Category: Review

Miss Bala (2011)

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★★★
“Beauty (queen) and the beasts.”

Pageants and drug cartels may not seem like topics that combine, but in South and Central America, they’re perhaps closer than you’d think. El Chapo’s third wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, was a Mexican beauty queen. In 2013, the previous year’s winner of the “Sinaloa Woman” pageant, Maria Susana Flores, was killed in a clash with police. According to USA Today, she “died like a mobster’s moll, carrying an AK-47 assault rifle into a spray of gunfire from Mexican soldiers. Hit below the neck, she dropped into a dirt field and bled to death, her carotid artery severed.” And then there’s the (loose) inspiration for this story: Miss Mexico International 2009, Laura Zuniga, was stripped of the title after being detained on suspicion of drug and weapons violations, in circumstances best described as murky.

The heroine here, Laura Guerrero (Sigman), is portrayed as mostly innocent, or at least a victim of unfortunate circumstance rather than deliberate intent. An aspiring candidate for Miss Baja California (the film’s title puns off this, translating as “Miss Bullet”), her nightclub trip with a friend turns into a more of a nightmare, as it’s the scene of an assault by La Estrella cartel on the DEA officers there. Trying to find out if her friend survived gets her kidnapped by La Estrella’s leader, Lino (Hernández), who decides that Laura can be useful. With her father (Zaragoza) and kid brother held hostage, Laura has little option except to agree. Her tasks will include couriering money across the border, helping uncover a DEA infiltrator within the gang, and acting as a honey trap to ensnare General Duarte, a leading light in the government’s forces.

It certainly shines a harsh light on the whole “narco culture” south of the border, coming over as an uncomfortable mix of telenovela and action film. Which may be the point. The director brings a very static, almost disinterested style to proceedings. The camera sometimes sits fixed, either in front of or behind the characters as events unfold – it feels almost like a video-game occasionally. At other momets, its eye pans slowly across unfolding events, for example gliding down a hallway during a home invasion, or across a beach as an informant is executed. This offers a clinical contrast to the passionate family loyalty driving Laura: her father and brother come first, last and always. Unfortunately, Lino knows that, and it provides an easy key with which she can be manipulated.

Despite the unflattering portrayal, this managed to become Mexico’s official Academy Award candidate, though didn’t make the list of nominees. I’d prefer the heroine to have been more pro-active, rather than the reactive character she is for much of this, though again, I sense this is an entirely deliberate choice, reflecting the lack of control most of the Mexican people have over their fate in this lethal war. Perhaps this is something which will be addressed in the pending Hollywood remake, directed by Catherine Hardwicke – best known for the first Twilight film, though let’s try and not hold that against her – with Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez in the lead. But the previous track record of such remakes, suggests disappointment is probably more likely.

Dir: Gerardo Naranjo
Star: Stephanie Sigman, Noé Hernández, José Yenque, Javier Zaragoza

Fair Game (1986)

  By

★★★
“Time to back out of the outback…”

First off, this is not to be confused with the other Australian film of the eighties by the same name, made four years previously. This is considerably more sparse, and likely the better for it. Jessica (Delaney, who went on to marry John Denver, and have a highly acrimonious divorce from him) runs an animal sanctuary in the outback, but discovers someone has been hunting the local fauna on it. Suspicion falls on three local yahoos: Sunny (Ford, reminiscent of a young Sam Neill), Ringo (Sandford, doing some impressive stunts) and Sparks (Who – no, really, that’s his name), a trio of hunters targeting kangaroos – regarded as vermin by the farmers – for their meat. They don’t take kindly to being confronted, and begin an escalating campaign of terror against Jessica. But even a peaceful animal-lover can only be pushed so far before she breaks. Turns out that line is likely being strapped to the hood of their Jeep and driven topless across the countryside. Or thereabouts.

While I doubt the maker of Revenge saw this fairly obscure film, it does seem somewhat similar, with three men pursuing a lone woman through a desert wilderness, before the tables are turned on them. Quentin Tarantino has also spoken glowingly aout this piece of Ozploitation, and you have to wonder if the scene described above was perhaps one of the inspirations for Death Proof, in which the similarly Antipodean Zoë Bell spends a good bit of time on the bonnet of a speeding car – albeit more clothed and of her own volition [Though amusingly, one of the video covers for the film opts to depict a rather more chaste version of the scene] If so, I can see why he opted to lift only that sequence, as the film as a whole is rather… jerky, for want of a better word. By which I mean, the narrative feels like it consists of a series of unconnected sequences, rather than ones which flow into each other.

