Revengeful Swordswoman

★★½
“Can’t argue with the title, certainly.”

There’s no hanging around here. Virtually as we meet our heroine, Hsiang Ying (Lee), she’s getting tossed off a cliff by her kung-fu teacher, into a pack of wolves. Having survived that and made her way back – perhaps assuming this was all some terrible misunderstanding – her master then disavows her, announces he was the man responsible for killing her father, and locks her up in a cage. This all happens within, literally, three minutes of the film starting. Fortunately, a passing stranger sees fit to free her from the cage, and the ‘Heartless Lady’, as she becomes known, can go on her way, with the eventual aim of being exactly what the title suggests: revengeful.

Not much in the way of surprises either, although there’s no shortage of action, some of which might possibly be quite good. I am, unfortunately, not able to speak with authority, as there does not appear to be any version of this available which comes close to approximating the correct aspect ratio. This is “pan and scan” at its most annoying – and making matters worse, there’s no panning. You simply get the middle chunk of the screen, regardless of relevance. Which leads to a surreal moment later on, where there’s a discussion between two characters, both of whom have managed to be cropped out of the picture, leaving an entirely unoccupied frame. Antique still life: Chinese room, with conversation.

I might be inclined to give the film the benefit of the doubt, except for the hideous attempts at “comedy” – and, please, take the quotes there as necessary. For some reason, the script decides to give Hsiang a buffoon for a side-kick: he’s named “Clown” in the English dub, more in hope than an accurate reflection of any amusement gained from his presence. For virtually any scene in which he appears, will have you wishing the cropping of the print had been even more extreme. This reaches the pits in a scene at a brothel, where he and Hsiang are seeking information about their target, and is so painfully unfunny as to be borderline offensive. When one aspect of a film sucks so badly, it’s harder to believe it’s good anywhere else.

Yet, there are occasional moments – maybe no more than three or four consecutive seconds, when Lee is shot from far enough way that she fits completely on the screen – which are almost impressive enough to make you go. “I should try and track a good-quality copy of this.” Lee is fluid and graceful in motion, not dissimilar from her Hong Kong contemporary, Angela Mao, although the supporting cast here is more knock-off, and fails to make anything of an impression. In the end, this is all just too generic, from the title through the environment to, pretty much, the entire plot. As noted elsewhere, I watched this the same day as another film made in approximately the same time and place: the two have already merged into one Taiwanese blob of fu.

Dir: Artis Chow
Star: Judy Lee, Wen Chiang-lung, Man Kong Lung, Li Tung

Devour, by R.L. Blalock

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

Back when I was growing up in Britain during the eighties, I was a voracious reader of horror fiction. The two staples of my literary diet were the works of James Herbert, who occupied the more “literary” end of the spectrum, and Shaun Hutson, whose novels were about as subtle as a kick to the groin. This likely tends towards the latter end of the spectrum, being a straightforward tale of survival during the zombie apocalypse. It begins as Olivia Bennett is heading home from lunch with her husband, when the St. Louis freeway on which she is driving becomes one of the first killing zones.

With civilization rapidly imploding, and communications all but non-existent, Liv has to make her way through the increasingly dangerous cityscape toward Slag Stead, a farm on the outskirts which may (or may not) provide a safe haven, and where her husband may (or may not) be waiting. Making matters considerably more perilous, Liv also has to protect her toddler daughter Elli. On the one hand, Elli’s survival provides a considerable dose of maternal motivation. But on the other, she’s too young to understand that there are times when silence is not just golden, it’s essential for survival.

In the cyclical nature of horror, I can’t help wondering if we have passed Peak Zombie, as it were. The Walking Dead has now completed its eighth season, and seems increasingly to be struggling to keep things fresh. This goes back to the roots of the sub-genre: rather than man vs. man (or woman), against a zombie backdrop, the story here is almost entirely woman vs. zombie. Or, rather, zombieS, for the pack nature of the infected here is part of what makes them devastatingly lethal. They’re also fast, rather than the classic, slow-moving shufflers of the George A. Romero universe: zombie purists may be less than happy with that choice.

