Category: Review

La Madre

  By

★★½
“Is there such a thing as whiteface?”

I ask, because this film, made in Mexico City and starring mostly Mexicans, seems to be trying to take place in America. It’s not doing a good job of it. The heroine is Martha (Mazarrasa), a single mother running a shop in a border American city with the help of her two daughters, Eva (Reynaud) and Raquel. Then Eva is kidnapped by evil Mexican cartel boss, El Chacal (Guerrerio), and held by him, even after Martha pays the requested ransom. However, it turns out Mom has a hidden past, which gave her a set of special skills. With the help of sympathetic cop, Juan Cinderos (Dulzaides), she sets out to bring down his organization and retrieve her daughter.

It might have worked better if everyone has spoken Spanish, and they’d actually set this in Mexico. Not that Mazarrasa’s English is bad. It’s far better than my Spanish. But early on, she tells her daughters, “Our family has been in this [American] city for generations.” Yet she sounds like she’s still dripping wet out of the Rio Grande: “Ey neeeed tu dooo zees!” It feels particularly fake to me, since I’m married to a first-generation Hispanic immigrant, so know Chris and her siblings sounds completely indistinguishable from native citizens. Literally nobody in the film speaks without a notable accent: the closest is El Chacal, the character you’d least expect to know English. It’s all tremendously off-putting.

The rest of the plotting is similarly shoddy, in particular the way Martha is able to infiltrate El Chacal’s operations and get them taken down from the inside, in a way Paul and his pals have been utterly unable to do. I get that she’s operating outside of the usual legal encumbrances, but building her history and doing more than slapping a wig on her as a disguise, would have gone a long way to avoid my eyebrow entering “Oh, really?” mode. The way a random cop like Paul gets to take part in police actions South of the “border” – quotes used advisedly – didn’t help. All told, too many elements here seem to have wandered into this Tubi Original, from a script discarded by the Hallmark channel.

Yet it’s not entirely worthless, with Mazarrasa just about able to hold things together through a decent central performance. She had a long-running role in Camelia La Texana, so has a handle on the more soapy elements here, and is capable of putting over the raw emotion appropriate to the circumstances. The individual pieces could have been re-arranged into an effective combination. Perhaps if Martha had gone full Liam Neeson from the moment Eva was kidnapped, telling El Chacal, “You just messed with the wrong madre…”, instead of wasting time faffing around, naively trying to negotiate and pay the ransom. That is quite at odds with the street-smart, take no prisoners approach she later shows. Maybe her brains were in the wig as well.

Dir: Mitchell Altieri
Star: Tamara Mazarrasa, Giovanna Reynaud, Javier Dulzaides, Alex Guerrero 

Night Train

  By

★★
“Not trucking good.”

Danielle Ryan’s quest for a movie worthy of her talents meets another swing and a miss. I guess you have to give credit to this one: it is at least trying to go in a different direction, making the Mexican cartel the good guys. For as well as their… less salubrious activities, they’re shipping pharmaceuticals into the US, and undercutting Big Pharma, by selling them to the needy at lower prices. #SoBrave Needless to say, this can’t stand, so word comes down to FBI supervisor Connoll (Sergei), who puts agent Jaylynne Jackson (Baird) on the case. Except, you wonder how much he wants to help, since she is an alcoholic burnout, with PTSD resulting from her stint in the military.

The target is Holly McCord (Ryan), who might also be a vet – to be honest, my attention kinda lapsed. She is trucking the imported drugs to the distribution hub in Las Vegas, using her souped-up vehicle. But only because it gives her access to the medicine her sick son needs. Her contact, Renzo Romeo (Haapaniemi) was initially unconvinced, but McCord’s ability to get the job done showed him she isn’t just a girl – a point the film practically belabours. That, however, can’t stop Holly from getting ensnared deeper in the crime web, as Jaylynne closes in, both ends threatening to destroy everything Holly cares about. Which is basically her son, so she decides to make a break for the border with him and Renzo.

