Category: Review

True Spirit

  By

★★½
“Plain sailing.”

This blandly inspirational tale from Australia is based on real events. In 2009, sixteen-year-old Jessica Watson (Croft) set sail out of Sydney Harbour, intending to become the youngest person ever to sail around the world solo and unassisted. 210 days later, she returned to Sydney safely. There: I’ve spoiled it for you. Oh, alright: in between departure and arrival, stuff happens. There is also some stuff which happens before she leaves, with certain parties questioning whether she is fit to carry out such a dangerous voyage, citing her lack of age and ocean-going experience. A close encounter between Jessica’s boat the Pink Lady and a freighter, while on a test sailing trip, only seemed to confirm there was good reason for concern.

Still, with the backing of her mom (Paquin) and dad (Lawson), as well as her sailing coach Ben Bryant (Curtis), she intends to prove them wrong. Ben is on a bit of a quest for redemption himself, his reputation as a sailor having been damaged by the death of a crew member on his watch. Just to confuse matters, no such person existed: he’s a composite of various people who helped out, and exaggerated for dramatic purposes. Speaking of facts, while Jessica did go around the world, her journey was not long enough to qualify for the official record (the closer to the poles you go, the less distance is needed). This is something the film effortlessly ignores. I guess being the youngest person to kinda do something is less interesting.

I think my main complaint is how mundane much of the 210-day journey was. A couple of storms, including one on the final leg, along the South of Australia, is about as dramatic as it gets. Otherwise, Jessica gets a bit whiny after the Pink Lady is stuck in the doldrums for a week, and has some encounters with dolphins (though I suspect these might have been digital!). That’s really about it. It’s all reasonably well-handled from a technical perspective (except for some ropey storm CGI), and Croft’s portrayal of the young heroine is decent. She’s not depicted as some kind of saint, and is given a good deal of personality, so you will find yourself rooting for her to succeed.

There just isn’t very much sense of danger here. Part of it may be the factual nature of the store: we know she survives, even subconsciously, negating any genuine feeling of peril on the high seas. But it hardly seems like she was “solo”, being in almost perpetual contact with Ben and her family through a sat-phone, and even posting regular entries to a vlog online of her trip. Obviously, having her sitting around on a yacht by herself might have been more challenging from the film’s perspective, but as is, this feels more like a slight challenge, akin to going on holiday by yourself for the first time, rather than the life-threatening endeavour it actually was.

Dir: Sarah Spillane
Star: Teagan Croft, Cliff Curtis, Anna Paquin, Josh Lawson

A League of Their Own

  By

It has been a very quiet year for action heroine films. Here we sit, entering the sixth month of the year, and the only one of the top 100 movies in 2023 at the North American box-office I’ve reviewed here is Everything Everywhere All at Once – and that actually came out in April last year. [I’ll probably add Polite Society to the list shortly] There have been a couple of high-profile streaming titles, such as The Mother, and last week, I discovered the third series of La Reina Del Sur had hit Netflix. It made the top ten shows in the US, which is quite impressive. But it’ll take a few months for me to get through its 60 episodes.

Since there’s nothing new to “feature”, I decided to dip back into the archives and revisit some old reviews, which are in need of updating for one reason or another. I’m starting with League of Their Own. This is partly because it deserves more than the three hundred words it got when originally reviewed 20+ years ago, and partly because of the Amazon reboot into a TV series which came out (as we’ll see, a very apt phrase!) last year. I think my original review (below) was a little harsh, though it may be that I’ve changed since. Baseball is now an intrinsic part of my everyday life, especially during the summer, and I can perhaps appreciate the film that much more.

Indeed, of all the films about baseball – and there have been some classic – I’d rate League behind only The Natural overall. The latter captures the mythic, almost epic quality of the sport, but League simply sparkles in terms of story, characters and dialogue. Virtually everyone involved gives at or near career-best performances, and considering that includes Tom Hanks and Geena Davis, this is a high bar indeed. Hell, even Madonna is good, though it feels more as if the character was written for her, rather than she’s playing a role.

