Author: Jim McLennan

Paradise Z

  By

★★½
“Slow, slow, quick-quick, slow”

This is all a bit confusing, not least because of the three different titles under which this is known. It also doesn’t help that it is one-third of an intended trilogy. This is the first part. I had previously seen the third, The Driver starring Mark Dacascos, a while ago (not GWG, but reviewed on my other site), and the second… hasn’t yet been made. Not quite the way I’d have gone about it. To be honest, you are probably better off having watched The Driver, since that explains a lot of stuff that this doesn’t. Which may well explain the eviscerating reviews on the IMDb. Though maybe it is the director: for a long time ago, he also made Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, which remains one of the worst-ever reviewed movies on Rotten Tomatoes.

There are really only two characters here: Sylvia (Gorum) and Rose (Tantayanon). They are the sole occupants of what seems to be a villa complex in Thailand, where they spend their days lying about and making yarn pictures. If you’ve seen The Driver, in which Sylvia and Rose appear at the end, you’ll know there’s a zombie apocalypse in progress, with these walking dead being particularly attracted to sound. Hence (because the film never explains it), S+R’s use of headphones, as well as a noise-cancelling toilet. Inevitably, it can’t last, and their idyll – “Another day in paradise,” as one of them sardonically comments – is eventually interrupted by a horde of fast-moving and extremely aggressive invaders.

Part of the reason I suspect it was critically eviscerated was that it’s fifty minutes or more before any zombies show up on screen, which is not what you’d expect from the trailer. It, quite deliberately, takes its time getting there, and depicts the boredom of our heroine’s daily life. Quite easy to mistake a portrayal of tedium as tedious itself, especially given the near-total lack of dialogue here. Even I, who was probably better prepared and informed than most, found this element severely overplayed. 10-15 minutes would have been fine, and done an equally good job of establishing the necessary atmosphere, rather than occupying the bulk of the film’s running time, as it does.

Eventually, and quite abruptly, it does kick into life, and there is an adequate amount of mayhem as the ladies realize their location has become untenable. It’s mostly close-combat, and in another interesting twist, the zombies are afraid of water (perhaps suggesting the disease here is akin to rabies?), something which can be used to humanity’s advantage. That said, it’s still not what I’d consider an acceptable payoff for the long lead-up, in which the sole point of note is probably some significant lesbian canoodling between Rose and Sylvia. This likely doesn’t count as enough, and as a standalone movie, falls short of satisfying. It might have worked as an episode of a long-running TV series, and is certainly different from your typical zombie film. Different, however, is not necessarily the same as good.

Dir: Wych Kaosayananda
Star: Milena Gorum, Alice Tantayanon, Brian Migliore
a.k.a. Two of Us or Dead Earth

Girls, Guns and Blood

  By

★½
“It’s trying. So very trying…”

Maybe I’m getting too old for this kind of thing. Perhaps there was a time in my callow youth when I would have been grateful for the light-to-moderate amount of gratuitous nudity which this contains. Now, though? Its flaws overwhelm any such merits. Or maybe it was the fact that I watched this while dozed up to the eyeballs on DayQuil, and frankly, coughing up phlegm proved to be a more satisfactory pursuit.

It takes place in a supposed “brothel” run by Monique (Love). Quotes used advisedly, since it looks considerably more like someone’s house. A party of high-rollers are scheduled to be coming in, dropping thousands of dollars: though quite why they want to, escapes me, since the staff here are no more than “somewhat attractive.” You could probably catch better fish with a bottle of Jager in your average night-club on a Friday evening. Anyway, doubts about this aside, it turns out this “party” is actually a robbery, who loot the place after abusing the women. 

Needless to say, they’re not standing for that, so Kitty (Nguyen), Trix (Amber), Beretta (Valentien) and the rest of the girls ride out in hot pursuit, intent on recovering the ill-gotten gains and punishing the perpetrators. Fortunately, the gang have gone their separate ways, which makes it easier for the women to take them down: the old “Let’s split up!” mistake. But perhaps things aren’t quite as cut and dried as they appear. Maybe there’s a snake in the grass, who is quite happy to let her fellow hookers thin out the herd on her behalf, because the fewer slices of the pie there end up being, the better it will be for the survivors.

