Category: Review

Til Death Do Us Part

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★★
“Bored til death, more like…”

Great poster. Solid trailer. In the light of those, unfortunately, the film can only be described as a significant disappointment. While it’s good, and occasionally very good when in motion, damn, there is a LOT of flapping of lips going on here. It’s clear that writers Chad Law and Shane Dax Taylor, as well as director Woodward, are in love with their dialogue. This is unfortunate, since it’s nowhere near as amusing, informative or entertaining as they think. There’s probably a decent twenty minutes in this, mostly when the lead character – nameless, known only as “Bride”, a conceit shamelessly stolen from Kill Bill – is kicking butt. Since the film runs a hundred and eleven minutes, that is a problem.

Indeed, nobody here gets a “proper” name. The Bride (Burn) decides at the last minute she is not going to go through with marriage to her fiance (Blain), and runs off to her family cabin. Her husband-to-be doesn’t take that lightly, and sends seven groomsmen, under the best man (Gigandet), to bring her back. not with polite discussion to convince her to return. For it turns out everyone involved is part of a shadowy organization of assassins called “The University”. You don’t get to leave, so the Bride has to defend herself from the consequences of her decision, still in her wedding dress. Which as Chris pointed out, is odd, considering it’s her family’s property. No clothing better suited to combat?

Confusing matters considerably further is a flashback (I guess) to happier times on a beach somewhere, whose purpose escapes me, except for providing a nice vacation for Jason Patric. What these lengthy scenes certainly do, is sap the film of any momentum as survival horror. Then again, the film does plenty of that itself, with endless scenes of the characters talking and talking and talking and… you get the idea. It’s a pity, because the violence, when it shows up, is done with some energy. Burn seems to be doing quite a lot of her own stunts, to good effect, and there’s nice use of improvised weaponry. The chainsaw shown on the poster is not just there for show either, providing perhaps the film’s most memorable moment.

Not that there’s exactly a lot of competition, admittedly. I found myself frequently thinking of ways this could have been improved. “Being roughly thirty minutes shorter” would be a good start. Alternatively, could potentially have been fun if the seven bridesmaids had also been assassins, fighting for the Bride. Why is it just the groomsmen? There, it feels like a sure-fire case of diminishing returns, with most of them more annoying than anything else. This is especially true of Gigandet whose character is perpetually droning on about the speech he has to give. Pancho Moler as T-Bone is perhaps the only one to make an impression. It’s all a garbled mess, which seems poorly constructed, and only occasionally delivering on the wildness of its premise. 

Dir: Timothy Woodward Jr.
Star: Natalie Burn, Cam Gigandet, Ser’Darius Blain, Orlando Jones

Blood Valentine

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★★½
“Dubbed to death”

This is another in a recent burst of Thai action heroine movies, including The Secret Weapon. But it’s less successful, although the deficit is not entirely the movie’s fault. The only version I could find was a dubbed one on YouTube: over the years, I have developed a strong preference for watching films in their original language, unless absolutely necessary. Here, that proved to be the case, and it was basically a reminder of why I prefer subtitles. This isn’t just dubbed into English, it was dubbed into English by Indians. Imagine watching a gangster film set in New York, where everyone has a Swedish accent. It’s immensely off-putting, and I had great difficulty in getting past it.

The plot has a hitwoman, Chris (Kingpayome), who has worked for Mr. Ralph (Macdonald) since before the birth of her daughter, Rin (Prommart). The daughter is being brought up in the family business, along with another girl, Joi, who was rescued from a crime scene. However, Rin is now in those difficult teenage years, and is being distracted by a schoolgirl crush on Sun, a senior at her college. This causes her to lose focus and make mistakes in the assassinations she carries out with her mother, for “Ralph Elimination Ltd”. Coming under pressure from her boss, Chris decides to take the liability of Sun out of the picture. Needless to say, Rin is not exactly happy about this decision.

It’s better in the second half then the first, once it stops being badly-dubbed teen soap-opera, and turns into badly-dubbed action, which is tolerable. Things aren’t exactly what they seem initially, and the dynamics of the situation become considerably more interesting as a result. I’ve seen enough of this kind of thing to feel I knew where this was going. I was expecting it to have Chris eventually coming to terms with her daughter’s wish for a normal life, and then protecting Sun from Ralph’s murderous intentions. No. Does not happen. Well… it kinda does. But the way it gets there, is in a rather more plausible manner, with everyone from Chris to Ralph having credible motivation for their actions.

