Category: Review

The Messenger: the story of Joan of Arc

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★★★
“Joan’s eminent originality was her common sense”

messengerThis was the the very first sentence of Michelet’s classic biography, published in 1853, but you’d be hard pressed to recognise the same person in Besson’s portrayal. A more accurate summary of this Joan would be the line spoken to her as she languished in prison: “You didn’t see what was, Jeanne – you saw what you wanted to see…” Besson comes down firmly in the school of thought which has Joan as a mentally deranged religious loony. While this is a viable theory, it doesn’t work as played by Jovovich – all twitchy, rolling her eyes and staring off into the distance – since it becomes impossible to see why anyone would have followed her. Unless we assume the 14th century French population were entirely gullible, she should have spent her life quietly as some village’s idiot. This cripples the film irreperably, since we feel little or no sympathy for a heroine depicted as a frothing zealot.

Historically too, it gets off to a bad start – an entirely fabricated incident in which Joan sees her sister first killed, then raped by an English soldier. This provides a spurious ground for Joan to hate the invaders, when contemporary accounts tell of her concern being almost equal for both sides. Also made-up is her finding a sword in a field, and there is a sudden leap, with Joan arriving to an audience with the King – in truth, she talked her way up the hierarchy. A rather lurid scene (missing from the US theatrical release) where Joan’s virginity is verified, marks the end of a troubling first act. Once her campaign begins, though, the film improves drastically, with excellent (if somewhat implausible – did they really use something resembling helicopter rotors as weapons?) battle scenes, that are at once enthralling and grim. It’s understandable when they unhinge Joan’s sanity even more; another of the themes seems to be that her mission was really non-Christian, in that it led to the deaths of so many people. Something about “thou shalt not kill”, though given the bloody history of Christianity, singling her out seems somewhat unfair. Tcheky Karyo delivers a fine performance as the leader of Joan’s army, facing the difficult task of balancing her expectations, with prosaic things like, oh, not getting killed.

Joan’s capture, trial and execution are fairly close to the truth, though in reality, the King was less involved and more concerned for Joan than shown. It certainly is reasonable to suggest that a naive innocent such as Joan would have been used for political ends. Once she’d outlasted her usefulness – and with the king on the throne, she quickly became more a hindrance than a help – she would have needed to be disposed of. Must confess, I quite like the concept of Joan as a medieval version of Lee Harvey Oswald. Dustin Hoffman’s appearance as Joan’s conscience is another neat touch, and his sarcasm works well. Indeed, the film is one good performance from being excellent. The bad news is, it’s Jovovich who is the culprit (a messenger who deserves to be shot?), though Besson and co-writer Andrew Birkin perhaps warrant most of the criticism for twisting facts and characters in order to fit a predetermined goal. Their Joan is so far from the historical record, they’d have been better off placing their character in an entirely fictitious setting.

Dir: Luc Besson
Star: Milla Jovovich, John Malkovich, Faye Dunaway, Tcheky Karyo

Satin Steel

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★★★½

This fast, furious, largely daft movie was Jade’s immediate follow up to the two Black Cat films. If they were based on Nikita, the inspiration here is clearly Lethal Weapon, with Leung as a headstrong cop (also named Jade Leung!) who believes in shooting first and asking questions…oh, somewhere between eventually and never. With her sensible partner (Lee), she chases evil weapons broker Mr. Fowler and his gang from Singapore to Indonesia. It eventually ends above a volcano, with Jade clinging desperately to a helicopter.

The elements here are hugely variable: Leung and Lee have great chemistry, but Lee’s boyfriend Paul (Chan) may be the most irritating bastard in cinema history – his every appearance provoked a strong desire to throw things at the TV, and we cheered loudly when he was gunned down, particularly since it shut him up for a bit. In contrast Russell Wong is more sympathetic as Fowler’s naive lawyer, though since we know what happened to Jade’s first husband, this relationship might as well be wearing a sweatshirt marked ‘Doomed’. One also wonders why an international arms dealer would employ a troupe of native dancers as henchmen.

While the plot and characterisation leaves a little to be desired in originality and execution, the action is plentiful and energetic. Of particular note is the previously-mentioned helicopter sequence – at first, we suspected heavy stunt doubling, but later on, there are a couple of shots which give pause for thought, and Jade deserves greater credit. It’s just a shame it ends so abruptly. Jade’s battle against the dancers is also pretty cool, and Lee has a good fight at a train station, culminating with a leap in front of an oncoming engine that merited an immediate rewind and rewatch.

There is, however, something obviously cheap and apparently rushed about the whole endeavour, and it feels like one of the later entries in Cynthia Khan’s filmography – particularly, Angel on Fire, which also had two policewomen from different lands, travelling to a third (and presumably, cheaper to film in!) country to find the villains. One suspects Jade was under pressure to make another movie while her star was still rising, regardless of the end product’s quality.

Dir: Tony Leung Siu-Hung
Stars: Jade Leung, Anita Lee, Russell Wong, Kenneth Chan

Women Who Kick Butt box-set

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★★½

Ten movies in a box for $17.99 – how can you possibly go wrong? And yet…I have this nagging feeling that there’s a reason you’re paying $1.80 per flick. But, hey: if there are two good films in the set, I’ll have got my money’s worth. Any more, and I’ll be delirious happy. So, we’ll be temporarily abandoning our usual ratings for a more financial one as we attempt to discover, are these films worth $1.80? Looking at the titles on the back, I’m not overly optimistic. There’s only about three I’ve heard of, and they seem to be ordered like a baseball line-up, with the strongest at the top, right down to total obscurities. Not to be coerced by such a transparent ploy, we naturally started off with #10.

Death Run to Istanbul

Dir: Rachel Gordon.
Stars: Fallon, Bill Ballis, Dean Thomas

Now at the plate…batting 0-for-13…a 1993 film so obscure it doesn’t even have an Internet Movie Database entry. This may be because it is utterly dreadful; my 14-year old stepdaughter makes films with her friends on weekends, and they are far superior. Doesn’t help that the synopsis given is almost entirely fictional:

  • Fantasy: “When ‘The Committee’ kidnaps a former cop’s sister, they didn’t stop to think about the big brother factor! A former police lieutenant and marine, Gary calls on his old kickboxing buddy Jason to go deep into the underworld with him…”
  • Reality: A junkie (Thomas) loses a suitcase of drugs belonging to a crime boss, so gets snatched off the street by the villains. His sister (Fallon) goes in to rescue him.

