Author: Jim McLennan

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

  By

★★★★½
“The wind rises.”

After the enormous critical, if not commercial, success of Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro, Miyazaki was commissioned to create a manga series for Animage magazine, with a potential film adaptation attached. Publication began in early 1982, but it would take a dozen years, albeit of intermittent publication, before that story was complete. When the series’s popularity among Animage readers was established, work began on the film adaptation, covering the early portion of the manga. Since this was before Miyazaki’s own Studio Ghibli was founded, an external company, Topcraft, were commissioned to create the animation. The budget was only $1 million, with a mere nine-month production schedule leading up to its release in March 1984.

It takes place on a post-apocalyptic world, a thousand years after the near-mythical “Seven Days of Fire”, pushed humanity to the edge of extinction. Since then, nature has taken over much of the planet, covering it in an expanding toxic jungle where the very air is poisonous in a few minutes. It is populated by equally lethal creatures, at the top being the “ohmu”, gigantic insectoids capable of destroying anything in its path. The human race is reduced to clinging on to the fringes, such as the small kingdom of the Valley of the Wind, in which a never-ending breeze keeps the toxins at bay. There, the king’s daughter, Nausicaä (Shimamoto), is one of the few brave enough to enter and explore the jungle, and has developed a mutually respectful relationship with its strange inhabitants.

The balance is destroyed when a plane from the kingdom of Tolmekia crashes. In its cargo is an enormous “God Warrior” – one of those which carried out the Seven Days of Fire – recently dug out from where it had been buried. Tolmekia and their rivals, Pejite, are wrestling for control of the warrior and the power it wields, and the crash drags the Valley of the Wind into their conflict. In particular, Princess Kushana of Tolmekia (Sakakibara) intends to use the warrior to destroy the jungle and restore mankind’s dominion over the planet. Nausicaä is ferociously opposed to this scheme, especially after discovering that the jungle is actually purifying the atmosphere and soil, absorbing the toxins from the apocalypse. She’ll do anything to stop Kushana, including being willing to sacrifice her own life if necessary.

There’s a lot going on here, as you can see. It’s somewhat understandable why, when initially shown in the West (one of the first examples of anime to receive a theatrical release), 22 minutes was cut out, in order to market it as a children’s film, retitled Warriors of the Wind. The problem is, like almost all of the director’s work, it is not a children’s film. This is not a uncommon mistake – presumably based on them having a child as the central characters, and because they’re animated, which still largely equates to Disney in many people’s minds. But they’re more about that age capturing an innocent and idealistic mentality. This is undeniably mature and thoughtful cinema. In just his second feature, and first original film, Nausicaä establishes several themes which would run through almost all of Miyazaki’s future work, in varying degrees: the joy of flight, concern for the environment, and a strong female presence.

Miyazaki’s father ran an airplane parts company in World War II, and even his film company, Studio Ghibli, was named after an Italian plane. Almost every one of his movies includes a flying sequence, and Nausicaä certainly has plenty of them, whether its the heroine skimming across the desert on her one-person glider, or gigantic warships looming, threateningly, in the sky. Despite the imperfect animation, a result of the limited resources, the sense of wonder and awe is undeniable. If you don’t want to take to the skies after seeing these scenes, you might want to check for a pulse. Similarly, there’s no denying Miyazaki is firmly on the side of nature, with his heroine believing all life to be sacred, and humanity deserving no special place above any other species. If mankind can’t live in harmony with the world, the movie suggests, it’s mankind which needs to change. Bending nature to our will is always going to backfire.

But it’s with the depiction of womankind that the film truly succeeds. In Nausicaä and Kushana, you have two fully-formed characters that are not just among the best in animated film, they could stand beside the protagonist and antagonist of most live-action movies. The latter, in particular, demonstrates Miyazaki’s skill at depicting those who would be flat-out villains in less nuanced films, instead being given motivation and depth. While you may not agree with Kushana resurrecting the God Warrior, you can understand what she is trying to accomplish. Her actions stem from a genuine belief that what she is doing is best for the future of mankind. She just has a military-industrial approach to that, in sharp contrast to the one emphasizing ecological science and harmony, preferred by Nausicaä. Interesting to note that, in the 2005 Disney English-language dub, Kushana was voiced by Uma Thurman.

