Author: Jim McLennan

Dead in the Water

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★★½
“Becalmed”

My heart sank in the first few seconds, when I discovered that this was a SyFy Original Movie. The really poor CGI, of a ship sailing on the ocean, seemed to confirm that I was in for one of their bottom of the barrel productions. In the end, however, this was… just about okay. Incredibly derivative, to be sure, and that’s not its only problem. Yet it still just about sustained my interest. That’s certainly not always the case for SyFy Original Movies, to put it mildly.

This takes place almost entirely on the not-so-good ship Amphitrite, an eco-warrior vessel engaged in tracking illegal Chinese trawlers. Its engine breaks down, right in the path of an incoming storm. They then pick up a survivor out of the water, who turns out to be infected with… something. Which is why he’s telling the crew, “Kill me… Then kill yourselves.” Needless to say, they don’t quite follow his suggestion. Before you can say “Alien rip-off“, they’re moving slowly around the dimly-lit corridors of the ship in search of… something. And before you can say “Thing rip-off,” they’re watching video off the survivor’s phone, and getting paranoid about who among them might, or might not, be infected.

It’s an all-female crew, which is why the film is here, and it’s admirable that no-one explicitly mentions this or makes a fuss about it. They are what they are, seven women who are competent at their jobs – and of course, it’s a reflection of the all-male cast in John Carpenter’s The Thing. The problem is that there isn’t enough effort put into differentiating them, or establishing them as individuals. I’m not certain I could tell you most of their names, or identify them even with a particular characteristic. I’m going to guess the one called “Sparks” was the ship’s engineer. Otherwise, they seemed entirely interchangeable.

The other problem was already mentioned in passing: the remarkable lack of lighting. Look, I get that the ship “lost power”. I understand that your creature budget of 15 South African Rand probably can’t stand up to the harsh glare of daylight. But there is a limit to how much sloth-like meandering along corridors by near-candlelight I can tolerate. And this film reaches that quota inside the first 30 minutes, then keeps right on meandering. Inevitably, the dwindling band of survivors eventually igure out what exactly they are going to do, and how they are going to stop the creature from reaching the all-you-can-infect buffet which is civilization. To the movie’s credit, it doesn’t shy away from the downbeat conclusion of The Thing, though as appears inevitable with SyFy Original Movies, there’s a coda which leaves the door open to a sequel no-one wants or needs.

In the end, the problem is as always: if you steal from the best, you’ll be compared to the best. And Dead in the Water comes up short of The Thing and Alien, by the width of several oceans.

Dir: Sheldon Wilson
Star: Nikohl Boosheri, Christia Visser, Tanya Van Geaan, Bianca Simone Mannie

Captain Marvel

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★★½
“Hardly marvel-lous”

I had a couple of potential concerns going into this. Firstly, my general unfamiliarity with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This was film #21 in their Infinity Saga. I had seen seven. Would this be like trying to follow Game of Thrones‘s penultimate episode, after having missed two-thirds of what preceded it? Secondly, Brie Larson’s press complaints about movie critics being “overwhelmingly white male.” Yep, guilty as charged, m’lord. Would this questionable attitude – that your skin colour and genital configuration matter more than what you do or say – carry over into the movie?

Fortunately, neither turned out to be a significant issue. On the other hand, it’s still not a very good movie.

Oh, it’s occasionally amusing and sometimes reaches the level of moderately impressive spectacle. But the longer it went on, the less involved I was in it. By the time Vers (Larson), a.k.a. Air Force pilot Carol Danvers enters goddess mode and becomes Captain Marvel, all I could think of was, “That’s a silly-looking helmet.” To reach that point, we follow her as alien Vers gets captured by the enemies of her Kree species, the Skrulls. Their brainwashing attempts succeed in partially re-awakening repressed memories of life on Earth as Danvers. The Krulls are after a light-speed engine being developed there by Danvers’s mentor, Dr. Wendy Lawson (Bening). It’s up to Vers to stop them. Except, almost nothing is quite what it seems at first.

