Category: Review

Domino

  By

★★½
“Domino Toppling”

“This is based on a true story…sort of” is how the pre-credit disclaimer goes. Which does, at least, show far more honesty by Tony Scott than the usual claims in such things – Blair Witch and Wolf Creek shuffle their feet nervously. Unfortunately, my response would have to be, “This is a watchable movie…sort of.” Scott brings his usual, hyper-kinetic style to the table, but I was prepared for that and so didn’t mind it. No, the major problem was the derailment of the film from the potentially fascinating and probably unique character of Domino, into yet another heist movie. So instead of any insight into personality, we get to watch a bunch of gangsters and low-lives, of whom Domino is merely one, double-cross each other. It’s an hour of watching the corpse of Barbaro being beaten, if you get my drift; even Scott has been here before, to better effect, in True Romance.

When it concentrates on our heroine, however, it’s eminently watchable, Knightley demanding attention in a way where her obvious lack of physical bulk becomes almost irrelevant. [I was surprised to see how the real Domino was similarly wispy, as the photo on the right shows.] Her finest moment is probably during sorority hazing at college, where her tormenter viciously criticizes her figure. Domino coolly stares back, pauses and asks, “Have you had a nose job?” Bemused, the girl says “No” – Domino sucker-punches her in the face. Twice. The incident sums up the feisty, take absolutely no shit attitude of the character brilliantly, and bounty-hunting becomes an obvious, logical choice of career.

She gets a job with Ed Moseby (Rourke) and Choco (Ramirez), who track down people who’ve skipped bail for bondsman Claremont Williams III (Delroy Lindo) – Ed and Claremont are based on real people, who worked as technical advisors on the movie, Choco is apparently a fabrication. Together, they become an efficient team, aided by Domino’s skills both with weapons and in street psychology. However, Williams has a plot to steal $10m from a Las Vegas casino, which goes badly wrong, not least because two of his chosen patsies to take the fall, are actually the sons of a mob boss. It all ends in a massive gun-battle at the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas, where everyone is after the cash and survival.

The film is filled with distracting stunt casting in the minor roles. This includes Christopher Walken, Mena Suvari, Lucy Liu, Jacqueline Bisset, two guys from Beverly Hills 90210 playing themselves, Macy Gray, Tom Waits and even Jerry Springer, though the episode of his show here is far duller and more earnest than the real thing. Walken is, inevitably, the only one to make much of an impression, playing a reality TV producer who wants to make Domino a star. He’s described as having the attention span of a ferret on crystal meth, probably an adequate metaphor for the film as a whole. It lacks the patience to stay with and develop any of the characters, so sniffs around them for two minutes, before scurrying off to find someone else instead.

I should probably comment on how close the film is to the real story of Domino Harvey: not very. She was the daughter of Laurence Harvey (star of the original The Manchurian Candidate) and his fashion-model wife. She was expelled from multiple schools as a child and is rumoured to have tried her hand at modelling, though the evidence for this is questionable; certainly, the catwalk catfight shown in the film appears to be an outright invention. She was, indeed, a bounty hunter, albeit not for long – maybe a couple of years, around 1994-1995. That’s about where the film and truth part company. In sad, actual fact, Harvey had been fighting with chemical abuse issues for years, and was found dead of a drug overdose in June 2005, while awaiting trial for distributing meth.

It doesn’t seem as if the life of a supermodel turned bounty hunter would be in much need of embellishment. But I guess when you sign Richard Kelly, the writer of Donnie Darko, for your script, you’re not looking for cinema verite. That said, this still seems like a wasted opportunity, relegating Domino, who should have been the focus of the film, into just another sidelight. Hell, even the impressive skill with nunchakus, demonstrated earlier on by Knightley, is largely abandoned. Scott’s earlier Man on Fire was much more successful, as it stuck with Denzel Washington’s character throughout, and a similar approach here would have paid dividends. In fact, the plot there, where a bodyguard hunts relentlessly for a kidnapped little girl, would have acquired an entirely new set of resonances with a woman playing the bodyguard. Memo to Scott: if you’re going to base a film on someone’s life, and still make stuff up for it, please use the opportunity to enhance, rather than distract from, the subject matter.

Dir: Tony Scott
Stars: Keira Knightley, Mickey Rourke, Edgar Ramirez, Lucy Liu

Mezzo Forte

  By

★★★
“Like father, like daughter. Only more so.”