The story here builds to a stellar climax, in which a massive herd of ohmu are lured into a stampede towards the valley, while simultaneously the God Warrior is unleashed by Kushana, to horrific effect. [The animation for the latter was done by a young Hideki Anno, who’d go on to become a master of the genre himself, best known for Neon Genesis Evangelion. In a 2006 Japanese poll, Evangelion was the only anime ranked ahead of Nausicaä as an all-time favourite] Our heroine puts herself in harm’s way in an effort to stop the carnage, and… Well, I won’t spoil it in detail; Miyazaki manages to pull off an ending which could easily have come off as contrived or ridiculous, and is instead emotionally satisfying. With even the Tolmekians forces humbled by nature, as environmental messages delivered by teenagers go, it’s certainly a great deal more effective than an angry Scandinavian shrieking “HOW DARE YOU!” at the audience.

Dir: Hayao Miyazaki
Star (voice): Sumi Shimamoto, Gorō Naya, Yōji Matsuda, Yoshiko Sakakibara

Princess Mononoke

  By

★★★½
“Princess Die”

To some extent, this was the film which “broke” Miyazaki in the West, being his first feature to receive an unedited theatrical release in America. It wasn’t a huge commercial success, taking only about $2.4 million in North America. But it was very well-received, Roger Ebert listing it among his top ten films of 1999. It likely opened the door for the success of Spirited Away, which would win Miyazaki the Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards. But if I’m being honest, I don’t like it as much as many of his movies. While there’s no denying the imagination and enormous technical skill here, it doesn’t resonate emotionally with me in the same way. I think it’s probably the central character, who is relatively bland and uninteresting, even compared to other characters in the movie.

Firstly though: no, there’s no-one called “Mononoke” in this. It’s not a name, but a Japanese term describing a supernatural shape-shifting creature. Though even this seems ripe to cause confusion, because there are no shape-shifting princesses to be found either. And despite the title, the protagonist is Ashitaka (Matsuda), a prince of the Emishi tribe in medieval Japan, whose arm becomes infected after an encounter with a demon-possessed wild boar. As happens… Seeking a cure before the rest of his body follows suite, despite the superhuman strength it gives him, Ashitaka heads into the Western lands, and straight into the middle of an ongoing battle.

On one side is Lady Eboshi (Tanaka), the ruler of Irontown, a progressive and industrial settlement, in need of the resources which can be found in and under the nearby forest. On the other is San (Ishida), a young woman raised by wolves, who has vowed to protect the woods and their inhabitants, including the Great Forest Spirit. It’s their conflict which is really the core of the film, with Ashitaka’s quest to get his demonic arm fixed, taking a back-seat for most of the (lengthy, at 133 minutes) running-time here. Probably for the best, since he is, as mentioned, perhaps the least charismatic or engaging protagonist in the entire Miyazaki canon. His arm is easily the most interesting thing about him – and that keeps wanting to strike out on its own. When your own limb wants to go solo, you might be the problem… To quote Lady Eboshi, “I’m getting a little bored of this curse of yours, Ashitaka. Let me just cut the damn thing off.” #ImWithTeamEboshi

But enough of him. Let’s focus on what works here, which would be San and Eboshi. The first time we see San, her face is smeared in blood which she has sucked up and spat out, from a wound in the side of a gigantic white wolf. [This is certainly the most hardcore of Miyazaki’s films, with decapitations and limbs being lost at a rate closer to an entry in the Lone Wolf & Cub franchise.] She’s relentlessly aggressive in attitude, going so far as to stage a one-woman assault on Irontown in an attempt to assassinate her enemy. She tells Ashitaka, “I’m not afraid to die. I’d do anything to get you humans out of my forest.” That said, she’s still considerably less creepy than the forest apes who want to eat him.