Sheesh. Woefully inept in every way. Example #1: the heroine’s blonde sidekick escapes from captivity…yet is next seen being interrogated by the chief villain (Ballis)…before vanishing from the movie entirely. It’s as if someone put the reels together in the wrong order – except it’s shot on video. Example #2: right at the climax, the heroine’s martial arts teacher is shot dead. The movie cuts to her laying flowers on his grave, presumably after the police investigation, autopsy and funeral. Did every other character take those days off? Example #3: they forget to add sound effects to one fight.

I could go on, and fill the entire page with precise details of how appalling this is. The fights are largely tedious, the cast can’t act (or overact horribly) and have no charisma, and there are huge chunks where nothing is happening at all. As for Istanbul? It gets mentioned once; the film never leaves Venice Beach. The only slightly interesting character is a very scary evil henchwoman, who turns up briefly. She is the sole reason this possesses any value at all, and we’re only talking about $0.10.

T.N.T. Jackson

Dir: Cirio Santiago.
Stars: Jeannie Bell, Stan Shaw, Ken Metcalf, Pat Anderson

Feeling in need of escape, we sprinted to the front of the DVD-box for the top-billed movie. Getting the bad news in first: the sound and vision suck. The print looks like it’s 70 years old, and we had to fiddle to get any audio at all – and that came from the back speakers only. It’s also horribly dated, in every way, from the fashions through to the dialogue.

…and yet, curiously, it’s fun. Chris remembers seeing this in Times Square on a double bill with Superfly, and that would have been a real hoot. Bell has attitude in abundance as the titular heroine (best line, “Yeah, and I’m Snow White with a case of sunburn”) who goes to “Hong Kong” i.e. the Phillipines, to look for her missing brother, only to fall in with bad drug dealers. “Titular” is perhaps appropriate given the gratuitous topless-fu scene involving the former Playboy playmate, yet it’s less exploitative than you might expect. The ethnically diverse cast generally acquit themselves well, with a script co-written by cult actor Dick Miller, a regular for both Roger Corman and Joe Dante.

Action-wise, the doubling for Bell is a little too obvious, but she has a nice line in gory arm-snapping which we wanted to see more of. Pat Anderson also makes an impression as an undercover cop, and has a good battle with the heroine in a graveyard. The end result is schlock entertainment with hardly a dull moment in its 73 minutes, that leaves us not averse to getting a better copy (and as I write, Chris is surfing Ebay for Super Fly!). Several marks off for print quality, yet still a solid $4.00.

Flight to Danger

Dir: Sara Matthews and Gina Jourard.
Star: Sara Matthews, Gina Jourard, Barbara Minardi, Lynn Eglash Reynaud

Knew we were in trouble when I saw ‘Vista Street Entertainment’; yes, it’s from the same company that brought us Death Ride to Istanbul. It’s supposed to be about an “all-women’s martial arts team” in Paris, but when sod-all had happened after twenty minutes, I cut my losses and hit the ‘Eject’ button. If it seemed perhaps a little more technically competent than DRtI, it was even more astonishingly tedious. While I might have been slightly amused to see how the sub-poverty row Vista Street tried to fake Paris, life’s too short. I do this for fun, not my living. Value: $0.00.

Street Angels. ‘A Vista Str…’ Not tonight, thank you. We’re running to the front of the box, in the hope of finding something not shot on video.

The Firing Line

firinglineDir: John Gale.
Stars Reb Brown, Shannon Tweed, Kahlena Marie

Supposedly set in South America, Brown is a ‘military adviser’ (read, CIA spook) who swaps sides and signs up with the opposition after the rebel leader he brought in for trial is executed. Tweed plays the exercise equipment saleswoman (!) who gets involved, and gradually becomes a gun-toting revolutionary (!!) – though let’s get one thing straight, the DVD cover on the right below bears no relationship to her character, or indeed the movie at all. Indeed, Tweed is surprisingly chaste, with one skinny-dip and a love scene with Brown, both PG-rated.

There are some interesting ideas here, such as the good guys being Communists (or at least, described as such by the ruling party); in a Hollywood movie, this counts as amazingly radical. It’s also laudable that the rebel’s leader is a woman (played effectively by Kahlena Marie). However, the action sequences are over-long and, frankly, extremely boring, with perhaps only the last one having any significance in the larger scheme of things.

Tweed’s transition to a gung-ho fighter is glossed over with a bit of target practice; it’d have been far more interesting if she’d really been an undercover CIA operative. Or a government agent, sent to discover the rebel’s hideout. Or…well, make up your own improvements here, as there’s plenty of room. It’s not worthless, certainly – after Vista Street Entertainment, I’ve revising my definition of the term – but not particularly worthful, either. Call it $1.50.

Street Angels

Dir: George Phillip Saunders.
Stars: George Phillip Saunders, Dee Hengotler, Gwen Somers, Honey Lauren

Well, get out the crayolas and colour me surprised. Vista Street Entertainment in competent film shock. We’re not talking Oscars, but it isn’t fifteen minutes of plot extended to 90 minutes through gratuitous dancing, the actors have a clue, it’s directed and shot with some ability, and the fight scenes are decently staged. This is a lot more than I expected, and after the previous two atrocities, is a breath of only slightly stale air. A cop loses his partner to The Phantom, and frees three women from jail to act as an extra-judicial counterforce against this mysterious villain and his henchmen. It’s pretty cliched – the women, one dark-haired, one blonde and a redhead, used to be [yawn!] a cop, a marine and a gang girl – but is done with enough energy to pass muster. The hero comes across somewhere between Kurt Russell and a foul-mouthed version of Philip Marlowe, though the heroines do less butt-kicking than I hoped.

It’s all serviceable enough, though it still isn’t wise to try lines like, “Street Angels? It sounds like a really bad, no-budget B-movie!”, when it’s painfully obvious that you are a moderately bad, no-budget B-movie. Witness the scene right at the start, where a villain tries to break a bottle for use as a weapon: it takes four attempts, and he’s left with something half an inch long and entirely unthreatening. There’s also an odd homoerotic subtext – the villain is blatantly bi, while at the end the hero goes off with his arm around, not the girls, but a young boy rescued from the Phantom. Kinda dubious, but this is still adequate, and I’d be happy to have paid $2.50 for this.