I’ll take misleading posters for $400, please, Alex. I am fairly sure – despite the attention thing mentioned above – that Holly never picks up a gun at any point, even during the final face-off with Jaylynne. Indeed, in terms of action, this is considerably more subdued than you’d expect. I was thinking there would at least be some hot car chases here, and the movie largely fails to deliver on that front either. It’s more of a thriller than an action film, and doesn’t work particularly well as that. If it had kept to the battle between noble criminal and ignoble cop, it might have worked, since both characters are interesting – even if Jaylynne would, in reality, have been tossed out of the FBI.

However, the film throws too much extraneous stuff in there which is either not needed, or plain bad writing. I mean, if you have to use a sick child as maternal motivation, that’s simply lazy. We also get Holly’s relationship with her father, Jaylynne’s PTSD, the creepy attraction the Las Vegas head has for Holly, etc. etc. When the two women finally meet in the desert, the battle-hardened FBI agent ends up falling to her knees and weeping, then letting Holly go, after a stern lecture from the smuggler. No, really. The words,”Who writes this crap?” may have passed my lips at that point. Some day, Ryan (and, indeed, Baird) will hopefully find a script that matches her abilities. Today is not that day.

Dir: Shane Stanley
Star: Danielle C. Ryan, Diora Baird, Paul Haapaniemi, Ivan Sergei

The Adventures of Shiela Crerar, Psychic Detective, by Ella M. Scrymsour

  By

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

Detectives as protagonists entered the realm of English-language fiction in the 19th century, especially in its later decades, and quickly captured the fancy of much of the reading public. The earliest examples, such as Poe’s Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Chesterton’s Father Brown, find their adventures solely in the natural world. But it wasn’t very long before other writers took the basic idea into the supernatural realm, to create the figure of the occult or “psychic” detective, such as Flaxman Low or William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki, a solver of mysteries that involve, or at least often involve, the weird and uncanny. Like their natural-world counterparts, the occult detectives in this formative era were nearly all male.

But in Shiela Crerar, the heroine of this six-story cycle originally published in The Blue Magazine in 1920, Ella M. Scrymsour (whose full name was Ella Mary Scrymsour-Nichol) created a distaff incarnation of this type of figure, who can hold her own with any of her male colleagues. I first encountered the character in “The Werewolf of Rannoch,” a story in a horror anthology I read back in 2020. (Prior to that, I’d never heard of the character or the author.) Guessing correctly that Shiela was a series character, I tracked this book down in the Goodreads database; and having gotten it as a gift this past Christmas, I was very pleased to finally get to read all of Shiela’s exploits!

Orphaned as a child, Shiela Crerar was happily raised by an apparently bachelor uncle, a Highland laird with a lot of lineage but not a lot of money. The Sight ran in the family; both she and Uncle John were strongly psychic (her gift –or curse– as she’ll discover early on, allows her to see ghosts, something most people can’t), and she shared in his interest in and study of the paranormal. She’s a kind-hearted, frank and down-to-earth young woman who loves nature and likes to read; she’s also one with considerable determination and a strong will.

His sudden death when she’s 22 leaves her the owner of his smallish estate, Kencraig, but it’s heavily mortgaged. Not willing to sell a place that’s profoundly dear to her, she rents it out on a five-year lease, resolved to find a line of work that will ultimately let her pay off the mortgage (while providing for her in the meantime). When nothing else offers, she hits on the idea of offering her services as a psychic detective. (All of this is presented to the reader in the first few pages of the first story, “The Eyes of Doom.”)

As we learn in the last story, “The Wraith [the back cover copy incorrectly gives that word as “Wrath”) of Fergus McGinty,” her mission takes her five years to complete. That she completes it isn’t really a spoiler; from the beginning, I think that most readers would surmise that she will. Her career as an occult detective involves her in some very intense and dangerous experiences, well titled as “Adventures.” Besides the ones already mentioned, the other stories are “The Death Vapour,” “The Room of Fear,” and “The Phantom Isle.”