Outside of the dire dub, the main issue is perhaps the somewhat underwhelming action, both in quantity and quality. It’s only okay in both departments, except for Rin’s final assault, which is a nicely-staged attack on Ralph’s headquarters. That is a shame, since the script is one of the better ones, and Prommart feels a little like she is channeling Natalie Portman in Leon. Though that might just be a combination of her hairstyle, and the way the movie ends. It does teeter over into melodrama on occasion, not least with a lengthy, emotive video message from Chris to her daughter. Overall, however, there is an impressive fatality rate, and it would likely be close in entertainment value to the preceding entries – if only it was available in a similar format.

Dir: Isara Nadee
Star: Metinee Kingpayome, Ray Macdonald, Nitchanart Prommart, Phiravich Attachitsataporn
a.k.a. Ladies First

Jack Squad 2: The Next Generation

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★½
“Do you know what the definition of insanity is?”

This is a question posed by the bad guy (Fears) towards the end of this, and of course, he provides the usual explanation in response: “It’s doing the same thing, expecting different results.” After watching this, I would choose to adjust it slightly. A valid definition of insanity is making the same movie, and expecting different results. Because it is, more or less, what Rankins has done here: it’s a remake of his own movie from fourteen years ago, Jack Squad. Now, there’s something to be said for that. I mean, Cecil B. DeMille did The Ten Commandants twice, while directors from Hitchcock to Michael Haneke have remade their own films. 

The difference is, they were kinda busy. For instance, Hitchcock directed twenty-five features between his two versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much. Since the original Jack Squad in 2009, Rankins has made just one feature: Angry Kelly in 2014. Did he not manage to come up with more than one original idea in a decade and a half? And that count is presuming Angry Kelly is not about a man who is annoyed because he was drugged and robbed by a trio of women. I’ve not seen it, I can’t say. Here, we get a little variation at the start, where the original Jack Squad get hunted down, and a bit at the end, where there’s dissension in the ranks over hidden money.

In the middle though? It’s a blatant re-make. Three young women decide to make money by drugging and robbing men. This goes wrong, when one of the targets is a courier for a violent drug boss, carrying a large sum of cash. They make the ill-advised decision to hold onto the money, a choice which brings them into the crosshairs of its real owner. If anything, we have even less going on this time. It’s a good half-hour before the new trio, of Cassie (Green), Nikki (Alexander) and Cam (Lynn) put their scheme into action. I guess there is at least some altruism, the goal – at least initially, before the designer shopping kicks in – being to cover the medical bills run up by one of the trio’s mother.

The overwhelming sense of deja vu here is what knocks the overall rating here down below the original. I mean, the three characters feel almost like bad photocopies of their predecessors. There’s one who has qualms about the whole concept, while another refuses to give it up at any cost. It’s likely a little more technically competent, though at basically two hours long, is still painfully over-long. There’s a weird subplot where one of the women has a mentally challenged brother, who wants to be a baseball pitcher. This does eventually show relevance, though the way it does, might have you wishing they hadn’t bothered. If we don’t get Jack Squad 3 until 2037, I am completely fine with that. 

Dir: Simuel Denell Rankins 
Star: DeShon Green, Samiah Alexander, Tinesha Lynn, Gregory J. Fears

Girl with a Gun: An Annie Oakley Historical Mystery, by Kari Bovee

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

This is an interesting idea. Take a real-life historical action heroine, whose life provides the underlying framework, and write a fictional story around that. Obviously, Annie Oakley really existed, and the broad strokes of her life here are accurate. If you’ve read our article on her, you will already know she did indeed take part in a shooting contest against famed marksman Frank Butler. That helped win her a spot on Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, with which she traveled both the United States and the world, amazing crowds with her markswomanship. The book adheres to these elements faithfully.