Get Christie Love

Dir: Willam A. Graham.
Star: Teresa Graves, Harry Guardino, Louise Sorel, Paul Stevens

Based on a novel by Dorothy Uhnak, Graves (like Goldie Hawn, an alumni of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In), is the titular black policewoman, trying to track down the ledger of a drug importer. She knows his girlfriend is the key, and has to find a lever to use on her, in order to find the information she wants.

Due to the TV-pilot origins, this movie is rather more restrained in its sex and violence than ‘proper’ blaxploitation films, but what it lacks in grit and realistic urban feel is largely made up for in plot and character. Love comes across as a detective more than a fighter, though isn’t averse to necessary roughness. There’s also an inter-racial romantic angle hinted at, between the heroine and her boss, which was probably hugely daring for the time, but more is made of Love being a female cop than a black one, though she still possesses a certain style and a hot VW convertible. In contrast, check out the Amish-giant looking dude, in possession of what is perhaps the worst jacket in cinema history.

The TV show, also starring Graves, ran for one season on ABC in 1974-5; in April 1997, there were reports that Whitney Houston had signed up to do a remake for Danny DeVito’s Jersey Films but – perhaps fortunately – nothing ever came of it (Quentin Tarantino would have wanted to direct, having been a fan as a kid). The movie, while certainly dated, is a little more thoughtful than most entries in the genre, and if the print here has seen better decades (several of them!), you can peer through the tinting to find a decent effort, worth $3.00 of anyone’s money.

getchristielove

High Kicks

Dir: Ruta K. Aras.
Star: Tara Lee-Anne Roth, Dennis Swarthout, Sandy Kay, Kevin Knotts

Think this might have strayed in from the Women Who Work Their Butts collection by accident, as this has more gratuitous aerobics than any film since that Travolta/Curtis “classic”, Perfect – the presence of an ‘aerobics choreographer’ in the end credits is relevant here. The heroine (Roth) owns an aerobics studio, and when she gets raped by the local street gang, turns to a passing sailor (Swarthout) and his mates for help.

Thereby hangs the problem with this film, in that it’s the sailor who kicks most butt. Only in the last five minutes does the heroine stop standing at the side; up until then, she’s been largely in need of rescuing. There are a couple of potentially interesting angles; her revenge becomes almost gleeful, but neither this, nor the rivalry between her and one of her customers for the sailor’s affections, go anywhere. The film could have shed interesting light on the psychology of retaliation and the cycle of violence. Alternatively, she could have used her new martial-arts skills to kick her rival’s ass from here to Hollywood. Instead, it does nothing but roll out the cliches.

Right from the interminable opening credits – three minutes of sod-all happening – there is hardly a scene which isn’t twice as long as necessary. Some of the fights aren’t bad, even if one of the good guys bears a disturbing resemblance to Jean-Claude Van Damme. But much like the rest of the film, they offer nothing new or interesting. You could probably burn up a few calories doing aerobics along with the cast; for the more sloth-like among us, it has very little to interest. You’d probably be hoping for change from $1.00.

Emanuelle, Queen of the Desert

Dir: Bruno Fontana.
Star: Laura Gemser, Angelo Infanti, Gabrielle Tinti, Giovanni Brusadori

You might be asking, what’s an Emmanuelle film doing, in a Women Who Kick Butt box-set? Good question, partly answered by the spelling: check it out, there’s only one M in this Emanuelle, to avoid copyright suits. This one is played by Laura Gemser, who appeared in a slew of 70’s/80’s Italian soft- and hard-porn films, chiefly for Joe D’Amato.

This one, also known as La Belva dalle calda pelle and Dirty Seven, is based on a novel by director Fontana. It starts promisingly enough, with Gemser as a mysterious avenging angel who sets about destroying a troop of soldiers, using her womanly wiles to turn them against each other in revenge for… Well, this is where the film falls down, in an amazingly lengthy flashback sequence which documents every detail of the events leading up to… something that most viewers will already have worked out, making the whole process tiresomely redundant.

This is a shame, as Gemser makes a great predatory femme fatale (see also another porn star, Brigitte Lahaie, in Jean Rollin’s Fascination) and the destruction of the troop from the inside is a potentially great idea. The wild landscape, in which urban man is clearly out of his depth, is also reminiscent of Walkabout. In the end, however, it’s largely a tedious flick about a bunch of soldiers – most of them possess few redeeming features, and in the main, neither really does the film. Call it $2.00, most of it for Gemser.

Sister Streetfighter

Dir: K.Yamaguchi.
Star: Sue Shiomi, Sonny Chiba, May Hayakawa, Sanae Obori

sisterstreetfighterfz2Jackpot! Finally – nine movies in – we hit one which stands a good chance of being watched again. Having recently endured the awfulness which is Dragon Princess, I wasn’t expecting much, but was delightfully impressed by the imagination on view here – not to mention the non-stop violence. The plot is similar to TNT Jackson, with Shiomi seeking her brother who has vanished into the Japanese underworld, adding a large dose of Enter the Dragon for good measure. The film is totally berserk, to the point where I suspect half an hour has been randomly edited out. At one point, the heroine is thrown hundreds of feet down from a bridge; when she returns, no explanation of her miraculous survival is forthcoming.

At another point, we get a catalogue of the bad guy’s collection of killers (some people collect stamps – others, psychotic assassins with interesting weaponry); one teasingly described as “Eva Parrish – Karate champion of Australia”, vanishes from the movie, never to be seen again. This is a pity, because we were eagerly anticipating a full-on east-meets-west catfight. What’s left is still fabulous – not least because it’s a good print, and even letterboxed. The villain, who keeps his dark glasses on during sex, and decries cop shows as being “too violent”, before smacking his bitch up. The henchmen, wearing what appear to be black wicker waste-paper baskets on their head. The guy who fires a blow-dart into a caged bird – here at GWG, we welcome any excuse for a recreation of Monty Python’s Parrot Sketch. Then there’s Shiomi herself, who is great, killing flies to make her point, and equally good wielding sai, nunchakus or simply her fists. It’s grand entertainment for a Friday night, and even $9.99 would be well worth it.

