Category: Review

Part-Time Spy

  By

★★★
“Korea careers.”

An amiable piece of light fluff from Korea, while this probably doesn’t need to be 117 minutes long, the time passed comfortably enough. After many years of failing the civil service entrance exam, Jang Young-shil (Kang) finally succeeds and is rewarded with a contract job in the national security agency. However, she’s still mediocre, and is laid off. Fortunately, she overhears her boss (Jo) having been phone-phished out of $500,000 of departmental funds, and is the only agent available to go undercover in the ‘boiler room’ carrying out these scams. There, she recognizes another employee, Na Jung-an (Han) – having seen her take out a pickpocket on the subway, she knows Na is an undercover cop. The two women, of sharply disparate backgrounds and skill-sets, form an uneasy alliance, seeking to take down the charismatic boss of the con company, Min Seok (Namkoong).

The similarities to the Melissa McCarthy vehicle, Spy, extend to more than the title, being a similar combination of goofy comedy and action, with a lead who is far from conventionally pretty [the poster on the right is spectacularly misleading, as far as 50% of the actresses are concerned]. Though neither the comedy nor the action here prove quite as successful. For all Kang’s charms, she lacks the impeccable comedic timing of McCarthy, though her long list of former jobs e.g. dog whisperer provide some amusing moments – as well as coming in surprisingly handy, for example when the villains unleash their canines of war. Han isn’t exactly Jason Statham in the martial arts department either. That said, her anger management issues are a nice touch, making her far from the perfect choice to go undercover at a sketchy call-centre, and she can pull discontented faces with the best of them. Her efforts to seduce Min are delightfully OTT as well.

For an action-comedy, I found this surprisingly eye-opening too. The concept of having to pass an exam to get a job with the government, for instance. Or the entire voice-phishing thing, which seems to be an epidemic in Korea, if this movie is to be believed. In the film’s defense, it is possible that cultural differences such as these may partly explain why some of the humour occasionally falls painfully flat. However, even local reviewers seemed unimpressed with the more slapstick elements, so it probably isn’t just me who was highly underwhelmed by these aspects. It does build nicely, with the finale seeing our two heroines sent to scam an army officer out of $500,000 – money which Jang’s boss intends to “requisition” and replace the money he lost. Needless to say, things don’t quite unfold as expected, especially after another employee overhears Jang and Na talking, and realizes they are not who they claimed to be.

It’s the kind of film I can easily see being remade by Hollywood, perhaps with McCarthy and Sandra Bullock as the tw… Oh, hang on: they already did that, and it was called The Heat. But in most ways, this is its equal: slickly-made and unashamedly commercial, if also largely forgettable.

Dir: Kim Deok-su
Star: Kang Ye-won, Han Chae-ah, Namkoong Min, Jo Jae-yoon

At Your Own Risk

  By

★★½
“Reality bites.”

This is one of those films where the making-of is probably more interesting than the movie itself. For this was made for a thousand dollars, with the shoot consisting of two cast and two crew members, filming on property belonging to the director’s parents. This is what micro-budget film-making should be about: knowing your limitation, and working within them, so they don’t appear obvious. On that basis,it is s an impressive achievement, for it looks and sounds thoroughly professional, not least in capturing the scale of the outdoor environment in which it operates. Unfortunately, it’s considerably underwritten, and even at a terse 72 minutes, there just isn’t enough going on here.

Taylor (Santos) and Angie (Boylan) are running a struggling PR firm in Las Vegas – matters not helped by the secrets each woman is keeping. However, there is hope, in the shape of a potential new customer (Schroeder). He is running a high-end adventure business which sends customers into the New Mexico desert on a geocaching treasure hunt. But before giving Taylor and Angie the contest, he wants them to go through the process as if they were customers, in order to understand it better. They agree, and head into the wilderness. However, the further they go, the clearer it becomes that not everything about this “experience” is what it seems.

The problem is that for the great bulk of the film you only have the heroines wandering around the desert, from Point A to B… to C… to D… They chat, and the secrets mentioned earlier are revealed. However, we already know about one from the opening scene, and the other is severely lacking in impact. Meanwhile, there’s not enough of an antagonist. It’s clear that they are being watched, yet the observer is thoroughly passive, and all you really have as a result, is a very mild “women vs. nature” story, without sufficient threat to make you genuinely concerned for the safety of the lead characters. Throw in a broken leg, for example, and that might have helped generate the drama and tension which, as is, the film desperately needs.