However, there’s a lot more going on here, which Bovee has added in. Almost as soon as Annie starts working for the show, her tent-mate, a young Indian woman, turns up dead. She is not the last corpse to do so, and there are no shortage of suspects in the crimes being committed either. The show’s manager, Mr. LeFleur, who seems to carry a torch for Annie. Twila Midnight, a medicine woman of mysterious origins, who conversely, has a passionate dislike for the heroine. Vernon McCrimmon, with whom Annie had crossed swords in the past – ending badly for him. Or possibly even Frank Butler, whose skills are failing him, with Oakley taking over as the show’s top attraction, or Buffalo Bill himself, who has skeletons in his own closet.

It’s likely not much of a spoiler to rule out the figures who actually existed like Butler, but Bovee does a decent job of keeping you guessing among the other characters. The evidence points one way, then the other, before things come to a head after an attempt is made on Annie’s life. This is only foiled due to the hedonistic tendencies of her replacement tent-mate. I think it probably works better as a whodunnit, rather than as an action story. Though there are plenty of rounds fired over the course of the book, these are almost entirely in the show’s arena, and the descriptions don’t generate a great deal of energy. You are instead left with a sense that perhaps you needed to be there.

This is a fairly straightforward story, with a generally good sense of historical time and place, capturing 1885 in the mid-West. Though I was amused by Twila saying, “His fever is high. It may be a virus,” since the first virus was not discovered and isolated by science until 1892. There’s not an enormous amount of complexity to Annie’s character here either. She’s relentlessly good-hearted, even to people who really do not deserve her kindness. But that’s part of her heroic nature, I guess, and Annie’s desire to provide for her family, as well as her loyalty to her horse, Buck, who also comes under threat, make for admirable qualities. I’d call this a solid read, which doesn’t seek to push the envelope, and if not aiming high, does hit most of its targets. D’you see what I did there?

Author: Kari Bovee
Publisher: Bosque Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 3 in the Annie Oakley Mystery series.

Abigail (2024)

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★★★
“And Then There Were None – with vampires”

SPOILER WARNING FOR THIS REVIEW: ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE TRAILER!

Trailers can do a lot of damage to a movie’s impact, and is definitely the case here. If the trailer hasn’t outright told us the idiot gangsters had kidnapped a little vampire girl, the first third could have been very suspenseful. To elaborate: we witness the kidnap of an innocent little girl; normally our sympathies would immediately be with the victim, worrying about her well-being. We explore the setting and characters are more or less established. Then a gruesome murder happens and the gangsters wonder, “Who’s killing our people? Why? The girl’s father is big in the (criminal) underworld and has a mysterious henchman named Valdez. What’s his story? Is it all a reckoning for past misdeeds?”

This potential homage to Bryan Singer’s semi-classic The Usual Suspects falls flat, as anyone who saw the trailer (and posters) already knows it’s the little girl who is pulling the strings and will murder the gang of misfits. It’s a total fail by the marketing department responsible, though you understand a wish to signal to horror fans it’s something for them. I guess it will pay a dividend in the end – though will keep people away who are not horror fans and might have gone, expecting a crime thriller. In any case, the big surprise is ruined and you can’t help wonder if that was the best way to go.

When Hitchcock released Psycho in 1960, no people were allowed into the cinema after the movie had started, and the audience had no idea what awaited them. You thought it was about Marion Crane stealing money and going on the run… until she got stabbed in the shower. That was a real shock. You won’t experience that here, and no-one cares for the first victim (played by the unfortunately now deceased Angus Cloud). At one time, a plot with a group of people in an enclosed space and a killer amongst them, would have made for fine suspense. The film makes no secret about taking inspiration from Agatha Christie’s 1939 thriller And Then There Were None (originally known by another, non-PC title!), and the same concept works in Alien – a fine horror/thriller in space with as much focus on characters as on suspense.

Today, it doesn’t seem to be enough. You instead end up with superficially drawn characters, about whom you just get to know enough to understand where they come from, and then you blast in with the gory action scenes. Don’t get me wrong; I liked the movie. But I would have liked it more if I had cared for the characters fate. They die here and there, they twist and they turn – and I just don’t care for them at all. The movie just has not the time to build its characters, or doesn’t want to take the time for it. Which is a pity but perhaps a sign of our frantic, “more, more, more” times. I recently saw a new BBC version of Christie’s story; while they took the time to tell it, they overloaded the plot because simple, storytelling has gone out the window in today’s film narrative.