My biggest complaint is how the film relies entirely on dramatically convenient amnesia. I found it painfully obvious, the way Vers’s memories repeatedly dribble back in exactly the manner most appropriate for the plot. The most important elements left are until last, because story-line. The period setting of 1995 turns out to be largely pointless, beyond an excuse to throw a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt onto Larson. [I’ll admit, we did pause the Blockbuster Video scene, to try and recognize some of the VHS sleeves, such as Hook and Jumping Jack Flash] It could just as easily have been set now, considering Marvel vanishes at the end, not returning until Avengers: Endgame, as a mid-credits sequence makes clear.

The above would have been okay if the action had been top-drawer, and it isn’t. This is probably the area in which Battle Angel kicks Captain Marvel’s ass the hardest: almost nothing here has any impact, physically or emotionally. Overall, it just feels lazy: look no further than the most obvious choice of  No Doubt’s Just a Girl as the backing track for the final fight. That was about as cringey as the empowerment got; rather more annoying was the political subtext, of “What if we were the real terrorists?” I watched this literally immediately after seeing Ricky Gervais’s beautifully savage assault on Hollywood at the Golden Globes: “You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world.” This film would seem to prove his point.

Dir: Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck
Star: Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Annette Bening

Agent Jade Black

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★½
“Someone should go Black to basics.”

This originally was going to be included in my preview for the year, since it showed up in the IMDb with a release date of January 7, 2020. But on Googling, I found it already had seeped out on Tubi, a free movie channel. At time of writing, this would appear to be the first review written about it anywhere, though it should be considered less a preview than a dire advance warning. Indeed, I could condense the whole thing into one word: “Don’t.” For a more pedestrian, poorly-executed excuse for an action film, you’d be hard pushed to find. Right down to the initials of its lead character and the tag-line on the poster (right), this possesses aspirations it fails miserably to achieve. On the plus side, 2020 can really only go up from here.

Jade Black (Burgess) is a globe-trotting agent, working for a clandestine department of the US government under her boss, Malcolm (Flack). Initially tasked with bringing a scientist in from Italy, that mission goes pear-shaped, and the target killed. His laptop survives, and opens the door to a looming plot. He was working on a biological weapon known as “Juliet”, triggered by chemicals the body releases during sex. The shadowy Darrian group are plotting to use this, and the related antidote, for… the usual nefarious purposes in which shadowy groups in C-grade movies engage, including the release of Juliet at a political fundraiser. Front and center in opposition to Jade is Darrian operative Elle (Franklin), another former acolyte of Malcolm. Like Jade, she was rescued by him from sex traffickers as a teenager. Only, in Elle’s case, the psychological damage suffered was too great to overcome, and she went rogue instead.

The above actually sounds kinda interesting – certainly, considerably more so than it is in execution. Part of the problem is the resources are incapable of delivering anything the script asks of them. “Italy” for example, appears entirely depicted by the scientist using an espresso maker. There’s not even any token stock-footage of Rome. When your film is shot entirely in Oklahoma, why mention Italy at all? This kind of ludicrous over-reach peppers the whole movie, considering it can only depict Malcolm’s office by tacking a couple of maps to the wall of a generic room. Spears’ direction is also terrible, though it may be more of an editorial issue. Both individual shots and entire scenes appear to have been cut with a blunt butter-knife, ending too soon or going on too long.

There’s absolutely no rhythm or pacing, with the film lurching and juddering from one moment to the next, and the players exchange one-liners that are less groan-worthy than induce actual nausea. It rapidly becomes painful to watch, despite the best efforts of the cast, who aren’t as relentlessly terrible as the direction or writing. Franklin comes out best, sinking her teeth effectively into her bad-girl role. But you could have had Meryl Streep in this, and she would have been unable to salvage it.

Dir: Terry Spears
Star: Katie Burgess, Sidney Flack, Connie Franklin, Taylor Reich

No Shelter, by Robert Swartwood

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

“Meet Holly Lin. Nanny by day, assassin by night.” That was the tagline here, and you’ll understand why it jumped off the Amazon page and onto my Kindle. I was expecting something like Mary Poppins crossed with Atomic Blonde [“A spoonful of C-4 helps the terrorists go down…”], which is a great concept. However, I guess I’m going to have to write that book myself, because this isn’t it. I suppose, technically it is, though may be closer to like “vaguely nannies some times, assassin at others”. It certainly helps in terms of workplace schedule flexibility, that she nannies for her government boss. So it’s apparently fine when she has to abandon her charges and jet off from Washington to Las Vegas to assassinate someone selling a flash drive, on which is… Well, we’ll get back to that.