. I didn’t mind the lead performances. Both portrayals manage to feel like real people, and I wasn’t left hoping a pack of hungry coyotes showed up and ate them. Given they’re on screen for almost every scene in the movie, that’s something of a feat in itself. We eventually reach a final reveal, explaining the reasons behind what has happened, though this provoked not much more than a shrug and a “Huh,” than any shock or awe. Indeed, it’s dragged out to such a point, it feels almost as if the footage was tacked on, purely in order that the film reached feature length. While there’s enough talent here I wouldn’t be averse to seeing what the makers create in future, this remains something I wouldn’t watch on a regular basis – even if condensed to an hour less commercial breaks.

Dir: John K.D. Graham
Star: Helenna Santos, Alexandra Boylan, Jeff Schroeder

Cats Kill

  By

★★
“Dead cat bounce.”

It’s quite a feat for a film which runs a crisp 67 ½ minutes to outstay its welcome, so… Well done? The problem is mostly that far too much time is wasted on the set-up, introducing us – in quite excruciating detail – to characters in whom we have little or no interest. These would be the friends who decide to spend a weekend in upstate New York, unaware they are about to cross paths with a pair of bored locals who have decided to alleviate the tedium by going on a killing spree. When one of them gets cold feet, however, it’s left up to Cat (Rafferty) to follow through on the original plan, which she does with some enthusiasm. Just a pity this doesn’t happen until roughly the final twenty minutes.

Up until that point, the film makes the mistake of concentrating on the victims. They are, by and large, not people with whom you would want to spend more than five minutes. To the movie’s credit, this does appear to be deliberate, yet it renders every moment an increasingly aggravating experience. That’s especially the case, when contrasted with the lack of motive provided for Cat and her partner, who simply choose to become murderers in virtually the first scene, with little or no justification. More time spent building towards that decision, and less watching the Big Apple pals swapping tedious banter, would certainly have been a wise move. Heck, hanging out with the New Yorkers for a bit first would surely convince anyone about the wisdom of murder as a moral imperative. No jury in the land would convict.

Indeed, the whole spree-killing couple angle is given such short shrift, I was left wondering why the directors bothered. However, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as when it’s just Cat operating by herself, things get done at a considerably brisker clip, which is certainly to the film’s benefit. [I’m not certain the likes of Milton Bradley, Victoria’s Secret and John Deere will be quite as enamored by the name-checks their products receive over the course of proceedings here – particularly the last] After capturing and disposing of a set of victims, it ends with Cat going up against final girl Alana (Loren), and it’s then that the film is at its bes… uh, least underwhelming.

Definitely a case of too little, too late however, even with the final twist, which I’ll admit gave me a dark chuckle. The makers here claim they were going for something giallo-esque. I know giallo. And this is no giallo. Given the complete lack of style shown, it’s more like a bad eighties straight-to-video slasher pic, with all the lack of gore, shortage of tension and terrible pacing that implies. Rafferty gets a full pass and Loren a partial, with their more energetic performances something the rest of the cast would have benefited from following. Otherwise, it’s hardly catnip for horror fans.

Dir: Alexander Cherney, Gregory Casino
Star: Alanah Rafferty, Kay Marie Loren, Daniel J. O’Connor, Will Scarlett

Eye of the Colossus, by Nicole Grotepas

  By

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

This probably picked up half a star in the final couple of chapters, because up until the end, the plot seemed to have some huge deficiencies. While most of these were certainly addressed by the final resolution, it still left a rather questionable taste in my literary mouth [if you see what I mean!]. The heroine is Holly Drake, who has been unjustly sent to prison after killing her abusive husband. Unfortunately, he was a police officer, and some of his dubious colleagues helped ensure Holly went to jail for it. On release, her previous career as a teacher is no longer an option, and she’s largely thrown on to the charity of her sister, Meg, also a cop.