At its heart is the relationship between sisters Dottie (Davis) and Kit (Lori Petty). Kit has been overshadowed by her sister for her whole life, but can at least hold her own in the baseball arena. When the chance comes to play professionally, it’s Dottie the scout wants, but Kit who needs the opportunity, and convinces the scout to take them both. Thereafter, it’s partly about Kit trying to come out from under the shadow of her sister, but also coach Jimmy Dugan (Hanks) rediscovering his love for the game, and all the women proving the game they provide can be every bit as entertaining for spectators as the male version, even if the quality of play is lower]

[Diversion. The distinction between quality and entertainment was made clear to me over the past few months as I’ve followed the battle for Wrexham to get promotion from the fifth to the fourth tier of English football. The talent on view is not of Premier League quality, clearly. But the decisive contest against rivals Notts County – won 3-2 by Wrexham after their keeper saved a penalty in injury time – was the most dramatic and enthralling game of football I’ve ever watched. So, the appeal of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League doesn’t need explaining, even if they’re not the major-leagues]

Writers Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel do a remarkably good job of keeping all the threads of the story moving forward over the course of the season. Events culminate in the final game, where the two sisters face off, on different teams, for the championship. Dottie knows its her last game, since she’s going to quit and start a family. Kit, however, needs the win, for her self-esteem. It is, of course, Sports Cliche 1.0.1, with the title decided on the final play, Kit barreling into Dottie at home-plate. Yet it still works. Even the wraparound segments, which I disliked at the time, now seem to provide a suitable send-off for the characters we have grown to love over the preceding two hours. Hence, its rating is upgraded to a very solid ★★★★.

Then there’s Amazon’s League of Their Own. It’s basically unwatchable. I tried, trust me. But it takes a story that operated at the intersection of sports and humanity, and turns it into one firmly located on the cross-streets of sexuality and race. And that’s fine. It’s certainly a version which could be told about the AAGPBL. But it isn’t what I wanted to see, and it certainly shouldn’t have been called A League of Their Own, because that creates a set of expectations which the film is unable to fulfill, despite forcing in famous lines like “There’s no crying in baseball!” Call it Lesbians in the War Who Occasionally Play Baseball: that’d be a more accurate reflection of the show’s interests.

Even as that, it’s not very good. The CGI used during the baseball games is flat-out terrible: nobody involved here looks even slightly competent (an area where it differs radically from, say, GLOW). It’s also a thoroughly unconvincing rendition of the period. The dialogue, attitudes and even the incidental music, all appear to come from significantly later times, to the point why you wonder why they bothered setting it in in the forties at all. Turning a frothy and subtly empowering comedy-drama into a social commentary sledgehammer, where baseball is an escape from straight society, was never a good decision. At least the largely (and justifiably) forgotten 1993 series, for all its flaws, operated in the same thematic ballpark. Pun not intended.

None of which takes away in the slightest from the joys to be had in the original movie. We watched it last night, and never mind baseball, it has to be one of the best sports movies, regardless of gender, of all time. That’s probably because it’s a rare entity which works both in terms of its sport and without it. You could remove every scene of them playing baseball and you’d still have a thoroughly entertaining, if somewhat confusing, film. About an all-women bus tour of the Midwest, I guess. But the AAGPBL was an entity that certainly needed to be better known too, and A League of Their Own is the telling of their story which it deserves.

★★★½
“A chick flick with balls…and strikes.”

Deserving credit for being about the only female sports film of note, this is actually pretty good, despite a pointless and schmaltzy wraparound, which gives us nothing but some wrinkly baseball, one of Madonna’s least memorable songs and Geena Davis as a thoroughly unconvincing pensioner. Which is a shame; if the bread in the sandwich is stale, the meat is tasty and filling.

From 1943 to 1954, women played professional baseball, a fact largely forgotten until this film. Davis plays the star catcher, taken from the countryside to play ball – giving a new meaning to “farm team”, hohoho – along with her sister (Petty). The movie covers the first season, under a recovering alcoholic coach (Hanks), leading to a face-off between siblings in Game 7 of the championship.

Davis is excellent and entirely convincing (she’d go on to make final trials for the US 2000 Olympic archery team): the interplay between her and Hanks is great, and most of her team-mates are also true personalities. However, Madonna is superfluous, given the similar presence of Rosie O’Donnell [I’m struggling to avoid obvious jokes here]. Jon Lovitz steals the first quarter as an acidic scout, and it’s a shame when he leaves.

If the characters are great, there’s a lack of narrative drive; how can you get excited over playoffs, when it looks like every team qualifies? The friction between Davis and Petty vanishes for much of the movie, in favour of a series of entertaining but – being honest – unimportant diversions. When we reach the finale though, it’s great; ever bit as exciting as any World Series Game 7. And coming from an Arizona Diamondbacks fan, that’s praise indeed.