Holly also had a tendency to go off-mission, riding off into the Nevada desert on her own to rescue a bunch of sex-trafficked women. That’s a decision that comes back to haunt her later on, though it’s extraordinarily convenient how all the bad guys seem to know and work with each other. They must have a villains’ Facebook group or something. The other major issue is the shift in focus. In the second half, the main antagonist becomes someone who was only mentioned in flashback/passing in the first. There’s little or no emotional resonance to the conflict as a result. Though if you can’t guess the identity of the mysterious figure who spares Holly’s life in an alley, you probably need to read more of this genre.

Swartwood has a better handle on the action, with a number of well-written and fast-paced set pieces, and a heroine who has no problem using brutal violence as a tool. However, the underlying logic on both sides is often questionable. The climax occurs after Holly’s charges are kidnapped and ransomed, held in exchange for that pesky flash drive. Yet the way in which she goes about retrieving it, seems more designed for spectacle than good sense – and she needn’t even have bothered, since the villain agrees to meet her without requiring any kind of proof she has it. These kind of missteps bedevil the story. Though I did appreciate the final, savage payoff to the running thread about the elevator in her apartment building being slow or out of order.

There just isn’t enough here to make it stand out from the pack of other assassins-with-a-heart-of-gold-and-a-troubled-past books. If it had played up the “double life” concept – making Holly some kind of bad-ass baby-sitter – this could have been a novel angle. Instead, it hardly gets much of a look-in, and as a final insult [probably a spoiler, but I don’t care] Swartwood can’t even be bothered to tell us what is actually on the flash drive to cause such mayhem and bloodshed. It’s a complete McGuffin. Unfortunately, this author is no Hitchcock.

Author: Robert Swartwood
Publisher: RMS Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 3 in the Holly Lin series.

2020 in Action Heroine Films

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And there ends 2019. Before we get on to looking at what’s to come in the action heroine arena for 2020, let’s quickly review what was saw this year from the film out of the 2019 preview. It was al mix of hits and misses – but probably skewed, rather disappointingly, towards the latter. Anna, Dark Phoenix, the Charlie’s Angels reboot and Terminator: Dark Fate all severely underperformed at the box-office. With even Battle Angel not exactly setting up a franchise, probably only Captain Marvel should be considered as a definitive hit. And it probably says something that I haven’t seen it yet. Our film of the year probably goes to She Never Died, which managed not just to match but surpass its predecessor. And with that… on to 2020, which should have at least a couple of definitive hits on the schedule!

Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (7 Feb)

We’ll start with what seems certain to be the clunkiest title of the year, which everyone will refer to as Birds of Prey. Or maybe BoP. On the plus side: Harley Quinn was pretty much the best thing about Suicide Squad and Margot Robbie has repeatedly proven herself very watchable e.g. Terminal. On the other… Well, that trailer is a mess. I’ve watched it several times, and still have no clue what the film is about, It’s clearly a girl-gang/girl-power film, but I’ve got a horrible feeling it’s going to end up closer to Spice World than Switchblade Sisters. We will see.

Black Widow (1 May)

From Marvel to DC, and a project which has been in the works since at least 2004. Traction grew after her arrival in in Marvel Cinematic Universe, and though she’s not the first superheroine film in its renaissance. will have to fill the large shoes of Avengers: Endgame, merely the biggest box-office hit in the history of cinema. [I’m not counting Spiderman: Far From Home, because reasons] Scarlet Johansson has proven a good fit for the character, and has an action pedigree, even if Ghost in the Shell was underwhelming. I am cautiously optimistic for this one.

Enola Holmes (TBA)

This is the first entry of what’s hoped will be a franchise. The characters are based on the books by Nancy Springer, about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes’s teenage young sister. Millie Bobby Brown from Stranger Things plays the title character, who in this movie will be investigating the disappearance of her mother. Henry Cavill is Sherlock. The makers will be hoping no-one links it to Holmes and Watson, a turkey which won the 2019 Razzie for worst picture.