Leaving Scars

Dir: Brad Jacques.
Stars: Lisa Boyle, Robin Downs, Jonathan Slater

Sister Streetfighter had taken the tension away, as if your team had scored a couple of late goals to break open a close game. And a good thing too, since Scars, despite the presence of star Lisa Boyle large on the cover of the box set, fits least in with the theme, and really shouldn’t be here at all. It’s a sleazy (and perhaps accurate) portrayal of Hollywood life, with slimebags, scumballs, scuzz-buckets and much drug-taking, centred around a floppy disk which the heroine, an aspiring actress, has given to her by a soon-to-be-murdered friend. The usual seeking activities ensue.

Apart from convincing me I do not want my step-daughter to pursue an acting career, there’s very little to recommend this. Certainly, Boyle does almost none of the promised butt-kicking, save one spray from an automatic weapon – very careless of those gun-runners to leave the merchandise around like that, fully loaded ‘n’ all… There’s a fair bit of nudity, though I should warn you the silicone is obvious, and the production values are obviously low-rent.

What gives this any value at all is the commentary track – yep, a commentary track – in which the producers talk about making the film, and as an insight into low-budget cinema, it’s rather more interesting than the product itself. A total surprise to find this, since there is no mention of it anywhere on the box, it roughly triples the value if we were talking about the movie alone, to $1.50.

Adding up all the above figures, we get a total of $25.59 for the box set as a whole, which should label it as a hit. However, Sister Streetfigher alone is responsible for almost 40%; adding in TNT Jackson and Get Christie Love and you’ve got virtually two-thirds of the value, because there is just way too much filler in this box. Better to buy the four film Savage Sisters set, which includes the three above and (the admittedly worthless) High Kicks, but can be found for $8.98 or less and will take up half the space on your shelves.

Witchblade: season two

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★★★½
“Girls with gauntlets.”

Much as in the first season, the second series of Witchblade brushed against greatness. Unlike the first, where you can point at the final episode as the key weakness, this time round it is a chronic rather than acute malaise that prevents it from getting the seal of approval. When it was great, it was fabulous – it just seemed that for every full, satisfying episode, there was a lame clunker to compensate. Particularly at the start of the season, there seemed to be precious little imagination on view.

Before we get to that, however, there was the little matter of heading forwards once again, Sara having effectively wished the entire first season into a plot-hole. To the writers’ credit, everything went forward in a completely different direction, from the moment Sara and her partner opted not to go into the theatre where, in the first series, everything had begun. Things diverged so rapidly from here that by the end of the double-length first episode, Kenneth Irons was dead, though as previously seen, this is only a minor inconvenience in the Witchblade universe. As Gabriel says in the finale, “Death is a revolving door.” I profess myself quite satisfied with how this was handled – it was the next few episodes which were distinctly ho-hum, with little in the way of memorable moments. Oh, look: there’s a new drug in town; Nottingham hires assassins to kill Sara; multiple personalities. And I had to cheat and look up synopses elsewhere to glean this much information, since they were notable largely for the lack of impression they made on me. I do recall being immensely irritated by the strobe-lit fight scenes, however, the sort of thing you do when you’re trying to hide ineptness.

Things probably reached their nadir in Nailed, in which a stereotypical, drooling paedophile kidnapped Danny’s niece. The Witchblade, with an impressively convenient sense of dramatic timing, revealed his location just in time for them to rush to the rescue, in what was otherwise little more than a lame rip-off of Cape Fear. Fortunately, I missed this episode when it aired (being off getting married!), and only caught up with it during the marathon. Otherwise, I might well have given up on the show. Which would have been a terrible shame, as things started to perk up thereafter. I always enjoy episodes where external mythos enter the show, and Lagrimas mixed the Wandering Jew fable in beautifully, with its cursed immortal, seeking death at the hands of the Witchblade. Hierophant was a little too Keyser Sose-ish for my tastes, but Veritas probably ranks as my favourite episode to date. Oddly, the legend it utilised, while much more recent, didn’t seem out of place in the slightest. We were largely one step ahead of the story, but only in an “Wouldn’t it be cool if…?” way, and I suspect the Powers That Be will rear their ugly heads again in season three.

The finale, Ubique, also has to rate highly, for sheer perversity at the very least – Nottingham reaches new levels of creepiness in his final scenes with Lucrezia. Throw in a kicking soundtrack (Lords of Acid!), some spectacular deaths, and we’ll forgive a central plot device teetering curiously close to the main premise of feardotcom, which opened in cinemas the very same week. Among the interesting themes on view are the way both Pezzini and Nottingham both struggle to come to terms with the loss of their fathers, albeit temporarily in the latter’s case. This may be linked to one of the unresolved issues carried forward; who is the guy with wavy grey hair who always seems to be lurking round Sara? Indeed, the whole Nottingham/Pezzini relationship had perhaps more depth than any other in the show; veering between love, hate and obsession, with never a dull moment.

Season 3 looked like it might have some stiff competition for Sara’s favours, particularly with Concobar (rather less irritating this time round) lurking in a coma. Add in Gabriel’s little kiss in the finale, and it seemed like time for all applicants to take a number and form an orderly queue. On the other hand, couldn’t see why they keep both Jake and Danny in the show, as their roles overlapped far too much. A permanent, irrevocable death would have made people sit up and take notice – my vote in this department goes to Jake… Despite the second season, overall, rating the same as the first, I reached the end of this one with more optimism in Witchblade‘s future. However, TNT didn’t share this confidence, in part perhaps because of Yancy’s inability to keep out of bars, and the series wasn’t renewed. This may have been wise – on January 3rd, 2003, Butler was arrested after allegedly punching her father, punching and attempting to bite her uncle, and head-butting a police officer. For the moment, Sara Pezzini is in limbo, but really, a better fate is deserved for one of the more innovative series to hit the airwaves in the past couple of years.

Star: Yancy Butler, David Chokachi, Eric Etebari,  Will Yun Lee

Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life

  By

★★
“Tomb for two, please.”

tomb2aThe first problem with the film is its title, a clunky mess apparently lacking in any punctuation – I’ve taken my best guess at what it should be above, even if it doesn’t line up with the first movie. But hey, new director, new grammar… Interestingly, Steven E. De Souza gets a screenplay credit this time round – he was one of the people who wrote a rejected script before the original film was made, and I wonder how much has been recycled here.

