Category: Review

Solo

  By

★★
“…and this is why we don’t camp.”

soloGillian (Clark) takes a job as a summer-camp counselor, only to discover that part of the training involves her spending two nights, by herself, on an island in the middle of a nearby lake. That isn’t an ideal sitation for Gillian, since she’s troubled by nightmares of her past, and is unsettled to discover a previous trip by campers to the island, ended when a young girl sleepwalked her way to tragedy. Her spirit is still supposed, according to camp counselor lore, to roam the island, etc. etc. There may be less parapsychological threats to Gillian’s safety, although are they real or just her paranoia playing up? She finds a broken doll, and then finds a tent, with photos of young women taped to the roof inside. Ok: it’s probably not just her paranoia then. The potential culprits include Fred (Clarkin), the creepy owner of the camp, who was part of the previous expedition; his creepy son, Marty (Love), called “Martian” by the other councillors, for reasons that are obscure; and apparently friendly fisherman, Ray (Kash), who shows up and offers first-aid, after Gillian gashes her leg.

Clark is a decent heroine, although one perhaps too defined by her vulnerabilities. The main issue is a script that is astonishingly dumb. For instance, as with any modern wilderness horror, it has to deal with The Cellphone Issue. Here, it does so by Gillian being forbidden from taking hers on to the island, which is kinda neat. Except she does. But there’s still no signal. So she swims out into the water, the phone in a plastic bag held between her teeth, and tries to send a text. When that doesn’t work, she hurls it away in a fit of pique. At some point later, the phone unilaterally decides to send the text. But the recipient doesn’t bother doing anything significant with it. WHAT WAS THE POINT? They should simply have stopped at her being forbidden to take hers on to the island. It’s this kind of inanity which plagues much of the proceedings here, with people behaving in ways that don’t seem credible.

This is just about plausible for the villain – after all, you are a loony stalking camp counselors in the middle of a lake,  critical thinking may not be your forte. However, the second half of the film, consists of little more than four people stumbling around, making poor decisions. Much though you want to root for Gillian, and she does find a decent amount of inner fortitude at the end (Let’s just say, “Anchors aweigh!” and leave it at that), the overall feeling is that everyone deserves to be voted off this island.

Dir: Isaac Cravit
Star: Annie Clark, Daniel Kash, Steven Love, Richard Clarkin

Restless (2012)

  By

★★★½
“Before she was Agent Carter…”

restlessWatching Atwell walking the streets of forties New York as British agent Eva Delectorskaya does little to dissuade you from the feeling that this could be a prequel to Agent Carter, telling about some of her wartime exploits, before she goes to work for the Strategic Scientific Reserve. There’s actually a good deal more going on: the two-part TV miniseries starts 30 years after the end of the war, when Sally Gilmartin (Rampling) reveals to her daugher, Ruth (Dockery), the truth about her identity as the former Miss Delectorskaya, recruited in pre-war Paris by British intelligence, after her brother is killed by fascists. After things kick off, she is sent first to Belgium, and then to New York where she works on efforts to get America into the war, and continues a relationship with her boss, Lucas Romer (Sewell). However, sent on what appears to be a simple courier mission to New Mexico, she finds evidence pointing to another agenda, and which suggests a traitor within the department. It’s this which leads to her going off-grid: but it appears her fake identity has been compromised back in the present day, with her home under surveillance, by person or persons unknown.

The vast spread of this, taking place over four decades or so, requires the use of two actresses to play the lead, and that can often be an issue. However, here it’s possible to imagine Atwell aging into someone like Rampling – if you look at pictures of the latter from the seventies, they are not entirely dissimilar. [It certainly works much better than the idea of Sewell becoming Michael Gambon, which is the other half of the equation] At three hours, this may be a bit over-stretched, particularly in the second half, where there seems to be a lot of going from one place to another without much purpose. Contrast this to the tenseness delivered by the first part, in particular when Eva and Lucas go to a Dutch border town, where a Gestapo officer is supposed to be defecting, only for the operation to go horribly wrong after a botched exchange of pass-phrases. But whose fault was that? I’d like to have seem more of these thriller aspects, as Hall (who has worked both on Spooks and Strike Back) seems to have a good handle on these.

