Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok are two of the most well-known names in the culture of the Wild West, though the reality of both individuals is almost impossible to separate from the myths which surround them. So it’s kinda pointless to complain about historical accuracy in films which focus on them. Better just accept them as effectively being fictional entities, which can be used for whatever purpose a filmmaker desires. Here, it’s the death of Wild Bill (Stephen Amell, best known as TV’s Arrow) in a poker game, which sets his girlfriend Jane (Rickards, also from the same series) off. She goes on the trail of Jack McCall (Allon), the scumbag responsible, who has understandably opted to depart Deadwood.
Complicating matters is that Jane is in custody herself, having been brought to the frontier town by Sheriff Mason (Rozen), to stand trial for murder. She escapes his custody – as Chris pointed out, Mason is a bit crap at the whole law enforcement thing – and heads off after McCall and his equally scummy brother. Mason assembles a (again, rather feeble and unimpressive) posse to go after the two suspected killers. Most of the second half is an extended pursuit through some very scenic landscapes, it must be said. There are a fair number of moderate diversions before the inevitable and entirely expected confrontation between Jane and Jack, as she seeks to get vengeance, or perhaps justice, for her murdered lover.
I think I like the characters here most. Rickards gives a winning portrayal as Jane, despite an unnerving similarity to one of the members of Bananarama (perhaps that’s just me though), and the supporting cast also do a good job of inhabiting their roles. It is fairly straightforward: black hats and white hats, with not much grey in terms of morality. In this way, it feels like a throwback to an earlier time. Along similar lines, while the language is fairly ripe, with a good number of F-bombs, the violence is very restrained by comparison. I feel if a film is going to have an R-rating, the makers need to embrace that artistic freedom fully, yet outside of the cursing, this would likely merit only a PG.
Among the supporting cast, the best is Abigail (Faia), who is entirely mad, and all the more entertaining for it. She boasts of the multiple people she’s killed, keeping a count with scars on her arms – I’d love to see a film of her back-story. She and Jane end up in a very nasty brawl, likely the action highlight of the film, with everything else being gunfights of the “Bang-bang, you’re dead” variety. While it’s all well enough assembled, there isn’t much indication of ambition or desire to tell a new story, or even an old one from an interesting direction. As a result, this only intermittently catches fire, preferring mostly to meander along safely, well within the speed limit and with its seat-belt securely fastened.
Dir: Terry Miles Star: Emily Bett Rickards, Tim Rozon, Primo Allon, Priscilla Faia
Not to be mixed up with Furie, The Furies or even Furies – the last of which also showed up on Netflix recently. Confusion seems almost inevitable (and I’m not helping, by largely recycling the tagline for Furie). However, those three are all films – two Vietnamese, one Australian – while this is an eight episode TV series from France. It begins with Lyna Guerrab (El Arabi) living a fairly idyllic, and certainly well-heeled life, with no bigger issue than whether or not to marry her cop boyfriend Elie (Nadeau). Things get upended in no uncertain fashion, when her accountant father is assassinated. Turns out, he kept the books for certain criminal organizations, and someone wanted him very dead.
Lyna vows to find whoever was responsible for her father’s demise, and make them responsible. That opens up a whole can of worms, as she has to venture into the domain of the Parisian criminal underworld, which is far more expansive and influential than expected. To a degree, it feels like the system shown in the John Wick franchise, with six crime families, working in different areas, e.g. prostitution, robbery, etc. who govern things and make sure nobody does anything that would upset their highly lucrative apple-cart. As their collective enforcer is a woman, Selma (Fois), known as the Fury, a hereditary position, passed down the matriarchal line, and she has the skills to keep everyone else in line.
Or does she? Because as Lyna enters the game, it becomes apparent that someone is out to disturb the balance of the system. Coming under the Fury’s patronage, as a possible successor, may not be enough to save her from the war which is becoming increasingly inevitable. As well as John Wick, there are quite a few elements here which feel inspired by Luc Besson in one way or another: the world-weary assassin who takes on a feisty young apprentice, for example, could be straight out of Leon. The fight scenes are well-crafted, slick and hard-hitting: I vaguely recall action director Jude Poyer as part of the Eastern Heroes crew in London, back in the nineties, so nice to see him kicking professional ass.
It does sometimes feel too over-stuffed, trying to juggle too many threads and characters. The script solution to any problem seems to be, throw in another subplot. The makers also deserve a demerit for ending on a horrendous cliffhanger. The streaming service have made no announcement regarding a second series: the show seems to have done reasonably well, but Netflix gonna Netflix. If that doesn’t happen, you should whack off a full star, since the way it ends is definitely not satisfying. But there does remain a good deal here to admire. I particularly liked the performance of Foïs, who brings a lot of nuance to a character that initially seems one-dimensional. The extended duration allows her to develop, though all told, it might have been better as a two-hour self-contained Besson flick.