Dir: Penny Marshall
Star: Geena Davis, Lori Petty, Tom Hanks, Rosie O’Donnell

Family Blood

  By

★½
“Bloody hell.”

Tubi TV has become a goldmine of obscure, weird and, very occasionally, wonderful content for me. When I say “obscure”, I mean their selection includes films like this, about which the IMDb has only the barest of information. No external reviews; no user reviews; not even a rating. The film exists, and at the time of writing, nobody on the Internet has apparently noticed. To be honest, there is  good reason for this: it’s another one of those modern blaxploitation vehicles, which seem to exist mostly for the director’s pals to show up on the soundtrack. Yet even by the low standards of that genre, this is technically inept, with woefully shoddy audio and almost no storyline to speak of.

What there is, occurs ten years after the event – not that you’d know it, if it wasn’t for a caption saying “TEN YEARS EARLIER”.  Det. Lens Smith (Stagger) tells the story of his ultimately unsuccessful efforts to locate a group of women assassins, operating at the time in Las Vegas. There was Dawn (Jaye), Phoenix (Cantrell)… and it then appears the group ran out of proper names, with the others being called Red Death (Douglas), White Tiger and – I kid you not – Yellow Fever. I have to repeat, there’s really no plot here. One of them is married to another LVPD detective. There’s some light bickering among the women. At the end, Det. Smith gets up and walks away, vowing to re-open the case. That’s it. 

Pluses are hard to find. It’s barely an hour long: that’s one. Initially, I thought it might eschew the usual crap rap, with the first murder accompanied by electro-Celtic bagpiping, which was at least different. This didn’t last long, unfortunately. There are occasional moments of droll humour, referencing the Die Hard and Lethal Weapon franchises, and one victim gets an extra bullet, for having had the temerity to touch his assassin’s ass. Though most of the killings are uninteresting or even unintentionally laughable. What assassin worth their salt, would climb to the roof of a building to try and shoot their victim on the sidewalk with a silenced handgun? I know nothing about guns and still realize that’s flat-out stupid.

As is sadly common, the audio is about the worst aspect. The talking head interview of Det. Smith is the only time where this is acceptable. Anything outside is doomed to be muffled; anything inside is equally inevitably afflicted with a tinny echo. I had to keep my finger permanently hovering over the volume button, turning it up whenever anyone was speaking, knowing that at any second the crap rap would burst out and send my ear-drums to Bleeding Town. In the end, I enabled the closed captions instead. Problem solved. The women are reasonably attractive, and keep their clothes on, with nothing more than a bit of cleavage to show for your troubles. It’s all, very definitely, not one of Tubi’s finest moments.

Dir: Bowfinger Stagger
Star: Kevin Stagger, Marlo Jaye, Porsha Cantrell, Ta’Sha Douglas

Paradise Highway

  By

★★½
“Mother trucker.”

I spent much of the first thirty minutes here going “That can’t be Juliette Binoche.” Yet, it is, the French actress looking thoroughly unglamorous and very convincing in her portrayal of white trash trucker Sally. Her brother Dennis (Frank Grillo, whose role isn’t as big as the poster would have you believe) is in prison, and under pressure from even sketchier parties, so Sally has been delivering packages for said parties as she criss-crosses the country. He’s about to get out, so this will be her last run. She’s still shocked to discover the item in this case is a very young girl, Leila (Finley), though she has no alternative but to comply. Except, the hand-off goes violently wrong, the intended recipient ending up dead in the dirt. Sally flees with Leila in tow, and tries to figure out what to do. In pursuit are both the girl’s “owners”, and the authorities, led by federal agent Sterling (Monaghan) and ex-agent Gerick (Freeman), who is now an FBI consultant.

If you’re think this seems like a cross between the various versions of Gloria and The Transporter, you would be about right. Things unfold almost entirely as you’d expect, with the relationship between Sally and Leila going from suspicion and mistrust to affection. Nor will you be surprised to discover that Sally has a background of abuse herself, giving her a particular reason to want to protect the child from the thoroughly unpleasant fate for which she was slated [The film never details it, but a scene where Sterling and Gerick find the traffickers’ den gives you enough of an idea] The problem is we don’t need this justification: wanting to protect a child should be the natural response of any right-minded individual. As a result, this set-up is largely a waste of time, and in a film which runs an overlong 115 minutes, is certainly unnecessary.