Eboshi, on the other hand, is a complete contrast to the near-feral San, and remarkably progressive, especially considering the era and location. Her town is a haven for the disenfranchised and those society considers “untouchables”, including both lepers and prostitutes, the latter whose contracts she bought out and who now work in her iron mill. Her citizens and their welfare are what she cares about, above all, and she’s completely fearless about who she has to go through for that purpose. “She’s not even afraid of the gods, that woman,” says one of Irontown’s residents about their ruler, admiringly. They aren’t wrong, for she subsquently tells her warriors, “I’m going to show you how to kill a god, a god of life and death. The trick is not to fear him.” It’s remarkably easy to envisage a version where the roles are reversed, and she is the heroine. The fact she’s a gun enthusiast, is just a bonus!

Ashitaka’s role is largely to act as a middleman between the two worlds: somewhat more than human, yet less than divine. That remains the case even at the end, as he agrees to spent part of his time in the forest with San, and part of it working alongside Lady Eboshi in Irontown. It’s potentially an awkward and unsatisfying compromise, storywise, yet Miyazaki makes it work better than you feel it should.  But there are a couple of perplexing missteps too. For one, when the animals of the forest are talking, there’s zero effort to make their lips synch up. It’s bizarre and distracting. And in the Japanese version, the voice of San’s wolf mother, Moro is a man. Someone known in Japan as a drag queen, admittedly – but a man none the less, a weird choice which confused the heck out of me [score one for the dub, at least, which had Gillian Anderson as the character]

The overall result is undeniably beautifully animated, and epic in its scope and invention. As ever, Miyazaki excels at creating a world which is like our own, yet simultaneously completely alien. However, it all gets rather wearing, especially at the length depicted here. My attention simply ran dry during the second half, as the multiple different factions began hacking or gnawing away on each other, with the personal and intense quality of the Eboshi/San conflict getting lost in the bigger picture. It’s in putting over the intensely personal elements of large stories, that Miyazaki is unsurpassed – never mind just in animation, among film-makers as a whole. This isn’t the best demonstration of his talents in that area.

Dir: Hayao Miyazaki
Star: Yōji Matsuda, Yuriko Ishida, Yūko Tanaka, Kaoru Kobayashi

The Sisterhood

  By

★★★
“Many Mad Maxines.”

This one may be the origin of the meme, “After the apocalypse, food, water and gasoline are in short supply – but hair-spray will still be plentiful.” For there’s no denying the absolute silliness of this slab of post-apocalyptic nonsense. But it’s still imaginative and energetic enough that my interest was largely sustained. We’re apparently long enough after World War III for it all to have become the stuff of almost-forgotten legend. In the aftermath, the world is now occupied by roaming bands, mostly of men. However, certain women are gifted with special powers, and they have banded together into the titular group, under their reverend mother, and are feared by most as witches.

After her settlement is attacked by Mikal (Wagner, looking like a low-rent Chuck Norris), and her brother killed, Marya (Johnson) hits the road, seeking revenge. She meets two members of the Sisterhood, Alee (Holden) and Vera (Patrick), and when they discover Marya’s gift, the ability to communicate with her pet hawk, they allow her to join them. Vera is abducted by Mikal, who then heads off to add her to the collection of Sisterhood members, being held in one of the few remaining cities. Alee and Marya follow, until a shortcut into the forbidden zone of radiation and mutants lets them stumble across a pre-apocalypse arms dump. Now armed with automatic weapons and a tank (!), they are thoroughly well-equipped, first to rescue Vera, and then storm the city and liberate the rest of their sisters.

Made in 1988, the debt this owes to the Mad Max trilogy (which had finished with Beyond Thunderdome, three years earlier) is apparent to the point of being blatant. There’s a lot of whizzing around in a quarry, with giant fireballs going off just to the side of the target. For, while it’s remarkable the heroines are able immediately to drive their tank, their talents clearly do not extend to aiming the guns accurately. This is all highly mockable, not least that it’s apparently set in the far-distant future of… er, the year 2021. Yet those involved play it all entirely straight, and eventually I found this seriousness rubbing off on me. There were occasional moments which, if not making me go “Wow!”, did extract a somewhat-impressed “Huh.”.