It’s Meg who gives Holly a lead to potential employment, albeit of a shady nature. But Holly has few options, and has to accept the job, which involves retrieving a necklace which has been stolen from its rightful owner, before it can be whisked away. To complete the task, she needs to put together a team with the various skills necessary, and also acquire a piece of tech called the Skelty Key, which is needed to defuse the security around their target. For someone with no background in the underworld, all of this poses a significant challenge, even discounting entirely the actual job itself. [Why she was hired at all is one of the eventually explained plot deficiencies]

This is nominally science-fiction, taking place in a six-moon system around Ixion, a gas giant. There are several different races, in addition to expat Earthlings like Holly, and the relationship between them is occasionally fractious. However, I never got any particular sense of “alienness”: you could rewrite this to be on Earth with almost no SF elements. There’s also not much in the way of an antagonist here. Early on, the “Shadow Coalition” appear to be trying to stop Holly from carrying out her mission; this aspect seems to peter out, as if the opposition got bored and drifted away. This combination perhaps turns it into more of a “crime procedural” than SF; that’s less criticism than an observation.

What is my main criticism is its sluggish pacing. You’re more than 90% of the way through before you get to the heist which is the book’s focus, and it’s a bit of a drag to reach that point. While self-contained enough overall, it’s clearly a set-up for future volumes, and I must confess, these are somewhat intriguing. There’s some stuff which happens to Holly late on, toughening up her character from the rather whiny one she has been to that point, and we also discover the harrowing circumstances leading to her incarceration. I just can’t help feeling we could have got to the same place considerably more economically, in about one-third of the page-count, and we would all have been considerably better off.

Author: Nicole Grotepas
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 3 in the Holly Drake Job series.

Crawl

  By

★★★★
“The shark was otherwise engaged, torturing Blake Lively…”

I have to say, I’m neither an expert on that strange sub-genre of “animal horror,” nor am I a particular fan of it. I’m mainly looking for a movie that can give me a suspenseful time in the cinemas. This is becoming more and more difficult. Partly because in by my time of live, I have has seen quite a lot of movies, of all sorts; but also because I feel modern film makers have forgotten how to create real suspense and a feeling of slowly rising and constant terror in movies.

Mostly we are left with nonsensical pictures of man-killing animals that seem to have supernatural abilities. Usually it’s played for laughs because of all the silliness that comes with these kind of movies. That’s a pity. Sure, as a cinema-goer you can’t expect the greatness of classics like Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) or Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) an ymore. But is it really that difficult? Create a modicum of interest for the main characters; introduce the predator; put the future victims in an isolated spot with the animals; and play with the ambiguity of the question as to whether said territory is safe at the moment – or not! That’s not rocket science, folks!

But for that you have to take the movie and the characters of your story seriously and the timing of every scene is essential: You’ve got to know where you set up your “beats”. How long can you ratchet up suspense before you’ve got to deliver? Where do you put the shocks, without which you can’t do a good horror movie? Do you put in a little bit of humor and to what degree? When is it time to give some relief to the audience, e. g. with character or relationship moments which seem obligatory background for these kind of stories? Whom do you kill? Whom do you have survive? And should you kill off the family dog or not? 😉

Alexandre Aja is a French film-maker who has got to show his talents across very different horror movies. His great High Tension, a psycho-thriller produced by Luc Besson, was followed by a The Hills Have Eyes remake, the good but not great Kiefer Sutherland vehicle Mirrors and later the (consciously) ridiculous Piranha 3-D. After a good start, in recent years it seemed as if he had lost “it” a bit. So, the offer from producer Sam Raimi to film an original story by Michael and Shawn Rasmussen came at the right time.

While the script has a few humorous moments (if you’re looking for them), it plays its story straight and Aja also focuses on creating genuine suspense and danger. Yet he also delivers in the important categories of shock and gore – something not really that evident from the trailers. That makes sense: you won’t show your climaxes in a trailer of an action movie. I’ve to say my expectations were pretty low when going into the movie. As a fan you know the score, so can a film still get you? To my surprise and delight, this was not only able to do that but also surpassed my expectations by far. But let’s start with some background info on what I want in such a movie.

Though you never expect a character study, I’m always happy if the characters get enough backstory or character traits, that they don’t appear as totally bland, two-dimensional audience stand-ins. That’s definitively true for Crawl‘s main actors Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper. Neither had that much luck with past roles: Scodelario, I remember from the Maze Runner movies but hardly seemed to register anywhere else much. I think I saw Pepper last with a supporting villain role in the True Grit remake (2010). I also need predators I like and respect. Some animals won’t really work for me, e. g. bears are simply too sympathetic. But for my money reptiles of all sizes always deliver the goods. And I’ve got an enormous respect for crocodiles or alligators.