There is still a certain sense of escalation, and for once, there isn’t actually a sexual assault. The thugs’ actions begin with petty bullying, and escalates through stalkerish activities, like taking a Polaroid of Jessica while she sleeps, but bypass the obvious rape, which is refreshing. However, it still takes a bit too long to get to the meat of proceedings, with Jessica turning her farmstead into a series of home-made, yet increasingly lethal, traps with which she can defend herself. I’d like to have seen this stretched out, rather than compressed into a frantic final 15 minutes. She’s the hunted rather than the hunter for the majority of the time, and as usual, the former is the less interesting part of the equation. Cinematographer Andrew Lesnie went on to become Peter Jackson’s favorite cameraman until his death in 2015, and does a nice job of capturing the wild beauty of the Australian wilderness.

Dir: Mario Andreacchio
Star: Cassandra Delaney, Peter Ford, David Sandford, Garry Who

The Quick and the Dead

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★★★
“Drawn that way.”

1995 possibly marked a recent low for the commercial appeal of action heroines in Hollywood. December would give us one of the biggest disaster movies of all time, in Cutthroat Island and March saw Tank Girl bomb. Together with this attempt to give the Western a female spin, the three movies had a combined budget of $155 million, but grossed less than $33 million. While Westerns were enjoying a return to popularity in the years after Unforgiven, it was almost as if Sony had learned nothing from Fox’s dud in the same area the previous year, Bad Girls. They instead doubled down on something which was not just a Western, but specifically a pastiche of the spaghetti Western subgenre.

In hindsight, its commercial failure was almost inevitable, even though after Basic Instinct in 1992, Sharon Stone was one of Hollywood’s hottest actresses. So when Sony bought Simon Moore’s script the following year, they approached her to star. She not only came on board as the lead actress, she also became one of the film’s producers, and had no hesitation in wielding that power. For example, she insisted that Sam Raimi – then, largely known only for his work on the Evil Dead trilogy – had to direct it, or she would not be involved. Similarly, she went to bat for then largely unknown actors Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio, going so far as to pay the latter’s salary herself. The subsequent Oscars for both men suggest she had a good eye for upcoming thespians.

Moore was eventually fired, with the studio bringing John Sayles on board. However, Moore was re-hired three weeks before shooting was scheduled to start, due to the movie becoming excessively long: he simply discarded all of Sayles’s changes, and Sony accepted what was basically the original version. However, during shooting, Raimi realized he had an issue. “I came to the studio and said, can you find me a writer? I’ve shot this movie, and the end isn’t quite working… They suggested Joss Whedon, who was doing Buffy, so I met Joss and he saw the movie, and he helped me solve this ending in one afternoon,” adding one more name to the list of future stars who worked on the film.

The concept here is pure gimmick. The town of Redemption lives under the iron hand of Herod (Hackman), who organizes an annual gunfight contest he always wins, partly to flush out anyone who might be plotting against him, mostly because he enjoys it. This time, 15 other entrants are drawn by the $100,000 prize, as well as other reasons. The more or less willing participants include Herod’s son (DiCaprio), former partner Cort (Crowe) and a mysterious woman (Stone), named in the credits as The Lady, actually called Ellen. She has a particular grudge against Herod, since his involvement in the death of her father, though things are more complex than you initially suspect. Getting revenge, however, requires Ellen to get through a tournament increasingly stacked against her.

The Variety review at the time nails the main problem: “Given the inevitability of an Ellen-Herod showdown, despite a couple of twists [Moore] has thrown into the last reel, the film quickly becomes hamstrung by the rigid dramatic constraints imposed upon it by the gun tournament format. No matter how many fancy ways Raimi invents to stage the shootouts, the tedium is quick in coming, and there’s nothing else going on between times to build up suspense, character or interest.” Moore has failed to grasp that while Westerns often climaxed in a gunfight, this does not mean that more gunfights = a better film. They are the full-stop at the end of a cinematic sentence. And like. Those, when. You use them. Too often, the. Results are jarring rather. Than effective.