Her clients are mostly well-to-do Scots gentry, and her travels will take her to various Highland locales, including the Isle of Skye and its environs. She’ll deal with mostly supernatural phenomena (one story centers around what proves to be a case of very grim psychic imprinting), including murderously vengeful revenants, a homicidal “Elemental,” and lycanthropy. The latter is explained here as astral projection, in which the sleeping werewolf’s astral self projects –sometimes unknown to the projector, but in some cases deliberately– and can take on the substantial form of a ravening human-beast hybrid.

Scrymsour’s tales are plot-driven, straightforward, suspenseful and intense, with a real sense of danger and menace. Her prose style is direct and (along with the relatively short length of the collection) makes for a quick read. Most of the stories involve a backstory rooted in fictional (but realistic) events in Scotland’s long and often bloody history, including savage clan warfare and the failed Jacobite rising in 1745 and its vicious repression. I felt this exhibited some affinity to M. R. James’ “antiquarian” approach to the supernatural tale, which for me was a plus.

There’s some effective reference to Celtic and other occult lore. Scrymsour furnishes her heroine with a love interest introduced in the first story, Stavordale Hartland, so there’s a note of clean romance. If we picture the stories as taking place from 1915-1920, it’s not clear why Stavordale’s not in the military; but the Great War isn’t reflected anywhere in this corpus at all. Shiela packs a pistol and can use it effectively (the author describes it as an “automatic revolver,” which tells us that she knew virtually nothing about handguns!), but that plot element only appears in one story.

There’s not a lot of directly described gore here, but there is reference to mostly off-stage past grisly atrocities, and to present-day violent deaths of animals and humans, both adults and children; and in one case the murder of a two-year old child in real time, though it’s not described in detail and is over in four sentences. Unfortunately, Shiela’s heroic qualities don’t include quick reaction time; my biggest peeve with the book was that she failed to act in time to prevent this! Scrymsour’s characterizations are not sharp; Shiela is the best-drawn character, but Stavordale isn’t developed as much, and the chemistry between the two doesn’t come across as strong.

He also tends to address her with phrases like “little woman”, which I found irksome. But I didn’t find the message of the story cycle to be sexist; he wants her to give up her detective work and marry him, but she won’t do that until she completes her self-set mission. And though one reviewer holds the theory that Shiela’s psychic powers depend on virginity, so that marriage will destroy them, to my mind the conclusion of the last story suggests the opposite; Stavordale comes to realize that her Sight is a permanent part of her, whether she uses it to further a paid career or not.

Author: Ella M. Scrymsour
Publisher: Wildside Press; available through Amazon, currently only as a print book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

God is a Bullet

  By

★★★★
“God, faith, mayhem and a lot of blood”

To be honest, I never read Boston Teran’s novel. I wasn’t aware of the story until this movie came out here on DVD – but then the book was also never released in my country. I’ve every intention to read it and have already ordered it in English. However, I can’t make any comparisons between the book and the movie adaptation, directed by Nick Cassavetes, son of John Cassavetes.

It seems that when Teran’s novel came out in 1999, it caused quite a stir in Americas crime literature circles. Most agreed about the literary quality of the book: it won several crime novel awards and was nominated for even more. At the same time, its dark outlook on life, as well as the strong violence, were criticized. Teran’s style has been compared to that of Hunter S. Thompson, Jim Thompson and Cormac McCarthy. The author himself, who writes many different sorts of novels, is seen as some kind of mystery: few people seem to know him personally and he doesn’t give many interviews. But maybe he is just not interested in being a public personality (and why should he?), constantly standing in the limelight as some “star authors” do.  The movie rights were quickly bought by Hollywood and Nick Cassavetes planned an adaptation.