Certainly, a lot of what was said about the first film applies equally to the sequel; despite much affirmation that, this time, they’d really got hold of the character, the potential remains largely unfulfilled. Instead, we get something that (ironically, in the light of previous comments) nicks large chunks from Indiana Jones, adds a flavour of Mission: Impossible 2 and loses most of the more interesting elements from first time round.

The plot here concerns the search for what is, effectively, Pandora’s Box, which turns out to be a genuine artefact containing a deadly plague. Evil overlor…sorry, industrialist Jonathan Reiss (Hinds) wants possession, in order to sell it to the highest bidder as a biological weapon, and use the antidote to control who’ll be allowed to populate the post-plague world.

Though most of the film is concerned more with the struggle for possession of an amber orb, which points to the location of Pandora’s Box. This contest takes the participants from Greece to England to Kazakhstan to China to Hong Kong to Taipei and finally Kenya, though there’s so little local flavour it feels more like an episode of Alias, quickly establishing itself with stock exterior footage, before switching to an obvious sound-stage.

While Barrie and Taylor return as Lara’s sidekicks, they get given very little to do, which is disappointing, since their characters were entertaining elements first time up. Instead, Lara gets a sidekick, Terry Sheridan (Butler), a dubious character who first needs to be taken from a central Asian jail, and who was romantically entangled with Croft in the past. His fate is obvious.

Indeed, so is much of the movie, save the opening sequence, which instead opts to be so ludicrous as to defy belief. Lara lures in a shark with her own blood, then turns it into a jet-ski, before being picked up by her own personal F-sized submarine. Even for a video game, this is stretching it, and the sound you hear, is most of the movie’s credibility, heading shame-faced for the exit as it mumbles something about another appointment. What little is left, gets swamped in an orgy of product placement that rivals recent Bond movies.

tomb2bIt does give you plenty of time to wonder about little things like the wisdom of instigating a shoot-out in a germ warfare laboratory, how many years have passed since someone parachuting off a tall building ceased to be exciting, and the failure to make Sheridan a credible opponent for a fist-fight with Lara Croft. The finale does feature some interesting CGI creatures, though any explanation of their presence, lust for human flesh, or ability to melt into solid rock is notable by its absence. Jolie still is Lara Croft, to an almost uncanny degree, but even her Oscar-winning talents can do little when faced with a script of such limited means.

Director De Bont can direct action, as was shown in Speed – since then it’s been downhill. Twister, Speed 2, The Haunting, and now this, which has almost nothing worth mentioning as far as thrills go. It’s nice to see Hong Kong veteran Simon Yam as a smuggler, and his fight with Croft in a cave full of terracotta warriors is kinda cool, but the rest is distinctly mediocre, relying too much on doubles or CGI. The film desperately needs a tent-pole sequence to make you go “Wow!”, like the training robot or bungee-ballet from part one.

Not the worst big-budget, girls-with-guns pic of the summer (that’d be Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle), but it’s significantly below the first film, which was flawed enough in itself. The harsh truth is, there is nothing here that justifies keeping the franchise going, and that’s really sad.

Dir: Jan De Bont
Star: Angelina Jolie, Gerard Butler, Ciaran Hinds, Noah Taylor

Alias: season one

  By

★★★★
“Run Sydney Run”

“My name is Sydney Bristow. Seven years ago I was recruited by a secret branch of the CIA called SD-6. I was sworn to secrecy, but I couldn’t keep it from my fiancé. And when the head of SD-6 found out, he had him killed. That’s when I learned the truth: SD-6 is not part of the CIA. I’d been working for the very people I thought I was fighting against. So, I went to the only place that could help me take them down. Now I’m a double agent for the CIA, where my handler is a man named Michael Vaughn. Only one other person knows the truth about what I do: another double agent inside SD-6. Someone I hardly know…my father.”

“It’s everything you want, and more.” That was Chris’s opinion – I was kinda stuck for the right way to start, and as always, she delivered. As, indeed, Alias pretty much delivers, with a crunchy-yet-chewy first series that juggled drama, action and comedy to fine effect, twisting the plot frequently. One problem in TV drama is that you must allow viewers to tune in at any point and rapidly work out what was going on, and former Felicity scribe J.J. Abrams does so in less than 150 words – see above for the heroine’s monologue which opens each show.

The 22 episodes cover a struggle for control of medieval technology, Nostradamus-style prophecy, and other organizations (good and bad), plus Sidney’s missing mother, ongoing relationship with her father, and perpetual struggle to keep her friends from suffering the same fate as her late fiancee. Each episode contains elements of major and minor story arcs, propelling them alone, yet also stands up well on its own.

After a breathless start in which it seemed that Abrams used every conceivable plot device inside three episodes, he wisely moved into new territory. In particular the introduction of Rambaldi, perhaps the show’s most interesting character, who has actually been dead for several centuries. A Da Vinci-esque inventor, he left pieces of his inventions, and clues to their operation, hidden around the globe, and SD-6 are now on a scavenger hunt to find and utilise these, with Sydney their main operative. The CIA are doing exactly the same, also using her to stay one step ahead of SD-6.

alias1Garner is a good choice to play Sydney, a no-nonsense character who is never one to sit back when confronted with problems. She comes across as a well-rounded person with her own fears and doubts, rather than some kind of Bond-esque superspy. But perhaps the show’s greatest strength is the spectrum of supporting actors, who give the show depth when it could easily become a disjointed series of Lara Croft-like escapades. Marshall, SD-6’s “Q”, provides gadgets and geeky humour, while especial kudos are due to Ron Rifkin as SD-6 head Arvin Sloane. The man who orders the death of Sydney’s fiancee could easily have been a two-dimensional bad guy, but by the end of the show, you feel a great deal more sympathetic to his problems.

The influences are plentiful and obvious, most plainly Nikita and the (let’s be honest, rather lame) TV series which subsquently followed. There’s also a helping of Run Lola Run in there; creator Abrams listened to the soundtrack “almost incessantly” while writing the show, and has said, tongue in cheek, that he demands one scene of his heroine running in every episode. He certainly gets it, even if this does become a little predictable. The action quota generally is variable, but usually well-staged, with Garner doing more action than you might expect. And anyone that gets to beat up guest-star Quentin Tarantino wins my approval (at least it took him away from making more dire films!).