The ending was a little bit of a damp squib as well: it became apparent early on who the traitor is, if only because all the other credible candidates get bumped off. From that point, you are more or less waiting for the inevitable face-off between the parties concerned, although the acting abilities of those involved certainly help. After a few years, in the acting wilderness, Rampling seems to be undergoing a bit of a late career renaissance, between roles like this, and in Dexter and Broadchurch. Maybe she’ll follow the footsteps of Helen Mirren and become an action heroine for the older generation: on the basis of this, she would probably do rather well.

Dir: Edward Hall
Star: Hayley Atwell, Rufus Sewell, Charlotte Rampling, Michelle Dockery

Chicks in Chainmail, edited by Esther Friesner

  By

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

chainmailWhile the stereotypical image of the warrior in our culture tends to be male, warrior women were not unknown in the world of antiquity; they left their mark on classical, Celtic, and Norse-Teutonic legend, and found a literary prototype in the “lady knight” Britomartis, who rides through the pages of Sir Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen. The creators of the sword-and-sorcery fantasy tradition in the early pulps drew on this background to create a few sword-swinging heroines such as C. L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry and Conan’s comrade-in-arms Valeria in Robert E. Howard’s “Red Nails.”

With the rise of women’s liberation, their ranks have been considerably swelled in contemporary fantasy, and two anthology series of original short stories have appeared to showcase them: the Sword and Sorceress collections begun by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and the Chicks in Chainmail series begun with this volume. Having read the first volumes of both, I’d say they’re both quality work; to the extent that they have a difference, it would be that the tone of the stories in this collection tends to be more on the lighthearted and humorous side than that of the stories in the Bradley collection –though there are exceptions in both groups. (It should be noted that the term “chicks” in the title here isn’t used in any disrespectful sense, any more than “gal” is in the parlance of an older generation.)

Twenty authors are represented with stories in this volume, some of them well-known in speculative fiction circles, such as Roger Zelazny, Harry Turtledove, Josepha Sherman, George Alec Effinger (who contributes a story featuring his series heroine, Muffy Birnbaum, “barbarian swordsperson”) and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. The great majority of the stories are quite entertaining, and they not infrequently have good messages (like much of the fiction in this genre, they tend to extol heroic qualities of character). My personal favorite is “The New Britomart” by Eluki Bes Shahar (she also writes as Rosemary Edghill), set in England in 1819, where a country baronet, inspired by Ivanhoe, decides to stage a medieval-style tournament. (Toss in a powerful closeted sorceress with no scruples, a couple of visitors from Faerie, an Ivanhoe character brought to life by magic, a genuine dragon, a girl who wants to compete as a knight and a guy who wants to be a librarian, and anything may happen.)

Other especially good selections are Sherman’s “Teacher’s Pet,” Elizabeth Waters’ “Blood Calls to Blood” (I’d welcome seeing her heroine as a series character!), and David Vierling’s spoof of old-time pulp fantasies, “Armor/Amore.” Margaret Ball’s “Career Day,” despite its invidious portrayal of its only Christian character, manages to be a strong story about personal growth, where the heroine learns some worthwhile lessons. But almost all of the stories are well worth reading, not just these five. Any collection of 20 stories is likely to have one or two that not every reader cares for, and this one is no exception. IMO, Susan Schwartz’ bizarre “Exchange Program,” in which Hillary Clinton is killed in an Amtrak accident and winds up going to Valhalla (or a grotesque parody of Valhalla) is the weakest selection; it falls flat, in my estimation. But in the main, these tales are well worth a read.

Note: Bad language is absent or very rare in these stories, and there’s no explicit sex; most stories don’t have sexual content as such. The exception is Lawrence Watt- Evans’ “The Guardswoman,” whose heroine finally becomes “one of the boys” when she’s able to join her male colleagues in traipsing to the local brothel for sex (she falls into an affair with the male bouncer). But in general, the other sword-wielding ladies in this book display high morals — they respect themselves, and insist on being respected.

Editor: Esther Friesner
Publisher: Baen, available through Amazon, currently only as a print book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Avengers Grimm

  By

★★★
“Once Upon an Enchanted Time.”

Avengers-GrimmI don’t mind The Asylum studio at all. They are notorious for churning out their “mockbusters” – low-budget, similarly-titled movies intended to cash in on a bigger budget film’s publicity e.g. Transmorphers. And, let’s be honest, most of those do suck. However, they have achieved some renown for cheerfully silly creature features, the best-known of which is the Sharknado series. [Though in our house, we worship at a shrine to Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, starring those titans of 80’s bubblegum pop, Tiffany and Debbie Gibson.] Avengers Grimm occupies an odd middle territory: while its title is clearly intended to be riding the coat-tails of Avengers: Age of Ultron, yet a more accurate mockbuster title would be the one given above. The sole reference justifying the A word is when one character says, to no particular purpose, “We’re not heroes, we’re avengers.” Marvel’s legal department would probably beg to differ there.