It seems to have been a passion project for him. But for whatever reason, it needed a quarter of a century until the movie, filmed in 2021 in Mexico City and New Mexico, would see the light of day. The main character is Bob Hightower (Coster-Waldau, best known as Jamie Lannister in Game of Thrones), a police officer searching for his daughter. She was abducted by a violent sect who also killed his ex-wife and her husband. A former member of the sect, Case Hardin (Monroe) declares herself ready to help him. According to her, he would never have a chance to find the gang by official means, without his daughter getting killed immediately. Bob accepts her assistance, though doesn’t know how trustworthy Case is. Does she really just want to help him rescue his daughter, from the fate that Case herself experienced 12 years ago? Or does she have other motives?

That’s the story in a nutshell. But it’s much more complicated than that, and you also shouldn’t expect this to be a non-stop action movie: it isn’t. I think you could maybe call it a road movie. The search for the young girl, while actually leading there in the end, is more a “McGuffin”, in that it moves the main protagonists forward – but under the surface, a different story is being told. There is an evaluation or discussion about faith, belief, God and values between Bob and Case. He is a believer in God and Christian convictions, while she is essentially atheist. Inevitably, they clash in the beginning until they develop an understanding. They come from two different sides of the spectrum. It’s the cruel descent into a man-made hell, where there is hardly any law except what you make for yourself, like an old-time Western, which makes them partners who rely on and save each other again and again.

It’s the most fulfilling part of the movie. In a way, Case is Bob’s guarding angel; she knows about those people, how they behave, how to deal with them, also the danger that they embody as human life has hardly any value for them. Bob goes “undercover” to find his daughter which also means he has to look and appear like these people, so gets a full-body tattoo by “The Ferryman” (Foxx in a larger supporting role). The aim is to contact the sect, whose cult leader Cyrus (Glusman) is a specific piece of human scum, and deal with him. All of what has happened ties back to Bob’s father in law and his superior at the police office, though he doesn’t know this.

It’s an exciting and I’d even say great piece of film work, though regrettably, will probably never get the attention it deserves. As far as I can see the film never ran in German cinemas, and only I was barely aware of the movie coming out on DVD and Blu-Ray. As the movie wasn’t produced by one of the big studios, the money for marketing might not have been quite there, I assume. The film was criticized for the amount and intensity of violence and so-called misogyny, due to the fact that the movie doesn’t hold back. But bad things happen to everyone in this story, regardless if you are male or female, black or white. In that respect the film is truly democratic, mistreating everyone equally. There are no safe spaces for anyone here.

While I personally have seen worse, a little word of warning. The movie includes rapes, vicious murders, child prostitution, drug addiction, poisonous snakes, slashed throats, head-shots, and people getting killed with flame throwers or suffocated with a plastic bag. You name it, the movie has it. That said, the depiction of all the carnage listed is not gratuitous. I never had the feeling that Cassavetes indulged in violence for violence’s sake. However, if you belong to the more squeamish, this might maybe not be the movie for you.

That said, the movie feels honest in showing a different side of America: the ugly, dark side you usually don’t see in all these feel-good Hollywood movies anymore. You get the sense this is about real people experiencing real pain. Despite the violence, that is stretched over two and a half hours, giving the movie a certain kind of calmness and tranquility. Cassavetes gives his characters time to develop and it pays off handsomely. Scenes can breathe, and unlike a lot of movies today, it’s not all cut-to-the-chase. In the end, Bob and Case are just two lonely people who find each other, during their journey through backwoods towns and the desert, a trip that has something of a cathartic quality.

In the end – and that’s why it’s here – it’s in the main Case’s story. Yes, Bob hopes to find his daughter but he always appears a bit bland compared to her fascinating, broken character. The movie begins and ends with her. There are flashbacks and you start to realize that she is not just lost, she has been robbed of her childhood, that no one really cares for her. She may be on a journey to her own death as Case has no real place that she can call home. The whole depiction reminds me of characters like Revy from Black Lagoon or Lisbeth Salander. Or maybe it’s just my imagination running wild.

In any case, I was highly impressed by Maika Monroe’s performance and the movie as a whole. I personally had no problem with the depicted violence, and think this movie deserves more exposure. All told, if you want to see something different from the typical Hollywood entertainment, this might be of interest.