It’s a shame, because the supporting cast is quite stellar, and deserve better. Outside of those already mentioned, there’s also Tobin Bell, who’d go on to become horror icon Jigsaw in the Saw franchise; Lance Henriksen; Keith David; and, although his scenes were deleted, Raimi’s long-time friend, Bruce Campbell. Seeing the talent which gets rushed in and out of the story in about five minutes makes me wonder if a feature film was the best medium for the idea. It might have worked better as an ongoing television series, each episode telling the back story of the participants and ending in their duel. A rotating series of guest stars would have worked very nicely, with the season covering one of Herod’s contests, leading up to the final gunfight in the last installment.

I’m not certain Stone is perhaps the best candidate for the role, since she seems to think staring really hard is the key to dramatic success. You’d think she might have known better, given apparent action heroine ambitions from relatively early in her career. Even before breaking through to stardom in Total Recall, she was in her fair share of adventure flicks – albeit not very successful ones – such as King Solomon’s Mines and Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold. Unlike Geena Davis, however, Stone didn’t seem to persist in her efforts: the critical acclaim she received the same year for Casino, pushed her career back toward more dramatic pastures. This therefore stands out as something of an oddity in her filmography.

Time has perhaps been slightly kinder to this than its companions in action heroine failure for the year. Raimi eventually showed an ability to deliver this kind of comic-book spectacle with his work on the Spiderman franchise, and that may have been a better home for his stylistically excess flourishes than this. Naturally, as an Arizona resident, this film now triggers a certain amount of native pride, having been filmed largely around the state, in particular at Old Tucson Studios [unfortunately, a good portion of which burned down a couple of months after Quick was released, forcing its closure for two years] and Mescal, 40 miles southeast of Tucson.

It may not be the greatest Western – or even a particularly good Western. Yet two decades later, it likely remains the biggest production in the genre with a female lead, and as such, it deserves a certain respect. Especially when the commercial failures in recent years of Jane Got a Gun and Woman Walks Ahead, suggest that position at the head of the class probably isn’t going to be under threat, any time soon.

Dir: Sam Raimi
Star: Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio

Should Be Dead, by Jeramy Gates

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

“Liberation, Val had learned, was not a simple matter of casting off stereotypes and social conventions. Nor was it a mere change in perspective. Rather, it was an evolution in state of being, a release not from consequences, but from fear.”

Valkyrie Smith was the sole survivor when her family had the misfortune to encounter a serial killer known as “The Collector”. Her husband and son were brutally slain, and she only escaped by hiding in a well. After a long recovery process, and still somewhat disabled, she sets out to track down the Collector and make him pay for what he did to her family. A series of mysterious clues, left for her by an anonymous party, bring Valkyrie to the Pacific coast, where it appears two killers, “Odin” and “Loki”, have teamed up and are inflicting a reign of terror on the region. Playing the risky game of posing as a federal agent, she joins the investigation under local cop Sheriff Diekmann, since it appears there’s a strong connection to the Collector. With the help of her tech advisor Matt and local reporter Riley, can she find and stop the killers before her own identity is exposed?

Despite the odd name, which is really the kind only given to heroines in thrillers like this, I liked Smith. She’s a little older than most of the genre, is intensely focused and owns one of the most kick-ass cars I’ve ever read about. It’s a restored, heavily-customized 1934 Packard, which had been her husband’s pride and joy, and now resembles something Q Branch would hand to 007, after a stern warning to pay attention. There’s little or no romance to be found here: while she beds Riley, it’s a one-night stand, born mostly out of sympathy, and causes more problems than it solves. Her independence from “official” authority gives her more flexibility; she’s better able to respond as things develop, and has no hesitation about putting herself in danger in pursuit of her targets.

The negatives I found here were mostly plot-based. Impersonating a federal agent is one thing – using your own name to do so, an unusual and highly-recognizable one at that? More seriously, the whole “anonymous” tips element bugged the hell out of me. As well as being lazy writing, it’s obvious Valkyrie is being manipulated into doing someone’s work for them. Fortunately, it’s not a major aspect here, save for the beginning and end. I have to say, I wasn’t particularly surprised by the “twist” in the latter, since it seemed obvious to me that Odin was not who Valkyrie hoped or expected. It flows instead into something pointing towards the second volume.

There was one aspect I found particularly well-done. Part of the second half is told from the perspective of one of Odin and Loki’s victims: a retired woman who, along with her husband, has becomes the target of their home-invasion. In terms of the overlying story arc, it’s mostly superfluous. Yet it’s chilling stuff, and in terms of a standalone tale, her struggle to survive may well the equal of Valkyrie’s.