Director Santiago should be well-known to readers here, having also given us Angel Fist and The Muthers; he brings much the same combination of female empowerment and exploitation here. Because, for all the strong female characters, they also seem to spent a inordinate amount of time either chained up or getting their tops ripped open – and, occasionally, both. But Holden and Johnson manage to rise above the low-rent production values with their dignity intact – even if nothing remotely like the video sleeve is to be found in this one! By the admittedly low standards of the genre, this is likely well-above average. And we only have to wait two years for it all to come to pass…

Dir: Cirio H. Santiago
Star: Rebecca Holden, Chuck Wagner, Lynn-Holly Johnson, Barbara Patrick

Bloody Chainsaw Girl

  By

★★★
“Japan Chainsaw Mascara.”

A solid enough entry in the Jap-splat genre, this benefits mostly from a winning central performance from Uchida as the title character, Giko Nokomura. Her family are in the demolition business, which is at least a token gesture towards explaining the F-sized chainsaw she carries everywhere – initially in a guitar case! She’s a bit of a delinquent, harking back to the sukeban movies of the sixties like Terrifying Girls’ High School: Lynch Law Classroom, and with some resemblance to Meiko Kaji, in attitude more than anything. Despite her bad girl credentials, she does want to graduate (there’s a speech later on about how delinquents actually love their schools, and the identity it gives them), and on this summer day, is going back to the otherwise largely-deserted educational establishment, to re-take a missed test.

Of course, it’s never that simple, is it. For pitted against her is her nemesis, Nero Aoi (Yamachi), plus the army of cyborg students created by this wannabe mad scientist. She started off by kidnapping and working on pets, but now has a lethal array of “enhanced” humans at her disposal, such as “Whole-Body Bomber” and former cheerleader Sayuri Bakutani (Sato). Nero is intent on taking her revenge on Giko, following a perceived slight which the latter has long forgotten. Even before she has arrived at school for the exam, Giko is under attack by the first three of these, including a girl with a rocket-launcher embedded in… a most unusual part of her body. Let’s just say, reloading is fun.

Based on the manga series Chimamire Sukeban Chainsaw, by Rei Mikamoto, it has the fast-and-loose sensibility you’d expect, with things taking place for little or no reason other than the maker thought it’d be entertaining. Sometimes they are correct, other times… not so much. There seem to be flashbacks every three minutes, explaining how everyone got to where they are, and it alternates between scenes that go on beyond their merit or purpose, and ones which feel too short. The low-budget is often palpable, falling well short of being able to deliver what is asked of it, and the blood is more digital than physical.

Despite these flaws, I was entertained, though obviously, those of delicate sensibilities should stay well away. Uchida has an appropriate range of expressions for the situations in which Giko finds herself – “deadpan astonishment” is probably the main one which gets used. There’s a dry sense of humour in concepts like the school having a Ninja Club, such as them still deferring obsequiously to the jocks). When Giko meets the president of Shop Club, who is also about its only un-cyborged member, her chainsaw gets some power-ups (“Extending Chainsaw”), though it still proves no match for Nero’s “Chainsaw of the Dead”. Actually, how you react to that sentence will likely determine whether or not you’ll enjoy this. Personally, if a little short of the best entries in this strange little genre, I still found plenty here to appreciate.

Dir: Hiroki Yamaguchi
Star: Rio Uchida, Mari Yamachi, Seira Sato, Yuki Tamaki

She Never Died

  By

★★★★½
“Angel of vengeance”

This is neither a prequel nor a sequel to He Never Died, but is clearly related, and takes place in the same universe. Like its predecessor, it was written by Jason Krawczyk, who hands the directorial reins over to Cummings for this. And it probably works better as a result. I tend to think having a separate writer and director allows each to build on the other’s talents, while countering the weaknesses. In particular, He, which starred Henry Rollins, didn’t have quite enough plot to sustain it. That isn’t an issue here, resulting in improved pacing. Combine this with the ultimate “give no damns” performance at its core, and you’ve got one of the best action heroine films of 2019.