Much the same goes for the way the film splits its focus between the two pairs: Sally and Leila, or Sterling and Gerick. I couldn’t help feeling they should have stuck to one or the other, instead of what feels almost like an even split, leaving both somewhat under-served. The agents don’t seem to have a particular purpose, except perhaps to indicate that not all agents of the system are bad – despite the way it has clearly and monumentally failed Leila. It’s always a pleasure to watch Freeman act, and that remains the case here. Indeed, the goes for Binoche: all the performances are good enough for their roles, and make the relationships the best thing about this. They just seem to exist in a vacuum, servicing a plot that doesn’t manage much more than a shadowy antagonist until the very end. There are too many under-developed elements, such as the posse of other women truckers, who exist purely to come to Sally’s aid, as and when necessary. This big-rig looks imposing, yet is running empty in terms of any emotional payload.

Dir: Anna Gutto
Star: Juliette Binoche, Hala Finley, Morgan Freeman, Cameron Monaghan

The Arrival, by Nicole MacDonald

  By

Literary rating: ★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆

I’ve made a terrible mistake. I don’t recall exactly at what point in reading this, I first came to that conclusion. It may have been the multi-page description of dress fitting. It could have been the lengthy shopping expedition. But it’s safe to say that, if I hadn’t been running behind on book reviews, this would almost certainly have been a Did Not Finish, and consigned to the recycle bin of oblivion. The main problem, if definitely not the only one, is the mismatch between the description and reality. The Amazon page describes it, rather breathlessly, as “An Epic Fantasy Romance Adventure.” Silly me, I expected this to mean about equal amounts of those elements, especially given the cover. A more accurate description would be, “A Romantic Epic Romance Fantasy ROMANCE Romance Adventure ROMANCE, with added ROMANCING”

It’s basically the story of four young women from New Zealand, who find themselves transported from Wellington to the mystical realm of Gar’nyse, after engaging in an occult ritual. Ok, it’s casting a love spell. There, dragons and all manner of other mystical beasts roam the lands. As well, naturally, as hunky young men: barely have they arrived, before they have encountered their soulmates, in the form of four incredibly handsome members of the Griffon Guard. And that’s where the book basically grinds to a halt, plot advancement being replaced by a slew of gazing deep into each other’s eyes moments. Oh, the quartet of interchangeable Barbie dolls, largely distinguishable only by their skills and hair-styles, are essential to the survival of the kingdom, naturally, due to their possessing “Elemental” abilities. After much training under Elena the Sorceress, they’ll go up against… the Wicked Witch of the West, or her blonde equivalent anyway.

For let’s be honest, she doesn’t show up until the very end, gatecrashing a palace ball (did I mention the dress fitting?) in Maleficent style. I had largely given up paying attention by that point, after slogging through two hundred or so pages of this nonsense. /gestures vaguely. Additionally, I found myself irrationally annoyed by the author’s inability to stick to a single point of view. The “I” in a paragraph was not necessarily the same as the “I” in the next one, and though the changes were usually obvious enough, I sometimes had to pause, then try and work out who was now the first person. It is an unnecessary chore made reading feel more like homework. But the main problem is, there simply isn’t enough going on to drive the narrative forward. I’d potentially have been interested to see how the four heroines survived as “strangers in a strange land”. Instead, as soon as the Griffon Guard show up, everything becomes too damn easy for them, and virtually the only challenges faced the rest of the way are ones of the heart. A very, very hard pass.

Author: Nicole MacDonald
Publisher: Little Leo Reads, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 3 in the Birthright series.

Ouija Japan

  By

★★
“Battle Royale, with cheese.”

This is a film with a really interesting idea; unfortunately, it’s one where the execution (and, indeed, the executionS) is not good enough to do it justice. There are just too many missteps to consider it successful, in more than intermittent spurts. These begin with having a heroine called Karen (Sekiya). I’m not sure if writer/director Kato is aware of the implications that name now has in the West, but I did spend much of the film waiting for her to ask to speak to the manager. Here, she has moved to Japan with her husband (Abe), and six months in, is having trouble fitting in. She’s struggling between her limited knowledge of the local language, and the bitchy behaviour of the other local wives, led by Akiyo (Kodaka).