However, this approach does lead to a relatively repetitious approach to the story here: Sneak, slay, hide, rinse, repeat. There’s really only so many times you can describe Liv’s chosen weapon of a mallet, whacking a “feral” upside the head. While occasionally, Liv and Elli do cross paths with other survivors, I rarely felt that the subsequent interactions provided much in the way of additional depth: these additional characters felt dropped in merely to serve the plot. I did like Liv, and appreciated her relentless survival instincts – though for someone supposedly training to be a nurse, she seemed curiously squeamish, especially during the early stages [admittedly, she gets over it, and by the end is wielding that mallet with something bordering on enthusiasm].

Occasionally, Blalock does crib a bit too obviously from other genre entries. The sequence where the ferals attack and over-run a radio station closely parallels 1979’s Italian movie, Zombie, while the notion that they “sleep” at night was used in The Girl With All The Gifts. Admittedly, there’s precious little that’s truly new under the sun in the zombie world, but if you want to stand out from the rotting, flesh-gnawing masses, you need to offer something new, be it in content or style. This doesn’t do much of either, and while competent enough, is eminently forgettable.

Author: R.L. Blalock
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon as both an e-book and a paperback.
Book one in the Death & Decay series

Fair Game (1982)

★½
“Not to be confused with…”

In particular, not to be confused with the Cindy Crawford film of the same name. But for the purposes of this site, more importantly, not to be confused with the film of the same name, also from Australia, released four years later in 1986 and which became one of Quentin Tarantino’s inspirations for Death Proof. I say this, since I did confuse them, and got the wrong one. I have now rectified the error, and a review of the latter will be along really soon. We regret the mistake. No, seriously: look at the rating here. WE REGRET THE MISTAKE. It perhaps could also be confused with Hostile Intentions, which was watched the very same day, and similarly concerns three young women on a road-trip, that goes horribly wrong. [Interesting how often the “three women” trope shows up: Charlie’s Angels, Charmed… Hell, Destiny’s Child. Future article idea filed away!]

That I’ve spent 150 words without actually discussing the movie, likely tells you all you need to know about it. But if you insist

Three schoolgirls – Jilly (Trengove), Joanne (Mack) and Liz (O’Loughlin) – head off for a weekend of fun at a beach-house owned by a relation. However, it’s not long before things start to get creepy, as their car is chased by a pair of mysterious black vehicles, driven by a group of local men. When they finally appear to elude their pursuers, and reach the sea-side, they meet their next-door neighbour, Pamela Wilkinson (West). She has a dark secret of her own to hide: she was part of a check forging scheme, but absconded with the loot from her last job. That puts her on the radar as well, and it’s not long before someone is (or someones are) lurking in the shrubbery nearby. What are their intentions?

It’s probably this split of focus which damages the film most. If it had stuck with Pamela or the schoolgirls, this could at least potentially have been a creepy thriller. The latter, for example, could have turned into a teenage version of Deliverance, which might have been a nice twist. Instead, just as the film begins to generate any degree of tension, for example, when the girls are being pursued by the black vans… It switches over to Pamela’s story, and effectively, has to start over. Then, when it gets going, we’re back with the schoolgirls – where were we again? Fitchett is so bad at meshing the elements together, it feels like you’re channel-hopping between two different movies, hoping (with steadily decreasing optimism) one or other of them will eventually make it worth your while to stick around.

Though West’s pedigree as Australian Penthouse‘s 1979 Pet of the Year is not in question, shall we say, the sleeve shown promises a great deal more salacious schoolgirl content than the film delivers. Again, it says a lot that, such are the film’s other flaws, even this level of blatant false advertising provokes no more than moderate irritation.

Dir: Christopher Fitchett
Star: Kim Trengove, Kerry Mack, Marie O’Loughlin, Karen West
a.k.a. Desolation Angels

The Follower

★★½
Misery loves company”

Country singer Chelsea Angel (Christensen) announces to her fanbase that’s she taking a time-out from touring and recording – not least because of her recently-discovered pregnancy. Her flight home crashes in the middle of nowhere, and she wakes up to find herself chained up in a remote cabin, along with another survivor, Evelyn (James). Except, it soon turns out that Evelyn isn’t the innocent air hostess she initially appears. She’s Chelsea’s most obsessive and dedicated fan, who was actually responsible for the plane going down. And now, she has the object of her affection – not to mention, her unborn baby – all to herself, for some quality time, in which she can address Chelsea’s new style, with which Evelyn is not happy. Meanwhile, the singer’s boyfriend, Dillon (Lauren), and the guy in charge of her fan-club, Frank (Kirkpatrick), are trying to figure out where Chelsea has gone, following the online trail Evelyn left behind.