Creators: Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, Jean-Yves Arnaud, Yoann Legave Star: Lina El Arabi, Marina Foïs, Mathieu Kassovitz, Jeremy Nadeau
This is the story of Syrian sisters Yusra Mardini and her sister Sarah, played by real-life sisters Nathalie and Manal Issa. Growing up, they were trained by their father, a professional swimmer himself, and had the goal of reaching the Olympics for their country. The (still ongoing) Syrian Civil War led to the sisters leaving their homeland, and this is mostly the story of their journey, through Turkey, across the Mediterranean in a very flimsy dinghy to Greece, then across Europe to Germany. It’s a journey fraught with peril, on which predators looking to scam migrants (or worse), lurk at every turn. However…
I don’t typically like to get political here, but when a film explicitly does, I will go there. I have every sympathy for refugees, who want safety. But once you leave your home country and reach a safe destination, that’s it. If you then decide to move on – making a beeline for a country where lax immigration laws let you pull the rest of your family with you – you’re not a refugee, you’re an economic migrant. My sympathy for you drops a whole order of magnitude. It’s like if your house burns down, I feel sorry for you. It doesn’t give you the right to move into the neighbourhood’s swankiest residence. Most of the film’s attempts to pull on my heartstrings failed due to this. As soon as the sisters left the Turkish beach, they were 100% responsible for putting themselves back in danger.
Rant over. What about the film? It’s a bit of a mixed bag. Having sisters playing sisters definitely works. Especially at that age, this is the kind of relationship which is hard to simulate for teenage actors. There’s a genuineness here, for obvious reasons, which makes the family devotion at the film’s core, easy to see and appreciate. Less successful is the apparent random switching between languages. Many conversations occur in a hodge-podge of English and Arabic. While I can’t speak to the authenticity of it, as a viewer, it was jarring to switch repeatedly from listening to reading subtitles. I ended up basically tuning out the dialogue and sticking with the subs.
I appreciate the necessity of bending the facts to fit a cinematic narrative, but this probably goes too far. It’s one thing to have Yusra overhear snark from other competitors about how she doesn’t deserve to be there. But maybe avoid this when the movie then omits to mention the only swimmers she beat were, basically, other charity cases? The Olympic Selection Time was 60.80 seconds. Mardini finished in 69.21, and even her personal best is more than five seconds off the OST. The awkward truth is, she really did not deserve to be there, but few are greater at virtue-signalling than the IOC. It all feels like there are probably better refugee stories which could have been told. All the gloss this applies to its tale. can’t disguise that it is uncomfortably close to well-made propaganda.
This is a sprightly and energetic Chinese knock-off, borrowing heavily from Resident Evil and Aliens in particular. There’s a research lab deep underground, in the middle of the Gobi Desert, which has suddenly gone radio silent. The research they were doing there was… well, I’m not 100% certain quite what it involved. While a lot of the dialogue in this is in “English”, I’m using quotes advisedly. Especially on the scientific front, it seems to be more of an enthusiastic word-salad, like “by chance, precise data from the gamma variable appear,” throwing jargon about radiation and DNA splicing into the mix, in lieu of anything coherent. Anyway, it seems Ohm Technology are into some fairly shady shit, to nobody’s surprise.
A group is sent out to find out what happened, and more importantly, bring everything back on line. The only man who can do it, apparently, is Doctor Haven, a kinda autistic super-scientist, who’d like to get his hands on the data. To protect him, three Lara Croft-alikes are assigned: leader Bai Zhi (Yu), the flirty Bi Jiao (Wu); and veteran Gui Che (Xu). Also coming along are a bunch of cannon fodder, and leader of the mission, Principal Gabon (Ger), who is clearly evil because he’s played by a Westerner. They haven’t even reached the base before they encounter the local fauna: scorpions that can swim through human flesh like water. So if you stand on one, it’ll pop out the top of your head.
These are, at least, only normal sized. But when the expeditions enters into the base, the women are appalled to discover this isn’t the rescue mission intended, with any survivors being ruthlessly gunned-down by Gabon’s men. [Those foreign devils…] Turns out he intends to seize the technology and use it for nefarious purposes, but not everyone is in favor of this. The heroic trio rebel, Dr. Haven refuses to get the systems running again, and even some of his own men decide they can’t in good conscience take part in Gabon’s plan. All of which would be merely morally interesting, if it weren’t for the F-sized version of the scorpions roaming the facility due to leakage of gamma rays. Or something.
You’d be hard-pushed to identify anything new or particularly innovative here. But it keeps moving, without significant downtime, and there’s enough background to make it feel more than you’re just watching a video-game. For instance, Bai Zhi is there partly to look for her fiance, who worked at the base before he suddenly vanished. There’s also a lot more interaction between the characters and the monsters than we usually see in this kind of thing. Though the quality of the combination FX is uneven, and the editing of the action is sometimes choppily incoherent. No great matter. This is a film pitting soldiers against freakin’ giant scorpions, and firmly checks the boxes of what you would want and expect from such a production.
Dir: Yun-Fei Lu Star: Sai-Chu Yu, You-Xuan Wu, Dong-Mei Xu, Dieter Ger
Oh, dear. I appreciate that actors have to work, like everyone else. Van Dien, in particular, has a reputation in our house as someone whose name is not typically a badge of quality. But it’s sad to see Suvari is now apparently in the same career boat. I can only presume the offers aren’t exactly flooding in, if this is the work she has to take on. It’s another variant on the old Most Dangerous Game story-line. Here, it sees redneck entrepreneur Carter (Van Dien) luring in women with the promise of $100,000, while remaining vague on the details. Turns out the victims then are pursued through the forest and have to survive for 24 hours. Spoiler: they don’t.
Their latest prey is Cassandra (Suvari), who joins up after having a fight with her girlfriend, Tessa (Stojan), in the cafe where Carter and his teenage son Jackson (Peltz) are eating. This is going to be Jackson’s first hunt, though he’s… not exactly as enthusiastic about it as his father. I should not need to describe any plot elements further. If you’ve seen as many as one (1) of this kind of thing before, you’ll be able to predict almost every story beat to perfection. There is a twist, in regard to Cassandra and the motivation for her actions, which does at least explain some of the idiocy present. Otherwise, this is painfully predictable, and executed in a manner which is equally tedious, almost as if intended to suck away any tension.