Though Sydney occasionally has romantic dalliances, she is somewhat unlucky in love – these men have an unfortunate tendency to die suddenly, and in one case, at Sydney’s own hands. This is probably a good thing, since I’m no fan of Unresolved Sexual Tension, finding it gets in the way of more important elements. Want romance? Go read Mills & Boon! This is an action series, after all, and I’d rather have Sydney kicking ass than going all gooey-eyed over, say, CIA handler Vaughn (Vartan). Their relationship is the subject of much fan fiction, but the ending of the first series would appear to have put the dampers on that department. [If you saw the finale, you’ll appreciate the particular viciousness of this comment]

Season one ended on a dramatic high with four characters potentially biting the big one, though no actual corpses were seen. Given this, and the twisty nature of the show in general, I think it’s safe to say a number of them will find a way to come back in the next series. I’m already looking forward to it.

Star: Jennifer Garner, Victor Garber, Michael Vartan, Ron Rifkin

Witchblade: season one

  By

★★★½
“Witch watch.”

The summer season of TV is usually characterised by repeats and re-runs, with little to stimulate interest beyond speculation over the fall schedule. This year, however, a dark horse emerged, from the surprising source of TNT, with their adaptation of Top Cow’s Witchblade series, with Yancy Butler in the title role. Over thirteen hours of episodes, including the two-hour pilot, it chronicled the adventures of Sara Pezzini, a New York detective who acquires a bracelet with remarkable powers, not the least of which is its ability to transform into an industrial-strength sword. This brings her into conflict with people like mysterious power-broker Kenneth Irons, and her own captain. She loses partners, lovers and friends on the way to what is unfortunately one of the worst twists in any TV series, since Bobby stepped out of the shower in Dallas. Serious spoiler alert for the following, folks, though this may be a good thing, since it’ll let you get your disappointment out of the way early.

Put simply, having killed of most of the cast (a refreshing change from more cowardly shows, which refuse to let any characters die), our heroine decides she doesn’t like what’s happened, and rewinds time back to just before her partner was killed, way back in the pilot episode. The rest of the season is deemed stricken from the record, and not even Pezzini has any recollection of it. It’s a little like Run Lola Run, except that film actually delivered a beautiful elegy on the role of chance in our affairs, something I suspect Witchblade will not come within a million miles of doing.

The main question is where can the show go from here? I can see how they can move the series in another direction now, with her (now-surviving) partner taking on a larger role, but while none of the characters may know anything, the audience’s memory is still intact. We know, for example, that Jake McCarty is an FBI agent, and are aware of the roles of most of the characters and their relationships. Watching the cast rediscover all this again – as they surely must – is going to be like watching a rerun.

However, maybe they can pull it off, since up until that final ten minutes, the writing on the show was actually very impressive. I confess to no familiarity with the comic-book at all – save for a vague awareness of covers featuring improbably-proportioned heroines – and so can’t comment on how accurately it follows them, but on its own merits, it works well. Several overlapping story arcs were contained in the series, but even if you missed some episodes, there was little trouble picking up on them – another mark of good writing. After the pilot, we kinda forgot about the show for two months (it was on TNT, after all!), and only caught up with the ones we’d missed when the channel aired an all-day marathon. There were plenty of potential angles for future exploration – we were particularly intrigued by the Vatican angle exposed by demonic priest Roger Daltrey, where the Catholic church had the Witchblade for centuries before giving it to Hitler.

witchbladeAbout the only angle that didn’t work for us was the love story between Pezzini and Concobar, her Irish bard. Pardon me if we yawn: Irish people are far too often either Guinness-swilling songsters who’ve kissed the Blarney Stone or terrorists, and the series gave us both. Beyond filling in some interesting sidelight on the history of the Witchblade – a concept worthy of a series in itself – there wasn’t much to this beyond Pezzini getting a shag, though even this didn’t seem to improve her humour. Yancy Butler, despite not having much of a pedigree (she’s perhaps best known for playing opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme in John Woo’s American debut, Hard Target), provides a strong central perfomance as Pezzini, striking the right balance between confusion, strength and sarcasm. Could perhaps do with slightly-less use of the sardonic eyebrow though – if she’s not careful, it’ll demand its own spin-off series. She seems to have come on in action terms as the series progressed; early on, the stunt-doubling was painfully obvious, but in later episodes, she appeared to be taking on more of the work herself, which can only be encouraging for the next series.

Most of the subsidiary characters come across as well-rounded, even the likes of Ian Nottingham, Irons’ enforcer, who gradually falls in love with Pezzini and reveals a softer side. This is in sharp contrast to his replacement – Nottingham v2.0, or Nottingham ME, as we call him – who was simply Very Scary. Her first partner, Will, although dead from the pilot on, continued to appear in a nicely-handled fashion, with mostly only Pezzini able to see him. Oddly though, he makes his presence known to McCarty when it proves suitably dramatic, without any explanation of why he can suddenly do so. Maybe it’s normally too straining on his ectoplasm or something. If it wasn’t for the climax, the show would certainly have deserved our Seal of Approval. As it is, any such award is placed on hold pending future episodes, and we see how they resolve the problems posed by the ending of this year’s batch.

Star: Yancy Butler, Anthony Cistaro, David Chokachi, Eric Etebari

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

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★★★
“Tomb with a view.”

tomb12.jpgAfter a tortuous journey (about which, see elsewhere), Lady Croft finally made it. The end result is wholly satisfactory in some ways, yet severely deficient in others. First up, the good news: Angelina Jolie is Lara, so much so that you can’t imagine anyone else in the part. [Other suggestions included Elizabeth Hurley, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Peta Wilson and even – ick! – Anna-Nicole Smith. Paragraph break for shuddering, here.]

Helped by Jolie’s reported willingness to do pretty much any stunt, this is crucial, and allows the film to hit the ground running – as well as jumping, climbing, and swinging around, with a gun in each hand. The first half an hour is everything you could hope for, beginning with a sequence where Lara fights a robotic monster, looking more than slightly like ED-209 from Robocop. It turns out to be just a training device, but there’s an edge to it, and even an almost sexual element as the beast drives between Lara’s open legs. PG-13? Hmmm… Her sidekicks are only slightly less satisfying; tech wiz Bryce (surely a nod to the nerd of the same name in Max Headroom), and stuffy butler Hilary are exactly the sort of people you’d expect Lara to have around.