The straight two-handed stuff between Evelyn and Chelsea is not bad. It’s especially effective during the early going as the dynamic between the pair shifts, and Chelsea gradually realizes her plight. The tipping moment is likely when Evelyn starts burbling about how they both had chips in their head, but she had hers removed. It’s at that point, I think, we realized we were deep into Annie Wilkes territory, and that Stephen King adaptation looms over this the rest of the way. Christensen isn’t exactly James Caan, and James isn’t Kathy Bates either, yet they’re competent enough to keep this interesting. Chelsea’s pregnancy adds a twist, and if this wasn’t a TV movie, I’d have been wondering if Evelyn was going to go all Beatrice Dalle on Chelsea’s stomach.

The stuff outside the cabin is much less effective, ranging from the simply dull to wildly implausible. For instance, Chelsea is such a big star she can “sell out stadiums” – though the audience for her concert which opens it, is in the several dozens. But we’re we’re expected to believe that she is the only person with the website password which will allow access to Evelyn’s purchase history there, and thus, her address. Yeah: I’m sure Taylor Swift packs and ships her own T-shirts too.

Even when the necessary information is obtained – and you’ll be yelling the password at the screen long before Dillon figures it out – they don’t bother to notify the authorities. Instead, Frank wanders off to investigate on his own, with entirely predictable (and not undeserved) results. Anybody who thinks men are the smarter sex, needs to watch this. Everyone else? We can probably take or leave this at will. The thought strikes me that it could possibly be adapted into an interesting stage-play, for some fringe theatre company, just using two actresses. This might end up delivering the psychological intensity necessary, only present here in intermittent and sporadic bursts – and largely overshadowed by the idiocy of the supporting characters.

Dir: Damián Romay
Star: Erika Christensen, Bethany Lauren James, Val Lauren, Jason Kirkpatrick

The Sheriff’s Surrender, by Susan Page Davis

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

Having started our acquaintance with the Ladies Shooting Club trilogy last year with the third book, The Blacksmith’s Bravery (long story), my wife Barb and I are now reading the other two volumes in order. Neither of us were disappointed in this one! My reviewing it here was a happy surprise. Although the covers of all three books feature gun-toting women, and a basic plot current of the trilogy is women learning to take responsibility for defending themselves and others, the heroine of the third book wasn’t actually called on to engage in any gun-fighting action. So I assumed the same would be the case here. But [at the risk of a mild “spoiler” –though for fans of this site, this will add interest rather than spoil it :-)], in this series opener, our heroine does need to step up to the plate with a Winchester. (Contrary to many fictional and movie depictions, rifles were used more for serious shooting in the Old West than six-guns). Despite that difference, though, both books have a lot of similarity in tone, content and style. Since I gave the concluding volume five stars on Goodreads, that’s a good thing!

In 1885 small-town Idaho, young Gert Dooley keeps house for her widowed brother, the town’s gunsmith. One thing she can do to help him is test fire the guns he repairs; and she’s gotten to be a crack shot over the years of doing this. When the town’s longtime sheriff is murdered in his office (the titular sheriff is his replacement), the usually quiet community is spooked; and a widowed storekeeper friend asks Gert to teach her how to use her late husband’s Colt, in case she needs it to protect herself or her business. There’s initially no thought of creating a club as such; but as other crimes follow and other women join in the lessons, the Ladies Shooting Club takes shape. Reactions among the community’s menfolk aren’t uniformly supportive –but not uniformly hostile either; stereotypical role expectations of female helplessness weren’t so ingrained in the late 19th-century West as they’d become later.

Despite the historical setting, the issue the novel poses is very contemporary, and hotly debated even today. Male chauvinists tend to see any use of weapons by females as transgressive of patriarchal norms. And while all feminists believe in “empowerment” for women in some sense, many of them either feel that pacifism is ideologically essential to true feminism, or believe that the State and its agents have an absolute monopoly on legitimate use of lethal force, which renders use of a gun for self-defense by ordinary citizens as nearly as bad as using it to attack an innocent. But another strand of feminism rejects that thinking, and views responsible and educated gun ownership as a legitimate tool of women’s empowerment. It’s not hard to deduce from this book what view of that matter Davis takes.