Next, the simple but effective story in a nutshell. Florida, hurricane time. Swimmer Haley Keller (Scodelario), who just failed in a swimming competition, receives a phone call from her sister She’s worried because she couldn’t reach their dad. Neither sister has had much contact with him, since their mother and father divorced; he was Haley’s former trainer, leaving their relationship no on the best of terms. The streets are beiing closed due to the dangers of the approaching hurricane and the rising water levels.

After finding her father’s house abandoned, save for his dog, Haley drives on to their former family house which he was renovating. Following the sound of a radio, she descends into the derelict cellar where she finds Dave, her wounded father (Pepper), who tells her that two alligators have entered the cellar through the drain. While they have some sanctuary in the cellar, they have to make an escape, due to the rising water that is coming up through openings in the cellar floor…

This may sound maybe a bit dry (pun not intended). But, believe me, the screenwriters and Aja have used every trick in the book to push and pull us, the audience, emotionally through our seats, in the same way the alligators push and pull the two likable yet imperfect protagonists through their surroundings. I was very pleasantly surprised about the high level of suspense and tension here. But also how the important ingredients mentioned above were perfectly blended together. The movie really creates suspense and grisly anticipation – yet also doesn’t forget that audiences need moments of relaxation so they can breathe a little, before the next furious attack or moment of extreme danger arrive. It’s a very well-written and executed entertainment, showcasing a kind of story-telling we don’t see much any more.

That said, the movie doesn’t reinvent the wheel. I personally wouldn’t be surprised if the Rasmussens saw two other recent animal horror movies with female leads: Burning Bright (2010) told the story of a young woman, locked together with her autistic brother in a house with a wild tiger by her evil uncle during a hurricane. And, of course The Shallows (2016, is it really already that long ago? It feels as if I saw the film just a couple of weeks ago…), which showed us Blake Lively on a rock in the rising water off an unknown beach while a blood-thirsty shark circles. As a matter of fact, both of these movies would make for a good triple-bill with this. And once Crawl comes out on DVD, it will find its place directly next to them on my shelves!

What is it about all those young women fighting predators with large pointy teeth? I’m no psycho-analyst but I guess it has something to do with the re-integration of certain character traits into the female psyche. Whatever these may be. I do remember an early trailer when The Shallows came out that had a voice-over of what sounded like a life coach trainer, encouraging the Blake Lively character. I wonder if the idea of the father who trained his daughter to extraordinary achievements was inspired by that trailer?

Actually, this movie goes a different way from some recent action-heroine movies, that looked to discredit father figures or put them in a negative light. Haley may have felt betrayed by her parents divorce and her father “abandoning” her. Yet during the course of the story, she finds out that her parents were not as happy as she thought and that her dad, who always loved her and believed in her, is just a normal guy. [Though I must credit him for absolutely convincing me how every household needs a utility belt for hand tools!] Having to survive and fight for what is left of her family, with the support of her father makes Haley overcome her own anxieties, through facing more than one deadly situation. Certainly, crawling through the drain by which the reptiles came into the house evokes quite distressing birth trauma… That’s a very positive message. After so many negative portrayals of father figures and “family values”, I found this a highly sympathetic and, for 2019, unusually traditional depiction.

But it only has to work – and it does that very well. We are not immediately tossed into shock-infested seas, there’s a nice build-up, so when the gators appear they evoke the desired audience reaction.Haley and her father have enough back story that you are on their side and want them to survive, while at the same time worrying if they will make it. Despite being just that just 90 minutes, the movie is full of ideas of how the imprisoned father-daughter couple could get help from outside (which leads to an unpleasant looter-reptile encounter) or escape the cellar and the house. It really plays with giving you hope, just to take it away again. One of my favourite moments is when Haley and Dave make it to an escape boat outside, when the levees break and a wave of water throws them back into their house – only one floor higher. Well-timed elements of humor, such as Haley’s reaction when normal house spiders fall on her face, help make for very satisfying entertainment.

A fascinating side-fact is that the movie was shot in Belgrade, Serbia, which doubles for Florida perfectly. And a little “tidbit”: Scodelario’s and Pepper’s family name in the movie is “Keller”. For German cinema-goers that’s extremely funny as “Keller” is the German word for “cellar”. But one last question: will the dog survive? Watch the movie to find out! It gets four well-earned stars from me. Your mileage may vary, but honestly I think it’s on the same level as The Shallows, which also scored highly with me. So, if you enjoyed that, this should be right up your (flooded) street.