That performance is Adeliyi’s portrayal of “Lacey”, whose real name we learn at the end, and which will make some sense to students of Biblical lore. Like Rollins’s character, she plays an immortal being, doomed to wander the planet for eternity, sustained only on human flesh. However, she operates on a code, eating only scumbags. This still brings her to the attention of local authorities, in particular the thoroughly world-weary Detective Godfrey (MacNeill). But when he discovers Lacey’s nature, he makes the ill-fated decision to weaponize her, and points her in the direction of a sex-trafficking ring run by Terrance (Danby), which he has been unable to take down by more formal methods. Complicating matters is the gang’s victim, Suzzie (Madeira), whom Lacey encounters during her first mission, and who becomes something of her acolyte.

Lacey is potentially among the most taciturn bad-asses of the genre, a woman of few words, whose remarkable healing powers allow her to take a baseball bat to the head, and then discuss the mild irritation of having to wait for a detached retina to repair itself. No wonder Suzzie is confused, wondering “Are you just a jacked-up lady blitzed out of her mind? Or a government experiment on the lam? Robot? Zombie? Vampire? You sound like a vampire.” The contrast between the pair, one hyper almost to the point of manic, the other deader than deadpan, is a joy. Seeing Adeliyi in action is another. This film doesn’t shortchange her diet, and Cummings background in horror is apparent. About the only person who can half-stand up to Lacey is the person in charge of the traffickers – which makes me wonder if they, too, may be more than human.

It’s one of the intriguing questions which this poses. Particularly at the end, after things appear to have been tied up nicely, the story opens an entire case of cans of worms, with both Godfrey and Lacey having encounters that’ll leave you going “Hmmm…” And that’s not even including the Bikers of the Apocalypse. While it’s definitely not necessary to have seen He Never Died, the cross-over of information may slightly enhance your information of both. I’m wondering if it’s all pointing towards a third entry – They Never Died?- in which the characters from these two films team up. If so, where do I start the queue?

Dir: Audreey Cummings
Star: Olunike Adeliyi, Peter MacNeill, Kiana Madeira, Noah Danby

Screened at Phoenix FearCon 2019

The Witch Files

  By

★★★
“The Breakfast Coven.”

If John Hughes directed a film about witchcraft, it’d probably end up like this. For you have five stereotypical high-school girls in detention: Brooke the rich bitch (Ziolkoski); Greta the jock (Adrienne Rose-White); M.J. the timid mouse (Robinson); Jules the goth (Flatmo); and Claire the nerd (Taylor), who isn’t actually in detention, just doing a report on it for the school TV channel. [90% of the film is the ‘found footage’ she shoots of subsequent events, a conceit for which I usually don’t have much time… and here is no different, occasionally requiring pretzel-like contrivance.] Jules mysteriously triggers the fire-alarm to get them all out early. After she reveals this no big thing was part of her witchy skills, the other four enthusiastically agree to take part in a ceremony binding them together, into a coven.

At first, it’s remarkably easy: they basically just chant whatever they want, and it shows up. Life becomes a bowl of free designer clothes and undeserved ‘A’ grades. But, inevitably, there’s a price to pay, and the young women start to find that minor physical ailments are accelerating at a highly disturbing rate. [This is nicely tied into the historical portrayal of witches as wizened crones, explained as a result of the magical energy expended] While some of the girls want to stop their dabbling in occult practices, others have become addicted to their new-found powers and refuse to stop. Given the previous binding, this is a problem. Additionally, the town’s past offers a long association with witchcraft, and a recurring pattern of strange events, taking place every seventeen years. As in almost every American high-school horror film since Carrie, this builds to a showdown at a school party.

This over-familiarity is likely the main problem, with both characters and story-line coming over decidedly as nothing you haven’t seen before. Even if you never watched Charmed or The Craft (or Swedish take on the same, The Circle), the tropes in question will be entirely recognizable, and the film offers few if any surprises. Credit is due to the actresses, however, who take their two-dimensional characters and do a good job of bringing them to life. This keeps the film rolling along, when on occasion it threatens to stall out completely. Ziolkoski probably does best, helping the audience understand the allure of mystical power, though the entire ensemble gel together nicely.