Gretel and Hansel (31 Jan)

Directed by Oz Perkins, the change in the traditional title was to stress she is the focus of the story, with her considerably older than her little brother (16 and 8 respectively). Perkins had described it as a “coming-of-age story,” though the basic premise remains as in the Grimm fairy-story: the siblings are trapped in and having to escape from, the house belonging to a witch (Alice Krige). The trailer definitely seems to put this into the “folk horror” category, not far from Perkins’s previous I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House.

Gunpowder Milkshake (TBA)

Certainly possessing the best action-heroine cast of 2020. Karen Gillan, Carla Gugino, Michelle Yeoh, Lena Headey and Angela Bassett? Okay, you have my attention. Not much more is known about this one, beyond a bare synopsis: “A secret sisterhood comes to the rescue of a mother-daughter assassin team.” Yep, still interested: Headey and Gillan are the family slayers in question, and the non-female cast is led by Paul Giamatti. I did enjoy director Navot Papushado’s previous feature, Big Bad Wolves, so if this can deliver on the potential of its cast, I’ll be there.

Monster Hunter (4 Sep)

Alice may be done, but the Paul W.S. Anderson collaborations with his wife, Milla Jovovich, on video-game adaptations continue on. This was a carry-forward from last year’s preview, but now appears fully set for September. A teaser trailer leaked in June, including Jovovich and co-star Tony Jaa, but that has been about it. Based on the response to their Resident Evil films, I expect this to be decent mindless entertainment, while fans of the video-games howl in outrage at how it isn’t exactly the same as on their computers…

Mulan (27 Mar)

Disney’s strip-mining of its animation vaults continues apace. But who can be surprised when the results include the #2 (The Lion King), #8 (Aladdin) and #25 (Dumbo) films world-wide in 2019? If I’d to predict, I’d say this will come in between Aladdin and Dumbo. Hard to say if the controversy over cast members’ pro-Beijing stance will hurt it: could be just a few Twitteratti who care. I know I don’t. This looks suitably serious, and the apparent absence of any comic sidekick should help in that department.

Pixie (TBA)

Limited information about this, but the synopsis is: “To avenge her mother’s death, Pixie masterminds a heist but must flee across Ireland from gangsters, take on the patriarchy, and choose her own destiny.” The tone appears to be comedy-thriller, which does help to defer the eye-rolling experienced following the bit about taking on the patriarchy. Hopefully it’ll go easy on the wokeness. Olivia Cooke stars, in the title role.

Promising Young Woman (17 Apr)

Speaking of woke… Going by the trailer (in the playlist below), this one appears to be betting on an exacta of SJW talking points: college sexual assault and rape while drunk. “A young woman, traumatized by a tragic event in her past, seeks out vengeance against men who cross her path.” Worth noting: “Promising young man” is what they called Brock Turner, student athlete and convicted rapist. I do sense the message here is considered more important than the medium, but a decent cast including Carey Mulligan and Bo Burnham, might salvage it.

The Rhythm Section (31 Jan)

Pushed back a year from its original scheduled release date of Feb 2019, So let me copy-paste: This will star Blake Lively as Stephanie Patrick, “a woman who seeks to uncover the truth behind a plane crash that killed her family. Patrick was also meant to be on the flight. After she discovers that the crash was not accidental, she embarks on a mission to track down those responsible by assuming the identity of an assassin.” It’s based on the novel by Mark Burnell, which “is not a thriller about the hunt for a terrorist, although that is the path Stephanie takes, and it’s not a story about revenge, although justice for her family is her initial motivation. Rather, The Rhythm Section is the story of Stephanie’s attempt to reclaim herself.”

The Serpent (5 Jan)

Not to be confused with the upcoming TV miniseries of the same name, this gets the year started, being released this Sunday. It doesn’t exactly look big-budget, while the plot is generic spy story #4, and I quote: “given a special assignment but then set up by her own agency.” Yawn. However, the trailer has its moment – the heroine letting loose with two automatic weapons simultaneously stood out – and if there’s as much action as it seems, could be fun. Interestingly, the film appears to have been written and directed by its star, model Gia Skova.