It doesn’t help that none of the characters here rise about the most basic and banal of cliches, with the hunters the worst. Obviously, this kind of plot has an inevitable gender political subtext. That’s fine, except when, as here, the makers decide that’s insufficient, eschewing all subtlety to rub the audience’s face in it. Hence we get an extended sequence of Carter and the other hunters sitting around, spouting fringe subReddit BS, which could only be written by a true believer in toxic masculinity. For instance, someone actually wrote this: “We are men. We are primal, strong, sexual beings. We used to be the stronger sex.” I can state, with 100% certainty, I’ve never heard anyone speaking like that. Ever.
The women fare little better: the apparently “feminist” intent severely undermined by a relentless focus on having the women humiliated while scantily-clad. Five minutes of role-reversal at the end, accompanied – and I wish I were joking here – by a lesson in Greek mythology, does not cut it. The action is equally implausible, both in concept and execution, such as knives being thrown incredible distances into people’s foreheads, and any impact is nullified by the fact you have been given no reason to care about anyone involved. For much of the movie, Cassandra’s entire persona is “woman threatened by men”. That’s it. Don’t know about you, I need a little more depth of character – and that turns out to be largely false. Even by the low standards of Van Dien’s filmography, give this one a wide berth.
Dir: Elizabeth Blake-Thomas Star: Mena Suvari, Casper Van Dien, Will Peltz, Maya Stojan
“It just seemed as if Hell opened up one day and that was that. Instant carnage, liberated monsters, death for all. They rose from somewhere beneath the ground, attacking for no clear reason and killing until God knows when.” That’s how this starts, so there’s no hanging around. Cia Rose is one of the few survivors, for whom every day survival is a perilous endeavour. She’s seventeen, and the daughter of a scientist. When the monsterpocalypse took place, the rich, influential and powerful – who, it appears, knew this was coming – headed for their shelters. Her father was allowed in, to research the invaders. Cia was not.
Four years later, she’s barely scraping by, running from the creatures or their mindless human slaves, known as Wasters. She still holds a grudge, albeit an understandable one, at being abandoned. But Cia is devoted to “Boy”, an autistic child whom she saved after his parents were torn apart by Masketes, a vicious flying species with lethal fangs and claws. The two are separated when Cia is captured by a pack of Wasters, and most of the book is concerned with her attempts to re-unite with Boy. During the process, she discovers that regular humans can be as much a threat as any monster, and finds out the truth about what happened to her father, both back in the early days of the invasion, and since then.
Wood certainly doesn’t stint on the horror, with much rending of flesh by the monsters, though I never really got much of an idea of what they looked like. For example, a Thoral has four legs and is “about the size of the average bungalow.” More than that, I’d be hard-pushed to say. Regardless, life is now nasty and brutal, not least when Cia is captured and made to become part of a repopulation program. The resulting sex scene is, perhaps intentionally, borderline creepy given the heroine’s age. Though it’s worth noting the story is set in Britain where the age of consent is 16 – not that “consent” is much of a factor here.
I think the biggest misstep is at the end, where Cia takes action which results in the immediate deaths of hundreds of people, destroying what had been a safe haven. No matter how bad your Daddy issues, and regardless of the reason, it’s hard to come to terms with the vast carnage for which she is directly responsible, willfully and very much with malice aforethought, while still empathizing with the character. Even though nobody we particularly care about is lost – only bad people, judged by Cia’s severely questionable moral code – it yanked away almost all desire to follow her progress through this post-apocalyptic landscape. It was basically a teenage temper tantrum. Having raised two teenagers, my tolerance for those is slim, especially with the lethal consequences they have here.
Author: Rick Wood Publisher: Independently published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book Book 1 of 4 in the Cia Rose series.
After the impressive surprise which was Jericho Ridge, I figured I should try out another BET Original movie and see how it fared. As the grade above should tell you, the answer is comparatively poorly. While technically adequate in most departments, it’s one of the more implausible Die Hard knockoffs I’ve seen. In a world where No Contest exists, that takes some doing. The high concept here is “Die Hard in a court-house” with Judge Jaeda King (Naughton) about to pronounce sentence in the trial of convicted murderer Sean Samuels (Mitchell). Barely has she said “death”, when the court is stormed by a force led by Sean’s brother Gabriel (Gross), a.k.a. “Black Caesar”.
King escapes the initial onslaught, along with Sean, his defense attorney, and Stryker (Messner), one of the courthouse guards. Gabriel, however, is not just interested in freeing his brother. He also puts the prosecuting attorney on trial in a kangaroo court, designed to prove the flaws and biases inherent in the system. Much of the film is therefore split between King and her group trying to figure out how to survive, as well as escape, and the courtroom side of things, where nasty little secrets are revealed, such as the prosecutor’s relationship to King having been more than professional. I will say, Miller does a good job of keeping both sides of the story moving forward. It would have been easy for the chattier portions to bring things to a halt: that doesn’t happen.