She does have one friend, Satsuki (Chiba), who has her back. Still, it’s with some trepidation that Karen agrees to go on an overnight trip with the group. She has good reason to be concerned, as a session with Kokkuri-san, the Japanese version of the ouija board, brings down the wrath of a local fox spirit. In an rather odd development, the spirit pits the 16 people present against each other, in a Battle Royale style hunt from which only one can survive. As an added, technological twist, each gets an app on their phone, where they can, in effect, trade their own life-energy for power-ups, such as weapons or the ability to see what other players are doing.

In the right hands, with the right actors, and the right budget, this could have been immensely satisfying, perhaps along the lines of the glorious slaughter which was Tag. I’m unsure Kato is the right hands, am certain these aren’t the right actors, and it definitely needs more money to deliver on the concept. The story unfolds in an awkward mix of English and Japanese, and a lot of the time, the actors seem to be reciting their lines phonetically. Sekiya is the main problem: it says something that Chiba delivers a more convincing performance in English, her second language, than Sekiya manages in her native tongue. Even discounting the knee-jerk reaction to her name, you’re given little reason to root for Karen.

I would have been happy to forgive much of the above, had the carnage been up to much. There are no shortage of actresses in Japan who know their way around a fight sequence. I guess they were all otherwise engaged the weekend this was shot. Even at the lower end of the budgetary spectrum, the likes of Hard Revenge Milly or High Kick Angels show what can be accomplished. This rarely reaches the level of competent, and the whole app mechanism feels more like an excuse for lazy plotting. Quite what the fox spirit – which is, incidentally, just someone in a mask – gets out of this is equally vague. For a first draft of a script, this is excellent. For a finished movie, not so much.

Dir: Masaya Kato
Star: Ariel Sekiya, Miharu Chiba, Eigi Kodaka, Takeaki Abe

The Moderator

  By

★½
“Falls far, far short of reaching moderate”

Oh, dear. Where to start? Let’s get the positives out of the way. This looks reasonable enough, and clearly was not a poverty-row production. The central idea isn’t bad either: while a vigilante killer taking out misogynistic online sexists is a fairly ludicrous concept, if you squint a bit, you can see how it could have become an acerbic comment on the toxicity of social media. And that’s all I’ve got. For any potential is ruthlessly exterminated by staggeringly feeble execution. We’re there inside two minutes, when an unnamed Russian supermodel wakes, to get a video message from two pals vacationing in Morocco, then turns on the TV immediately to see a news report about them being executed by ISIS, with the video online for all to see. Wait, what?

Ms. Supermodel then visits a shadowy character who gives her a small rucksack telling her it contains everything she needs, including her new identity as “Mya Snik”. This is only the second-dumbest name, because later on we hear of somebody called, I kid you not, Dr. Akula. No, really. The rucksack also contains a scorpion, for no reason ever made clear. Mya then heads off on a somewhat ruthless pursuit of random Internet trolls, leading up to serial rapist and shitty white rapper, Vance Wilhorn (Lane), who is in Morocco too, abusing any young woman stupid enough to hang out with him. And we are talking very, very stupid, as shown by this stunningly terrible piece of dialogue:
    “Do you want to get raped or what?”
    “Oh, come on – don’t start that again…”

Once more, this might all have been tolerable, had it focused on Mya giving scummy perverts their comeuppance. Instead, there are meandering subplots about the Interpol pursuit of her, led by agent Bourdeau (Dourdan), and local cop Selma (Azzabi). The latter lets Mya go after capturing her, because her prisoner recites crime statistics at her, apparently boring the policewoman into hypnotic compliance or something. We hardly ever see Mya even lightly kick significant butt, and her talents evaporate entirely at points. One minute, she’s efficiently taking down security personnel in a resort (albeit to no real purpose). The next, she can’t beat a fat Moroccan tour-guide, who can barely waddle away. I’m not impressed.

There are few things worse than a film which clearly wants to make an earnest point (as evidenced by the quoting of statistics), yet is incapable of doing anything except repeatedly shooting itself in the foot. We’re given no reason to root for or care about the heroine, or anybody else in the picture for that matter. The action is largely feeble, though I did have to laugh at the Interpol agents chasing on foot after Mya’s motor-cycle, which then conveniently falls over. And if you want to see attractive Moroccan scenery, you’d be better off with a Tourist Board promo video. Definitely a candidate for worst movie of the year.