Run Hide Fight (TBA)

“17-year-old Zoe Hull uses her wits, survival skills, and compassion to fight for her life, and those of her fellow classmates, against a group of live-streaming school shooters.” In the wake of recent events, this may potentially be skating on the thin ice of good taste, unless handled correctly. We’ll see. Thomas Jane and Radha Mitchell play Zoe’s parents, though it’ll be the feature debut of Isabel May as Zoe. Horror icon Barbara Crampton is also present.

Tribal Get Out Alive (9 Apr – UK)

Hmm, perhaps Birds of Prey has some contest as the most clunky title of 2020? But what interests me most is star Zara Phythian (right), someone we’ve been keeping an eye on since 2016. Here’s a synopsis: “Elite military personnel Caitlin Ross retires from service after suffering from PTSD. Along with former team member and close friend Brad Johnson, they are hired by young, troublesome millionaire Richard Kenning to clear and secure the land and property he has recently inherited. It soon becomes apparent they are being hunted and the race is on to get out alive.”

Two of Us (28 Jan)

Originally known (in the trailer, for example) as Dead Earth, it’s the story of two young Thai women who try to survive after the zombie apocalypse. Zombies, unsurprisingly, ensue, if the trailer is anything by which we should judge it. According to the IMDb, it was shot in 9 days at an abandoned resort in Thailand. And a very long time ago, back when director Wych Kaosayananda was known as Kaos, he gave us Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, still the worst-reviewed film in the history of RottenTomatoes.com, with 118 reviews, none positive. Hey, the only way is up!

Underwater (10 Jan)

There was a spell at the end of the eighties when this kind of oceanic action films were popular e.g. The Abyss, Leviathan, Deepstar Six. But it seems like a while, so are we ripe for a resurgence? Kristen Stewart is the big name in a cast that also includes T.J. Miller and Vincent Cassel. The film follows a crew of underwater researchers who must scramble to safety after an earthquake devastates their subterranean laboratory. But going by the trailer, the earthquake appears not to be the last of their problems… Cthulhu. I hope it’s Cthulhu…

Wonder Woman 1984 (5 Jun)

If I was a betting man, I’d wager this one will take most money of these. It does appear a little less emotionally-intense than the first film, which focused on the hell which was World War I. This might be a more conventional comic-book approach, though I’ll admit to having been super-stoked by the trailer. In particular for its extremely cool use of an orchestral version of New Order’s Blue Monday, which managed to be retro-nostalgic and cutting edge at the same time.

Zombinatrix (TBA)

From the potentially sublime to the utterly ridiculous (hopefully, deliberately). The synopsis, as submitted to the IMDB by lead actress and co-writer Bianca Allaine: “A Dominatrix is brutally murdered by thugs. Returning from the grave as Zombinatrix, she takes great pleasure in incorporating her sadistic S&M kinks into killing anyone crossing her path. After all, she is into whips and BRAINS.” If it isn’t getting Oscar consideration this time next year, I say we storm Hollywood. :)

Rudhramadevi

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★★½
“A two and a half-hour gender reveal party.”

Not unlike the saga of Manakarnika and its various adaptations, this is based on a figure from Indian history: Rani Rudrama Devi, who ruled over the southern Indian area called Kakatiya in the second half of the 13th century. Her father had no genuine male heirs, so to ensure succession, declared her legally to be his son. When the king passed away, some nobles attempted to rebel against being ruled by a woman, but she and her army prevailed, and she subsequently sat on the throne for 30 years. That’s very loosely echoed in the story here. However, King Ganapatideva (Raju) carries out the pretense from the birth of Rudrama Devi (Shetty), with only a few aware of her true gender.