For this is actually about the crossing over into the modern world of fairy-tale characters. The villain here is Rumpelstiltskin (Van Dien), who hijacks the magic mirror belonging to Snow White (Parkinson) since it can – an ability inexplicably omitted by the Brothers Grimm – act as a portal to our own, magic-free universe. He travels through dragging her with him, and by the time Snow’s princess posse catch up, he has become mayor of Los Angeles, because time flows at a different rate here. He is creating an army of “thralls,” mind-controlled minions that will do his bidding and allow him to expand his realm from a city to much further, and must be stopped. While Snow is trying to do just that, the arrival of her allies poses a problem, as they bring with them the last fragment of the mirror: it can be used to return to their world, or allow Rumpelstiltskin’s pals to join him. Making matters worse, he has enlisted the help of Iron John (Lou Ferrigno) and turned him into an unstoppable killing machine to hunt down the princesses.

This is as much an exercise in limiting expectations. Do not expect anything to do with Marvel, and instead something that’s an energetically low-budget riff on Once Upon a Time crossed with Enchanted, and you’ll be about there. There are probably a couple of princesses too many: outside of Snow, only Red Riding Hood (Peteron) and Rapunzel (Vanderbilt) made much impression, the latter swinging her weighted hair around like an offensively-coiffeured version of GoGo Yubari. There’s a nice subplot which has Red more or less going on her own mission, to take down the big, bad Wolf – one of Rumpel’s sidekicks – because he killed her parents. That’s the kind of inventive storytelling we could have used more of, or perhaps showing how the princesses adjust to modern life, which seems to happen with little more than a flick through a fashion magazine. However, Van Dien and Ferrigno make good foils for the ladies (many of whom come from Team Unicorn), and there are adequate quantities of princess ass-kicking. I was adequately entertained: and that’s more than can be said for my short-lived attempt to watch Once Upon a Time. This is a case where, as far as I’m concerned, the mockbuster tag probably does the film more harm than good.

Dir: Jeremy M. Inman
Star: Lauren Parkinson, Casper Van Dien, Elizabeth Peterson, Rileah Vanderbilt

Lady Ninja Kasumi, Volume 1

  By

★½
“Godfrey Ho nods approvingly.”

LadninI’ve endured enough of these that I get the increasing feeling they are cranked out on a Japanese assembly-line somewhere, for they seem to have the same elements, right down to the title, which involves a random combination of words such as Assassin, Female, Geisha, Girl, Lady, Ninja and Woman. Get some porn actress, whose talents are neither in acting nor in martial arts, a few robes and some samurai swords, then have everyone run around some generic but potentially “historical” location, such as a forest. You’ll want a lot of sitting around chatting, since that’s particularly easy to film, and sprinkle lightly in mediocre sword-play. Intersperse the story with lengthy sex scenes every 15 minutes or so. Package in a non-descript sleeve that promises more than it can ever deliver. Release. Profit.

Because this kind of dubious excuse for a movie is incredibly cheap to make, and it seems there’s an endless appetite for them, both in the West and (presumably) in Japan – much like any old cack with a zombie in it will currently get a release here. I watch them so you don’t have to. Trust me, there are times when this site is a chore, not a pleasure. This theory isn’t inviolate: Geisha Assassin is actually pretty good. Lady Ninja Kasumi, on the other hand, possesses absolutely nothing to separate it from all the other sword-wielding soft-porn which has strayed across my disinterested eyeballs in the past.

The heroine is Kasumi (Young-mi), who became a ninja in order to protect her little brother, Kotaro. She’s sent on a mission to spy on a nearby clan, and defeats a member of their Hakuga squad, run by the Itagaki brothers. Injured in the process, she is nursed back to health by a friendly medicine-peddler. However, the other Itagaki brothers are keen to get their hands on the ninja responsible for their colleague’s death and… Well, let’s be honest, it was at roughly this point that my interest vanished over the event horizon, sucked in by this low-rent combination of clunky cinema, bad fight scenes and tedious humping. I think there was something about another, freelance female ninja, and an assassin who could disguise himself as a small child, which I guess deserves half a star for sheer novelty.  There are times I feel guilty about not giving a film my full attention. This is not one of those occasions. This is the first in a series which runs ten volumes – needless to say, I won’t be bothering with the others.