Dir: Alexandre Aja
Star:  Kaya Scodelario, Barry Pepper

Kiss Kiss

  By

★★½
“Weaponized strippers. What could go wrong?”

Four exotic dancers go on a trip to vineyard, courtesy of a customer at their club. However, they get more than they bargained for, falling unconscious and waking up to find themselves test subject in a scientific experiment run by Gibson (Wagner – no, not that one). He is attempting to convince the military-industrial complex to invest in his project to create “super soldiers”. To this end, he has a serum which vastly enhances both aggression and compliance, and has invited Senator Graham (Farino) to witness a test, under carefully controlled laboratory conditions. Oh, who am I trying to kid: he actually just shoots up the strippers with the serum and makes them fight to their deaths. In sports bikinis. And face-paint. In subdued yet artistic lighting. Because science! And that’s how government funding works!

It’s every bit as silly as it sounds. Unfortunately, it’s probably not as entertaining. It’s as if the editors of Maxim rented a copy of Raze, and decided to do an unofficial remake for their target demographic. They just forgot to bring along any of the significant players, leading to a result which is more pale imitation than loving homage. Even beyond the color filters, King does shoot proceedings with a good deal of style, and certainly no excess of slow-motion. Though he mixes this up with over-kinetic editing, e.g. showing the same punch landing from multiple different angles in quick succession. This can, however, only go so far in covering up that the fights are no more than average.

It’s never clear quite why the protagonists have to be strippers. Even during the opening scenes, where we see them “at work,” they don’t actually show any significant skin, and it’s weird having them called each other by stage names, like Kiss (Hopkins) and Promise (Castellon). I will admit that I knew some dancers back in my youth, and they never used the fake names outside. It may backfire, in that these pseudonyms repress the feeling these are real people, and I certainly didn’t feel any significant connection to the victims. Instead, it feels for much of the time like you are watching video-game: a well-rendered one, it has to be admitted, though one where the cut scenes go on considerably longer than normal.

To that end, I did quite enjoy Wagner, who chews the scenery to good, “mad scientist” effect. His performance reaches the point that the silly trappings (I mean, do we really need an electric fence around the ring?) begin to make weirdly flamboyant sense. You can even believe his scientific research establishment has a whole team of hair and make-up artists, to ensure the test subjects never have a lock or lick of mascara out of place, despite repeatedly brawling each other in the dirt. But in the end, it’s all just too daft. 35 years ago, it would, however, have made an excellent Duran Duran video.

Dir: Dallas King
Star: Natascha Hopkins, Robert Wagner, Nathalia Castellon, Julia Farino

Counterfeiting in Suburbia

  By

★★½
“Fake it till you make it.”

High-schoolers Reilly (Albuquerque) and Erica (Wallace) have discovered a way to literally print money, forging hundred-dollar bills. They then use these to buy high-end fashion, and sell these ill-gotten gains on to their schoolmates for genuine cash. The more cautious Reilly wants to stop, but realizes she can do good by helping Karen (Butler), her aunt and guardian, who is in financial trouble. So when Erica is insistent they expand, Reilly goes along with it, and they use the school’s art-class resources to up their game, laundering the fake money through foreign exchange stores. However, this criminal empire comes under threat, after art teacher Tim Sylvester (MacCaull) discovers what they’re up to. Because by chance, he owes a large sum of money to some nasty people, and starts a relationship with Erica, to make sure she’ll keep working for his benefit.  Worse still, the Secret Service have been alerted to the flood of funny money, so are also investigating.

I have… questions. What made R+E get into counterfeiting to begin with? For when the film starts, they’re already printing out the Benjamins on their home printer. And where do you get the special paper? While there have been cases of people using inkjet printers for this purpose, it seems these involved wiping $5 bills, then reprinting them with higher denominations. [Googling to find this out has probably got me on a watch-list…] And while the film makes the point, especially in high-end stores, that most purchases using credit-cards means assistants are less familiar with spotting fake bills, this surely doesn’t apply to currency exchanges? As a credible piece of scripting, this ends up skipping most of the necessary check-boxes, and I doubt it’s based as much on a true story as claimed.