This aspect is certainly helped by a strong performance from Gross, who manages to avoid the obvious tropes of such a situation, and comes over as smart, well-spoken and committed. He’s no Alan Rickman of course; then again, who is? I found myself, if not quite on Gabriel’s side, at least seeing his point of view and his grounds for extreme action. The main problem is a failure to set King up as credible opposition. Before things kick off, there’s no reason to view her as an action heroine: all we see is her being easily beaten by her martial-arts teacher. Then, suddenly, she – or, rather obviously, Naughton’s stunt double – is kicking butt and spraying bullets around like a grizzled Army Ranger.
Okay, Naughton is far better than Anna Nicole Smith, though that’s a low bar for anyone to clear. She does okay with the dramatic side of things, though the script occasionally gives her little to work with. The broken relationship with her spouse feels like another element poorly lifted from Die Hard, and things like her overhearing another judge go full racist were so obvious as to trigger an eye-roll. Miller does have a nice visual eye, e.g. the shot of the attackers marching towards their target was a genuine stand-out, and there’s enough competence to stop it from being actively annoying. However, its script needed more work, and perhaps a better central concept, to succeed in an over-crowded field.
Dir: Wes Miller Star: Naturi Naughton, Lance Gross, Jason Mitchell, Johnny Messner
Plot. Mizu (Erskine) has a grudge. She’s a mixed-race young woman living in 17th-century Japan, a position which leaves her at the bottom of society. But she has dragged herself up to become an onna-musha, a warrior with ferocious sword skills, courtesy of Master Eiji (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), the blind swordsmith who raised her. Now, she’s on the hunt to take revenge on the man she believes is her father, Abijah Fowler (Branagh). He’s an Irish smuggler, who is upsetting the delicate balance of Japanese society, closed to foreigners, by importing firearms. He’s involved in planning a coup to overthrow the current shogun.
[Editor’s note: the original plan was for Dieter and I to review it independently, then combine the two pieces. But Dieter went into rather more detail! So most of what follows is his opinion, with my thoughts sprinkled as garnish, in italics]
I have to admit my opinion on this show has changed a couple of times while watching it. First, there was the enthusiasm of a Japan-based-action series with a female main character. After that I thought about the “wokeness” of the show (after all, it’s Netflix), something that hardly can be overlooked. And finally, I recognized the strong effort that went into the storytelling, the visual beauty, and small details of the show and realized that while definitely a “woke” story, these elements are neither too strong nor too dominant to destroy the genuine pleasure I had when watching it.
I liked this, but it’s probably fair to say I didn’t love it. I tend to have a blind-spot with regard to animated action. Personally, I find it’s a medium that dilutes the intensity of fight scenes, because it applies a distancing effect to it. I’m always aware that I’m watching drawings or pixels beating the heck out of each other, which is intrinsically going to be less impressive than people “really” doing so. If this had been live-action, and equally gory, it could have been awesome. There’s also a weird visual choice here in that Mizu’s nose is typically shadowed. This has the unfortunate effect of making her look to me either as if she has a bad head cold, or if she is a habitual alcoholic.
But first things first: despite its title and the location (Japan in 1657 in the Edo era) Blue Eye Samurai is – an American product, so certain allowances have to be made. While I do love a story of female persistence, this 8-part show pushes the limits of believability. We have to accept that, at a time when foreigners are forbidden to be in Japan, not only there is such a person living there, but also this man fathered a daughter. This means she is half-Caucasian, half-Japanese and therefore considered a “demon”, harassed by pure-blood Japanese who have never seen such a stranger in their country. She will then become a trained “samurai” – quotes used advisedly, as we’ll see – with the appropriate sword skills.
It’s a stretch, though still in the reign of possibility, since there have been, real swordswomen in Japan. That woman then going on a rampage, hell-bent on revenge for… well… her own creation? This does not make much sense to me. After all, should we not all be happy we exist? But then, my own life, like most, has been peaceful and harmonious. In contrast, the main character, Mizu, has led a life of misery, constantly been harassed, pursued with hatred, endangered and betrayed. It’s not difficult to imagine, if you grew up that way, you would sooner or later start to hate the man responsible for your very existence. Though strangely, she doesn’t seem to hold a similar grudge against the mother who gave birth to her,
Mizu’s path leads her to Ringo, the son of a innkeeper, who has no hands (remember, this is Netflix!). After being saved by her, he becomes her servant. There’s also Taigen, a samurai-in-training, who once lived in the same town as Mizu and almost succeeded in killing her as a child. After she beat him in battle, he feels his honour is insulted and follows Mizu to challenge her to a rematch. But his revenge has to wait. A further complication arises in Japanese noblewoman Akemi, who is in love with Taigen and would like to marry him. Though her father has other marriage plans and Taigen is not ready to marry her until he has regained his honor. None of them know (yet) that Mizu is a woman. And as Mizu mercilessly pursues her path of revenge, Ringo and Taigen become her allies, with some indication of a mutual attraction between Mizu and Taigen.
Blue Eye Samurai is a French-American animated show by Blue Spirit for Netflix, created by Michael Green (the screenwriter for Logan and Blade Runner 2049) and Amber Noizumi. They were inspired by their daughter, who was born 15 years ago with blue eyes. Noizumi spoke about how she, herself biracial, wondered what it would have been like to lived as a biracial person in 17th-century Japan, when Japan’s borders were closed to the outside world and strangers from abroad would have no chance to be accepted in society. Another, unconfirmed inspiration might be British navigator William Adams who travelled to Japan in 1600, and was called “the blue-eyed samurai”. He also inspired the ever-popular series Shogun, which Netflix just remade. What a coincidence.