Dir: Nick Cassavetes
Star: Maika Monroe, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Jamie Foxx, Karl Glusman 

 

Run

  By

★★★½
“Meals on wheels.”

The title here is used ironically, because “run” is the last thing the heroine can do. She is Chloe Sherman (Allen), a teenage girl who has been plagued by medical issues since birth, requiring full-time care from her mother, Diane (Paulson). She’s partially paralyzed, unable to walk, and also suffers from severe asthma. Chloe is, however, awaiting the result of her college application, and is eagerly looking forward to starting a new, independent life, having been home-schooled by Mom, who is the very definition of a helicopter parent. One day, Chloe discovers some of her medication is in her mother’s name, and gradually discovers more evidence that something is very wrong with Diane. If her suspicions are right, the bigger question is, what can Chloe do about it?

This feels like it might have been a COVID-19 project, filmed during the pandemic. There is a limited cast, and the action mostly takes place in the Sherman house. That isn’t actually the case – it was filmed before that, though it’s planned theatrical release was cancelled due to the outbreak, and it ended up becoming a Hulu Original. As such, it plays quite well, with an enjoyably ludicrous approach that, on occasion, makes it resemble a Lifetime TVM. Albeit one that somehow ended up being made by proper film-makers, with a real cast and actual production values. For a smart madwoman, Diane is remarkably stupid. I mean, flat-out Googling “household neurotoxins” – not even bothering with an incognito window – is just silly.

The same goes for Chloe, who swings from whip-smart to panicky and useless, at the drop of some animal medication. I mean, there’s a phone in the house. Dial 911 and be done with it. However, I found it fairly easy to put such logical thoughts to one side, and just enjoy this for its pot-boilery goodness. Paulson is very good at this kind of role. I mean, there’s a reason nobody has appeared in more seasons of American Horror Story than her. Allen is solid too. Interestingly, she does actually use a wheelchair, which gives scenes like her crawling across the roof, to escape after being locked in her room, an additional intensity. She doesn’t seem to have appeared in any films since, which is a shame.

It’s sequences like that which merit its inclusion here, though we have covered similar territory previously with Wait Until Dark. The more hysterical tone in this case, means its closest cousin is probably something like What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, a similar two-hander in which a controlling partner seeks to manipulate a relative. This is more physical than the mental gaslighting in Jane, with Diane realizing that she needs to control Chloe’s body first, in order to control her mind. Conversely, Chloe needs to liberate herself physically first. It’s all rather more nuanced than it initially appears, though works well enough on just a surface level too. It’s certainly a very different take on maternal love.

Dir: Aneesh Chaganty
Star: Kiera Allen, Sarah Paulson

Robotica Destructiva

  By

★★
“Technically marvellous. But only technically.”

To bring out one of my go-to phrases, if I was eleven years old, and hopped up off my face on candy-floss, this would probably be one of my favorite movies. Instead, it’s the kind of film which apparently caused my brain to shut off as some kind of defense mechanism. I’m not kidding. Ten minutes into my first viewing attempt, I suddenly fell asleep. I think my mind may have experienced the cerebral equivalent of a blue screen of death and ran out of memory, forcing a shutdown. For this is just an insane overload of a movie, all the more so considering it was a labour of love, assembled over a period of multiple years.

Gaffin and pals are part of a rock band out of Florida, called The Killer Robots, whose schtick involves dressing in (undeniably impressive) robot costumes, and have also made films like The Killer Robots and the Battle for the Cosmic Potato. Maybe if I’d seen those, this might have made sense, instead of being the incomprehensible gibberish it seemed.  As far as I can determine, the plot is this. The Killer Robots steal the Arculon Destroyer from planet Radia, leaving it defenseless. To retake it, the rulers defrost a trio of android warriors: Mytra (Belko), Azalla (Martin), and Luna (Theron), known as the Destructivas. Mayhem ensues. Which is my way of saying “I’m not sure what happens thereafter.” Oh, except there’s time-travel. Definitely time-travel.