The big problem is, the moment the main characters are established as gangsters, you don’t really feel pity for them. Why should you? They are mean spirited people – bad guys – and that is a minor flaw in the concept. Having largely sympathetic space travellers finding an alien life form is quite the opposite. We are supposed to side with them because it’s a vampire. But the necessary character building hasn’t been done, and because one twist isn’t enough the movie gives us two or three more. At the end we are supposed to root for Abigail (Weir) and last surviving gangster Joey (Barrera), fighting one of her own who turned against them. Directors Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett are asking too much of us emotionally. Should we always side with the underdog? Why? In the end they are all monsters, therefore equally unlikable, though the movie tries to make us pity the little vampire, that big daddy doesn’t really seem to care about, until he shows up at the end.

The same directors did much better with Ready or Not, where you constantly felt for Samara Weaving’s character, thrown into the pit with an insane, blood-thirsty family. It doesn’t work well here, due to the basic premise. The leads are hardly more than sketches and even Joey doesn’t get much more than being a junkie mom who cares for her little boy. It’s not enough in the development department, folks! The actors all do good work – as far as I can tell. In Germany, you get distracted by the choice of dubbing actors: the voice actor for Cloud is hardly bearable and Kevin Durand’s German voice sounds almost like Patrick from SpongeBob Squarepants which is… distracting! Also, I feel in the German version, a lot of humour is lost, I guess something to do with line delivery. I can imagine a line like “I hate ballet!” being hilarious in English, but in the German version it has no real effect.

I don’t know any of the actors save Durand and supporting actor Esposito, but the greatness of Weir’s performance can’t be stressed enough. I did believe her helpless girl – or would if I hadn’t been spoiled before – as well as the frightening vampire. How many people can scare a bunch of grown-ups? Though, of course, it’s not new ground. We saw how effective such casting can be when Kirsten Dunst did it thirty years ago in Interview with a Vampire. The trope of the “scary, evil kid” in general reaches back until at least the 1950s. The production design is beautiful and luxurious for the old villa with bar and billiard table, a kitchen (strangely situated in the cellar?), secret tunnels in a library, a computerized control room and a pool underground for corpse disposal. Similarly great is Brian Tyler’s effective score which I would really like on CD instead of the digital release.

I was less impressed by Barrera who plays the main gangster role. She is set-up as the intelligent, tough and strong woman, but her actions constantly contradict this, e. g. she can’t imagine a kid could be evil. Why? Because she has a child of her own? Everyone knows children are natural monsters and only by time, education and life experience become “human”. Her colleagues turn out partly smarter than her there. And when she, a normal mortal, tells a vampire, “I’m going to kill you now!” you wonder how delusional she can be. There’s a big goof at the end, when she gets her mobile out to call her son and say goodbye. Weren’t all cells collected early on by Esposito’s character? If she had another, wouldn’t she have been able to call help? Why didn’t she? Perhaps I missed how she got it back – maybe in the control room when the two vampires were fighting. Someone please enlighten me? [Jim. I think when she’s in the control room unlocking the house, she sees the bag of collected phones and takes one from it. Not exactly highlighted though!]

Strangely, the movie is claimed to “re-imagine” Universal’s Dracula’s Daughter from 1936. Having seen the classic movie, I can hardly see any similarities, save the main character is a female vampire, and daughter of a vampire. Her father turns up in a last minute surprise, effectively adding nothing except for re-establishing the classic Hammer vampire, of the Christopher Lee variety. Still, despite these flaws this is a good, entertaining horror movie. It’s not really suspenseful as the main characters are disposable and not developed enough to care about. And the trailer… (see previous rant!) It’s also surprisingly gory. I remember a time when such a movie would have been for 18+ audiences in Germany; this is 16+. Well, it’s not the 1980s anymore and Catholic priests aren’t sitting in German censorship board meetings anymore, so… enjoy!

Dir: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Star: Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, Will Catlett

Now, that trailer… Again: SPOILER WARNING!