There’s nothing tract-like about this novel, however, any messages emerge naturally from the story itself. Christian faith plays a role in the lives of Gert and other characters, and of the town –the coming of a preacher and his wife to form a nondenominational community church is an important event, as it really was in many Western communities, where organized religion came more slowly than it did in the more easily-settled Eastern states– but the author isn’t “preachy” in her handling of this. The club is also a vehicle for creating female camaraderie and friendship that crosses social divides set by class, religion, and Victorian attitudes (it’ll eventually include both the preacher’s wife and a saloon owner and her girls), and some characters will have lessons to learn in that area.

But the main focus is on the question of what’s behind the sudden rash of arson and violence in the community. I’d describe this as a Western (and there’s horses, guns, a posse, and gun-play at the end), but it embodies very real characteristics of the mystery genre as well. (While I guessed the identity of the villain early on, I’m not sure many readers would –and you might have fun testing your own wits!) And in the background, we have regard and respect growing into love between a worthy man and woman.

Since this was the second book we read of the series, as Barb said, it was “like visiting old friends.” I’d recommend to new readers, though, that they read the books in order. And for us, it’s now on to our third book (which is actually the trilogy’s second), The Gunsmith’s Gallantry!

Author: Susan Page Davis
Publisher: Barbour Publishing, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Lady Hunter: Prelude to Murder

★★½
“Taking the Miike”

While not the first to be released, this was the first movie directed by Miike, who would go on to become one of the most prolific – yet, still, critically-lauded – directors to come out of Japan in the last quarter-century. Perhaps this is well-informed hindsight: yet, if still pretty basic in its content, it does feels at least somewhat above what you would expect from a straight-to-video movie by a first-time director.

Saeko (Kashiwabara) is a retired soldier, living quietly in the city – though not without a touch of PTSD, if her bunker-like apartment is any indication. A former colleague, now running a day-care, calls on Saeko for help after an abduction attempt on one of the kids he’s looking after, whose mother has also gone missing. Those behind the abduction turn their attention to Saeko, only to find out they’ve bitten off rather more than they can chew in the former special forces operative, who has a very particular set of skills, as they say… She’s intent on getting to the bottom of things.

Despite the salacious cover, this is actually relatively tame in terms of content. The only nod to prurience is perhaps when Saeko knocks out and ties up a female opponent, it’s with an elaborate series of knots, which appear to have strayed in from a Japanese bondage film. Overall, it’s better at the set-up than the execution, especially in the second half, when the action takes a back seat – not least to scenes involving technology that have not aged well. Though nor was the print I saw helped, by English subs which seemed to pop out to the bathroom for much of the time.

Initially, I was wondering whether the bulk of the film was going to be a siege on the heroine’s apartment – an idea which Everly subsequently utilized. That could have been a nice way of exploiting the limitation of a small budget, with a claustrophobic setting, turning Saeko into an urban version of Rambo, making the most of her environment. Shame she (and the film) eventually escape, as it’s close to the best part of the movie, and loses a significant amount of steam thereafter. The other memorable sequence introduces Eddie, another former colleague of Saeko’s, who tells a brutal war story to two drunken Japanese women, who laugh hysterically throughout it: the ending has an unexpected, disturbing twist.

Indeed, that applies to the film overall – the final scene perhaps sticks in the mind significantly more than it makes narrative sense. It turns out the kid is the offspring of some high-ranking guy from Moldova (the term “king” is used in the subs; I suspect something was lost in translation there); quite what’s going on remains not entirely clear. Dating from 1991, it feels a little like a precursor of the Zero Woman series from later in the decade. In the light of what Miike would go on to do, it’s something of a interesting curio. But to be honest, if anyone else had directed this, it would likely have been condemned to the memory hole of cinematic history.