Other influences, according to Noizumi, were movies such as Kill Bill, Lady Snowblood, and… Yentl, Barbara Streisand’s musical about a Jewish woman who wants to study and has to take on a male identity. It has been confirmed by Noizumi that Mizu was inspired by Clint Eastwood’s break-out Man with No Name role in the famous Dollars trilogy by Sergio Leone, This fits, because the show often reminded me less of a typical Japanese jidaigeki (historical drama) or chanbara (sword-fighting movie with a historical background), but more a Western in disguise. If the mix between East and West was intended, whether this makes it “the best of two worlds” or a travesty is up to you. But it’s not really the first of its kind, considering Tom Cruise’s The Last Samurai.
I personally don’t like it when words like “emancipation” or “discrimination” are thrown around in relation to a show mainly meant to entertain. But in this case, they are justified given the very basis of the show, in medieval Japan. This setting is different to current Western countries, being one with a mostly homogeneous population, traditional conservative values and what feminists nowadays like to call “patriarchal”, as a background for a story of female emancipation and racist discrimination. You may question what “woke propaganda” Netflix is tossing at an innocent viewer this time. But it’s a relief that any messaging comes, not in heavy-handed preaching, as is typical for many Netflix shows, but mostly carefully integrated into the show, rather than feeling like they were bolted on.
The show certainly ticks all the diversity check-boxes with its characters. We have a biracial female who taught herself everything, a repressed (though in the context of the era “spoiled” might be more accurate?) lord’s daughter, a helpful assistant born with no hands, a blind sword-maker, while an old white man is the perverse, cruel villain, and women have no say in society, serving as servants or prostitutes. Did I forget anything? Despite it all, this feels acceptable given the time and place in which the story occurs.
As noted, in choosing this kind of story, time and place, the creators often stretch the limits of believability. In particular, with Akemi, the daughter of a powerful lord who wants to marry her to the son of the shogun. She is in love with Taigen, so absolutely resists that idea. Akemi comes across the entire series as enormously stubborn, resisting advice and always wanting to get her way. I have to shake my head in disbelief, knowing that the idea of “marriage for love” was in those times rare both in Japan and Europe (Historians say the idea of what we call today “romantic love” was born around 1850). People married due to sharing social class, to keep property within a circle of families, or because their business-partnered parents decided so, sometimes even before they were born.
Even more unbelievable for the time, is the idea a Japanese woman would have been allowed to voice her wishes or opinion in the blunt manner depicted here. Quite honestly, I think if any woman would have behaved so disrespectfully to an older man, giving strong, vocal objections or even slapping the shogun’s son, she would have immediately been beheaded or drowned in the nearest pond. The wish of the creators to have another strong female character in the show backfires here. Akemi is what you would expect a modern, Western young woman to be, not a Japanese woman from the Edo era. This is fan-fiction at best, bad research at worst.
Probably my least favourite aspect was this significant side-plot involving noble samurai Taigen (Barnet), and his true love, the Princess Akemi (Branda Song), who is about to be married off against her will. Neither of those characters seemed significant, and it felt like this sometimes became an excuse for male-bashing. Brothel madam Kaji (Ming-Na Wen) was the worst for that: look, nobody is keeping you a prostitute. Get out of the profession or quit complaining about your customers. Oh, and if men are bad, white men as embodied by Fowler are the absolute worst.
A word of warning to the uninitiated. The show does not hold back in the depiction of violence. The slicing-off of extremities sometimes made me wonder if the victims’ bodies were made out of styrofoam, and I also found a bit excessive, the arterial blood spray. How many litres does the human body contain? The same goes for sexuality, though less often. I personally have seen more extreme things, but this is Western animation, and the audience may not be quite prepared for the graphic content. But I guess anyone going to watch the show would probably know beforehand it is not a show for children. You wouldn’t expect kid-friendly content from an Akira Kurosawa samurai movie, wouldn’t you?
This was not a problem for me. Indeed, I would have been disappointed had it been any other way! The “garden hose” approach to blood has long been a mainstay of Japanese cinema, certainly back as far as the early seventies and the Lone Wolf & Cub films – a staple of Western VHS stores under the title of Shogun Assassin. Realism isn’t a factor, and this is an area where animation can really push the pedal to the metal, being unconstrained by the limits of latex and Karo syrup.
Ah, yes… samurai, that’s a key word: after all, it’s in the title and is mentioned several times. I should stress here, Mizu definitely is no samurai by the traditional definition. He would usually act in service of a daimo, a feudal landlord serving the shogun. This usually comes with certain obligations and behaviour that would be seen as a code of honor. Mizu quite definitely doesn’t fit the description. However, many of Kurosawa’s “samurai” don’t either, including The Seven Samurai or the character Toshiro Mifune plays in Yojimbo and Sanjuro (which, cycling back, served as inspiration for Eastwood’s Man with No Name). But the writers of the show were really smart, and address it within the story. When Ringo complains she doesn’t act like a samurai would, she turns and angrily shouts: “I never said I am one.” It’s a sign of well thought-out screenwriting, and I like it very much. Kudos to the storytellers: now, will they make the show eventually deliver what the title promises?