Dir: Zhor Fassi-Fihri
Star: Irma Lake, Michael Patrick Lane, Gary Dourdan, Soraya Azzabi

The Wild Women of Chastity Gulch

  By

★★★
“Civil War of the Sexes”

This sprightly TV movie from 1982 boasts a rather decent cast and, at least in the first half, manages to go in unexpected and interesting direction. It does end up descending into rather familiar territory thereafter, and the finale doesn’t manage to be as rousing as it should be. Yet it managed to keep my interest, and as this genre goes, that probably makes it better than average. It takes place in the last stages of the American Civil War, when the Southern women of Sweetwater have been left bereft of men, after the Confederate Army has recruited them all to their cause. Newly arrived in town is doctor Maggie McCulloch (Barnes), who has arrived to help her ailing aunt, Annie (Collins). She is shocked to discover Annie is less the mine owner touted in her letters, and more the owner of the town brothel.

With the men out of the picture, the local townswomen try to drive Annie and her business out of town, only to find the madam is made of sterner stuff. Such petty grievances are set aside with the arrival of Union forces under Colonel Samuel Isaacs (Duff), who demands Maggie’s services to help his injured son, Frank (former teen heart-throb, Donny Osmond!). Leaving Frank behind to take care of business elsewhere, the Colonel promises to leave the town alone if Frank is saved, though Confederate surgeon John Cain (Horsley) doubts he’ll keep his word. The women of Sweetwater need to be formed into a fighting unit capable of repelling Isaacs and his men if they return with ill intent.

From a modern perspective, perhaps the most unusual thing is seeing the Union soldiers (with the exception of Frank) portrayed as the villains of the piece. These days, the Confederate flag is basically the same thing as the swastika, yet the movie seems perfectly happy to accept that there were basically decent people on both sides. Pointedly, at the end, nobody mentions who won the war, because that’s not important – just that it’s over. Though on the other hand, there is literally not a single non-Caucasian in the entire movie. It’s flat-out impossible to imagine any depiction of the Civil War like this being made nowadays, making it a period piece almost as much as the era it represents.

That aside, the plot unfolds largely as you’d expect. There’s the initial tension between whores and housewives, and the women struggle to come to terms with the everyday business of running the town. For example, there’s a fire drill, which ends up with half the ladies thrashing around in shallow water, and some other slapstick involving whitewash, that is somewhere between lightly amusing and embarrassing. However, Barnes – at the time a sitcom star in Three’s Company – does a very good job of keeping the film grounded, and the supporting cast help admirably in that aspect. Collins is particularly good, projecting an attitude which clearly proclaims she will take no shit from anyone.

Inevitably, there’s the expected romance between Maggie and John, and the latter slowly succeeds in getting the townsfolk from literally falling over when they fire their weapons, to a reasonable degree of competence. On the one hand, it is implausible that civilians could defeat trained and experienced soldiers in a firefight. However, they don’t have to win, just make the situation unpleasant enough the Colonel decides it’s not worth it, and moves on. That perhaps happens rather too quickly, and the film might have benefited from devoting less time to the romantic aspects, in order to give us a more satisfying finale.

Obviously, given the medium, it’s never quite going to be able to live up to a title which feels considerably more “mature viewer” than the content here ever reaches. However, considering the limitations, it wisely concentrates on the dramatic elements, and that’s when it comes admirably close to being, not just a “real movie”, but a good one at that.

Dir: Philip Leacock
Star: Priscilla Barnes, Lee Horsley, Joan Collins, Howard Duff 

Sever

  By

★★
“When you order À l’interieur on Wish…”

The French film À l’interieur (a.k.a. Inside) is one of the most ferocious and intense of all action-heroine films. It’s the story of a pregnant woman who has to defend herself and her unborn child from an absolute psycho who turns up on the doorstep of her remote house one night. This film, more or less, has the same plot. It is, however, a pale imitation in just about every single way. Where À l’interieur was spare and taut, this is bloated and meandering. When it had nothing but excellent performances, the ones here are largely poor or worse. And while the French movie delivered on its hellish premise, this possesses almost no impact at all.

