Quinn, both attracted to and worried about the heroine, while she has to learn to come to terms with her equally obligatory powers. However, if there’s nothing particularly new here, it is still executed reasonably well. While there’s clearly a lot of scope in the concept, the author doesn’t over-reach herself by trying to cram too much in. Especially in a first volume where there’s always going to be a fair degree of set-up and exposition anyway, it’s wise to focus on Lex and her desire to make sure Charlie is kept from danger. There is stuff around the outside which does feel a bit superfluous – at least in this first volume. Examples include her feelings for Charlie’s father, and a dead sister turning up as a ghost. Yet they never interfere too badly with the main plot, which is solid and keeps moving forward.

Being a former soldier, Lex certainly knows how to handle herself, and is willing to mix it up in defense of Charlie, even with vampires whose state gives them enhanced strength and speed. Though as the book proceeds, her metaphysical skills become more relevant than her physical ones, and they’re a bit less exciting to read about. For instance, “pressing”  – her mind-control talent – is not exactly cinematic, and is a tad convenient, truth be told. Not a bad read, all told, though Olson will need to be careful her heroine doesn’t end up becoming obnoxiously over-powered in future volumes.

Author: Melissa F. Olson
Publisher: 47North, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 5 in the Boundary Magic series.

Girl

  By

★★½
“Axe me another question.”

Thorne appears dedicated to destroying the wimpy image created by her role as a Disney channel heroine. A little while ago, we reviewed Chick Fight, in which she played the bad-ass nemesis at a female fight club. Now, she’s the unnamed heroine (whom I’m going to call Girl, as the credits do), who shows up back in her home-town of Golden after a prolonged absence. She has returned to protect her mother (Lavallee) from her estranged father, only to find someone beat her to the punch. Dad is dangling, lifeless, in the shed, and those responsible are after a stash of cash which he supposedly squirreled away. Not helping matters, those responsible are led by the local sheriff (Rourke), and they are convinced Girl knows where the money is. Fortunately, Girl has acquired some unusual survival skills of her own, in particular, throwing a mean axe, as suggested by the poster.

I would say though, the film would have benefited from more axe-tion, as it were. While it’s established early on that’s she’s packing in this department, you have to wait a good while before the payoff comes, and it’s merely adequate. Until then, there’s the feel of a modern Western, not least in the lack of people – if the streets here don’t quite have tumbleweeds rolling across them, they might as well have. Into this, moseys the lone gun-slinger (or axe-slinger) into a town both controlled and terrorized by corrupt leaders, seeking to right a personal wrong, with the side benefit of cleaning up this here territory. The locals give what support they can, yet are too scared to actively fight back, leaving the heavy lifting to Girl.

While a convincing depiction of small-town America as hell, there’s also a curious lack of tension here. Golden is the kind of place which feels like it would be ground zero for the opioid crisis, yet that seems to have infected the film, with most scenes feeling like they have taken Oxycontin. There’s just such a lack of energy in all the performances. Even Rourke, whom you would expect to bring a certain swagger to the role, as lord of his domain, opts for largely understated, to the point of gently soporific. Of course, as expected, deep-buried family secrets end up getting revealed, not least concerning the relationship between the sheriff and  Girl’s mother.

Thorne gives a decent performance, as someone who has clearly been through a lot, and come out the other side embodying the phrase, “That which does not kill you, makes you stronger.” It feels as if director/supporting actor Faust is aiming for Winter’s Bone, and probably comes up short, perhaps because Girl is too abrasive to be sympathetic. She’s the kind of girl whose sports the chip on her shoulder as ostentatiously as the piercing through her nose, and that’s probably not the kind of character with which I want to spend time. And similarly, if I never go back to Golden again, I’m probably fine with that.

Dir: Chad Faust
Star:Bella Thorne, Mickey Rourke, Chad Faust, Tia Lavallee