Kobanê

  By

★★★
“It’s clearly no Nirvana…”

Yes, let’s get the obligatory Kurt Cobain joke out of the way quickly and painlessly. This is instead about the Kurdish city, located in northern Syria, which came under assault from forces belonging to the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014-15. The defenders eventually repelled the attack in what has been called the Kurdish version of the Battle of Stalingrad. Even before that, we had covered how groups such as the YPJ put Kurdish women on the front-line, in a way rarely seen in modern warfare. One such woman is the focus of the film, Zehra (Arin), who is forced into a commanding role after backup is refused, and the city is cut off by the advancing ISIS army.

What follows is basically your traditional war movie, with a small group of defenders coming under attack from a numerically superior opponent. We’ve seen this often enough, in the likes of Zulu, Saving Private Ryan, 300, etc. But making the central character female is certainly unusual, and better still, the film ignores her gender entirely. Seriously, I don’t recall a single time it was so much as mentioned. Any Hollywood film would surely make an obvious point of it, with a male character questioning her competence, or worse still, shoehorning in a cringeworthy, Avengers: Endgame,”She’s got help” moment. Here, everyone is far too busy trying to survive to indulge in that kind of nonsense, and if you want an up-close street fighting experience, this certainly delivers.

However, there are issues. At a whopping 159 minutes, it’s overlong, and there are also times it feels you need a Wikipedia crash course on the complicated situation involving the Kurds, Turks and Syrians. For instance, there’s a point at which the defenders are set up for betrayal. Perhaps the logic of this makes sense if you know the situation, but it felt like I had to take the logic on trust. It’s also worth remembering that this is, at heart, a piece of propaganda, and sometimes it’s not exactly subtle about it. The ISIS soldiers feel as if they strayed in from a Disney class in villainy, and there are times when the story resorts to equally blatant emotional cliché.

I was impressed by the technical aspects, with a sense of destruction – they found a lot of razed city blocks – and deaths where people get shot, sit down, and slowly pass away. Reportedly, a lot of the cast were genuine fighters who took part in the siege: that’s a bit of a mixed blessing, as sometimes the lack of acting experience shines through. I’m not sure if Arin is among them: her IMDb listing has no other roles. But she’s fine, with a face which simply feels as if has been through a lot. The film is helped significantly by Mehmûd Berazî’s score, and I think it does work better that similarly-themed features such as Soeurs D’Armes or Sisters Apart, feeling more grounded and “real.”

The makers have put the whole thing up on YouTube with subtitles, below – and if it’s imperfect, I’d say it remains worth a look.

Dir: Özlem Yasar,
Star: Dijle Arin, Awar Eli, Reger Azad, Nejbir Xanim

Snatched

  By

★★½
“Everything comes to he who waits. Eventually.”

The title here seems quite deliberately a nod towards Taken, which similarly has an ex-government operative chewing up and spitting out bad guys, after they make the fatal mistake of abducting the operative’s child. In this case, it’s CIA operative Angela (Bozeman), who lost her husband Jason in murky circumstances, but subsequently put away Dmitri (Weber), the criminal mastermind responsible. Now, six years later, she can get on with living her life, bringing up son Jason Jr. (Cheatham), and hanging out with fellow agent Byron, who seems a possible husband replacement. Well, until Dmitri escapes from prison and starts killing off everyone he considers responsible for putting him behind bars.

Sooner or later – and as we’ll see, it’s not the former – that brings him into Angela’s circle, and ends up in him kidnapping Junior, with the aim of luring her into his (very well-appointed, it has to be said; I particularly liked the chandelier) lair. However, he doesn’t realize what he has done. Once this all gets going, it’s not bad. If hardly seeming an accurate portrayal of CIA practices, unless they’re utterly slipshot and incompetent, it’s kinda fun as long as you don’t ask awkward questions. Such as, where the heck does Angela get those groovy remote-controlled gun-toting little cars? Was Andy Sidaris having an estate sale? Dmitri also has a groovy bad-ass sidekick, Sophia (Camille Osborne), though her fight with Angela is disappointingly brief.

The problem is mostly the long, meandering, roundabout and largely uninteresting way in which the story gets to the amusing stuff. The first half or more is largely comprised of extremely conversational scenes of merely passing interest. In these, Angela talks to Byron about wanting to retire. Or talks to Junior about the realities of her career. Or talks to her mother, Carolyn (Hubert), about her not really a relationship with Byron. Dear lord, it’s far from the action-packed trailer, and you would certainly be forgiven if you gave up on all this soapy drama. Though I was eventually entertained by Carolyn’s ability to kick ass in a grandmotherly way, like Pam Grier on an AARP outing. At least until she encounters Sophia, anyway.