Dir: Hiroyuki Kawasaki
Star: Young-mi, Saki Anz, Yui Mamiya, Hideki Satô

Lady Deception, by Bobbi Smith

  By

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

LADY DECEPTIONThis is another book I got for my wife, because I felt the pistol-packing cowgirl on the cover would appeal to her, and then read on her recommendation. It’s even more of a departure from my usual reading fare, since it isn’t only a Western, but a paperback romance as well. Set mainly in Texas in 1877, the title refers to the heroine’s penchant for using disguise and deception in her work; she’s a bounty hunter with a reputation for bringing in her quarry alive. The leading male character is an ex-gunfighter recently turned rancher, who’s mistakenly accused of complicity in a bank robbery; she’s hired to bring him in alive.

Smith’s prose style could use polishing, and often lacks artistry; scenes often aren’t sketched with much sensory detail, and many of the characters are not sharply drawn. However, the plot moves with several inventive twists and turns that enhance reader interest, and Smith even incorporates a bit of mystery, in the hidden identity of the shadowy outlaw chieftain El Diabloto. (Astute readers will guess this early on –but trying to guess the solution to a mystery is part of its fun.) Cody and Luke are both appealing characters whom the reader can readily like and respect. Despite their human foibles (see the note below), to the extent that the book presents any moral messages, they’re generally wholesome ones, and even religious ones in places. One of our heroine’s guises is as a lady preacher; her preaching definitely presents a theistic and moral world-view, with a call to repentance and a recognition of the possibility of forgiveness and grace, and she has a positive effect on some characters’ lives. (Granted, to some degree she’s playing a role here –but it’s not a role that’s wholly foreign to her.) Western-style gun-fighting action isn’t pervasive in the book, but there’s some of it; and Cody will earn Luke’s recognition that she’s “good with a gun.”

Note: There are a couple of explicit unmarried sex scenes here, and a certain amount of bad language, of the h- and d-word type.

Author: Bobbi Smith
Publisher: Montlake Romance, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Death Shadow

  By

★★★
“Stylized beyond belief.”

deathshadowsWhile made in 1986, you’ll frequently find yourself thinking this could be from a decade or two earlier, though to be honest, the style in this samurai-revenge-crime-whatever film is as all over the place as the plot. Some of that works well. Having the heroine’s sword turn into a ribbon, which she then twirls artistically, is more successful than it sounds. However, the multiple breaks for little disco-dance sequences, involving dry ice and flashing lights… Not so much. The set-up is great. Three condemned men are recruited, Nikita-style, to become shadow agents, working for the government. One of them manages to have a wife and a daughter, but has to leave them for their own safety.

Ten years later, he’s working a case when he meets his daughter, Ocho (Ishihara) employed by the man he’s investigating, Denzo. The end results is, the case blowing up, the death of both he and Denzo, and Ocho’s recruitment by his boss as a replacement. She can avenge her father by getting the evidence that will bring down the whole syndicate, in particular, a fake license hidden in the sash of a kimono. Unfortunately, this sash is now evidence in a murder investigation, and is in the hands of the police. And Denzo’s mistress, Oren (Natsuki), is out for her own revenge, on the woman she blames for his death.

Plenty of scope here, certainly. Unfortunately, the potential is frittered away after that blistering first twenty minutes, becoming bogged down in a welter of male characters who tend to look the same, act the same and sound the same. It’s a constant stream of corruption, lies and deceit that becomes quite wearing: the yakuza are corrupt, the cops are corrupt, even the local priests are corrupt, their grave-robbing antics being what kicks the quest for the kimono sash off. But it’s all too meandering, and Gosha [who also directed The Yakuza Wives] seems to be much more in love with these subsidiary characters than they deserve. Ocho and Oren are fine – the latter, in particular, is a memorably slimy creature, who is not as weak as she appears. There just isn’t enough of them.

Occasional moments here do work: mostly, when the two female leads have not been shunted off to one side, making way for macho grunting by top-knotted sword-wielders. I don’t have a problem with films like this, that take a different approach to familiar material. However, style alone isn’t enough, and what’s left here is infuriatingly flawed. There’s the basis of a great storyline, and a pair of superb central characters; that’s a foundation many movies would kill for, and on which Gosha could have built. Rarely have I seen such solid ground wasted as badly as occurs in this film.