It’s not entirely without merit though. The underlying idea – teenagers gradually getting out of their depth, and not realizing it until they are too far in – is a decent one. The contrast between the two leads is effective as well: Erica is perpetually touting them as being like Thelma and Louise, and is unfazed when Reilly points out how that ends. There’s also a contrast in motives between the girls – though you wonder a bit why they’re friends, given their divergent natures. Reilly is entirely selfless, and is using her illicit income for what she perceives as “good” [though never quite considers the negative implications of her acts]. Erica, on the other hand, is apparently doing it for the thrill or the LOLs, and you’re never sure quite what this loose cannon might do.

By coincidence, this was watched the same weekend as Body of Sin, and the two films are similar. Both focus on two young women of disparate characters, whose decision to team up and go over the border of legality has severe consequences. Both also have severe problems in the script department. Body was perhaps better technically, but this gets the edge – simply for the sheer uselessness of the only sympathetic male character, which may arguably be more feminist than anything the women do. While some way short of great, it just about passes muster, if you’re in an undemanding Netflix mood.

Dir: Jason Bourque
Star: Larissa Albuquerque, Kayla Wallace, Sarah Butler, Matthew MacCaull

Body of Sin

  By

★★
“Diamonds are clearly not forever.”

Erica (Kriis) is an attractive con-artist, who seduces married men in hotels, then drugs and robs them, knowing they’ll never be able to report the crime. She has just brought on an apprentice, Lauren (Patrikios), to learn the dubious trade, watch her back, etc. Their next score turns out to be the jackpot. as they discover the target was carrying a stash of diamonds with a seven-figure value. Absconding with their ill-gotten gains, the pair decide to lay low for a while, and head to Erica’s hideout on the holiday destination of Isabelle Island. They’re disturbed to read news reports that the target turned up dead in the room, and it quickly appears that the owner of the diamonds is closing in on them. But who is the threat? Local policeman, Mike (McCullough), for whom Lauren has a thing? Visiting boat-owner and part-time magician Tom (Berdini), with whom Erica has a fling? Or the creepy bald guy who arrives on the island and appears to be stalking Erica?

The performer who makes the best impression here is Tybee Island in Georgia, playing the role of Isabelle Island. It seems like a very nice place to take a holiday, picturesque and relaxing. Everyone else? Not so much. In particular, you could have Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren, and they’d still struggle to do anything with a script which resembles French lace, in that it’s a lightly-connected series of holes. For instance, when robbing the target, Erica first comes across an empty briefcase, before locating the diamonds in a tube, hidden in the toilet cistern. Inexplicably. she still takes the briefcase – which, of course, turns out to contain a tracking device. For the film’s entire duration, people both good and bad don’t behave in ways that make logical sense, and Creepy Bald Guy is probably the Worst Stalker Ever, though in his defense, there does turn out to be something of an explanation.

The leads are decent enough. There’s a nice contrast between the utterly cynical and untrusting Erica, who believes she’s on some kind of crusade to punish deceitful men, and the more naive and open Lauren, who gradually becomes more appalled, the more she discovers about her partner. I’d far rather have seen this angle exploited, with the two women turning from Thelma and Louise buddies, into vicious competitors, battling each other for the diamonds. Instead, they literally stand around while the (eventually revealed) good guy and villain tussle it out, mano a mano, on the edge of a convenient cliff. No prizes for guessing how that ends. The other thing is, for a film basically predicated on sexual attraction… it’s  tame stuff. Given Kriis bears some resemblance to Penelope Cruz – though she’s Indian rather than Hispanic – this was disappointing. If ever you want proof that technical competence alone is not sufficient to justify a movie’s existence, this should be Exhibit A.

Dir: The Olson Brothers
Star: Elisha Kriis, Ellie Patrikios, William Mark McCullough, Riccardo Berdini

Agent 5

  By

★★½
“Sleepless in Seattle”

Coincidentally, this one-man production was watched immediately after another, also put together toward the north-west corner, around the USA/Canadian border. But Carter Johnson is relatively restrained compared to Shadow of the Lotus‘s Jeff L’Heureux, Johnson’s name only appearing ten times in the end credits. While not dissimilar in low-budget approach, Agent 5 likely comes out just on top of the two, due to better pacing and sleeker look.