In the end though, there isn’t sufficient here to set it apart from those which have gone before. It doesn’t help that the magical battles in the final third are well beyond the capacity of the budget to depict. The optical/digital effects unfortunately mostly feel like they were copy-pasted in from an eighties Full Moon Features project. There is one nice bit of vehicular mayhem, though even there, Final Destination did it better. If you haven’t ever seen a film about teenage girls and witchcraft, you could certainly do a lot worse. But there can’t be many of you out there.

Dir: Kyle Rankin
Star: Britt Flatmo, Holly Taylor, Alice Ziolkoski, Tara Robinson

A Vigilante

  By

★★★
“The grubby truth about vengeance.”

Sadie (Wilde) has escaped from an abusive relationship with her husband (Spector), but at a terrible cost: the death of her son. In an effort to come to terms with her grief, and make use of the survivalist skills forcibly imposed on her, she becomes a vigilante. Responding to coded messages left on her phone, she travels around to confront abusers and prove that there is someone tougher, willing to stand up for the victims against them. But this doesn’t give Sadie the closure or peace that she seeks. Before she can help others, she’s first going to have to help herself, and confront the man who made her what she is.

There’s a grim, messy realism about this, which is plausible, and is both the film’s biggest strength and its greatest weakness. Violence, or the threat thereof, doesn’t really solve anything, and there’s precious little satisfaction gained by Sadie from it. Or anyone else: you could argue that, by robbing others of their agency, she’s doing more harm than good. But nor does this mundane approach make for great cinema. It’s one thing to rob vigilante violence of its adrenaline-powered rush, and the film consciously does that, even cutting away during the final confrontation between protagonist and antagonist. However, the film-maker needs to find something to replace it, otherwise you’re left with an empty experience. Admittedly, that may be the intended conclusion here. Yet if your point is the pointlessness of it all… what’s the point?

There is something to be said for the banality of the evil we see portrayed here, especially in the first case, when the well-dressed businessman is revealed to be an abuser. Yet, I can’t help noting the complete lack of any due diligence by Sadie. If a woman says she’s abused, well, that’s clearly good enough to justify a good helping of the old ultraviolence. A less polemic film might have leveraged that into its story, though again, perhaps her lack of interest in justice (despite her stressed reluctance to kill) is part of the flawed package she represents, along with a supreme disinterest in what happens to anyone after she has left the building.

The looming presence of her abusive husband is a little too convenient, especially in the way he suddenly pops up when dramatically necessary; some kind of foreshadowing would have helped. No denying the strength of Wilde’s performance though, and you get to see and feel every ounce of pain as she experiences it, in a way that becomes almost uncomfortable to watch. In the end, however, it doesn’t really tell us anything we didn’t already know. No matter how many “upbeat” vigilante movies I see, I enjoy them purely for the cathartic exercise, not as a primer. I don’t think I need a cinematic antidote like this, in order to be reminded that it’s actually not a good thing to take the law into your own hands.

Dir: Sarah Daggar-Nickson
Star: Olivia Wilde, Morgan Spector, Kyle Catlett, C.J. Wilson

The Leine Basso series, by D.V. Berkom

  By

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

Leine (short for Madeleine) Basso quit her job as a somewhat-sanctioned government assassin, after realizing her boss was using her to carry out off-book, non-sanctioned ops for his personal gain. Oh, and he also tricked her into killing her lover, and b Initially working in private security, she is hired on a reality show, following the murder of a contestant (Book 1: Serial Date) by a serial killer out to make a point. Leine’s daughter is abducted, and it turns out the perpetrator is a shadow from her past, with a grudge.

In the next entry (Book 2: Bad Traffick), she’s the bodyguard to a Johnny Depp-like actor, Miles Fournier. A young girl, trying to escape from human traffickers, seeks Miles’s help, and Leine finds herself involved in taking down the ring. This experience convinces her to join up with former colleague Lou Stokes at SHEN, a private group committed to fighting human trafficking, and this forms the focus of both the third and fourth volumes. In the former (Book 3: The Body Market), a American girl on a weekend in Tijuana is abducted; the latter (Book 4: Cargo) sees an American girl holidaying in Bangkok abducted. While the third is perhaps the best in the series, I could probably have done without what feels very much like a repeat immediately afterward.