To say this is loosely-plotted, would imply there was any plotting going on at all. There’s no shortage of stuff happening, to be sure. However, very little of it makes coherent sense on more than the shallowest of levels. Characters arrive, do something or more or less relevance, and then vanish without explanation. I was somewhat amused on occasion, such as the way the Destructivas keep getting arrested, convicted and sent to space prison. Or there’s the “peacekeeper” chasing after them whose hand turns into a literal hammer. It’s just that it feels as if Gaffin simply hurled every idea he could think of into a blender, flicked the on-switch and committed the results to high-quality digital video.

Make no mistake, there’s a strong visual aesthetic here, perhaps best described as Tron, remade for fifty bucks after a hit of industrial-strength weed. The poster above is actually a fairly decent representation of the lurid delights in question, and I can’t fault this side of things. However, the lack of characterization, and performances which largely feel like having Chris Farley yelling in your face for a hour, outstay their welcome and become wearing. I would say, it’s the kind of thing which might work better as a music promo. Except, after the credits, that’s exactly what we get: a promo for The Killer Robots. And it’s kinda dull, with the band just wandering round in their admittedly impressive costumes. I still might buy a ticket for a live show. Their movies? Not so much. 

Dir: Sam Gaffin
Star: Amber Belko, Torie Martin, Kristal Theron, Sam Gaffin

Mother’s Day (2023)

  By

★★★½
“Everybody has issues.”

I’d be the first to admit, those issues likely extend beyond the characters in the movie, and probably extend to the script writers, because there are certainly… well, let’s just say, some novel concepts here. The heroine is Nina Nowak (Grochowska), a former Special Ops soldier, who had to fake her own death and give her son Maks up to adoption, for both their security. She’s been keeping an eye on Maks (Delikta) from afar, but after he’s abducted at the request of a gangster Nina took down, she needs to become considerably more hands-on. Rescuing Maks, however, will bring her into contact with a number of rather odd  people, on both sides of the law.

In particular, there’s Igor (Delikta), her contact inside the establishment, who is divorced, and has a fragile relationship with his daughter that he desperately wants to repair. On the other side is the very strange Woltomierz (Wróblewski), a gangster who keeps the severed head of his father in a jar on his mantelpiece, and is known as “Volto” for his habit of tazing incompetent henchmen to death. Getting, and keeping, Maks out of his grasp is going to be a challenge for Nina. Although her bad-ass credentials are firmly established after she takes on a group of men outside a convenience store, armed with nothing more lethal than a six-pack of beer. Nina literally knocks one of them out of his shoes.

This is not to be confused with any of the other similarly titled films, not least the 2010 movie starring Rebecca de Mornay. Nor should it be confused with another recently released Netflix movie about a mother with special skills, looking for her abducted child, The Mother, starring Jennifer Lopez. With that said, the look and feel of this is impressive, the fight scenes in particular being well-staged and imaginative – though fair warning, do not expect realism. or anything approaching it. I’m unaware of Grochowska having any particular action background, yet she still delivers on that front.  Most notably, she stabs someone in the head with a pair of carrots: I’ve not seen that since the equally bonkers Clive Owen movie, Shoot ‘Em Up.

The whole film is lit in a sickly green palette, which does a great job of making the city in which it takes place, look like a terrible place to live. Less successful are the attempts at drama. The Nina/Maks relationship is flat and unconvincing, and the rest of the cast largely seem to be weird for weirdness’s sake. They’re not as interesting as the makers think they are. The best way to look at this is perhaps as a female-fronted version of Crank: a deliberately excessive action flick, clearly not intended to be taken seriously. As such, I think it is a better effort than Jolt, another Netflix movie which seemed to be aiming along similar lines. The ending hints at a sequel and, truth be told, I wouldn’t mind one.

Dir: Mateusz Rakowicz
Star: Agnieszka Grochowska, Adrian Delikta, Dariusz Chojnacki, Szymon Wróblewski

Incarcerated

  By

★★½
“Chastely sleazy.”

