Category: Review

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

Real Dangerous Place, by K. W. Jeter

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

Note: My previous reviews of this series had incorrect information on the series numbering, and about the relationship of this printing to the first one. That first printing had seven volumes. If Lincoln Square Books reprints all of the series, their edition will have six, because they combined the original Real Dangerous Girl and  Real Dangerous Job (which form a single story arc) as Parts I and II of a single novel with the first title. However, they did NOT combine any of the later novels, which all have their original titles; the next two, including this one, were divided into Parts I and II to start with. I apologize to readers for the earlier misleading information; but a late correction is better than no correction!

Having read (and reviewed) the previous volumes in this action adventure series, all of which got high ratings from me, I was glad to follow along with this next installment. Most readers of this book will probably have read the earlier ones –and should have, since this series is one that absolutely needs to be read in order. (This review will contain some spoilers for the preceding book, though not for this one.) Likewise, most readers of this review will most likely have read my takes on the preceding volumes, so will already have a basic idea of Kim’s personality, family situation, and back history.) The main body of this story takes place on one day, mostly in a tense hostage situation, and Part I ends in a cliff-hanger in the very middle of that situation.

The most obvious difference between the previous installments and this one is that we’re no longer in our familiar upstate New York setting. Landing on her feet at the conclusion of her previous adventure, our rough-edged heroine had wangled herself a job as chief of security for her deceased boss’ erstwhile newly minted partner, Mr. Karsh (whose business practices unfortunately aren’t any more ethical or strictly legal than the late Mr. Falcon’s, though he also aspires to a veneer of legitimacy). In the interim between the two books, his far-flung business enterprises have taken him to L.A. for an extended stay, so he’s re-located Kim and Donnie (I’d say she’s now at least 18, if not 19, and Donnie’s 12-13) there along with him. When our story opens, Kim’s making better money than before; she and Donnie can afford a better apartment, and Karsh’s gotten him into a private school that caters to special-needs kids. She’s thinking that their situation is looking up; but with her luck, it can go south very quickly. And then things get really hairy, when she finds herself, in a Karsh-owned equipment truck, in the middle of a late afternoon traffic jam on an elevated L.A. freeway, in which Donnie’s school bus is also stuck –and shooting and explosions start to happen.

That brings us to another difference, or set of differences, from the previous books. Here, the unity of time and location is much tighter. Events are also, in a sense, more straightforward. True, Kim doesn’t have a clue why a gaggle of heavily armed thugs have set off vehicle explosions that block 50 or 60 cars between them, with no escape, and neither do we as readers; Jeter will disclose their leader’s plan and motivation only very gradually. But figuring out who the enemy is here isn’t going to be a problem; they’re toting their assault rifles quite openly. There are also a number of scenes and events here to which Kim isn’t privy at the time. Given that she’s our first-person narrator, that’s a challenge to pull off, but Jeter does it successfully. He’s already used the technique, in previous books, of her describing a scene the way she imagines it went. (But as Kim says, “The thing about my imagination, though –I’m not usually wrong about whatever I come up with. Kind of a gift, that way.” :-) )

Here, he just has to use it a great deal more. Finally, there’s not a lot of moral ambiguity or grey areas in this tale; anybody who’s not morally brain-dead can recognize that the perpetrators aren’t doing good things, and Kim doesn’t need to agonize over whether it’s right to try to mess up their plans and hopefully get Donnie to safety -and herself and maybe others as well, if she’s lucky. That’s pretty much a given. The real question is whether she can rescue anybody. (The cover art here is highly misleading; Kim never has a pistol in her hand in this book.) Her treasured .357 is in her shoulder bag in her boss’ car (long story), and the head thug quickly relieved her of the Ladysmith in her thigh holster. So she’s unarmed, and not blessed with a physique that gives her much advantage in hand-to-hand combat, nor martial arts skills. But she does have guts, smarts, and determination; and her colleague Elton (whom we met in the previous book), who’s with her in the truck, has the same qualities.

The action-adventure aspect of the story is more prominent here than in the previous books (though Kim herself gets to display her chops only towards the end –she’ll more than make up for that, however!), and is presented with a good deal of tension, suspense, and excitement, punctuated by explosions and mayhem. (Hollywood disdains to adapt indie or small-press books as films; that’s their loss in this case, because the narrative has a highly cinematic quality. It would be tailor-made for adaptation as an action film, and would probably be very popular at the box office.) Strong characterization is an asset, as always in this series; Donnie in particular comes into his own here (and we actually learn what his medical condition is; it’s esophageal atresia, and compounded in his case with complications from surgical infection, it’s life-threatening). And don’t sell him short in a crisis, either; yeah, his legs are useless, but his big sister isn’t the only sibling in that family who’s got fighting spirit…. Bad language is restrained (no obscenity, and not much religious profanity), and there’s no sexual content; Jeter’s prose is vivid, and the narrative is fast-paced.

Continuity/editing issues, as in the previous book, are the one significant flaw here. An important plot point results from a scuffle that supposedly took place earlier; but in the earlier part of the book that describes that encounter, there was clearly no scuffle at all. At one point, Kim refers to being aware of something she actually couldn’t have known until later. Most glaringly, a character who’s shot dead with a close-range pistol bullet between the eyes appears two pages later, walking, talking and menacing people. In fairness, I had to deduct a star for those issues, but they didn’t keep me from really liking the book. (All of them could be fixed with fairly slight editing.) For series fans, it’s a must-read; and I think most fans of clean action-adventure, especially those who appreciate a protagonist from the distaff side, would greatly like this series if they’d try it.