“I had trusted in humanity, the basic goodness of people, that they won’t walk into your house and kill you just because they can. But that’s not the way the world is…”

Author: Jeramy Gates
Publisher: Timber Hill Press, available through Amazon as both an e-book and paperback.
Book 1 of 2 in the Valkyrie Smith Mystery Series.

Johnny Guitar

  By

★★★½
“When a fire burns itself out, all you have left is ashes.”

Despite the male-oriented title, there’s no doubt who the star is: Vienna (Crawford), a former saloon girl who has clawed her way up to owning her own place, on the outskirts of an Arizona mining town. She has inside knowledge of the route the railroad is going to take, and chose her location with that in mind. But there’s stiff local opposition, from those who don’t want the railroad, or who object to her allowing the Dancing Kid (Brady) and his gang, suspects in a stagecoach robbery, to frequent her establishment. Leading those with a dim view of Vienna, is Emma Small (McCambridge), whose brother was killed in the robbery.

Vienna hires her former lover, who goes by the name of “Johnny Guitar” (Hayden) as security, only to be given 24 hours to get out of town by Emma and the disgruntled townsfolk. Matters aren’t helped when the Dancing Kid and his crew raid a local bank. A posse sets out to track them down, and Emma convinces the town-folk that Vienna – unfortunately in the bank at that point – was complicit in the Kid’s crime. The presence of Turkey, a wounded member of the gang who is hiding out in the saloon, doesn’t improve Vienna’s situation.

Crawford is magnificent, utterly commanding the screen with a blistering performance, despite off-screen issues between Crawford and other cast members – a situation not helped by McCambridge’s alcoholism at the time. But she wasn’t alone, Hayden infamously saying afterward, “There is not enough money in Hollywood to lure me into making another picture with Joan Crawford. And I like money.” However, it could perhaps have been worse: the director originally wanted Bette Davis for the role of Emma, but couldn’t afford her. Given subsequent events when Davis and Crawford starred together in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Ray probably dodged a bullet.

Made in 1954, this is a not very disguised parable about McCarthyism and mob psychology: credited writer Philip Yordan often lent his name out to blacklisted colleagues, reportedly Ben Maddow in this case. For example, the Dancing Kid is innocent of the crime of which he’s accused, and driven to commit one as a result – he needs funds to get out of town and escape the lynch-mob. But it’s the scene where Turkey is interrogated by the mob and forced to implicate Vienna, which is the most obvious jab at the then-contemporary political situation. Perhaps the resistance to the railroad is also a metaphor for reactionary conservatism?

This is all largely secondary in terms of modern entertainment, especially when you can watch Vienna spitting out lines like, “Down there I sell whiskey and cards. All you can buy up these stairs is a bullet in the head. Now, which do you want?” In less confident hands, these could easily seem cheesy: in Crawford’s, they become an entirely credible threat. Vienna is a rare character, not only for the genre or the era, but also for her age. The tired veteran gunfighter who simply wants a peaceful life is a common Western trope; it’s just rarely if ever a middle-aged woman. Crawford was 49 at the time of its release, and there’s little or no attempt to play her as younger.

She’s so good, everyone else pales in comparison – and that’s a cast which includes the likes of Ernest Borgnine and John Carradine. Hayden and, particularly, Brady come over as bland, and their subplots are nowhere near as interesting. It’s possible they may simply have been necessary for the fifties, which could have been more than slightly unwilling to tolerate a film with a gun-toting fallen woman as the heroine. As she says, in another great speech, “A man can lie, steal and even kill. But as long as he hangs on to his pride, he’s still a man. All a woman has to do is slip – once. And she’s a tramp!” Tramp or not, she’s still capable of being the most fascinating character in a compelling tale which has, largely, stood the test of time well.

Dir: Nicholas Ray
Star: Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge, Scott Brady

Cold November

  By

★★★
“Deer Florence…”

If you think children are of one mind with regard to the gun debate, thanks to the zealots of Marjory Stoneman, the alternative view portrayed by this movie will feel amazingly transgressive and almost alien. The world it depicts is one where schools will actually teach kids how to use guns safely, handing out gun permits, and a teenage girl can receive a treasured family heirloom, in the shape of a .30-30 rifle, passed down the generations. Hunting is a way of life, and an important resource, with a particularly strong matriarchal tradition, in which three generations of women will be going into the woods together. For 12-year-old Florence (Abas), it’ll be her first excursion: in a not-too-subtle parallel, she also gets her first period.