Unfortunately, the further you go from Croft, the lamer things get, with her chief opponent for much of the movie being mid-level henchmen Manfred Powell (Glen), rather than the Illuminati who are apparently running things. To draw a parallel, it’s as if Austin Powers was taking on Mini Me, rather than Dr. Evil, and Powell falls well short of being an adequate villain. Describing the overall plot as weak would be charitable. It’s the quest for various pieces which, when put together, will create a device allowing the holder to control time, rule the world, and presumably, get pizza delivered before they actually order it. There’s also a deadline, due to an imminent planetary alignment which only happens once every 5,000 years.

 This is more an excuse than anything coherent, almost as if the many writers operated on alternate pages, without being able to communicate with each other. It also suffers from an overdose of meaningless exotic locations, leaping from Venice to SE Asia to Siberia, without any real purpose or sense of location ever being present. The theme, according to director West, is time, but you need this pointed out to you, as it never goes beyond the painfully obvious, for example, time lost between Lara and her father. Ah, yes: Lara’s father. The stunt casting of Jolie’s real father, Jon Voight, deserves points for gall, but doesn’t come off as it should. You’re too busy trying to work out whether anyone in the film is actually using their real accent, what that hairy thing on Voight’s lip is, and whether you have enough time to hit the bathroom before the next action sequence.

tomb1.jpgOnly in motion do you sense what might have been. It’s highlighted by the ‘bungee ballet’, when Croft’s mansion is attacked by minions seeking an artefact in Lara’s hands. She starts, swinging from the ceiling on elastic ropes – contrived, yes, but such fun to watch that we easily forgive it – before moving to the garage and back to the main hall. Croft uses everything to hand, and it’s the closest the movie comes to the game’s inventiveness. Jolie even did the bungee-work herself, allowing West (and action director Simon Crane, who deserves his own movie some day) largely to avoid obvious stunt-doubles. [Red Dwarf fans will also appreciate Rimmer stalking around with a shotgun!]

The previously mentioned opening, and the sequence involving a massive rotating orrery replicating the solar system, also work very nicely. But if the final battle with Powell feels like a tacked-on late addition, that’ll be because it was a tacked-on late addition, according to West’s commentary on the DVD. One wonders if much else was changed on the fly, as this would go some way towards explaining the inadequacies in the film’s storyline and villains. Overall, it still ranks well-above average as a video-game adaptation – albeit largely because there have been so many inept ones. Standing alone, it succeeds to a smaller extent, with some truly great sequences, and an excellent lead performance. But there’s way too much padding in a very weak script, and it’s this which prevents it achieving Indiana Jones-like greatness.

Dir: Simon West
Stars: Angelina Jolie, Ian Glen, Noah Taylor, Daniel Craig

"Wholly satisfactory in some ways, yet severely deficient in others."

Black Cat 2: The Assassination of President Yeltsin

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★★★

blackcat2While neither Nikita nor The Assassin ever resulted in a sequel, the success of Black Cat lead, immediately to a follow-up. This is both good, in that it forced D&B Films into coming up with some new concepts, and bad, because what they came up with is a barely coherent mess. They take Leung – who had won the ‘Best Newcomer’ award – and give her a role where she gets to speak twice. The real star is Robin Shou, well before his Mortal Kombat days, and with a much better haircut too.

He plays a CIA operative – the laserdisk subs say this stands for Central Intelligent Agency, clearly dating this before 9/11 – who is investigating a group out to assassinate President Yeltsin. Their chosen hitman has been beefed up with some kind of ill-explained technological wizardry, but luckily, one person can detect the radiation he gives off: Black Cat, who now has a chip in her head (to match the one on her shoulder, hohoho). This leads to an amusing sequence where Black Cat heads off on her own, charges into a mall, and shoots an old lady because – wouldn’t you know it? – the senior citizen just happens to be giving off the same kind of radiation, courtesy of her medical treatment. Well, I found it amusing, anyway; there’s something about a head-shot which spatters the face of a nearby clown with copious amounts of blood. Er, just me, then? :-)

 Okay, the movie may never be dull, and is certainly not short on action. Yet it doesn’t make any sense. Why would the CIA send operatives into Russia to save their president? And what are they doing operating in America? Isn’t that illegal? Oh, I forgot – it’s the CIA we’re talking about here. Leung’s robotic performance – even though entirely appropriate, since she now comes with an remote-control off switch – also feels like a terrible waste of her talents. There’s a lot of wire-work in the action sequences, but it’s not badly done; the highlight is probably a fight in a steel-works where both Robin and Jade have to take on large numbers of adversaries. The final battle, when Black Cat fights the assassin around the wreckage of a crashed plane, is cool too, with the two antagonists bouncing off the debris.

However, the overall impact is bitty and sporadic. While there are some nice ideas, they are poorly thought-out and developed, and the script doesn’t meld them into any kind of satisfactory structure. The action sequences feel equally bolted-on, though I did like the use of a President Yeltsin lookalike (at least, one presumes it was a lookalike, though I recall the real ex-President Gorbachev did appear in a Wim Wenders film). After the critical acclaim that greeted her debut, Jade Leung could have turned her skills in any direction; unfortunately, this disappointing follow-up is largely symptomatic of the poor choices that seem to have dogged her subsequent career.

Dir: Stephen Shin
Stars: Robin Shou, Jade Leung, Zoltan Buday, Patrick Stark

Honey West

  By

★★★★
“A taste of Honey.”

Honey West’s significance in television history can’t be exaggerated. She was the first ever woman detective to be the central character in an American network series, and was arguably the medium’s first action-heroine. Even though it ran for just one season, it helped open the doors for those who followed, such as The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., Get Christie Love and Police Woman. The show was based on a series of books by husband-and-wife team Gloria and Forrest Fickling, writing as “G.G.Fickling”. Beginning in 1957 with This Girl For Hire, eleven novels were produced over the next half-decade, and noted producer Aaron Spelling bought the rights and turned it into a TV series, originally spinning off from Burke’s Law [Gloria Fickling states they were largely screwed over by Spelling, getting little beyond a credit].