Berkom seems perhaps to have felt similarly, for the next volume (Book 5: The Last Deception) marks a sharp turn in direction. While visiting a friend at a Middle East refugee camp, Leine comes into possession of a flash-drive with potentially explosive contents, revealing a plot by a rogue Russian to lure the US into a Middle East war. While there is still an abducted girl who needs to be rescued (the daughter of an arms dealer), it’s more a sub-plot, rather than the main focus of the story. I confess to not yet having read the final two entries (Book 6: Dark Return and Book 7: Absolution), but based on the synopsis they are a little “rescue an abducted girl” and a little “forcing her to revisit a dark and violent past she thought she’d left behind.”

I haven’t mentioned A Killing Truth yet, either. Chronologically, it’s the first, though is more of a novella, coming in at a crisp 156 pages, and takes place at a point when Leine was still a federal employee. @@@@ It was the last one I read, though it doesn’t make too much difference. Berkom is good at referencing past events where relevant in future volumes. But there is not much in each book which requires particular explanation, and you could pick up any one as a standalone entity without real bother. I got editions 1-3 as an omnibus, then tacked on #4 and #5; discovering there is now an omnibus edition for them plus #6 was rather annoying. I wish there was some way I could “trade in” those two and get the omnibus.

That’s a technical issue, not particularly relevant to this review, however. To be honest, when I got the first book, I was expecting more globetrotting assassinations, and less stuff more befitting a PI or homicide detective, which is really what the first two books are more like. Things perk up considerably in #3, with Leine having to handle life south of the border; you’ll probably be crossing Mexico off your list of potential destinations by the time you’re done there. They do seem – consciously or not – to become more exotic and international, as they go on. #4 and #5 take place almost exclusively abroad, to the point that I felt a bit sorry for Leine’s boyfriend, who must barely see her!

That is a bit of an issue, though it’s a double-edged sword. I’m no fan of romantic dalliances in my action, but after Berkom sets them up as being passionately involved in one book, it seem odd for their relationship to be so apparently non-committal in the next. The same applies to Leine’s relationship with her daughter, which goes from estranged to deeply-devoted, and then back to “Leine seems little more than irritated her daughter has been abducted by Middle Eastern traffickers”. The stories work rather better when she’s operating purely on her own; then again, I don’t expect an assassin to be much of a “people person”.

Indeed, there’s part of me which wants to hear more about her earlier escapades, based in particular on some crisply effective excursions into termination with extreme prejudice: “Several yards away, a man smoking a cigarette stood with his back to her, an AK-47 at his side. He appeared to be alone. Without a word, she raised the gun and fired, hitting him twice in the back of the head.” As is though, this feels a bit like the adventures of Sherlock Holmes… after he had retired to take up bee-keeping.

Author: D.V. Berkom
Publisher: Duct Tape Press, available through Amazon, both as paperbacks and e-books as follows:

Fatal Defense

  By

★★½
“There is nothing that’s going to empower you more, than if you kick the crap out of somebody. “

Single mother Arden Walsh (Scott) and her daughter Emma (Guest) are traumatized by a home invasion, and at the insistence of mom’s cop sister, Gwen (Fortier), Arden signs on for a self-defense class given by the hunky Logan Chase (Cade). He’s a bit… intense, shall we say. Despite some initial bonding over their ex-marriedness, it’s not too long before Arden discovers his methods leave “unconventional” lying in the dust. Probably about the point where he zip-ties Arden and tosses her in the trunk of his car. At this stage, she decides to forego further classes. Except, Logan is having none of it, and even teams up with the original burglar to put Arden through further “training”.

By this point, I’ve seen enough Lifetime TVM to know where this was going, and if you’re a regular here, you’ll have read enough reviews to figure it out as well. Logan ends up kidnapping Emma, in order to lure Arden to her final “examination”. Though I can’t help thinking, this works mostly as a tacit commercial for firearm ownership. If Arden had only followed Gwen’s advice in the self-defense department – rather than responding, “I’m not gonna have a gun in my house with Emma, no way” – the problem which is Logan would have been solved a) a great deal more quickly, and b) with considerably less trauma for little Emma. The finale, involving the intervention of detective Inspector Banks (Sherilyn Fenn), kinda proves this point.