This is a very sober film, which takes guns and the culture around them extremely seriously, and that includes hunting, which is depicted in unflinching fashion. This is likely not a film for the committed vegan, in particular when Florence has shot her first deer and, in the absence of any immediate adult help, has to dress it. This is foreshadowed earlier, Florence’s aunt Mia (Fellner) teasing her when the young girl gets a bit squeamish about menstrual blood (and in particular, its uses in hunting): “You think that’s gross? Wait until you get elbows deep inside a deer.” As someone who tends to encounter raw meat only on polystyrene trays in the supermarket, it’s quite a shock – albeit also refreshing – to be reminded from where it comes.

On the other hand, the naturalistic approach eventually hampers the film, simply because so little of note actually happens. Up until the end, when Florence finds herself alone in the woods for a bit, virtually the sole bit of excitement is a small fire breaking out in the tree stand. This is not exactly an adrenaline rush. In Jacob’s defense, it’s clearly not intended to be: according to the director on the film’s Kickstarter page, “I noticed how the power of taking a life, butchering an animal, and meditating through the act was empowering. It changes you. It seemed clear that those who had not lived through this change have a fundamentally different experience of life.” However, quite what that “change” might be for Florence is not clear. How is her life “fundamentally different” as a result? We don’t really know.

The main difference seems to be that Florence is no longer visited by the ghost of Sweeney, her late sibling. This is another time the film’s opacity is a bit irritating: it’s suggested that Sweeney’s death was tragic, and perhaps even firearm-related. But would it have been too much to ask, for the film-makers to be a little clearer, on what appears to be an important point? Despite these criticisms, while it’s probably not a film I’d watch again, I didn’t feel it was 90 minutes wasted. Very much understated, this provides a glimpse into an environment not often depicted by Hollywood, one where guns are a tool, and not a threat.

Dir: Karl Jacob
Star: Bijou Abas, Anna Klemp, Heidi Fellner, Karl Jacob

Touching Infinity, by Erin Hayes

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

I will confess to a little post-read confusion here. Amazon calls this Volume 2 in the author’s Rogue Galaxy series – but I could find no information, there or elsewhere, regarding Volume 1. I suspect Amazon and Goodreads are wrong,  and this is actually the first entry, as stated in the Dominion Rising collection. It certainly reads like an opening work, introducing us to Clementine Jones and the rest of the crew of the Picara.

They’re freelance data pirates, taking on corporate espionage missions from the companies who rule the galaxy, with Clem the  recovery specialist. Their latest mission seems too good to be true: Syn-Tech offers a massive bounty for the simple retrieval of patent information from a derelict ship. Despite misgivings, they accept the job, and to no-one’s surprise, it is too good to be true. In addition to the patents, they end up bringing back a lethal virus – the actual target for Syn-Tech, who want to develop an anti-virus they can then monetize. The disease has the ability to infect both organic and synthetic systems, merging them. The results are… messy, to say the least, leaving Clem and her colleagues rapidly running out of options, especially ones not involving the dubious mercies of their employer.

Hayes’s other works appear more in the romance line, yet she demonstrate an impressive grasp of hard SF in this. The future depicted, corporate war by proxy, seems plausible, a universe where many opt to trade freedom for security as a “Lifer”. That makes you, basically, a company indentured servant: as Clem disparagingly puts it, “Your entire existence is owned by that corporation… even which lavatories you’re allowed to shit in.” Free Agents like her rely instead on cyborg parts to enhance and repair themselves, to such an extent she is sometimes left doubting her own humanity. A particularly interesting hook here is, the virus is self-aware, and communicates with Clem in order to come to a mutually beneficial arrangement: it gets to spread, she makes it promise to spare her crew-mates. Yet can you really trust a disease?

The author does a fine job of painting word imagery with a cinematic eye, such as the black hole into which the derelict is tumbling. It did take a while before I even realized that “Clem” was a woman, with the story unfolding in her first-person narrative, leading to “I” rather than “she”. That’s not intended as a criticism, just an observation; similarly, there are hints at her feelings for the ship’s android, Orion, though since she’s about 50% cyborg herself, it is less creepy than you’d think. My sole complaint is its relatively light action quotient: until she teams up with the virus, this is so low-key as to be a borderline candidate for the site. Though even so, it’s never less than entertaining, tells a complete tale and sets the scene in a way that leaves you wondering where the story might go next. The “real” second book is one I’ll probably be buying.