I was less impressed with the music. More than once the people responsible seemed to think, “As long as it’s cool, everything is fine” – an attitude I personally don’t agree with at all. For example, in a training montage of Mizu, the famous “Battle Without Honor Or Humanity” by Tomoyasu Hotei plays. Sure, a cool tune from a Japanese composer. But it’s modern music and – though first used somewhere else – so closely associated with Kill Bill, it really felt like a misstep. Other popular pieces, e.g. by the Black Cats or Metallica, have even less justification. You tell a story in 17th century Japan, please apply music that fits the time period. And partly the show feels like a check-list of everything you ever heard or saw in the West about classic Japanese culture, from bunraku (classical puppet theatre) through geishas, samurai, Zen-like philosophy, sword-making, kimonos, calligraphy and so on and on. You name it, they have it.
With regard to the cultural depictions, I wasn’t happy with the fact these obviously Japanese characters were speaking in English, to the point I even checked for a Japanese dub option (no luck). It felt like the creators sent out a casting call for any Hollywood voice talent with somewhat Asian origins, e.g. Song, born in California to Thai parents, and having Kenneth Branagh putting on a dodgy Irish accent doesn’t help. Were all genuinely Celtic actors unavailable?
Episode 6 really knocked my socks off. It played virtually like a computer game: think Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft going through different levels of the game, plus elements from Resident Evil for good measure. I’m not saying it was bad. so much as unexpected. It’s also a point when it became harder to suspend my disbelief concerning Mizu’s abilities. I mean, how many people can you still fight, after one of your feet gets perforated? Or fighting a dozen-plus armed men without a weapon? Or carrying a man on her back, hanging from her sword on a stone wall, then climbing with said sword in her mouth (!) to safety on higher ground? Are we really sure she is not the child of a supernatural monster? I’m willing to believe this woman is exceptional, but this was a bit much. Mizu gets dangerously close to the superheroes of popular comic-book movies who can do anything, and usually do.
Part 6 was my favourite of the entire show, because it removed all the extraneous elements (hello, Taigen, Ringo and Akemi!), leaving it a blow-dart episode – all it had was point, simply Mizu fighting her way inexorably towards her goal. Which was what I came here to see, frankly.
What saves the character’s depiction again and again, is the makers never make it easy for her. She bleeds a lot over the course of the story. Mizu is shown making mistakes, and is not a hero since, as much as you sympathize with her goal, it is in the end selfish. I attribute the fact she survives this season to her remarkable physical skills, absolute die-hard dedication to her self-set cause, the help of her (very often smarter) allies and an enormous portion of luck. Which… works for me, though I’d have wished for a bit more realism in a show that explicitly is not fantasy. What is impressive is the visual style. A lot of work went into the landscapes, the backgrounds, and probably researching how ancient Japanese houses, buildings and temples looked. There are a lot of little details that you may overlook when watching the show for the first time. Also, as expected, the voice performances by actors such as Erskine, Takei, Branagh, Tagawa and many others are excellent.
I agree, the animation was great, especially in the action scenes, which were probably as good as anything I’ve seen this side of a Miyazaki movie. Fluid, and assembled in a way that certainly seemed cinematic. It was often easy to forget you were watching animation, and that’s close to the highest praise I can give the medium. Plot-wise, the main storyline was also excellent. I loved the fact that Mizu is single-mindedly focused on her revenge. That it might help avoid the Shogun being overthrown is utterly irrelevant to her.
It must be said that Mizu herself is a character ‘work in progress’. As mentioned, less a hero, than driven by years of abuse, mistreatment, non-acceptance, anxiety and sheer hatred. I guess any little boy with red hair and glasses who was harassed in class can understand her. The feeling of not being part of society or a group, of being rejected due to just being how you are, is something many people will identify with. Though again: does it justify a violent rampage on a merciless one-woman war against the person that fathered you? Hardly. The feeling is softened by the fact Abijah Fowler, who may be her biological father, is a real piece of abhorrent trash. He is a disgusting, almost inhuman, pervert, who deserves his just deserts.
Interestingly, the final fight between Mizu and Fowler is the catalyst for the fire of 1657 which devastated Edo (today’s Tokyo). Perhaps the message here is, if you follow only your own egotistic trail – Mizu’s wish for revenge and Fowler’s to take over Japan – you risk turning into a destructive force that causes more harm than good. I hope Mizu might realize her thirst for revenge is not the best motive, but rather acting to prevent the mayhem Fowler and his people would bring to the world if allowed to run it. This would make Mizu a real heroine and earn her my respect. Perhaps indicators for such a development can be spotted when Mizu decides to save her “frenemy” Taigen from death. If the show is willing to follow this developing character trait, it could evolve into something very beautiful and extra-ordinary. We will see.
It ends on something of a cliff-hanger, without much resolved. Yet where it’s going has me genuinely interested, and it’s quite possible the (already announced) second season may end up addressing most of the issues. In particular, some of the more annoying characters look likely to be left behind!
In a time where female protagonists get everything they need or want on a platter, without having to do the hard work, make difficult decisions or sacrifices, a character like Mizu feels different. She has character flaws, feels pain and has to become a better person, not just to achieve her own goals, but better the world around her. That is what popular fiction needs right now, and Hollywood screenwriters should take notice. That’s how you should write a character: flawed, not perfect. If your character can already do everything and is perfect you end up with boring, bland characters like Rey or Captain Marvel. So, while still a bit too superwoman and “Xena-ish” for me, Mizu is a big step in the right direction. Despite some complaints, the show as a whole exceeds the large majority of current female-centered TV and films. I hope it might inspire other producers to learn from its example. This is how you do female empowerment right, without hitting both sexes of your audience on the head with messages or propaganda.