It’s all tiresomely amateur. Not least, the feeble attempts at comic relief, such as the gangster kingpin, Kaiser, whose droning complaints about lost money to a ski-mask clad ninja, go on way past what could remotely be considered entertaining. The repeated us of Six Million Dollar Man sound effects also should also have been strangled at birth. The pacing in general is awful, and the lead performances generally reflect the fact that most of the actresses are better known for adult work than their Broadway resumes. Nguyen and Love are, at least relatively credible, capable of walking and delivering lines at the same time. Some of the others? Not so much. Let’s leave it at that.

There were a couple of moments in the action which did actually work. Though I’m not sure how much sense they could be said to make, e.g. one of the women suddenly pulling a flaming sword out of… well, I’m not even going to hazard a guess at that. But when you’re left yearning for the understated subtleties of an Andy Sidaris film, there’s clearly something wrong. It might have succeeded better with alcohol, but that would likely not have combined well with my medications. Not a risk I was prepared to take, at least.

Dir: Thegin German + Robert Rowland
Star: Christine Nguyen, Britney Amber, Kleio Valentien, Rebecca Love

Soeurs D’Armes

  By

★★½
“Army dreamers.”

This suffers from being almost exactly the same story as the previous feature we reviewed about women Kurdish fighters going up against ISIS, Les Filles Du Soleil. Both focus on a woman who is kidnapped by ISIS after they sweep through her town, and gets sold into slavery by her captors. She escapes, and joins of the all-female units who are battling the jihadist occupation. Bur there is a family member – in Filles, the heroine’s son; here, her younger brother – who is still with ISIS and has become a child soldier for them. Even if you haven’t seen the earlier film, you’ll not be surprised to hear this plays a key role in the film’s climax. The similarities are so startling, I kept expecting to hear this was a remake. It just appears to be a carbon-copy.

There are some differences, the most notable feature being the multinational nature of the women’s group here. As well as local Yezidi Zara (Gwyn), there are two young Frenchwomen, Kenza (Garrel) and Yaël (Jordana), an American sniper (Nanna Blondell, who was in Black Widow), etc. The ISIS are similar: the chief “bad guy” is English, with a strong Northern accent – though I’ve been unable to take English jihadists seriously, ever since watching Four Lions. It’s no easy task for the women’s commander (Casar) to mesh all these different upbringings, experiences and personalities into a cohesive unit.

And extending the similarity to Filles, the film has the same main weakness, and ends up spreading itself too thinly across the multiple stories it wants to tell. None of them manage to acquire the necessary depth, and most of which are more or less obvious. Not helping, the film has an unfortunate tendency to sink into drippy feminism. The montage sequence of the women training, accompanied by a pseudo-empowering “I am woman, hear me roar”-type song, marked a particular low point. More successful in general is the technically impressive action. The film’s best sequence depicts a battle between the women and a platoon of ISIS troops who are chasing a group of fleeing refugees, which includes Zara. It’s beautifully shot and well-staged, with a genuine sense of tension.

Yet, there are other, almost embarrassingly naive moments, such as the women entering a town their side has just bombed, and standing in the middle of the street for a chat, without checking the area has been cleared. I’m not a soldier, but even I know that’s… not wise. Such gaffes aside, it’s mainly the hackneyed and trite storyline that stops this from achieving any real degree of success. There is certainly a fascinating story to be told in the Kurdish women’s battalions and their part in the war against ISIS.  But that’s now two efforts which appear to have barely scratched the surface, or gone beyond the obvious. Particularly here, they seem more interested in political, religious and gender-based point-scoring than telling a good story.