Author: Erin Hayes
Publisher: CreateSpace, available through Amazon, currently only as a paperback, but was part of the Dominion Rising e-book collection.
Book 1 of 2 in the Rogue’s Galaxy series.

Saala Khadoos

  By

★★★
“A maniac training a rebel.”

Despite thrashing virtually every sports cliché under the sun into the ground, this just about manages to skate by on the energy of its two central performances. Adi Tomar (Madhavan) is a boxing coach who gets hit with a trumped-up #MeToo charge by the head of the boxing association Dev Khatri (Hussain), and punted off to the backwoods of Chennai. There, however, he finds a raw jewel in Madhi (Singh), a fish-seller whose sister, Lakshmi (Sorcar), has been training as boxer with an eye to joining the police. But it’s Madhi’s aggression which attracts Adi’s attention, and he eventually convinces her to strap on the gloves.

From here unfolds, pretty much, exactly everything you would expect. Parental disapproval. Sibling rivalry. Madhi mistaking Adi’s devotion to her for something romantic. And, especially inevitably, Dev seeking to sabotage Adi’s hard work and claim the credit of Madhi’s success for himself. It all builds to the finals of the world championships – apparently a team sport – where Madhi goes up against Russian nemesis Natalia Riker, who battered her to a pulp in an earlier match [albeit with various extenuating circumstances]. If the Russki doesn’t quite snarl, “I must break you” before the contest, she might as well do. And if at least avoiding full-blown musical numbers, the songs all but required by Bollywood show up in the form of so many montages, they could form the basis for a drinking game.

I suspect this was inspired by the success of Mary Kom, and has much the same strengths and weaknesses. The makers seem to think that making a woman the central character is enough to offset the hackneyed story. Do not, however, take this as meaning the film is devoid of entertainment. For as mentioned, both leads crackle, and the tag-line on top accurately sums their relationship; it’s a lot of fun to watch develop, as they spar, both verbally and physically. Madhavan certainly looks the part of a former boxer, and although Singh could do with some more definition on her arms, makes up for in pure, undiluted Attitood (spelling and capital letter entirely deliberate) what she may lack in musculature.

That said, the boxing scenes are effectively enough staged that I could overlook the heroine’s wispiness, and this is considerably slicker all-round than the last Bollywood film I stumbled across on Netflix, Warrior Savitri. The cinematography is particularly effective, helping to generate a good volume of raw emotion, and this in turn helps distract from the thoroughly generic “underdog makes good” level of the story. It may even manage to catch an unwary viewer with the occasionally effective shot, such as when Madhi says to her coach, after he has just had to make a very difficult, personal decision: “You gave up everything, just for me. If that isn’t love, what is?” Ouch. If perhaps a low blow, it’s still a line that packs a wallop.

Dir: Sudha Kongara
Star: Ritika Singh, R. Madhavan, Zakir Hussain, Mumtaz Sorcar
a.k.a. Irudhi Suttru

Queen of the South, season three

  By

★★★
“Turnabout is fair play”

We arrived here with Teresa Mendoza (Braga) having gunned down Don Epifanio, and made an implacable enemy of his estranged wife, Camila Vargas (Falcon). Epifanio had become the Governor of Sinaloa, a position Camila took over, using it to buttress her position at the top. She formed alliances on both sides to assist her further: notably General Cortez (Arias), who provided military muscle, and with DEA agent Alonzo Loya, to whom she fed intelligence about her rivals. However, Camila’s increasingly strained relationship with her teenage daughter ends up being used against her.

Meanwhile, Teresa is on the run after killing Epifanio, and is holed up in Malta for the first few episodes, before returning to try and set up shop in Arizona. This is a process fraught with difficulty, as she has not only to deal with La Comisión, the narco-committee who currently run things, but also corrupt local sheriff Jed Mayo (an amusingly thinly-disguised version of notorious actual Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio). Further problems ensure when her supplier, El Santo (Steven Bauer) summons her to Colombia in order to find and address a traitor, an encounter which leaves Teresa in need of a new supplier. Then, with the tables turned and the roles reversed, Camila being on the run, she contacts Teresa to make an offer of a replacement product source – in exchange for taking out Camila’s foe.