The biggest flaw is the lack of credible motive for Logan. It’s not quite clear what he’s trying to do here. Seems like Arden is not his first victim, and he has clearly been unhinged by the loss of his wife during a rural robbery. Yet I can’t help but think there were easier ways to achieve his (ill-defined) goals, not least because he seems almost to want to die at the hands of his trainees. I suspect that picking on the thoroughly no-nonsense Gwen might have presented a better chance of that happening, and it does seem a bit of pointless doubling up to have both her and Inspector Banks as supporting characters, even if it’s to get round the “You’re not allowed to investigate cases involving your own relatives” rule. Which I presume is a thing.

While I’d rather have seen more of Fortier, Scott is okay as the lead, and her action scenes occasionally have slightly more impact than I expected. However, this is largely doomed by the relentless predictability of things as they unfold. There are two particularly obvious bits of foreshadowing: one involving hot tea, the other wet leaves. About the only thing which remains in question is, which one of these will actually be relevant to the ending, and which will be a red herring. I’ve no intention in spoiling all the film’s slight pleasures, so if you want to find out, you are going to have to watch this yourself.

Dir: John Murlowski
Star: Ashley Scott, David Cade, Sophie Guest, Laurie Fortier

The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion

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★★★
“Lucy  in disguise…”

The first in an intended trilogy, this stands on its own reasonably well, balancing between tying up the loose ends and leaving the future uncertain. The heroine is Ja-Yoon (Kim), who begins by escaping from a shadowy, quasi-governmental facility as a raw eight-year-old, despite being hunted by the woman in charge, Dr. Baek (Jo) and her minions. She is found by husband and wife farmers, and they adopt Ja-Yoon, who has no apparent memory of her early life as their own. Ten years later, with Mom suffering from Alzheimer’s, and the farm struggling financially, Ja-Yoon enters a nationwide singing contest. However, the resulting attention brings her firmly back on the radar of Dr. Baek and Nobleman (Choi), the other survivor from that night a decade ago. The not-so-good doctor won’t let Ja-Yoon escape this time.

After a messy opening, which establishes Dr. Baek as someone specializing in giving no damns at all, this certainly takes its time to get going. For most of the first hour and a half, it’s mostly Ja-Yoon and perky best friend Myung-hee (Go) interacting and progressing through the competition. Though when you hear her… ah, let’s just say “startling” and leave it at that, rendition of Danny Boy, you’ll wonder if perhaps she was selected as the Korean version of William Hung. Meanwhile, the villains are hovering nearby in ways which appear so obvious and suspicious, they would be rejected as painfully unsubtle by Auric Goldfinger.

Eventually, even they realize a more direct approach is needed, i.e. Nobleman storming the farmhouse and threatening everyone Ja-Yoon cares about if she refuses to co-operate. This proves successful, and she meekly goes off to see Dr Baek at her new facility. But as the title and the cover both suggest, Ja-Yoon might be quite comfortable, coming to terms with her inner superwoman. The final 30 minutes show her to be not so meek after all. The movie certainly makes up for lost time, with a slew of well-choreographed mayhem, as our heroine goes all Lucy on the asses of everyone within reach, now she’s using more than 10% of her brain. Or maybe all Hanna? For, in many ways, this is a cross between them, with the pseudo-scientific approach of the former, and the “innocent who strikes back” of the latter.

At more than two hours in length, it would probably have benefited from being about half an hour shorter. The entire “talent show” angle could have been covered just as effectively in about five minutes. And if the bad guys has been more direct, instead of opting for lurking and dropping ominous hints, that would have been a major time-saver as well. However, the twist near the end is handled effectively, and the resulting carnage is brutal and effective. I was left with more than slight interest in the next entry. It will hopefully provide more in the action department, and less in the way of poorly-executed exposition.

Dir: Park Hoon-jung
Star: Kim Da-mi, Jo Min-su, Choi Woo-shik, Go Min-si
a.k.a. Manyeo