The Peach Twisters baseball team suck. This may be because the owner kills his pitcher with a baseball bat in the car-park, after losing a game? And he’s the model of restraint and sanity compared to his daughter, Momomi. The Danger Service Agency, a trio of troubleshooters, are hired to kidnap the owner (obviously, legality is a minor concern), but things go wrong, and he dies in the process. How can they escape this tricky situation? The core of the DSA is Mikura, who is a combat specialist, and easily the best thing in the group, as the other two are largely forgettable. But when Mikura goes into action, the film accelerates from 0-60 in about two seconds, which a cheerful, splattery approach that’s endearing. And she’s an upbeat character, which is a notable contrast to Umetsu’s other genre entry, Kite [Sawa, that show’s heroine, makes a cameo here].

There was a time when watching a cut version of any film or show would have me frothing at the mouth, but from all the descriptions I’ve read, the two sex scenes edited out here added little to the plot. I certainly can’t say I was ever thinking, “What this show really needs, is cartoon characters, going at it like knives.” That would probably have derailed, or at least detoured, the fast, frothy, frantic feel of this ultraviolent anime. I was also unconvinced by Mikura’s psychic abilities, which show no evidence of being other than lazy writing, and the apparent connection between Momomi and Mikura also stretches credibility to the max. The look and feel of this is undeniably nice, but can’t quite cover up the weaknesses in the plot and some of the characters.

Dir: Yasuomi Umetsu
Stars (voice): Tomoko Kotani, Takumi Yamazaki, Taichirô Hirokawa, Akemi Okamura

Flight 005 Conspiracy

  By

★★★

Why let Kei and Yuri blow up one case, when you can save time by giving them two at once? That’s what happens at the start of this, as the WWWA computer assigns them two, apparently unrelated, assignments in the same galactic sector: one is to investigate a spaceship which blew up, and the other involves the disappearance of a scientist and his family. You will not be surprised to hear that these two cases are interconnected, though it does appear to come as a shock to the participants here. Once they reach their destination, it soon becomes clear that someone is out to stop Kei and Yuri – “someone serious,” to steal a line from Leon. Can they uncover the conspiracy before it uncovers them?

The action in this episode is significantly more restrained than Project Eden, which had a number of spectacular battle set-pieces. Indeed, at times this plays more like a detective story than anything else, and with relatively minor adjustments, could be relocated to the present-day – I tend to feel that is something of a cop-out for science-fiction. That aside, and despite a fair degree of predictability, there are some interesting twists to the story, with unexpected deaths – both fake and real – and a surprisingly poignant ending, that’s a tribute to the characters who didn’t make it to the end.

On the other hand, there are some gaping flaws in the logic, not least some DNA evidence which appears to have materialized out of thin air (actually, complete vacuum). Yet, overall, it’s a lot more restrained than Project Eden, and that is not really a good thing – it certainly isn’t what we expect from the Lovely Angels. There are plenty of opportunities for mayhem here, sadly ungrasped, and the ironic, tongue-in-cheek humor is also largely lacking, not least in the sombre ending, noted above. As the final animated outing for Kei and Yuri in a decade, it’s a downbeat way for the series to finish.

Dir: Toshifumi Takizawa
Star (voice): Kyôko Tongu, Saeko Shimazu

Dirty Pair OAVs

  By

★★★★

dpovaBack before such things were easy, conversion of videotapes from NTSC to PAL were done by recording the picture off your TV screen with a camcorder. Needless to say, this had its downside: any time the screen went dark, you got a reflection of the converter’s video-room, usually with him creeping around quietly. I mention this, because my first encounter with Kei and Yuri was back when an unsubtitled camera copy of The Ultimate Halloween Party strayed across my eyes. I was hooked. And twenty years later, it still plays beautifully, a mini-masterpiece in 24 minutes, that is funnier, contains more action and is just superior entertainment than 95% of shows currently on television.

The format is relatively simple, but an infinite universe allows almost infinite scope for development. Teenage trouble-consultants Kei and Yuri jet about the cosmos, investigating crimes from drug-dealing connected to an underground fight club (Revenge of the Muscle Lady), young delinquents who hijack a planet (The Prisoner’s Troublesome Revolt) or a civil-war on a planet which some people don’t apparently want to end (Red Eyes are the Signal of Hell). Obviously, given you’re barely talking twenty minutes of story by the time you extract opening and closing credits, so there’s nothing complex, and you can usually spot the villain well before Kei and Yuri do. The animation is also about the level of quality you’d expect from a mid-80’s straight-to-video anime: serviceable enough.