There’s an interesting idea here, at least. As a young child, Elena (Ayala) has to watch as her mother and brother are killed by crime boss babe Maeve (McComb), after her father (Pardo) made the ill-advised decision to try and steal from her. It’s particularly awkward, since Maeve made him choose which of his two children should live… then killed the one he picked, his son. This Sophie-like choice has, understandably, left the father-daughter relationship somewhat strained, to put it mildly. 15 years later, Elena is a druggie, who robs a liquor store and gets sent to jail as a result. Except, this incarceration is entirely deliberate, because it’s the facility in which Maeve is now serving time, giving Elena her long-awaited chance for revenge.

Naturally, it proves not quite as simple as that, even though within two minutes, her friendly cell-mate, a veteran of the system, is providing a helpful gobbet of exposition about how Maeve has a parole hearing coming up, and has bribed a judge to recommend her release. From here, the inevitable tropes of the women in prison genre kick in, replacing the fairly original overall concept. The enemy quickly made by Elena (or rather, “Sophia,” the name she goes by in jail – perhaps a nod to the whole choice thing mentioned above?) after an incident in the chow hall. The horny guard, Fletcher (Wiles), with an addiction to taking advantage of the inmates. Violence in the showers.

What’s weird, though, is the relatively tame content, considering the situations. For example, on arrival, Elena is given a strip-search by Fletcher, in a rather creepy scene – rendered oddly powerless by the lack of any nudity. The same goes for several scenes shot in the prison showers, in a way which would barely stretch a PG-rating, and feel more in keeping with a TV movie (it’s not: this was made for streaming company Tubi, who have plenty of “mature” content on their service). The only exception is Fletcher getting his comeuppance, which involves a certain body part being sliced off and flushed down the toilet, in fairly graphic fashion. Mind you, Monroe was responsible for the remake of I Spit On Your Grave: it does feel as if he’s more comfortable with violence than sex.

This is all more than a bit implausible, from the way Elena miraculously ends up two cells down from her target, through the way she’s able to keep her identity secret on the inside, to the finale where all pretense at prison security simply evaporates. Can’t help thinking, she could also have just waited until Maeve got out on parole and taken care of her revenge then, considerably more easily. But where’s the fun in that? There are no surprises in the way things unfold, and the almost tasteful amount of restraint here left me suffering from a bit of cognitive dissonance. It feels as if Monroe misunderstood the assignment a bit, resulting in a missed opportunity.

Dir: Steven R. Monroe
Star: Yesenia Ayala, Heather McComb, Jason Wiles, Danny Pardo

The Alien Corps, by P.J. McDermott

  By

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

If you’re even slightly familiar with the Star Trek universe, you’ll be aware of the Prime Directive. While never explicitly stated, it’s the rule which prohibits interfering with the development of less technologically advanced civilization, in particular those that are not capable of space travel, or are unaware of the existence of life beyond their own planet. It’s a key concept in this book too, though is meshed together with a religious theme – not something often found in this kind of science fiction.

The central character is Commander Hickory Lace, part of the Alien Corps. This is a group created by the Vatican to investigate extraterrestrial “messiahs” as they are reported, to see if they are potentially also the Son of God like Jesus. After a century, they’ve had no success: perhaps the latest candidate, Kar-sèr-Sephiryth of the planet Prosperine, might be “the one”. The Corps are working with Earth’s Intragalactic Agency, in which Hickory’s father is an admiral, as Prosperine has the rare material Crynidium, essential to faster-than-light travel. The IA has their version of the Prime Directive, so Hickory and her crew have to disguise themselves as the local population. Not everyone abides by the same rules. The Bikashi, an outlaw race thrown out of the Galactic Alliance, are present on Properine, seeking to control the Crynidium for themselves, and don’t care about manipulating the development of the natives.