Dir: Hideo Gosha
Star: Mariko Ishihara, Mari Natsuki, Masanori Sera, Takuzô Kawatani
a.k.a. Jitterna. There’s also some question over whether it’s Shadow or Shadows. The IMDb goes for the former, the DVD sleeve the latter.

Fraulein Doktor

  By

★★★½
“Germany calling…”

frauleindoctorThere’s a lot going on in this World War I spy thriller: probably a little too much, though it’s still generally interesting. The titular character – I wouldn’t go so far as to call her a heroine, for reasons that will become obvious – is a nameless German spy, whom we first see coming ashore at the British naval base of Scapa Flow. Her two male associates are captured, with Meyer (Booth) being “turned” by British intelligence officer, Colonel Foreman (More). Meyer reveals the fraulein’s mission is to find out on what boat Lord Kitchener will be leaving the base, so it can be attacked. Despite More’s desperate efforts, the plan succeeds and Kitchener is killed. That’s not the first time she has caused problems: in a flashback, we see her seducing French scientist Dr. Saforet (Capucine), in order to steal the secret of a dreadful new chemical weapon. Meyer, now a double-agent, is sent back into Germany with the aim of killing her, and appears to succeed. However, that’s just a ruse, so the not-so-good doctor can complete her biggest mission: organizing a raid on Allied headquarters to steal their defense plans, in advance of a massive German push.

It’s refreshingly grey in terms of morality. Neither side comes off as occupying the high ground, and there’s very much a sense of grubby necessity. For instance, when the agent is being presented with a medal for her role in killing Kitchener, the presenting German officer refuses to shake her hand, because he considered Kitchener a fellow officer as well as a friend, and his death was “cheating”. But they are perfectly happy to use her talents: when the idea of sending a woman in is questioned, her commander replies, “Why not a woman? She has imagination, precision, courage beyond any man on any battlefield. She has only two weaknesses: traces of pity and grains of morphine.” The latter adds an extra wrinkle in her final undercover role, as a nurse on a Red Cross train, heading to the front, and she has no reluctance in using her body to achieve her goals – whether with men or women. Kendall gives a solid performance, and I was surprised to discover this was inspired by a real person, Elsbeth Schragmüller, whose identity as “Fraulein Doktor” was not revealed until almost 30 years after the end of WW1. Details of her actions are still sketchy, offering the makers a blank canvas on which to paint: no evidence she was a bi-sexual drug-addict, for instance!

As noted, there’s too much going on here. The mission to kill Kitchener could have been an entire movie in itself, as could the theft of the chemical weapon, but instead, these are galloped through at an over-anxious pace. The finale then seems to forget about its leading lady entirely, heading off in an completely different direction, depicting the German attack, both with conventional weapons and poison gas, and the effects on the Allied troops. Shown below, it is truly a nightmarish sequence of epic proportions, enhanced by Ennio Morricone’s discordant score: I believe the Yugoslav army supplied military extras, and that ups the ante considerably. It makes for a grim, rather than rousing finale, bringing home to the fraulein, the responsibility of what she has done. I can see why it was a commercial flop and has largely been forgotten, yet despite its flaws, it deserves a better fate than obscurity.

Dir: Alberto Lattuada
Star: Suzy Kendall, Kenneth More, James Booth, Capucine

August Eighth

  By

★★★½
“Kseniya, Warrior Princess.”

augusteighthFirstly, a quick note on the title here, which is a little odd. The subtitles call it August ’08, which would make more sense, since it’s based on the spat that month between Russia and Georgia over the territory of South Ossetia, which had seceded from Georgia with Russian backing. Fortunately, you don’t need to know much about the murky geopolitical climate, though this is firmly entrenched on the side of the Russian “peacekeepers,” so probably should be be relied upon for accuracy [I note it was banned in the Ukraine]. The heroine is Kseniya (Ivanova), a single mom who packs her son Artyom (Fadeev) off to be with dad, so she can go on a trip with her new boyfriend. Unfortunately, father is a soldier stationed near the border; when things kick off down there, communications with the outside world are all but cut. Kseniya embarks on a perilous mission through the war-torn landscape to retrieve Artyom, with the aid of recon commander Lyoha (Matveev). Artyom, meanwhile, retreats into the fantasy world he has constructed to deal with the trauma, in which he is the hero, CosmoBoy, fighting with the aid of a giant robot against the evil Darklord.