Dir: Takashi Miike
Star: Yoshie Kashiwabara, Naomi Morinaga, Kōsuke Morita, Isao Murata
a.k.a. Red Hunter: Prelude to Kill

Proud Mary

★★★
“Leonetta: The Professional”

Despite the distinctly retro feel of the poster, intro and much of the music, this is very much a contemporary affair. Mary (Henson) is an enforcer working for Benny (Glover): at one point, she was in a relationship with his son, Tom (Brown), and he still wants to continue it. During one hit on a debtor, she finds the target’s young son, Danny (Winston), obliviously playing video-games in his bedroom. Struck by guilt, she leaves him alone, and keeps an eye on the kid thereafter. A year later, she rescues him from the abusive drug dealer who has “adopted” Danny, but the resulting bloodbath is a big problem. For the dealer in question worked for Benny’s biggest rival, who is not happy about the removal and demands Benny find the culprit. Mary, who was already fed up and wanting out of her career, has to decide exactly where her loyalties lie.

As the tag-line on top suggests, I was getting very strong hints of a gender-reversed Leon: a female hitman taking a young boy under his wing, and protecting her from the evil forces which threaten to engulf them. There are, admittedly, a number of differences: Mary is not the simple creature who was Leon, and her relationship with Danny is basically maternal, rather than the slightly creepy yet endearing one between Leon and Matilda. Though the main change is one the film almost seems to underplay, when it could (should?) have been the dramatic focus: Mary killed Danny’s father. The major conflict which I expected should ensue from this, never quite materializes.

The film as a whole is a great reminder of how guns work as a “force multiplier”, allowing a skilled woman to face and defeat opponents who are clearly physically stronger than her. That said, the action is merely okay – albeit, given Najafi was responsible for the awful London Has Fallen, “okay” counts as a significant improvement. We were distracted by the frequent, blatant product placement for the remarkably bullet-resistant Maserati, in which Mary whizzed round town [we really needed a scene of someone trying to jack her car, and getting his mistake forcibly explained to him]. While it takes place in Boston, there’s not enough sense of place to make it matter: it could be any grimy inner-city. 

Henson – whom, I assume, uses her middle initial to distinguish her from all the other Taraji Hensons – is solid enough as the heroine, carrying its emotional weight effortlessly, and she keeps this worth watching, despite the flaws. Though this often feels like it’s trying to be weightier than it deserves, almost as if trying to live up to her Oscar-nominated standards. Yet at its heart, this is a formulaic “assassin with a heart of gold” feature, and there just isn’t enough beyond the obvious going on, plotwise, to separate it from its predecessors. Might have been better to embrace its clear B-movie roots, and roll with that aesthetic, rather than abandoning it after about ten minutes.

Dir: Babak Najafi
Star: Taraji P. Henson, Jahi Di’Allo Winston, Billy Brown, Danny Glover

Nightblade: A Book of Underrealm by Garrett Robinson

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

One of the common problems I’ve found with fantasy novels is establishing the universe. It’s clearly going to be very different from the reader’s, and the author needs to get them up to speed on how things work in the book’s setting. If this isn’t done quickly and effectively, the reader can be left floundering in a world they know nothing about. Robinson uses a neat trick to get around this. His heroine, Loren, basically knows nothing about it either, because she has been brought up in a remote rural area. Virtually all she knows about life outside the woods comes from tales told to her by an itinerant tinker, and her dreams of becoming a heroic thief seem no more than fantasies.

That all changes when she encounters a fugitive, Xian the mage. Fed up with her life – and given the severely abusive parents, it’s hard to blame her – she throws her lot in with him. That’s how everything starts: as she discovers the world around her has a lot more to offer than household drudgery and arranged marriages, so do we. She has a couple of advantages over the usual runaway: she’s “country strong” having been brought up to hunt, providing her with a skill-set which will putt her in good stead to hold her own in a more urban environment. And on her departure, she takes a dagger, a family heirloom of sorts, which for some reason, strikes fear into the subset of those she encounters, who recognize it.

Loren is, perhaps, a little too well-prepared occasionally: while I can see how running and climbing trees would translate into parkour-like city skills, her adeptness at picking locks was a little eyebrow-raising. However, this ia a relatively minor issue, and more than outweighed by the strengths of Robinson’s writing. He draws a world which is easy to imagine in your mind’s eye, populated by a range of memorable characters. I appreciated the almost total lack of the near-compulsory romantic angles, and that Loren is far from the only strong woman to be found in these pages. Already, we have met Auntie, the shape-shifting mage who runs the underworld in the city of Cabrus, and Damaris, a scarily well-connected smuggler who helps Loren, yet appears to have her own agenda.