I liked the concept and the world-building here, with Prosperine truly seeming like an alien planet in every regard. The scenario poses an interesting challenge for the heroine, with the strictures imposed by the Intragalactic Agency limiting her ability to counter the Bikashi, who are operating under no such constraints. Fortunately, she has some tricks up her sleeves, most notably her empathic abilities, which even work on the native wildlife. Along with her team, she has to find a way to thwart the rebellion being fomented among certain radical elements by the Bikashi, while also trying to decide whether or not Kar-sèr-Sephiryth is legitimate. This process does lean more heavily on smarts than firepower, in part because the weapons so far invented on Prosperine are relatively primitive.

It feels as if every member of the Alien Corps ends up both captured by, and then escaping from the Pharlaxians, the religious reactionaries leading the revolt, with Bikashi help. I’d have a word about their security protocols, if I were their leader. The religious elements are not overpowering, and there is a lack of resolution which is a bit unsatisfying: we never reach a conclusion as to Kar-sèr-Sephiryth’s divine status. Still it’s kinda brave even to suggest the concept that the second coming of Jesus Christ could be as an alien. The ending feels like Hickory and allies are heading off on another mission:  however, naming the series after the planet suggests they’re not going anywhere. Nor are Hickory’s Daddy issues. It may be a somewhat optimistic take on first contact, yet was thoughtful enough to make for a satisfactory read.

Author: P.J. McDermott
Publisher: ‎ Patrick McDermott Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in the Prosperine series.

Boudica: Queen of War

  By

★★★
“Fury woad.”

The latest take on one of Britain’s greatest historical heroines has come in for a fair bit of critical flak. But I really did not think it was all that bad. Sure, it plays fast and loose with historical accuracy (Christianity wasn’t a thing in Britain at the time). However, we’re dealing with someone about whom there is very little reliable record. Why not throw in chunks of the Arthurian mythos, if it might make for a more interesting end product? The usual basics are there. Queen of the Iceni Boudica (Kurylenko) loses her husband (Standen), and subsequently falls foul of the occupying Roman Empire. She raises an army, leads a rebellion, kicks Roman butt for a while, but eventually goes down, fighting. That’s the Cliff Notes version. 

The variations are in the details, and the  versions previously reviewed each take a different approach. For example, Warrior Queen (2003) leaned into the drama. This goes the other way, coming to life most in the battle sequences. It should be no surprise: Johnson is a former stuntman, who has turned to directing action films. He’s best known for excellent Scott Adkins vehicle Avengement, but here we previously reviewed his war film, Hell Hath No Fury. There isn’t the budget here for the necessary scale – the Iceni army reportedly numbered well into six figures, but when Boudica is giving her inspirational speech, it’s more like a soccer mom offering half-time motivation. Yet it makes up for this in gory intensity: this is certainly the most blood-drenched version of the story ever told.

It does take its time getting there. Initially, Boudica is not a warrior queen at all. It’s only after she gets a sword handed down from previous generations that she begins to head in that direction. She encounters a female fighter (Martin), who regards Boudica as the fulfillment of prophecy. It’s when the Roman’s take over, flogging and branding her, then doing worse to her daughters (an angle which is handled weirdly,  yet not ineffectively), that Kurylenko becomes the bad-ass Brit bitch we expected from the likes of Sentinelle. She paints up her face and takes the battle to the enemy, in a way which is up-close and personal.

At least for the first few battles, the Romans won’t know what hit them, and this absolutely doesn’t soft-pedal the brutality of hand-to-hand combat. It’s a shame there’s some stuff around the periphery that doesn’t work so well, such as a mercenary called Wulfgar (Franzén), who speaks modern-sounding French – was that even a thing in 61 AD? – and appears to have the hots for Boudica. There’s also the way her sword seems almost magical, which does perhaps take away from her intrinsically heroic nature, and doesn’t add much. I think if you took the best elements of both this and Warrior Queen, you might have something close to definitive. This can provide Kurylenko and a solid eye on the action. That’s still good enough for me. 

Dir: Jesse V. Johnson
Star: Olga Kurylenko, Clive Standen, Peter Franzén, Lucy Martin