The score above is likely a composite, with two stars for the first half and three for the second, when things do reach an acceptable level of entertainment. Bozeman seems better known as a singer, but does a decent job of portraying the highly upset mother, and has a terse style of close-combat that is effective. On the plus side, it is quite gory, with a number of head-shots and other fairly graphic deaths. On the minus side, these are mostly CGI, as is apparent from the blood spray never landing on anything in the environment. You probably want to have something on hand for the sluggish early proceedings: either a good book, some snacks or an alcoholic beverage would all serve that purpose.

Dir: Chris Stokes
Star: Veronika Bozeman, Charlie Weber, Jered Cheatham, Janet Hubert

Nowhere

  By

★★★
“Survival of the fittest.”

One of the shows we enjoy watching here is Alone, in which ten contestants are dropped off in a hostile location – typically chilly – with limited resources. The last one left standing wins $500,000. It’s a simple concept, yet endlessly fascinating. We sit on our comfortable couch, eating Doritos and passing comment on the failing of the competitors. Especially so when they are hoist by their own stupidity, such as losing their means of starting a fire. This feels not dissimilar, except rather than a survival expert, it’s a woman who finds herself thrown into utterly inhospitable circumstances, and forced to make do by any means necessary – not just for her own survival, but that of her new-born child.

The woman is the heavily pregnant Mia (Castillo), who is fleeing an uncertain present in Spain, hoping to get to Ireland, with her husband Nico (Novas). The route is supposed to involve them being sent in shipping containers along with other refugees, but almost from the off, things go wrong. Mia is separated from Nico; the rest of the occupants are gunned down; and then, just when Mia is on her way, the container is washed off the ship in a storm, leaving her afloat in the middle of the ocean. It’s leaking badly – bullet holes will do this – and even after she has addressed that immediate problem, she has to figure out how to survive, with only the contents of the container. Oh, and then she gives birth.

It is, of course, a very contrived set of circumstances, with the container offering a variety of potentially useful items, rather than being, say, entirely full of agricultural machinery. Similarly, her cell-phone has remarkable battery life and service coverage, though I have read a suggestion the calls she received were actually hallucinations. That might be a shame, as one of them certainly represents the film’s dramatic peak, an utterly heart-rending conversation. It was the point where I suddenly realized I had become invested in Mia’s fate, and cared. It came as a bit of a surprise, and is testament to a good performance from Castillo. Not least because for much of the time, she has nobody to act against except a new-born baby.

The scripting is less effective. As well as the convenience mentioned, the whole opening half-hour proves almost irrelevant. It sets up a scenario where resources have become so short, the government is killing off unproductive members of its own society. Let’s just say: I have questions, yet it serves no purpose in the movie, except to get Mia into her crate. Things improve once it does, and the film becomes a straight survival story, rather than trying to make (I presume) some kind of social point about… something. Not that this stopped me from sitting on my comfortable couch, eating Doritos and passing comment on Mia’s attempts to fish. If only she’d watched Alone, she’d have managed much better…

Dir: Albert Pintó
Star: Anna Castillo, Tamar Novas, Tony Corvillo, Mariam Torres

Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver

  By

★★
“The law of diminishing returns.”

And that rating is from someone who, unlike most critics, really didn’t mind the first part. I’m a fan of big, bombastic science-fiction, best exemplified by The Chronicles of Riddick. [Why nobody has ever thrown $150 million at Michael Bay for that kind of thing, I don’t know. And, no, the Transformers franchise does not count. And neither does Armageddon] I want to see square-jawed heroes or heroines, going toe-to-toe with irredeemably unpleasant villains, as burning spaceships fall from the sky behind them, onto the surface of an exotic planet. While Part One of this was heavy on the world-building and character development, at least we got all that out of the way, and could look forward to a second half of non-stop action.

Couldn’t we?