As the introductory book to a six-volume series, there is rather less than a complete story told here, though neither is there one of those oh-so annoying cliffhangers. There are instead questions, which will presumably be answered down the road. Where did Loren’s blade come from? What is its significance? What about the mysterious gems Damaris is smuggling? And who is Jordel, the man who is also after Xian, yet seems to keep encountering and assisting our heroine? I was left feeling fulfilled by what I had read, yet also wanting more, and that’s a combination which is not as frequently found as you’d expect.

Author: Garrett Robinson
Publisher: Legacy Books, available through Amazon, both as an e-book and a paperback
Book 1 of 6 in The Nightblade Epic series.

Kidnap

★★
“Car troubled.”

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. And considering Halle Berry’s last appearance on this site was for Catwoman, that’s saying something. This is so dumb, I genuinely felt I could feel my IQ slowly sliding away as I watched the movie. Even now, simply remembering it has me feeling more stupider by the sentence. If this review ends up sounding like Beavis & Butthead by the end, that will be why. Its plot is beyond simplistic. Karla Dixon (Berry) has her child abducted from a New Orleans park while she’s on the phone, by husband and wife kidnappers Margo (McGinn) and Terry (Temple). Losing her cell in the process, she takes off after them in hot pursuit, and nothing will get in her way for the next 80-odd minutes.

Which is 75 minutes longer than it would have lasted, had anyone behaved smartly. The six-year-old kid is likely the smartest person in the whole movie, and he spends most of it whimpering in the back of a car. Fortunately for him, the only thing dumber than the box of rocks which is his mother, are the two boxes of rocks which are Margo and Terry. Or possibly the entire pallet of rocks scriptwriter Knate Lee must have in his head, for thinking this procession of poor decisions and eye-rolling developments could possibly pass muster. At least, with any audience not consisting of fellow six-year-olds.

These begin with the cloying opening montage of baby pictures, proceed through a lengthy sequence of Karla at her day job – yes, you get to watch nothing except a harried waitress serving customers – and finish with the phone-call informing her of an upcoming custody battle with her ex-husband. The movie has just wasted its first 15 minutes on entirely inconsequential irrelevancies, since none of the preceding have the slightest significance during the rest of the film. Then there’s the chase itself, which relies far too much on happenstance, with Karla repeatedly losing contact with the kidnappers, only fortuitously to bump into them again: I guess Louisiana must be about the size of Hyde Park. It’s full of other ludicrous moments, like Karla trying to run Terry over, only to stop for no apparent reason, or her trading down from a shotgun to a knife.

The sole saving grace is Berry, and it’s a significant one, since she is on-screen in virtually every shot. She puts over a raw passion and drive which goes some way – albeit, not far enough – toward salvaging the woeful material. You can see how she was an Oscar-winning actress, even when spitting out cringe-inducing, sub-Taken lines such as, “Let me tell you something, as long as my son is in that car, I will not stop. Wherever you go I will be right behind you.” You do get the sense Karla is an utterly irresistible force of nature, prepared to do absolutely whatever is necessary, including wrestling with Margo while the car careers through a (suspiciously-empty) tunnel. Enjoy and appreciate this intensity: forget absolutely everything else.

Dir: Luis Prieto
Star: Halle Berry, Chris McGinn, Lew Temple, Sage Correa

Dueños del paraíso

★★
“The main powder here is soap, not cocaine.”

Business is on the streets, check it out.
Survival of the strongest they’re the ones in charge
It’s at gunpoint, it’s outside the law.
Your word is your bond and you know it, man.
How many lives have been lost to loyalty?
If you’re my partner take care you can’t fail me
Honor comes before love.
The streets are fierce because they know I’m here.
We’re the masters of this dream, All American dream
I’m brave not merciful, I’m bad to the bone
By steel, tequila and blood we’ll be the masters of paradise

Based on the above theme song, and credits which are a fast-paced montage of gun-fights, explosions and chases through the Everglades, you’d be expecting a action-packed creature that will keep the adrenaline pumping. The reality? Not so much. Indeed, just about every gun-battle in the 71 episodes here could be fitted into the opening credits. Despite this being the much-touted return of del Castillo to the genre, after her success in La Reina Del Sur, she is just one in a slew of characters, and while central, is arguably not the focus.