But what works are the straightforward entertainment aspects. This is action-SF with tinges of humour, and a couple of central characters who swan around the galaxy in what are basically space-bikinis, engaging in gun-battles with their enemies. It clearly isn’t meant to be taken seriously, doesn’t take itself seriously, and is perfectly content to be nothing more than a bit of mindless fun. But there are occasional moments of subtlety, such as Sleeping Beauty, where the Pair find a young girl who witnessed a murder but has been in cryogenic slumber for twenty years. The final scene there has surprising poignancy. That’s the exception rather than the rule, which is unabashed entertainment.

Dir: Katsuyoshi Yatabe
Star (voice): Kyôko Tongu, Saeko Shimazu

Project Eden

  By

★★★★

If you’re going to start with Kei and Yuri, this is as good a spot as any; it may not be the first entry in the series, but requires no prior knowledge at all. Even complete novices will be up to speed by the pre-credit sequence, which sees them – oops! – destroying an entire space-station after they decide to pursue the bad guy, rather than handling the explosive suitcase with which he has tried to distract them. They’re then sent to investigate some strange happenings on a mining planet, which is being plagued by attacks from monsters. They discover that the creatures are the results of failed experiments by Dr. Wattsman, who has plans to force nature’s hand, by making the next evolutionary step beyond mankind. Meanwhile, gentlemen thief Carson D. Carson is there, for his own reasons.

Pop-culture nods go to everything from James Bond through Star Wars to Aliens, though the female leads helps give familiar scenarios a fresh air. It’s clearly not to be taken in total seriousness, for example, Kei and Yuri pausing mid-mission to take baths (though like everything else in the show, it’s no more than PG-13 rated). The action is frequent, particularly towards the end, with some monumental battles between the girls and Wattsman’s monsters, accompanied, as is the entire film, by a smooth jazz-funk soundtrack [not normally my cup of tea, I’m still whistling Over the Top, days later]. There’s also some surprisingly touching stuff between Carson and Yuri, though he is always firmly in the back seat. Naturally, it’s Kei who has an eye for him, a constant factor through almost every version.

Technically, it’s as nice as you’d expect from a theatrical feature – it was originally part of a double-bill at cinemas with Bat and Terry, an animated film about baseball players which is all but forgotten now. Project Eden (a title used solely in the West: I’m looking at the Japanese LD, which just says Dirty Pair: The Movie) does look somewhat dated, and to be honest, the plot wouldn’t really stand up to serious inspection [Wattsman apparently runs his massive industial-scientific complex with the help of one guy, his butler, Bruno]. But as a semi-spoof, say along the lines of Our Man Flint, it works very nicely and is solidly entertaining, with slick production values and a good sense of fun. It is also a fine demonstration of one of anime’s strengths, the ability to give full rein to unfettered imagination, and create a world where anything can happen.

Dir: Kôichi Mashimo
Star (voice): Kyôko Tongu, Saeko Shimazu, Katsuji Mori, Chikao Ôtsuka

Affair on Nolandia

  By

★★★★

A number of the other reviews of this I read were somewhat sniffy and it’s often largely dismissed by DP fans, which surprised the heck out of me, as I though this was, in the main, highly-enjoyable entertainment. The pair are sent to locate a missing girl, who may be tied to a shuttle-crash where the pilot screamed the ground was shifting just before the accident. By the time they arrive, their client is dead, and the girl has holed up in a remote forest, filled with strange life-forms. They’re not the only ones after her either, and I think it’s giving little away to say that the results of the investigation include destruction on industrial levels.

In some ways, this is superior to Eden, though the animation is not one of them. The storyline wins out for imagination, despite a frantically expositional scene where the film derails from one plotline to another in about 30 seconds. This is, however, where the action also kicks into overdrive, with Kei having to take on an apparently-unstoppable opponent, while Yuri has to chase after the villain, by any means necessary – using at least five different modes of transport to do so [taxi, bicycle, foot, motorbike and powered roller-skates, if you’re counting!]. The intercutting between these two, separate yet simultaneous, sequences is splendid. Oh, and Yuri wields the Bloody Card,

It’s in sharp contrast to the middle of the film, where they’re searching for the girl in the forest, where they cram in dream sequences and hallucinations; the pair’s clairvoyant ability also makes a rare appearance in the animated version of the show. The creators also tossed in some gratuitous nudity, which will keep fans of Kei happy, going beyond the usual ‘cheesecake’ elements of the show, not least in one tenticular sequence which appears to have strayed in from an entirely different genre of anime entirely. However, this showcases some impressive imagination, with a trippy quality that blurs the line between reality and hallucination, where unicorns run through the trees, and you can water-ski through outer-space. And then, as we all have come to expect from our heroines, blowing it up. :-)