The first few episodes, when Teresa is faffing around in the Mediterranean are very disappointing. It feels more as if the cast and crew wanted a holiday somewhere pleasant, rather than it fitting into the gritty scenarios which were a strong point over the first two seasons. My other major complaint about this season is the feeble attempt to represent Phoenix and Arizona. As someone who lives there, I can assure you that Phoenix is nowhere near as… arboreal as is depicted here. Trees. Trees everywhere. It looks like the season was mostly filmed in Dallas, as for the first two series, which explains a lot and is rather irritating. Rather than fake it badly, come to sunny Arizona and film here, dammit!

Grumbling aside, it did improve in the second half, after the roles were reversed and it was Camila who was scrambling to find shelter from her enemies. It was a nice switch, and a harsh reminder for those living in the narco-universe, that you can’t trust anyone, no matter how close they may be to you. I was pleased to see a definitive resolution to the love-triangle between Teresa, James (Gadiot) and the boyfriend from her previous life, Guero. We also enjoyed the ongoing quirkiness of King George (Ryan O’Nan), though the final episode showed a VERY dark and vengeful side to his character. On the other hand, the guest appearances by rapper Snow Tha Product and her microbladed eyebrows… Well, we ended up derisively referring to her as “Miss Tha Product”.

It all finishes in a relatively tidy fashion, rather than the semi-cliffhanger which marked the end of series two, and it would be an adequate way to draw the line if that turns out to be the end of the show. The status of a fourth series is uncertain, a notable change from last time, where its renewal was announced before the season finale was broadcast. However, the rating for this series were only fractionally lower than the second set, and in the key 18-49 demographic it was USA Network’s most-watched renewal [as opposed to new programs]. I’d not be at all surprised to see Teresa return once more, and at least the strong nature of the second half bodes better for a fourth season than if it had gone in the other direction.

Star: Alice Braga, Veronica Falcon, Peter Gadiot, Yancey Arias

The Galathea Chronicles by J.J. Green

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

This compendium gathers together the first three (shortish) parts of Green’s Shadows of the Void series. In this, humanity has to face a malevolent alien species, the Shadows, which capture their victims, then take their shape in order to lure in more people. In these books, the threat is known but being largely kept under wraps, which is why it comes as a surprise to Jas Harrington. She’s the security officer on board a private exploration ship, sent out by the Polestar corporation to find new worlds to exploit. They find what appears to be a prime target, yet Harrington can’t shake the feeling something is wrong with the planet. Over-ruled by the ship’s captain, it turns out she was right – but by that point, the captain and almost all the officers have been replaced by their doppelgängers.

The three volumes more or less cover Harrington’s battle for control of the ship; the struggle to survive on the planet’s surface and get back to space; and finally, events after they reach a nearby planet and discover they might not have escaped the Shadows entirely. It’s a bit of a declining return. The first section is really good, an absolute page-turner as Harrington, along with shuttle pilot Carl Lingiari and navigator Sayen Lee try to out-think the aliens, and prevent them from infecting both the rest of the ship and other planets. The various story elements interlock nicely, right up to the craft plummeting through the atmosphere to the surface. It packs so many thrills in the first third, I wondered how Green could possibly keep up this pace.

Sadly, the answer is, she can’t. Volume #2 suffers from a serious case of “middle book syndrome,” with the characters largely circling in place. One of them gets shunted off into stasis, and is replaced by an alcoholic trainee engineer: without being too spoilerish, the eventual solution to their situation turns out to be the spaceship equivalent of “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” Things do perk up again in the third book, as they arrive for quarantine and testing purposes on Dawn, a frontier planet largely inhabited by religious colonists. There, Harrington has to handle a tricky situation of abuse, unconnected to the Shadows: How far should freedom of worship be permitted to go?

It’s certainly an unusual tangent, though as three books in a ten-volume series, it’s hard to say how this will all eventually fit together. As a stand-alone story, it almost feels built backwards: part three could almost be the introductory phase, with the plot then working back to Jas and her allies having to prevent the ship from crashing, which feels like it should be the climax. I liked Harrington as a heroine, and the near-total lack of romance was laudable. However, the frequent shifts in POV were occasionally distracting,  and I’d liked to have seen Harrington do more action herself, rather than relying heavily on cyborg “defense units”. The energy from the first part just did allow it to retain my attention, even if it did feel more like it was coasting thereafter, rather than pushing forward.

Author: J.J. Green
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon as an e-book or paperback.
Books 1-3 of 10 in the Shadows of the Void series.