Creators: Amber Noizumi and Michael Green Star (voice): Maya Erskine, Masi Oka, Kenneth Branagh, Darren Barnet
This is an adaptation of a Russian play A Long Time Ago by Alexander Gladkov, but was inspired by the real-life exploits of Nadezhda Durova. She was a woman who basically pulled a Mulan, concealing her gender in order to defend her homeland in the Napoleonic and other wars of the early 19th century. Durova joined the army on her 23rd birthday and served honourably for a decade, even after her true gender was discovered. Tsar Alexander I was impressed when he heard about Durova, giving her a promotion after summoning the soldier to his palace in St. Petersburg. Wounded by a cannonball at the Battle of Borodino, she eventually retired in 1816, with the rank equivalent to captain-lieutenant.
Somehow this became a light and fluffy slice of musical rom-com. 17-year-old Shura Azarova (Golubkina) is an accomplished rider and tomboy, who meets Hussar officer Dmitry Rzhevsky (Yakovlev), and is mistaken by him as a brother in arms. [As usual in these things, significant suspension of disbelief is required!] When war with France breaks out, Rzhevsky returns to his unit and Shura convinces faithful family retainer Ivan (Kryuchkov) to help her join the army in disguise. She makes a name for herself as a skilled and brave courier, though her relationship with Dmitry is more adversarial than romantic. There’s a French actress on whom he has designs, triggering her jealousy. Mistaken as rivalry, Dmitry and Shura end up having a duel, though the war keeps interfering in its execution.
All is forgiven after Shura is captured on a spying mission, Dmitry leading his platoon to the rescue, and leading to a rather decent extended fight, running through a ransacked stately home. [While the actual swordplay is no great shakes in general, the other stunts aren’t bad, including Shura leaping down off a balcony, which looks to have been done by the actress herself] The sudden moments where people burst into song are a little jarring initially, yet I got used to them – probably, again, a point of comparison to Mulan. The production is quite large in scale: there’s an opening ball sequence that’s impressive, and the battle scenes aren’t bad, albeit not quite War and Peace [though some of the costumes from it were recycled here!]
There is the obvious, and given the era probably entirely expected, patriotic theme, with discussions about defending the motherland. The film’s premiere took place on the 150th anniversary, to the day, of the previously-mentioned Battle of Borodino, a famous and bloody encounter between Russia and Napoleon’s forces – best known for inspiring the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky. However, it’s rarely heavy-handed, and for all its fluffiness, lack of substance and shortcomings in the motivation department, you do find yourself rooting for Shura. To be honest, perhaps to a greater degree than Dmitry, who comes off as a bit of an arrogant dick. Likely more genuinely progressive than anything coming out of Hollywood around the same time.
Dir: Eldar Ryazanov Star: Larisa Golubkina, Yuriy Yakovlev, Igor Ilyinsky, Nikolay Kryuchkov
This French film takes place a little way into the future, though society has undergone radical changes. Law enforcement is now privatized, with investigations contracted out to private investigators, who have to balance their costs in order to turn a profit on the cases they accept. One such PI is Blondie Maxwell (Langlart) – and to get the obvious out of the way first, no, she is not blonde It’s mentioned once, but never explained. She is currently on the trail of the terrorist Boloch, who has been mounting a campaign against Chronos Industry, the all-encompassing tech company, which is invested in almost every area of everyday life. The reward would go a long way to solving her perilous financial situation.
She gets a case to investigate the murder of an escort. It seems an open-and-shut case with the evidence squarely pointing at a journalist. However, something doesn’t sit right with Blondie, and the more she picks at the crime, the more it seems a set-up job. Even her getting the case seems suspicious, since authorities know she doesn’t have the resources to investigate it properly. The journalist claims the victim was actually his source, who was going to blow the lid of Chronos, not least a “dark” area of their network where murder for hire is bought and sold. Is he telling the truth, and what does this have to do with Boloch and his campaign?
As the tag-line above implies, this bears a significant resemblance to Stephen Spielberg’s Minority Report, with its tale of law and order run by technology. which someone on the inside gradually comes to realize isn’t as idyllic as it seems. This is rather less nuanced. At one point, a colleague of Blondie says, “Our job is to make the world safer. If that means sacrificing a little liberty, it works for me. It works for us all. It’s a choice we make as a society.” However, it’s clear Ivanowich’s sympathies are more aligned with Benjamin Franklin. This is very much a pre-liberty screed, though credit for being at least somewhat ahead of the curve with its concerns about artificial intelligence, an issue of increasing scrutiny in 2023.
Unlike Minority Report, it doesn’t have the budget to create a fully-fledged future society. This one looks like ours in almost every way, just with a few added bits of gadgetry, such as displays embedded into contact lenses. Maxwell’s main trait is her dogged determination to find out the truth, regardless of the personal cost, and she makes for an admirable heroine. As played by Langlart, she’s down to earth, though there were points where it seemed like the script had all but forgotten about Blondie. Either Ivanowich fell too much in love with the setting. or the story might have benefited from fewer characters and a sharper focus. Definitely not terrible though, and a good example of what can be done with imagination instead of budget.
Dir: Julien Ivanowich Star: Léonie Langlart, Stéphane Dufourcq, Vincent Terrier, Boris de la Higuera
Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok are two of the most well-known names in the culture of the Wild West, though the reality of both individuals is almost impossible to separate from the myths which surround them. So it’s kinda pointless to complain about historical accuracy in films which focus on them. Better just accept them as effectively being fictional entities, which can be used for whatever purpose a filmmaker desires. Here, it’s the death of Wild Bill (Stephen Amell, best known as TV’s Arrow) in a poker game, which sets his girlfriend Jane (Rickards, also from the same series) off. She goes on the trail of Jack McCall (Allon), the scumbag responsible, who has understandably opted to depart Deadwood. 