Dir: Masaharu Okuwaki
Star (voice): Kyôko Tongu, Saeko Shimazu, Toshiko Fujita, Masaru Ikeda

a.k.a. Affair of Nolandia

The Great Adventures of Dirty Pair, by Haruka Takachiho

  By

★★½

While in English, this came out in Japan, since it was part of a series of translations of popular works, intended as an aid for people learning the language. As a result, the book comes with translation notes at the back explaining, for example, what the phrase “We’re encased in a transparent sheathing of ultrathin reinforced polymer” means. Though I note the word “lesbian” is, apparently, deemed unworthy of further translation. It’s a swift read; discounting the notes, barely 125 pages long, and they’re not large pages either – a lunch-hour might suffice, if your boss gave you a few minutes grace.

The plot is somewhat Project Eden-like; they head to a planet to investigate what initially seems to be an act of industrial espionage, only to uncover a far more lethal threat. It’s a thin work, yet still manages to divert too much from the plot: I mean, do we really need to know their vital statistics? The result is eminently forgettable, despite a couple of cool moments, such as when the pair’s clairvoyant activities, the main reason for their 3WA recruitment, are demonstrated. “Something blazed in the back of my eye. It was a flash of pure white light. Then a dizzying feeling of walking on air, followed by a tingling ecstacy. Everything went white. An image appeared. It appeared like a picture painted on a immaculate canvas. It went out. In a twinkling, color returned to my consciousness.“

The ‘Bloody Card’ – perhaps more famous in the US comics than the anime – also makes an appearance, and it’s also interesting to note that the name of the villainous group behind operations is Lucifer, the same as was used in Dirty Pair Flash: Mission 1. But it’s just too disposable and light to be worthy of significant note. Though the civilian death toll as a result of their actions in this novel – as noted previously, largely due to some terribly bad luck; here, involving a crashing space-ship and a major city – comes in at a brisk 1,264,393. Well done!

Author: Haruka Takachiho, translated by David Lewis
Publisher: Kodansha English Library

Project A-ko

  By

★★★½

“Raises some interesting questions regarding the Japanese educational system.”

Project A-ko is one of those odd films that probably could only be done as anime, though as live-action goes, something like Kung Fu Hustle comes close. It centers on three schoolgirls, A-ko, B-ko and C-ko: the first two are rivals for the third’s attention…but despite the lesbian subtext, it’s really not that kind of story. [Though the film was originally intended to be part of the Cream Lemon series, which definitely are those kind of stories] No, it’s far more concerned with A-ko’s superpowers, to which she’s largely oblivious, the gadgetry cooked up by B-ko, thanks to her apparently limitless finances, and C-ko’s ancestry, which turns out to be not of this Earth – and that explains a lot, it has to be said.

This is as much parody as anything else, and what you get from it will, to some extend, depend on what you bring; for example, knowing that Mari, part of B-ko’s gang, is a pig-tailed dead-ringer for Ken from Fist of the North Star, with a squeaky voice. The rest is tongue-in-cheek SF, that revels in excess, particularly in the second-half. This is markedly less successful than the simple love-triangle, culminating in a marvellously destructive brawl between A-ko and B-ko, that starts off in school, then moves into the nearby city, where the pair end up facing an alien invasion. In the words of Monty Python, it’s just “too silly”, toppling over into ludicrous explosions for far too long, that proves rather less entertaining than the more understated irony from before.

The voice-acting (at least in the Japanese version; as usual, I couldn’t bring myself to listen to the dub) is solid; B-ko is one of the most tremendously irritating characters you can imagine, but that’s entirely deliberate. Of particular note is the soundtrack, largely by American session musicians, Richie Zito and Joey Carbone, which thereby avoids the usual J-Pop cliches. Okay, largely by replacing them with American cliches, but the result is still pretty cool, in a Giorgio Moroder kinda way; hey, it was made in 1986. The result is solid, if entirely brainless, fun – and how can you not like a film which borrows its title from one of Jackie Chan’s best?

Dir: Katsuhiko Nishijima
Stars (voice): Miki Itoh, Michie Tomizawa, Emi Shinohara, Tessho Genada

Haute Tension

  By

★★★
As Judge Dredd almost said: “I am the saw!”