It is successfully hidden for 25 years, until mounting pressure forces Ganapatideva to get his “son” married off. Probably inevitably, this leads to the secret becoming discovered by his enemies. Murari Devudu (Adithya Menon) and Hari Hara Devudu, nobles long opposed to Ganapatideva’s rule, attempt to use it to force the king out. He tries to gets ahead of them by revealing it first, but a disgruntled population allows Murari and Hari to stage a coup. Their harsh rule allows Rudrama, with the help of childhood friend and long-term rebel, Gona Ganna Reddy (Arjun), to gather her own army. She prepares an assault on the heavily-fortified capital where her enemies lie in wait.

At 158 minutes, including a clunky wrap-around sequence involving… uh, Marco Polo, this certainly takes its time to get going, and only redeems itself with a somewhat impressive finale. Beyond the problems of the pacing, there are a bevy of issues on the technical side. This was made in 3-D, and it’s often painfully obvious, in a House of Wax way. There are also a lot of digital effects, most of which are second-tier in quality. They’re the sort which work fine off in the distance, such as the finale where army formations take the shape of snakes and eagles. But these are much less effective close-up, such as the CGI elephant which Rudrama has to tame. Overall, it’s severely jarring, and much less successful than Manakarnika, due to the obviously digital nature of many of the elements here.

Shetty doesn’t really have the presence necessary to command the screen. Arjun does a much better job, though it was nice that Reddy steps aside at the end, allowing the title character to take center stage. Her sidekick even explicitly explains himself: “If I killed him it is not a big deal. The Kakatiya people who dreamt a male royal heir will protect them, their expectations should be met by a woman. In no way is a woman
any less brave… So Rudrama must kill him.” It’s a shame the rest of the players, and indeed the film-makers, didn’t realize this over the first 145 minuts of the film, and give their heroine room. Instead, I’m left with no real explanation of why she is still remembered, 650 years after she took the throne.

Dir: Gunasekhar
Star: Anushka Shetty, Allu Arjun, Adithya Menon, Krishnam Raju

Tiffany Jones

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★★½
“Immodesty Blaise.”

Fashion model Tiffany Jones (Hempel) finds herself dropped into the middle of international intrigue, after President Boris Jabal (Pohlmann), leader of the Eastern European state of Zirdana, takes a shine to her during a state visit to Britain. It’s supposed to be a trade negotiation, but is really to allow Jabal to broken an arms deal with some shady Americans. Her meeting the President brings her to the attention of two factions of Zirdanian rebels.

The nice is led by Prince Salvator (Thomas), the ruler in exile. The not-so-nice are a more aggressive faction, operating out of a restaurant kitchen. Both wonder what Tiffany is doing with Jabal, and are keen to use her to achieve their ends. Which is fine by her, since she has no love for the authoritarian regime which controls Zirdana. So Tiffany agrees to a plan where Jabal will be distracted, preventing from seeing the arms dealers, and a substitute will take the meeting in his place.

Walker is better know for his S&M horror films, with titles such as House of Whipcord, and it’s safe to say saucy comedy like this is not his strong suit. There’s no shortage of sauce, to be sure. It’s reported that Hempel (now known as Lady Weinberg, through marriage) bought up the rights to the film, as well as her work with Russ Meyer, Black Snake, for showing rather too much of her. And that’s before we get to the garden party she throws for Jabal, populated by a flock of 1970’s dolly-birds, who shed their clothes enthusiastically at the drop of a cocktail napkin. The whole thing – a plot to get sexually compromising material on a visiting foreign leader – does still have contemporary resonance…

It’s the comedy angles which are a horrible failure, with virtually every attempted joke falling flatter than Hempel’s chest [quite how she ended up in a Meyer film escapes me, given his fondness for the more-endowed end of the feminine spectrum. Then again, he said later of Hempel, “We had a stand-in for the tits and wouldn’t let her speak.”] It’s not just the passage of time, for the Carry On films of the same era have endured very well: I suspect this was simply not very funny to begin with, and appears to have tanked at the box-office. Like Modesty Blaise, it was based on a British newspaper comic-strip, which ran from 1964-77. Unusually for the era, it was created by two women, Pat Tourret and Jenny Butterworth, though I suspect the newspaper version was likely less salacious.