Dir: Caroline Fourest
Star: Dilan Gwyn, Amira Casar, Camélia Jordana, Esther Garrel

Girls With Guns Calendars 2021

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Welcome to our eleventh annual round-up of girls with guns calendars. This one almost slipped my mind until I suddenly realized it was November 30! Still, given the all-round awfulness of the year, what better way to pass the time, then to look forward to 2021? The sooner it gets here, the better, I’d say… We do bid farewell to one of the icons of the genre, with Hot Shots having retired after their 2020 edition – maybe they knew what was coming this year! And sadly, it seems the pandemic and resulting shutdown has taken its toll, with definitely a smaller number available this time round.  Still, below, you’ll find prices (generally excluding shipping), sample images and links to purchase for all the calendars we could find. We’ll add more if we see them, feel free to email us if you know of any others

TAC GIRLS

TacGirls.com – $18.95

“The Tactical Girls® 2021 Bikini Gun Calendar is our Best of the Best Edition, with 13 months of the best photos from our 13 year history. Many of these shots were originally our cover photos or hugely popular fan favorites. For example, June 2021 is our 2010 cover model, Erin Banks with an M249 SAW, Vanessa Swainston, the 2013 cover with an Surgeon .338LM is January 2022 and our cover is Robin Raider from October 2019 with a DRD Paratus with a shoutout to the Marines. Every 2021 Best of the Best Tactical Girls Calendar comes with a 12X24 mini Poster insert with the cover girl Robin Raider on the front and a collection of other great shots on the reverse. It slides out of the calendar, no tearing or staples to pull. The remaining memorable shots bring you 13 months the best photos with some of the world’s most exotic weaponry in realistic tactical settings. The 2021 Tactical Girls Calendar Best of the Best Calendar includes the KRISS Vector SMG, the Cadex CDX-30 Guardian Precision Rifle and the Kel-Tec KSG Tactical Short bullpup Shotgun. All of these, along with a variety of carbines, battle rifles, machine guns, pistols and sniper rifles, all with gorgeous models in realistic settings.”

LIBERTY BELLES

LibertyBellesUSA.com – $14.49

:It’s the year 1777 and King George III has lost control of his naughty children. Even Captain America’s ass can’t compare to these Belles of the Revolution.  Get ready for another year as they pose for liberty and the right to bear arms, shoulders, and legs. Each month, the ladies portray important female figures (both famous and obscure) who nonetheless fought along side the men during the war that birthed our nation. The designs for this 2021 calendar is inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Alminac.” It features a Lunar calendar, a measurement tool on the side, and a bit of important wisdom from our second president & founder, John Adams, and —of course as always— girls with firearms.  This calendar also showcases the dates for some of the most infamous battles of the revolution. Only Federally observed  holidays are included in this calendar. The calendar also includes a 12″ x 18″ centerfold pull out poster.”

GUNS AND GIRLS

GunsAndGirlsCalendar.com – available through Amazon, $13.92

The website doesn’t seem to have been updated, but there does appear to be a new edition of this one available. Though maybe “Guns N Girls” is different from ‘Guns % Girls”? “The 2021 GUNS AND GIRLS wall calendar is packed with beautiful pin up models and many of today’s most popular weapons, everything from handguns to AR15s. This 16 month large format calendar is 17″x 28″ when hung up and a perfect gift for any Armed Service Member, Police Officer or Shooting Enthusiast. Also includes a bonus 12 month poster inside giving you two calendars in one package!”

ZAHAL GIRLS

zahal.org – $25.90

“We are proud to present our new ZAHAL Girls Calendar which combines the best of both sexy models and the tactical gear world. No gun bunnies! Only IDF veterans. Size is Approx A3. No gun bunnies! Only IDF veterans.”

WEAPON OUTFITTERS

WeaponOutfitters.com

In a cunning marketing plot, this one is available in two versions. Safe For Work ($19,95): “The safe for work version, features classic Weapon Outfitters landscape and portrait photography with a variety of models. Featuring:  Alex Zedra, fan-favorite Eva, Silvia Kitsune, KC, with special appearances from the Tacticats, Vanellope Von Floof, and more!”

Not Safe For Work ($29.95): “Twelve months of Weapon Outfitters After Dark (WOAD) spice! Not compliant with HR departments, nor endorsed by jealous girlfriends and wives. Featuring a published models including but not limited to: Casey, Calypso, Tabi, and Aurora! The 2021 NSFW calendar is a mix of studio and landscape photography. ”

DILLON PRECISION

DillonPrecision.com – $14.99

“The Dillon Precision 2020 Calendar is in stock and ready for your reloading room, office, or wherever you want to display the World’s Finest Models and Firearms.”