Naturally, this being the mid-sixties, the racier elements of the pulp novels had to be toned down, but the presence of Forbidden Planet star Anne Francis added its own share of potential, especially to boys of the appropriate age, which according to Francis, included Oliver Stone. But she was just as fascinating to young girls. It’s hard to appreciate in a world of Rizzoli and Isles, Prime Suspect, etc, that this presented a character which had never been seen on television. Fans included Chris, who even used to have the Honey West doll – given it now is offered on Ebay for up to $250, she wishes she had kept it, in the original box and with all its accessories.

How does the show stand up, almost fifty years later? Firstly, you have to appreciate that…well, it’s fifty years later. Most obviously, this shows in that the action is basically woeful, by modern standards. Honey’s karate skills extend little beyond flipping people on to their back, with the odd chop – and, it appears, in the sixties, everyone had a spot on their neck which would trigger immediate unconsciousness when touched. The doubling, is often painfully obviously a man in a blonde wig, though frequent stand-in (and early MMA practitioner) Gene LeBell does have decent legs. Credit in this area for the later episodes to Sharon Lucas, another stunt-double, and we should be fair and point out that no show from the time could stand against modern era in terms of action.


The unofficial lyrics
“Honey West, she’s a P.I. – for real…
Karate and judo, amazing contraptions,
gadgets, a sports car, and the latest fashions.
Plus… She… Has… Got… An… Oh… Ce… Lot!
But she’s smart, and she’s sexy,
Though her partner’s a little bit bitchy.
So that’s why we love Honey West!
(For real).

In contrast, the show was ahead of its time in terms of gadgetry, with Honey using on an everyday basis tools that have become part of everyday life now, e.g. mobile phones, GPS, etc. Ok, the phone in question was still the size of a normal phone and attached to the car (a really neat Cobra sports model), but this was 1965. One could even argue that the sunglasses used as a two-way communication device, was the first appearance of a Bluetooth headset. Though the illusion of secrecy for these is somewhat damaged, shall we say, by the fact that, in order to communicate, you have to take the glasses off, raise the antenna, and speak directly in to the corner of the frame…

Fortunately, what works really well, and still seems as fresh and entertaining as the day the show first aired, are the characters. Honey is a delightfully feisty character, who wouldn’t seem out of place at all in the 21st century, refusing to be the “little woman” that was expected of her sex at the time. The show feels like it was an ancestor of Burn Notice, with the trio of West, partner Sam Bolt and Aunt Meg more than a little reminscent of Michael Weston, Fiona and his mother. Here, Sam has a bit of a temper, and is always trying to control Honey – despite being very clearly the junior partner [it appears the private detective agency was started by her father] But she blithely ignores him, and does exactly what she thinks best.

There is hardly ever any fat on the storylines, a necessity when you have only 25 minutes or so for the entire episode. The results are plots that are crisp, to the point and miniature models of well-done storytelling. As with the characters, they could largely be transplanted forward 45 years and used, almost without significant adjustment. Admittedly, this seemed to change towards the end of the series, with the last five or six episodes apparently written by eleven-year olds. These include such elements as Mexican gypsies with a pet gorilla in the basement, a killer robot and a bizarre, extended dream sequence where Honey imagines herself to be a movie star in a range of films. It’s a dubious contrast with the well-grounded approach to Honey’s character.

We also appreciated the parade of supporting actors, which include a significant number of familiar names, especially if you watch other shows from the era. Other names should be recognized regardless, including Kevin McCarthy, Michael J. Pollard, Richard Kiel, Joe Don Baker and Dick Clark. The music, by Joseph Mullendore, is an appropriate blast from the past, resulting in much snapping of fingers and shaking of shoulders from the GWG couch by myself and Chris. Indeed, Chris even came up with her own set of lyrics for the theme-tune, which you can find in the sidebar; we were singing lustily along with the opening credits, to the utter bemusement of our son. [The middle section is a bit tricky, and should probably only be attempted by trained professionals. We ended up going, “Raindrops on roses, and whiskers on kittens…” much of the time!]

 We have to mention Bruce, Honey’s pet ocelot. If you’re not sure what one of those is, think 30 pounds of wild feline. And, by most accounts, “wild” was the word. As Francis put it, “If a cat is happy, it bites and scratches; and if it is unhappy, it bites and scratches.” She was left bruised and in need of a tetanus shot by the end of some scenes, though Anne bore it with grace, as in the publicity pic (top left). It’s undeniably impressive to see a heroine deliver lines with impeccable aplomb, while a sizable carnivorous animal attempts to gnaw off her face. This, however, has not stopped Chris from wanting an ocelot for Christmas, I think our two geriatric dogs would object; something plush might be better for all concerned.

It’s the kind of show that, on a casual glance, is more laughable than anything – the first couple of episodes watched, we were mostly sniggering at the anachronisms and sixties stylings. But as the series wore on, that aspect ceased to be notable, and we found ourselves enjoying the relationships, snsppy repartee and characters present in the show, without any ‘ironic’ overtones. It wasn’t long before we found ourselves looking forward to watching an episode with our morning coffee, and were genuinely sorry to come to the end of the final installment.

The show initially did well enough in the ratings, making the top twenty programs, while Francis won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Emmy, losing out to Barbara Stanwyck in The Big Valley. However, neither that nor the merchandising returns could save the show. its viewing figures were clobbered toward the end of its run by Gomer Pyle, though the decision not to renew the show for a second season was largely the result of network stinginess. As Francis remembers it, “ABC said, We can buy The Avengers cheaper than we can make Honey West. And that’s exactly what happened.” It was an ironic replacement, West being effectively “killed off” by her Transaatlantic cousin, Emma Peel.

There has been subsequent talk of a movie version, with Reese Witherspoon attached in 2001 and again in 2007, but nothing came of either project. Most recently, 7th Voyage Productions apparently bought the rights, but that was more than two years ago now, with little or no progress since. There have been a series of comics, but in a world where ABC will hand out a lot of money to botch a Charlie’s Angels remake, it’s a shame no-one has made a serious effort to reboot Honey, which in many ways is a property intrinsically better suited to the modern era.

Star: Anne Francis, John Ericson, Irene Hervey