Not to be mixed up with 
This is the story of Syrian sisters Yusra Mardini and her sister Sarah, played by real-life sisters Nathalie and Manal Issa. Growing up, they were trained by their father, a professional swimmer himself, and had the goal of reaching the Olympics for their country. The (still ongoing) Syrian Civil War led to the sisters leaving their homeland, and this is mostly the story of their journey, through Turkey, across the Mediterranean in a 
This is a sprightly and energetic Chinese knock-off, borrowing heavily from Resident Evil and Aliens in particular. There’s a research lab deep underground, in the middle of the Gobi Desert, which has suddenly gone radio silent. The research they were doing there was… well, I’m not 100% certain quite what it involved. While a lot of the dialogue in this is in “English”, I’m using quotes advisedly. Especially on the scientific front, it seems to be more of an enthusiastic word-salad, like “by chance, precise data from the gamma variable appear,” throwing jargon about radiation and DNA splicing into the mix, in lieu of anything coherent. Anyway, it seems Ohm Technology are into some fairly shady shit, to nobody’s surprise.
Oh, dear. I appreciate that actors have to work, like everyone else. Van Dien, in particular, has a reputation in our house as someone whose name is not typically a badge of quality. But it’s sad to see Suvari is now apparently in the same career boat. I can only presume the offers aren’t exactly flooding in, if this is the work she has to take on. It’s another variant on the old Most Dangerous Game story-line. Here, it sees redneck entrepreneur Carter (Van Dien) luring in women with the promise of $100,000, while remaining vague on the details. Turns out the victims then are pursued through the forest and have to survive for 24 hours. Spoiler: they don’t.
“It just seemed as if Hell opened up one day and that was that. Instant carnage, liberated monsters, death for all. They rose from somewhere beneath the ground, attacking for no clear reason and killing until God knows when.” That’s how this starts, so there’s no hanging around. Cia Rose is one of the few survivors, for whom every day survival is a perilous endeavour. She’s seventeen, and the daughter of a scientist. When the monsterpocalypse took place, the rich, influential and powerful – who, it appears, knew this was coming – headed for their shelters. Her father was allowed in, to research the invaders. Cia was not.
After the impressive surprise which was 
Jim: ★★★
But first things first: despite its title and the location (Japan in 1657 in the Edo era) Blue Eye Samurai is – an American product, so certain allowances have to be made. While I do love a story of female persistence, this 8-part show pushes the limits of believability. We have to accept that, at a time when foreigners are forbidden to be in Japan, not only there is such a person living there, but also this man fathered a daughter. This means she is half-Caucasian, half-Japanese and therefore considered a “demon”, harassed by pure-blood Japanese who have never seen such a stranger in their country. She will then become a trained “samurai” – quotes used advisedly, as we’ll see – with the appropriate sword skills.
The show certainly ticks all the diversity check-boxes with its characters. We have a biracial female who taught herself everything, a repressed (though in the context of the era “spoiled” might be more accurate?) lord’s daughter, a helpful assistant born with no hands, a blind sword-maker, while an old white man is the perverse, cruel villain, and women have no say in society, serving as servants or prostitutes. Did I forget anything? Despite it all, this feels acceptable given the time and place in which the story occurs.
This was not a problem for me. Indeed, I would have been disappointed had it been any other way! The “garden hose” approach to blood has long been a mainstay of Japanese cinema, certainly back as far as the early seventies and the Lone Wolf & Cub films – a staple of Western VHS stores under the title of Shogun Assassin. Realism isn’t a factor, and this is an area where animation can really push the pedal to the metal, being unconstrained by the limits of latex and Karo syrup. 
It must be said that Mizu herself is a character ‘work in progress’. As mentioned, less a hero, than driven by years of abuse, mistreatment, non-acceptance, anxiety and sheer hatred. I guess any little boy with red hair and glasses who was harassed in class can understand her. The feeling of not being part of society or a group, of being rejected due to just being how you are, is something many people will identify with. Though again: does it justify a violent rampage on a merciless one-woman war against the person that fathered you? Hardly. The feeling is softened by the fact Abijah Fowler, who may be her biological father, is a real piece of abhorrent trash. He is a disgusting, almost inhuman, pervert, who deserves his just deserts.
This is an adaptation of a Russian play A Long Time Ago by Alexander Gladkov, but was inspired by the real-life exploits of Nadezhda Durova. She was a woman who basically pulled a Mulan, concealing her gender in order to defend her homeland in the Napoleonic and other wars of the early 19th century. Durova joined the army on her 23rd birthday and served honourably for a decade, even after her true gender was discovered. Tsar Alexander I was impressed when he heard about Durova, giving her a promotion after summoning the soldier to his palace in St. Petersburg. Wounded by a cannonball at the Battle of Borodino, she eventually retired in 1816, with the rank equivalent to captain-lieutenant.
This French film takes place a little way into the future, though society has undergone radical changes. Law enforcement is now privatized, with investigations contracted out to private investigators, who have to balance their costs in order to turn a profit on the cases they accept. One such PI is Blondie Maxwell (Langlart) – and to get the obvious out of the way first, no, she is