ALPHA GUN ANGELS

aga-guns.com – $14.99

“The traditional “Alpha Gun Angels” Calendar has arrived! This time we took our Calendar’s photםshoot to the next level! We gathered our BADASS squad to a crazy photoshoot in a CHOPPER! Every month will feature one of our GORGEOUS and BADASS girls with our sponsored products!”

WILD DAKOTA GIRLS

wilddakotagirls.com – $14.95

Not strictly a GWG calendar, but I think there’s enough overlap – as well as going by the pic of the bonus poster below – that it may be of interest. :) This is a fairly long-running charity effort, with the proceeds going to fight breast cancer since 2017.

Night Witches in the Sky

  By

★★★
“Spirits in the sky.”

kinopoisk.ru

This was made in the early eighties, when the Soviet Union and United States were making loud, growling sounds at each other. Being a product of that era perhaps explains the way this feels almost like a propaganda film, made to inspire the population to be prepared to fight in defense of the motherland. Its closest cousin on this site is therefore the similar Chinese film, The Red Detachment of Women. The topic here is one we’ve covered before: the renowned “Night Witches”, the all-female air force squadron, who carried out reconnaissance and bombing missions against the Germans on the Eastern front, during the second half of World War II.

The two central characters are Galya Polikarpova (Druz) and Oksana Zakharchenko (Grushina). The former is recuperating from injury in hospital, but sneaks out against doctor’s orders in order to rejoin her colleagues on the front lines. The pair are hauled over the coals for this by their long-suffering commanding officer (Menshikova), but are able to escape punishment due to the shortage of fliers making operational needs more important. Thereafter… Well, to be perfectly honest, not a great deal happens, and the film comes in at less than 80 minutes.  At points, it almost feels like an edited-down version of a longer feature.

For instance, there’s one point where they are being harried by a Messerschmitt – then, suddenly, they’re landing in a field to sweep up an orphaned boy, Fyodor (Zamulin), who becomes an unofficial mascot of the squadron, despite efforts by the higher-ups to send him away. There’s also a long-distance romance between Galya and another soldier that didn’t do much for me.

However, one point about this production is particularly worth noting. Director Yevgeniya Zhigulenko was actually a “night witch” herself, having been a member of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment. Initially a navigator in May 1942, she became a pilot and eventually a flight commander. By the end of the war, she had flown close to a thousand sorties, and been awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. There can’t be many films from any country set in World War II, which were directed by someone who took part in the events depicted.

This was one of two features she made, and seems more functional than particularly artistic, though may have been constrained by its budget. Some of the flying sequences are… let’s say, not particularly convincing. But perhaps due to the director’s background, it does have a down-to-earth (pun not intended) approach which does occasionally work in the film’s favour. One example would be when the women are struggling to get their planes launched out of the mud, after heavy rain. But generally, the tempo is kept upbeat and patriotically optimistic, with only occasional nods to the heavy toll of life taken by the conflict. All told, a decent effort; I’d just give the edge to the TV series Night Swallows, whose greater length allows for more depth in its characterizations.

Dir: Yevgeniya Zhigulenko
Star: Yana Druz, Valentina Grushina, Dima Zamulin, Nina Menshikova
a.k.a. V nebe ‘Nochnye vedmy’

Marie

  By

★½
“A not-so fair cop”

After an incident where she shoots dead a woman armed only with a toy gun, Marie (DeCianni) quite the police force to become a housewife. However, her husband, Barry (Spadaro), has some dodgy friends, in particular, Nadi (Regina, who also co-wrote this), a man with ties to organized crime. Barry falls behind on payments, and an unfortunate car “accident” befalls him: a recent large life-insurance policy named Nadi as the beneficiary. It’s all very shady, as Marie’s old police captain (Session) admits. However, there is just not enough evidence for the authorities to take action. That’s not an issue for Marie, however, who decides to take revenge for the loss of her husband, against Nadi and his associates.