This Thanksgiving viewing – that may say more about our house than anything – was a suggestion by our teen daughter, which is somewhere between a incentive and a put-off. Normally, she won’t view anything with subtitles for more than two minutes; but her tastes are closer to Anchorman or The Notebook than French slasher pics. Reviews I read in advance were similarly split: either enthusiastic hype (“arguably the best horror movie since The Blair Witch Project” wrote James Berardinelli), or disparaging critiques which condemn it for a cheap twist (“Treats me like a jackass that will swallow anything”, says a writer at eFilmCritic.com).

The truth, as usual, lurks between: a warmed-over rehash of genre cliches, it’s done with sufficient verve to be tolerable. And while the surprise holes the plot sub-waterline, it is, at least, an attempt to modify conventions largely unchanged since Leatherface revved up the saw back in 1975: outsiders + loony locals = carnage. In this case, Marie (de France) and Alex (Maïwenn) head for a study weekend to the farm where Marie’s parents live. However, a single-minded psychopath (Nahon) kills Ma & Pa in spectacularly gory fashion – in the unrated version, at least – then kidnaps Alex, leaving Marie her sole hope of survival. The madman always seems one step ahead, in a way reminiscent of The Hitcher, though the killer here is scuzzy sleazeball rather than charismatic prankster. The cat-and-mouse chase leads deep into the remote countryside, before a final confrontation and the twist, which I have to say wasn’t a surprise. My first guess was a post-orgasm fantasy by Marie; it’s not (except tangentially, perhaps), and my second stab proved right.

But does it work? In hindsight, probably not; it needs too much cheating of viewpoints for everything before to become plausible. Much of the rest, however, is fairly effective; the lack of backstory works for the killer, and the deaths are great, in-your-face, nasty pieces of slaughter. Director Aja doesn’t really have much of an idea about tension, thinking that the absence of action, combined with ominous music, is sufficient to this end. Yet there is talent and potential present, and you can see why he has signed to a remake of the similarly-themed The Hills Have Eyes. Until then, this post-post-feminist slasher pic is a failure, albeit an interesting one.

Dir: Alexandre Aja
Star: Cécile De France, Maïwenn, Philippe Nahon
a.k.a. High Tension

The Blackburn & Scarletti Mysteries Volume I, by Karen Koehler

  By

★★★½
“The X-Files meets Hellsing. In a very dark alley.”

Take an FBI agent with some psychic ability, January Blackburn, and partner her with part-vampire Catholic priest, Dorian Scarletti. Intrigued? Me too. That’s the premise of the three stories in this book, where our odd couple investigate paranormal crimes around the US. The results are somewhat uneven, yet with much promise: Blackburn is probably a more interesting character, possessing both great inner strength, and quirks that make her vulnerable and more human. In contrast, Scarletti, thus far, seems a bit like a “vampire by numbers”, with all the standard moping around, relationship angst and so on, too familiar to be of more than passing interest. Though, must say, his weapon of choice – hundreds of cross-shaped throwing knives inside his coat – is worth cool points in my book (even if I presume he doesn’t go through airports).

The structure of the book is also somewhat irritating, bipping back and forth between present and past. For example, one scene has our pair undercover at a strip-club run by werewolves(!), where the residents have discovered Blackburn’s true nature and rush towards her to… End of chapter: cut to Scarletti in Victorian London, befriending the Elephant Man during the Ripper murders, for the next ten pages. “Aaargh!”, went this reader, skimming furiously. That’s a shame, because when Koehler sticks to the modern era, the stories are real page-turners, which on at least one occasion, made me late to work after lunch. The world it depicts has a huge amount of potential, and has clearly been well-thought out. In particular, the second story, The Hyde Effect, is a fabulous piece about killings in Boston that might – or might not – be werewolf-related. And that’s another good thing about these stories; the author is not afraid to mix occult and prosaic explanations.

As yet, Koehler is best known for her Slayer series, a lynchpin of the “industrial gothic” movement. [The protagonist there, Alek Knight, turns up in the third story, a smart bit of marketing!] But I see no reason why this shouldn’t become even more popular, if she concentrates on what makes her stand out from the field. Blackburn certainly has the potential to surpass Anita Blake as a horror-action heroine of literature. Let’s just hope Koehler, unlike Laurell K. Hamilton, can keep the soft-porn out.

By: Karen Koehler
Publisher: Black Death Books, $14.95