Fairly epic in scale, this does a particularly good job at depicting the hellish nature of battle, in particular the urban kind, where snipers and other threats potentially lurk in every window. It’s also effective when portraying Kseniya’s devotion to Artyom, and her willingness to take any risk to reach him, albeit driven in part by guilt over the poor initial choice to ship him off. While the CGI initially seems a bit ropey, it makes more sense when you realize it’s a child’s imagination, and the production values are generally high-quality. The film’s weakest section is probably the middle, where Kseniya takes a back seat, literally hanging on to Lyoha’s belt and following him on a mission to rescue refugees trapped by the conflict (like I said, “peacekeepers”…), I’d rather have seen her continue as the courageous and self-dependent woman she is, both in the early going, and during the rousing finale, as she makes her way through what’s described as the most dangerous three miles in the world.

Still, even when the movie forgets its action heroine tendencies, it’s a solid piece of war cinema, that easily sustains its 132 minute running-time. Currently available on Netflix, this is the kind of unexpected find that makes having the service worthwhile. For I’d almost certainly have missed it otherwise, and that would have been a shame, since the performances and overall quality are generally more than up to Western standards.

Dir: Dzhanik Fayziev
Star: Svetlana Ivanova, Maksim Matveev, Artyom Fadeev, Aleksey Guskov

Guardian

  By

guardian★★★½
“A coherent plot. It’s vastly over-rated…”

How you react to a film isn’t always a logical exercise. I’m a great proponent of “guilty pleasure” films: movies that, by objective standards, are generally not very good, yet still manage to be, on one level or another, thoroughly entertaining. Barb Wire is one: as soon as you realize it’s a post-apocalyptic sci-fi version of Casablanca, it’s totally awesome. Add this Indonesian movie to the same pile: it contains many things which, on their own, I loathe; yet here, for whatever reason, the whole ends up being a great deal more entertaining that you’d expect from the sum of its woeful parts.

Let’s start with that plot. Which is certainly a great deal more than the film does. Seriously: it takes 50 minutes for anything approaching a meaningful plot element to show up. It opens with a man driving home, being ambushed and stabbed to death. His wife and young daughter find him. Fast-forward ten years, and some thugs attack the house with what may be the longest single burst of automatic weaponry in cinema history, followed up, for no particular reason, by two rounds from a rocket launcher. Cue mother Sarah (Diyose) and pouty teenage daughter Marsya (Camesi) going on the run: Mom has clearly been anticipating this for a while, and has a hideout, stash of weapons and martial arts training. Turns out, there are two factions at play here: the one seeking to kill the family is led by corrupt cop Captain Roy (Fernandez), while playing defense is Paquita (Carter, best known for her role in Falling Skies), who… Well, you will find out eventually. Just don’t hold your breath.

guardian2.jogFor before you reach that point, there follows alternating scenes of ludicrous excessive gun-battles, and Marsya whining “What’s going on? Make it stop? I said, WHAT’S GOING ON? I want an ice-cream!” [I may have imagined the last, I’m not sure] Normally, this kind of thing would be incredibly grating. But let’s face it, she’s basically echoing what the audience is thinking, so it’s okay.  Throw in Kardit’s style of action, which consists of jerking the camera back and forth while simultaneously zooming in and out, and you’ve got the recipe for a headache-inducing exercise, about as far from fellow Indonesian flick The Raid as possible [seriously, if you haven’t seen The Raid, go do so now. It’s the best action movie of the past decade. You can thank me later.].

And yet… If you can handle the fact that the ratio of bullets to reloading scenes is several hundred to one, cope with not knowing what the hell is going on for half the movie, and tolerate characters that are basically a procession of shallow genre tropes, you’ll have fun. Against the odds, I did: there’s at least four women here with no qualms about kicking ass in industrial quantities, and both Divose and Carter bring the necessary intensity to their roles [there’s one awesome shot where Paquita is chasing after a car on foot and is just screaming at it]. There’s a chunk at the end where all three leading ladies are simultaneously fighting for their lives, and that’s a good deal more progressive than you’d get to see in most Western films. For all its many, copious flaws, I was kept entertained – as much by the daft insanity on view, as in spite of it. In the right hands, this could have been awesome: Kardit clearly is not those hands, yet it’s still more fun than I expected.

Dir: Helfi Kardit
Star: Dominique Diyose, Belinda Camesi, Sarah Carter, Nino Fernandez