This is almost entirely terrible, to the point that I have to wonder whether it was actually some bizarre project by actual organized crime to launder money. If so, I’m just hoping that enough years have elapsed since its release, that the statute of limitations has passed, and so me mentioning this won’t send them round to make me an offer I can’t refuse. It’s mostly a scripting issue, with far too many scenes that serve no purpose, and a heroine whose actions make little or no logical sense. Such as storming a mob birthday party, complete with gratuitous strippers (really, right from the opening, it feels like every bad boob-job in the Tri-State area got a callback for a role somewhere in this), and taking her shirt off in order to blend in, so she can whack one of them.

If DeCianni isn’t terrible, Marie seems to take a delight in announcing her moves, in a way which would, in the real world, simply make it painfully easy for her targets to take her out. Well, if they were halfway competent, at least. And the Captain seems perfectly happy for her to continue on her vigilante ways, showing absolutely no regard for law and order. About the only moment of interest sees her going above Nadi’s head to his boss, in order to suggest a partnership that would be to both of their advantages. However, this is rapidly discarded, in favour of a climactic “surprise” that a) is entirely unsurprising, and b) makes as little overall sense as anything else in this dog.

In lieu of writing anything more about this painful experience, I will instead note that a decade later, Carpenter and Regina would make Jesse, in which “Police detective Jesse turns vigilante as she investigates her brother’s murder and enters into a world of crime, corruption, and shocking deception.” Save swapping husband for brother, that seems perilously close to what we got here, not least because an IMDb review says the brother “got involved with a mafia loan shark and couldn’t repay the thousands that he owed.” Another review hints at the same twist we get here. Hmm… Maybe they did better second time around? I’m not inclined to bet on it.

Dir: Fred Carpenter
Star: Donna DeCianni, Paul Regina, Charles Sessions, John Spadaro

Rogue

  By

★★★
“Because females are the true killers.”

Megan Fox may not exactly be the first name which comes to mind when you think “battle-hardened mercenary leader.” But if you can get past your preconceptions, she’s definitely not the worst thing about this. We’ll get to what is, a little later. She plays Samantha O’Hara, leader of a group or mercs who have been hired by the governor of an African province to rescue his daughter from the Muslim group who kidnapped her. The mission initially goes well, but problems arise. First, the daughter isn’t the only woman kidnapped, forcing Sam to take along multiple civilians. Then, their evac chopper is shot down. Finally, the abandoned house in which they hole up while awaiting extraction turns out to be home to some large, toothy predators of the feline variety, leading to the quote above. Between fending off them and the pursuing kidnappers, Sam and her crew have their work cut out to survive the night until rescue arrives.

I was reminded of the series Strike Back in a number of ways, and it’s no coincidence. Director Bassett worked on the show and Winchester was one of the stars. But there’s also a similarly frantic pace and exotic location, as well as a love of giant fireballs. I’m down with all of those, even if the characterizations here are definitely on the shallow side; the film clearly feels this would be time wasted, which could be better spent on those giant fireballs. Fox is fine, though I’d say definitely should have been made to look less glamorous. There’s barely a shot here, where she doesn’t look as if she wandered onto the African veldt, right off a fashion runway: perfect hair and make-up, with not evern a smudge of dirt on those cheek-bones. However, she hurls herself about with some abandon, and I can’t fault her willingness to go outside the comfort zone of her usual roles.

No, a far bigger problem here is the CGI used for the lions, which is flat-out terrible. I don’t know what the hell happened, but any time it’s properly seen, the flaws are glaringly obvious, and severely detract from proceedings. Which is a shame, because they’re used quite well. We get an attack seen through night-vision goggles that is genuinely chilling, and there’s also the best “out of nowhere” moment since Samuel L. Jackson got sharked in Deep Blue Sea. I suggest looking at the big cats out of the corner of the eye, and they might pass muster. The film ends with an explicit pro-conservation message from the director, which seems a bit odd, given they’ve spent the previous hour and three-quarters showing us what terrifying beasts lions are. But it’s apparently okay, because they had reasons. I don’t see many people sticking around for the morality show: you’re here for Fox in khaki and the maulings. Providing you can get past the ropey CGI, this delivers adequately enough on both counts.