The titular heroine is Jada (Lemos), an assassin for a shadowy group which brought her up and trained her to kill, after the death of her parents. However, her programming is broken after she’s assigned the target of a whistleblowing doctor, whose elimination has been ordered by the pharmaceutical company which employed him. He convinces her to spare his life: although nearby colleagues still complete the job, before his death, he gives her the folder of incriminating data, information which could save thousands of lives. When Agent 5 goes public with it, her own employer decides she must be eliminated for her treachery, and the call goes out that she is to be located and killed. Easier said than done, though, especially when the target has decided to take the battle to her boss.

The action is competent. Nothing especially memorable, yet those involved are wise enough to know their limitations, and operate within them, rather than pushing the envelope and coming up short. Plotwise, there are some wobbly aspects: as with Lotus, the director being the writer probably hampers seeing such deficiencies. Jada exerts no effort to make things difficult for her ex-employer. If I was the subject of a brigade of assassins, I’d have moved to another country (or at least another state), drastically changed my appearance and gone as far off the grid as possible. Agent 5 does none of this, and keeps driving around town – likely for the prosaic reason that it would have posed production difficulties. Her “defection” also needed additional work: as it stands, she goes from apparently dedicated killer to rebel on the strength of a thirty-second conversation. Showing her as already disgruntled and with thoughts of quitting, would have made this much more plausible.

Originally developed as a short web series back in 2012, the main strength for the feature-length version is on the visual side. The technical quality of the footage here is so slick, it’s all but indistinguishable from a fully professional production (from what I can gather, it’s more of a high-end hobby effort for most involved). If only the same could be said about the performances, which are the biggest problem. Not so much Lemos – I’m not the only person to think she could perhaps be mistaken for Kate Beckinsale under certain lighting conditions. But the rest of the cast are all over the place, things likely reaching their nadir in the male “newscaster,” whose acting is so spectacularly awkward, I rewound it, purely for amusement purposes.

Dir: Carter Johnson
Star: Cindy Lemos, Ben Andrews, Andrew Tribolini, Roy Stanton

Into the Dark, by J.A. Sutherland

  By

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

Alexis Carew is a third-generation settler on the planet Dalthus, and the ward of her grandfather, her parents having been killed in an accident. But her future is murky, for Dalthusian law prohibits women from inheriting property, such as her family’s estates. With the alternative being a marriage Alexis really doesn’t want, the 15-year-old girl instead signs up to become a midshipman in Her Majesty’s Navy (or, at least, the space version thereof), on the interstellar sloop Merlin. However, this is largely just exchanging one set of problems for another, whether winning the respect of her colleagues, fending off the too admiring ones, or adapting to the harsh life of outer space – and, stranger still, the “darkspace” which facilitates interstellar travel. And then there are the pirates…

This isn’t the first SF/sailing combination to feature a female protagonist, apparently being quite similar to David Weber’s Honor Harrington series. The first volume of that is still sitting in my “to read” list, so while I can’t directly compare them, Werner has you covered for a review of Weber’s book. They definitely seem to have a mutual inspiration in C.S. Forester’s Hornblower series, with a futuristic spin. Here, I’m not certain quite how well it works: some of the sailing elements definitely seem forced, even with the hand-waving nature of “darkspace”. For it basically behaves in whatever way is necessary for the plot to be jammed into Sutherland’s nautical peghole.

That’s probably the main weakness: it’s one especially apparent in the early going, when Alexis first goes into space, until my brain seemed to get used to it. On the plus side, she does make for an admirable heroine, one who uses her wits more than her fists. As such, the action quotient is fairly low; there’s a steep learning curve here, for both Alexis and the reader, as we all learn the mechanics of how things work in this strange universe. When that is finally out of the way, the energy ramps up: in particular, when a ship captured by the Merlin, is being taken back to port with Alexis at the helm, when the captured crew mutiny and retake the vessel.

This sequence likely the action highlight of this first volume, the rest being mostly long-distance space battles. Though with war breaking out right at the end, it’s likely things escalate further in subsequent volumes. Although the supporting characters are nicely drawn, I could perhaps have done with more of an antagonist.  The nearest this book has to offer never meets Alexis directly – his son being the closest she comes. Again, I suspect this angle may be further developed down the road. There’s enough promise shown here to keep the door open to continuing the series. But I should probably read On Basilisk Station first, as I suspect one series of pseudo-aquatic sci-fi is probably enough!

Author: J.A. Sutherland
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 6 in the Alexis Carew series.