The title of this 2015 show translates as “Masters of Paradise”, and it occupies a not dissimilar time and place to the previous year’s Viuda Negra: Miami during the infamous cocaine wars of the late seventies and early eighties. Rather than taking some inspiration from the actual character of Griselda Blanco, this Mexican-Chilean co-production invents an entire set of fictional characters. At the core is Anastasia Cardona (del Castillo), the wife of a Mexican drug lord who is forced to flee the country after war breaks out with a rival group of traffickers.

They try to set up shop in Florida instead, which brings them to the attention some of well-established local rivals, the Quezadas, led by Leandro (Varoni). While Anastasia’s husband soon bites a bullet, the twist is, it’s not the enemy who are responsible: Anastasia herself killed him, in a fit of jealousy. Not that this stops Leandro’s chief hitman from taking the credit, or from attacking the funeral, stealing the corpse and then dropping it from a helicopter into the courtyard of his house – to make some kind of point, I guess. They follow up by kidnapping Anastasia, leaving her for dead in the swamps, and when she eventually recovers, vows to take revenge.

If this was what the show was about, it would be fine. However, it’s much more about the everyday lives of her various minions and their families, in particular, Conrado San Miguel (Zabaleta) and Adán Romero (Torre), the latter of whom is just as newly arrived in Miami. These all unfold against a backdrop of Anastasia’s quest for power and revenge, but the latter feels more like an afterthought. Think of it as similar to the way Zombieland was a road movie, that just happened to unfold against a backdrop of the zombie apocalypse. So this is a soap opera, that just happens to unfold against a backdrop of drug dealing and vengeance.

So, we get things like Adán’s daughter having issues with a jealous classmate at her new school. Conrado’s wife, Erica, is an aspiring actress, who is lured in by a sleazy producer into material of a more, ah, “adult” nature. An interfering mother-in-law. Unwanted pregnancy. A sprinkling of sexual tension. It’s mostly generic stuff, blandly uninteresting and little more than background noise as far as drama goes – though I was amused by the first name-check of B-movie director Russ Meyer I’ve heard in a telenovela. Another problem was the Chilean co-production elements, which keeps diverting the film off to that South American country, almost inevitably at the worst possible moment, just when things are getting going in Florida.

All told, probably less than a third of this is what I’d call “the good stuff”. Much of that is down to del Castillo, who is as solid as ever, and has plenty of opportunities to deliver her trademark stare, capable of melting a hole in sheet metal. I also note the presence of Oscar-nominated actress Adriana Barraza as Anastasia’s mother, Irene Medrano, who has an entire graveyard worth of skeletons in her closet; that’s certainly a better pedigree of supporting cast than most series can boast. Other positive elements include the husband and wife “cleaners”, who have a thriving business disposing of all the dead bodies, and occasionally effective moments, such as when one character is given the news of her mother’s death, in medium-long shot, and told almost entirely in her reaction.

However, the scripting in particular seems to be remarkably sloppy. At one point, Leandro Quezada appears to be stricken with a terminal disease, but this plot-line appears to be casually discarded, almost as if it never happened. The time-frame doesn’t make a great deal of sense either: there’s a gap of seven months when Anastasia recovers from her kidnapping, during which Quezada and his clan are doing… apparently nothing, when they have a perfect opportunity to bury their enemies for good. It performs another great leap forward for the final couple of episodes as well, skipping over two years, for no clear purpose. And that ending supposedly offers a big twist, yet is incredibly obvious: while I’m usually no good at spotting these things, even I saw this one coming from a long way off.

It never quite became irritating or annoying enough for me to give serious consideration to giving up, and was, at least, relatively consistent in its tone and style throughout. My disinterest was mostly a result of the content. It feels as though the makers didn’t want to tell a story about crime and criminals, so much as bolt the elements of a traditional soap-opera onto a hot topic, seeking to exploit del Castillo’s previous work and reputation, rather than capitalizing and building on it. Definitely a disappointment.

Creator: Pablo Illanes
Star: Kate del Castillo, Miguel Varoni, Jorge Zabaleta, José María Torre