Dir: M.J. Bassett
Star: Megan Fox, Philip Winchester, Greg Kriek, Brandon Auret

Ravage

  By

★★½
“Harper’s bizarre.”

Wildlife photographer Harper Sykes (Dexter-Jones) is out in the wilderness of the “Watchatoomy Valley” [fictitious, but apparently located somewhere in the Virginias], when she stumbles across a group of men brutally attacking a victim. She snaps a few pics before fleeing the scene, but her attempts to report the incident to the authorities backfire immediately, and she quickly finds herself at the mercy of their leader, the appropriately-named Ravener (Longstreet). He explains the victim was a scout for big business, whose predations would destroy the natural environment, and so had to be stopped. Now, Harper is next in line. However, she is not the innocent and helpless victim they think. Even when she has the chance to escape, Harper decides to stay in the valley, and take vengeance on Ravener and the rest of his clan.

It is an interesting idea. Frequently in the horror genre, the character arc is of the “final girl”, who only resorts to violence when finally pushed too far. That certainly isn’t the case here: indeed, Harper actually fires first, gunning down one of Ravener’s henchmen as soon as she steps from her truck. Yet there’s a reason the trope of the final girl exists, because it pulls the audience along with her. Here, Harper’s actions are unexpected enough they could well disengage much of the audience, coming as they do before we’ve established much sympathy for her. Another problem is her decision to stay and actively look for her revenge isn’t well-enough defined: I was left wondering for quite some time, why she didn’t leave. Some explanation of why she’s so skilled might have been nice: not much, just a quick reference to time in the military, or a survivalist Dad, would have been fine.

The structure is also a tad problematic, with the film being told in flashback, a heavily-bandaged Harper recounting her story to a disbelieving state trooper from her hospital bed. So, we know she will survive, and the early explanations also remove much other tension from subsequent proceedings. If you’ve seen more than, roughly, two of this kind of movie, you’ll also fail to be surprised that the kindly individual to whom the heroine turns for help, ends up being anything but. I could perhaps have done without the lengthy digression into medieval torture techniques and bovine anatomy. Though both do prove at least tangentially necessary to the plot, and the latter in particular, leads to a grisly payoff.

Dexter-Jones does a good job of selling her role, and Harper generally has no compunction about acting, e.g. blowing one of her target’s brains out at point-blank range. Yet, this is at odds with some of her other actions. She literally throws up after watching the initial savagery, and the sight of a dead body later makes her shriek like a little girl. It’s all maddeningly inconsistent, and left me rather annoyed, with too much the potential here wasted through sloppy execution.

Dir: Teddy Grennan
Star: Annabelle Dexter-Jones, Robert Longstreet, Michael Weaver, Bruce Dern
a.k.a. Swing Low

Kat, by K.L. McRae

  By

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

Firstly, I’m still trying to figure out the relevance of the cover (right). With a heroine named Kat, why is there a dog pictured? It’s not as if she even owns one at any point. The “size of the fight” line… well, tenuous at best. I should probably have listened to my instincts and skipped this frankly implausible tale, about a teenage girl who is smart, attractive and a black-belt martial artist with 34E breasts. Yet she ends up having to get work as a stripper, a job at which she is naturally brilliant (thanks to adopting a pseudo-Xena persona), in order to keep her alcoholic mother out of debt. She breaks the arm of a particularly unpleasant customer, Alex, an act which gets her the attention of Alex’s business partner. He runs McKenzie Personal Security, and offers Kat a job as a trainee bodyguard.

She and the boss, a black Scotsman who is terminally ill, end up falling in love, while Alex, who had been set to inherit the business until Kat showed up, plots against her with his cronies. This ends in a nightmare gang-rape, setting up Kat to take vengeance. Oh, and the all-powerful MPS has a “black” division, which kills pedophiles and the like for money. If you are not going, “Wait, what?” at multiple points during the above synopsis, you’re a more tolerant reader than I. So much of this sounded like dubious sexual fantasy, I was genuinely surprised to discover the author is a woman. I mean, it could still be dubious sexual fantasy; I just tend to expect that kind of thing more from male writers.