The targets here are Cord (Caillouet) and Mindy (Kavchak), an apparently happily married couple, who are having a weekend getaway at their family retreat, deep in the Rocky Mountains. Their vacation is interrupted by the arrival on their doorstep of a stranger, a woman who claims to need help. With the cabin having no phone, and ‐ this is my thoroughly unsurprised face – being out of cellphone range, Cord invites her to stay the night, without even consulting his wife. This is the first of many truly poor decisions the couple will make. For the woman is Martha (Cruz), who recently staged a brutal escape from the psychiatric facility in which she was incarcerated, and is now intent on making her unwitting hosts, Cord in particular, pay for the sins of the past.

Which is part of the issue: the resulting narrative is so convoluted it becomes ridiculous. Though especially in the final act, I actually found myself thoroughly amused by its excesses. The problem is, I think I was supposed to take it seriously. Yeah, that’s gonna be a “No” from me, dawg. The other big flaw are the performances of Kavchak and, especially, Caillouet. The former is flat and thoroughly unconvincing as a woman in peril of her life. She is still Oscar-worthy compared to the oak wardrobe which is her on-screen husband, delivering lines with all the energy of an airport departure announcement. A cord of wood might have made a better Cord.

The only thing which kept this watchable was Cruz (credited as Batya Haynes). Her bible-spouting religious fruitcake was a genuinely scary creature, truly devoted to her philosophy of life. If it may not be one with which you can agree, it is possible to see where she’s coming from. You certainly have to admire the commitment to her chosen purpose, even though such fanaticism is terrifying at the same time. It’s just a shame it’s not a performance in the service of a better movie. I’ve just realized I’m not even sure if Mindy actually was pregnant. If so, it never played much part in proceedings. I suspect I may simply have spliced that plot-point in from another, far superior one. No prizes for guessing where.

Dir: Matthew Ryan Anderson
Star: Batya Cruz, Maia Kavchak, Garret Caillouet, Phyllis Spielman

The Mother

  By

★★★
“Jenny from the Glock.”

It has been a very quiet year for big-budget action heroine movies so far. Here we are, more than one-third of the way through 2023, and this Netflix Original is likely the highest profile entry to date. There is a certain pedigree here, albeit of the direct-to-streaming variety, with director Caro having also helmed the (considerably more expensive) live-action remake of Mulan, which went straight to Disney+. Lopez has dabbled in the action field before, including the likes of Anaconda and Enough, but this is certainly her first full-on entry into our field. The results are workmanlike, and occasionally reasonably impressive, but there’s nothing outstanding or original enough here to make much impression.

Lopez plays an unnamed former soldier – “The Mother” is all even the credits call her – who gets involved with a pair of arms dealers, then betrays them to authorities. In revenge, one of them, Adrian Lovell (Fiennes) finds her and stabs her heavily pregnant belly. The resulting baby daughter survives, but the mother is convinced to give her child up for adoption, and vanishes off the grid herself. 12 years later, she’s told by FBI agent William Cruise (Hardwick), whose life she previously saved, of am impending kidnap attempt on her daughter, Zoe (Paez). The mother comes out of hiding to protect Zoe, though re-establishing any kind of relationship proves difficult. Not least, because Lovell is still intent on getting his revenge. Still, bonding over wilderness survival training salves all emotional wounds, apparently.

It’s all fairly straightforward, and you can likely predict where the film is going to head, at any given point. At 117 minutes, it feels somewhat too long, and there’s a split in focus as far as the antagonist goes, with Gael García Bernal playing arms dealer Héctor Álvarez. I wonder if merging his character with Lovell would have made more sense. There’s also too much time spent on the relationship between Zoe and her mother, along with a painfully obvious metaphor in the shape of a wolf bitch and her offspring, which teeters perilously close to dead horse territory much of the time. It doesn’t help that Paez has a severe case of Resting Teenager Face, and I found it almost impossible to care about her.

The film is considerably better when the characters stop speaking and begin chasing, stabbing and shooting each other instead. Even if the action sequences are sometimes over-edited, they are decently staged, I particularly enjoyed a chase, involving the Mother using her feet, a motor-cycle and a car, through the streets of “Havana” (actually Las Palmas in the Canaries). Now and again I could believe that Lopez was not just sitting in her trailer, letting her stunt double do all the work. Like most Netflix Originals e.g. The Old Guard, this will pass muster as entertainment, before vanishing off the front page of the streaming service, and heading into long-term obscurity, forgotten by most who saw it.

Dir: Niki Caro
Star: Jennifer Lopez, Lucy Paez, Omari Hardwick, Joseph Fiennes