The main redeeming aspect here is Hempel, who has a lovely, breezy charm which manages to sail above the leaden material, almost redeeming it. She portrays Jones with an endearing mix of savviness and innocence, as she dodges the (literal) grasp of President Jabal, and the more fanatical of his opponents, while working to help the Prince regain his throne. Probably wisely, the morality of replacing an absolute, unelected leader with another absolute unelected leader, simply because the latter is younger and cuter, is never addressed. Hempel is not quite enough to rescue this, and it’s perfectly understandable why this vanished into obscurity, with or without the lead actress’s help.

Dir: Pete Walker
Star: Anouska Hempel, Eric Pohlmann, Damien Thomas, Susan Sheers

Chokehold

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★★
“Gasping for air.”

I wanted to like this more than I did: director Skiba is a veteran of the Arizona film scene, though his other film previously covered here, .357: Six Bullets for Revenge, left a bit to be desired. This is slightly better; but only slightly. The heroine is Zoe (Croden), a mixed martial artist who is trying to make it big in Las Vegas. Her dad (Van Dien) is back in Arkansas, and crosses paths with Russian mobsters, led by Natalia (McCrea). It doesn’t end well. Let’s just say, if you’re watching this for Van Dien, you’ll quickly be underwhelmed. Zoe leaves Las Vegas, seeking justice for her father – naturally, the only way to get to Natalia is through her convenient underground fighting circuit…

It’s as if the writers were determined to check off every cliche of the genre in 95 minutes. If that was indeed their aim: well done. Outside of having a female protagonist, there is almost nothing new or of interest here, the story unfolding exactly as you’d expect after Van Dien collects his cheque. I think peak eye-rolling was unlocked when Zoe “discovers” a video letter left by her father. Fortunately, this narrative conceit was too much even for Skiba, and is quickly discarded. Even the depiction of the underground arena was painful, with blaring music from a DJ, and people doing that “waving their fists in the air during fights” thing, that you only see anyone do in movies.

All of the above would likely be fine, if the fights were any good, as Lady Bloodfight proved, overcoming its basic plot with a plethora of kick-ass action scenes. Certainly, there’s no shortage of action here. However, MMA style is not the same thing as kung-fu movie style: one isn’t necessarily better than the other, they’re just different. Here, instead of going for one or the other, they occupy an unfortunate middle-ground between realistic and non-realistic, and don’t work as either. The exception is a battle between Zoe and Natalia in a bar. Released from the constraints of being a “proper” fight, the makers get to have a bit more fun, e.g. kicking a bottle at your opponent – and as a result, so do the audience.

The producers of the film include two sports legends. However, they’re baseball players, Kenny Lofton and Torii Hunter, which makes mixed martial-arts seem like an off choice of topic. Probably wisely, they stay off-camera, and some credibility is lent by the presence of retired MMA star Chael Sonnen, playing a fight promoter. It isn’t enough to save this, as it limps through the motions towards the expected ending. The surprises end with the unexpectedly early departure of Van Dien. And even that’s more the result of his name being misleadingly front and centre on most of the advertising, rather than any conscious effort by the film itself. Despite the female focus, this is just another entry in the bargain bin of UFC-lite fight flicks.

Dir: Brian Skiba
Star: Melissa Croden, Ilona McCrea, Corinne Van Ryck de Groot, Casper Van Dien

Win a TacGirls calendar!

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The kind folks at TacGirls have kindly sent over a box of their calendars. After taking care of my Christmas presents – I’m sure my mother is going to love it… – we’ve got a few left over, so would like to spread the love from here. So we’re going to give away a bunch (number vague and to be determined!). If you want one, it’s simple to put yourself in with a chance. Here’s how to enter:

  • Email [email protected], with “TACGIRLS CALENDAR” in the subject line.
  • Include your name, shipping address and three favorite action heroine films
  • That’s it.
  • Entries close on year’s end: midnight on December 31, 2019
  • After that I’ll pull a number of entries matching whatever is the number of calendars available, notify the winners and ship ’em out ASAP.
  • This offer is technically only available to those in the United States, simply because of the cost of overseas shipping would bankrupt me.
  • But I am always open to pleading letters from foreign readers, if you want to make your case!

And, of course, you can always bypass the whole random process, and just purchase one directly from the source!

Buy a 2020 TacGirls Calendar