The structure is all over the place. After she is attacked, Kat’s actions seem completely bizarre and pointless, and the book fast-forwards through a couple of years, until a later explanation that falls some way short of convincing. Meanwhile, neither Alex nor his allies come over as any kind of credible threat: in particular, their assault on her rural farmhouse is portrayed as painfully inept. Which, I concede, may be part of the point. As the book says, “vile bullies…might have some skills but put them up against someone who really knows their stuff and the only chance they had was blind luck.” During this, Kat sits back in her stronghold and lets her allies take care of the threat, bringing the villains to her like a Christmas present for her amusement. She certainly spends more time training in martial arts, than actually putting her skills into practice. In fact, she probably spends more time attending karaoke nights than being an action heroine. I was somewhat surprised Kat did not turn out to be a classically-trained opera singer, while she was at it.

All told, sadly, this book turned out to be a bit of a dog. I guess the cover was representative enough, after all.

Author: K.L. McRae
Publisher: Little Silver Publishing Ltd, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 2 in the Kat series.

Grand Theft Auto Girls

  By

★★
“Preferred this when it was called Counterfeiting in Suburbia.”

Turns out that The Asylum are not the only company who makes mockbusters. As its alternate name makes clear, this Lifetime TVM is clearly a knock-off of the title mentioned above, down to the same, basic plot. Two teenage girls begin doing crime, largely for the excitement. A teacher becomes aware of their exploits and decides to blackmail them for his own benefit, by making them escalate their activities. This brings them increasingly under the scrutiny of both authorities and criminal elements, not to mention parental disapproval, eventually leading to a climax where all these aspects cross paths. As my review of Counterfeiting mentioned, it wasn’t even a particularly original idea there. As you can imagine, a second-generation copy is not an improvement, even if the idea of a knock-off of a movie about forgery possesses a certain irony. 

The main twist here is that instead of counterfeiting, the crime in question is car theft. Emily (Belkin) is being brought up by her mother, after her father died in a car accident, and is working to restore her late dad’s muscle car, a task which has helped give her certain car skills, including hot-wiring them. She has teamed up with classmate Max (Helt), to boost cars, purely for joy-riding purposes, but the pair decided to make a commercial endeavour out of it, and sell the vehicles to a local chop-shop they know. Their shop teacher, Mr. Curnow (Hynes) finds out about their work, and decides to use them to start stealing high-end cars, to provide seed money for his own business involving exotic sports vehicles. This doesn’t sit well with the chop-shop owner, the cops are beginning to close in, and worst of all, Emily’s Mom is growing increasingly suspicious. When she pays Curnow a visit at his home, she is held hostage to ensure Emily completes one final task, stealing a Hummer belonging to a well-connected local club owner.

This is so painfully bland, it should have been called Barbie and Friends Do Crimes. Admittedly, I was hoping for something like a female version of a Fast and the Furious movies. As I soon as I realized this was a Lifetime TVM, all hopes of that evaporated, but it could still have avoided having less edge than a rusty butter-knife. It shoehorns in a hot teenage boy delinquent (Manley) on whom Emily can crush, largely as a means of filling time, since he serves no real plot purpose. Even the car-stealing scenes, which could have generated tension, are feeble: witness in particular the example which consists largely of one girl starting intently into her handbag, waiting for a light to go green. Hitchcock is turning in his grave. It did manage to leave me yearning nostalgically for a film which only got 2½ stars, so that’s a new experience.

While I have already written more about this than it deserves, I just discovered there is still another TVM going down the same furrow: Smuggling in Suburbia. I’ll just leave its synopsis here. mostly as a warning that the possibilities appear, sadly, endless: “Joanie gets recruited to travel with other girls to exciting cities delivering camera lenses to photographers–and falls in love with Tucker, a partner in the courier business. When she searches the camera case she’s carrying and finds diamonds hidden inside a lens, Joanie realizes she is part of an illegal smuggling ring! She just needs to pay for her brother’s cancer surgery that would otherwise bankrupt the family.” Yeah, I’m good, thanks.

Dir: Jason Bourque
Star: Zoë Belkin, Samantha Helt, Tyler Hynes, Jake Manley
a.k.a. Hotwired in Suburbia