Um. Well. About that… All I can say is, combine the two, give them to a enthusiastic editor, who can merge them into a single, coherent movie of round about two hours, and you could well be onto something. Now, I like Snyder: or, rather, I used to. 300 is great, and I will honestly defend Sucker Punch as a genuinely good movie, especially in the director’s cut. But since then? Nothing has come up to the early work. You eventually reach this, the poster child for what happens when you give someone $166 million, and let them do whatever they want creatively, without apparent significant oversight. A visually impressive, but bloated and self-indulgent mess, lacking any significant heart. 

Things follow quickly on from its predecessor, Kota (Boutella) returning to Veldt with the warriors accumulated in Part One, who will protect her settlement from the evil Admiral Noble (Skrein) and his forces. For Noble is not as dead as Kota hoped at the end of the first half, which is a nasty surprise to her. Inevitably, we get the “training the locals for battle” sequence, but we also get an extended “bringing in the harvest” sequence, and a very extended “why don’t we all sit around and reveal secrets about our dark past and what the hell is Snyder doing, can’t he hurry up and get to the fighting” sequence. My attention and interest dwindled steadily throughout the first hour and more.

Eventually – and I stress that, eventually – we get to the cool stuff, and it’s not bad. Snyder does undeniably retain an eye for spectacle, and this does deliver eye-candy for those fond of giant fireballs (hey, sue me). However, it’s all empty: sound and fury, signifying nothing, and you’re left to try and work around wonky plotting which has a few farmers taking down the galactic rulers after a couple of lessons, going little further than “Stick ’em with the pointy end.” It helps, I suppose that Noble’s craft have a tendency to explode so easily, I suspect a recall from the manufacturer’s is in order. I imagine this may end up taking Snyder’s plans for a Rebel Moon Universe with it.

Dir: Zack Snyder
Star: Sofia Boutella, Ed Skrein, Charlie Hunnam, Michiel Huisman

Shadows in the Water, by Kory M. Shrum

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

DEA agent Jack Thorne and his wife are killed, and his reputation shredded after his death. His 12-year-old daughter Lou only escapes courtesy of her father’s sacrifice, and an unwanted innate talent, which she shares with her aunt, Lucy. Lou has the ability – sometimes without her choice – to transport herself through the shadows or through water to another, similar location. After the loss of her parents, Lou goes to live with her aunt and learns to control and use her skill. Fourteen years later, and now a grown woman, she is on a crusade of vengeance, to seek out and destroy every member of the Martinelli crime family responsible for her parents’ deaths. 

Of course, that’s the thing about revenge: it’s messy. It’s at least somewhat fine when it’s just Lou who is put at risk. But those around her are not immune from being sucked in to her deadly mission. For instance Lucy calls on the help of a former DEA agent, now a private eye, Robert King to give Lou a purpose beyond multiple murder. Except, the case on which they work together ends up bringing heat on everyone, and is related to Lou’s personal vendetta. The truth about who was behind it is also revealed: it wasn’t just the Martinellis acting on their own, which Lou finds out, as she hunts the last surviving member of the family, Konstantine.

I like the concept here, and the way Lou’s power used is well-handled by Shrum. It obviously acts as a force multiplier for the heroine, especially at the end when she has to go up against the man at the top and his men. It also provides an effective, if grisly, way to cover her tracks. There is another world she visits, called La Loon (quite why she slides into this extraterrestrial location is unclear), with its vicious predator, whom she calls Jabbers. Yet it is not an unlimited power-up, and Lou’s reluctance to ask for or accept help in her mission, stops her from feeling overpowered. She has a lot of bottled-up issues, hidden behind what can sometimes feel like an emotionless facade.

It might have been better to have focused on Lou, and her journey from troubled pre-teen through to avenging angel. Instead, it’s very much joining her vengeance well in progress, and we get more about King and his relationship with Lucy, which is considerably less interesting. Despite being the first in a lengthy series, it feels satisfactorily self-contained. Indeed, perhaps a little too much so, since I wasn’t left with particular interest in seeing where Lou’s story went after achieving closure. I’m sure there’s potential there. I mean, if she became an UberEats delivery agent, you’d never have to worry about your food arriving cold. I suspect this is probably not the direction in which the series goes…

Author: Kory M. Shrum
Publisher: Timberlane Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 11 in the Shadows in the Water series.