Author: K. W. Jeter
Publisher: Lincoln Square Books; available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Mercy

  By

★★
“Die Hard in a hospital.”

I’m almost tempted to leave it at that, because there are points where it feels like writer Alex Wright left it at that as well. Heroine Michele (Gibson) gets down to her vest? Check. Takes a walkie-talkie off a bad guy? Check. At one point, she even lost a shoe. If she’d gone crawling through an air-duct, I’d have flipped a table. Anyway, Michele is a former military doctor, now working in a civilian hospital. Rushing in one day is an FBI agent with Ryan Quinn, son of an Irish crime family, who was shot in an ambush after agreeing to flip on his relatives. Not far behind is family boss Patrick (Voight) and Ryan’s brother, Sean (Meyers), the latter intent on finishing the job.

The resulting hostage situation unfolds more or less as you’d expect, especially after you’re introduced to Michele’s son, Bobby (Bolognese) – and wouldn’t you know it, today is his birthday! That’s one of a few moments where your eyes will be forgiven for rolling enthusiastically. I think we reached peak ocular orbital velocity when Michele heads across the hospital roof, and the cops below pause to salute her. No, really. Quite why she’s on the roof at all, escapes me, and it’s very much a case that for every step the script takes forward, it tends to take two back. The film is a bit better when simply engaging in crunchy violence, and reaches adequate levels in this department now and again.

What probably stops things from collapsing are a decent cast, who are mostly much better than the script deserves. Voight and Meyers in particular, have a very good dynamic, their relationship gradually becoming more fractured, especially after Patrick realizes it was Sean who shot Ryan. The pair are fun to watch, and in Sean we have a particularly nasty villain, with absolutely no qualms about cold-blooded murder. Even here though, the story manages to screw things up, with a ludicrous brawl between father and son. Jon Voight is eighty-four years old, people. When I reach that age, I’ll be satisfied simply to be walking without assistance, and will not be fighting anyone. Trust me.

There might be a bit less of Gibson in this than I expected, with the movie occasionally appearing to forget about her. The army background does give a solid base to explain her hand-to-hand skills: she wasn’t “just” a medic, shall we say. There’s a largely unnecessary prelude which throws in a dead husband and apparently gives Michele bomb-disposal skills, courtesy of the ghost of her husband. Ok, while I made the last bit up, it probably makes as much sense as what the finale provides. It’s the kind of film where I feel a bit sorry for the leads; I can’t help feeling they deserve better material.

Dir: Tony Dean Smith
Star: Leah Gibson, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Jon Voight, Anthony Bolognese
The film is released in select theatres on May 12, on digital May 19, and is available On Demand from June 2.

The Witch: Part 2. The Other One

  By

★★½
“Which witch is which?”

This showed up as a bit of a surprise. Obviously, even the title suggested that the makers were looking for a sequel to The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion. However, I had no idea whether or not it had been successful enough to merit a follow-up. Clearly the answer is yes, though I would certainly recommend you either re-watch, or at the very least read up on, the preceding entry. Even at a rather bloated 137-minute running time, it does not provide any “Previously, on The Witch…” recap. You’re entirely on your own, and after a brief prologue, you will be dropped right into things, though any connection to the previous film only becomes apparent at the very end.

It begins with the escape of “Ark 1” (Shin) from the research facility where she has been undergoing experiments. Stumbling onto a road, she’s picked up by a car containing Kyung-hee (Park), a young woman who is in serious trouble with the gangsters also present in the car. Ark 1 handily defeats them after they get a bit too friendly, quickly earning Kyung-Hee’s gratitude. She takes Ark 1 back to live with her and her brother, Dae-gil (Sung), introducing Ark 1 to the delights of food. The gangsters are none too happy with getting their butts kicked, and regroup for another attempt. They’re not the only ones after Ark 1 either, as her former “owners” sent out an agent, Jo-hyeon (Seo), with talents of her own, to retrieve their property.

As the rather clunky sub-title implies, this is mostly about an entirely different character to the preceding movie. This feels like a bit of a cheat, as if you’d carefully studied for a pop quiz, only for it to be for another subject entirely. Instead, you get a plot which, even at the extended running time, feels rather too over-stuffed. The remarkable coincidence of Ark 1 stumbling into a car containing the very person who can help her, and that simultaneously needs her help, is just the first in quite a few moments where people happen to be in the right place at the right time. I suspect there’s also a plot thread or two more than is beneficial to overall coherence.

This is especially true at the end, where the various factions converge and have a massive battle in poorly-lit conditions. Going by what I saw earlier, this may have been the makers’ way of disguising the CGI. It’s an area with scope for improvement, especially when Ark 1 is demonstrating her remarkable super strength, by hurling people. cars, etc. around with enthusiasm. I suspect this is a victim of second movie syndrome, being the entry in a trilogy that has neither a start nor an ending. I do have to cut it some slack on that basis, and presuming the series is finished (and this was a top 10 film in Korea for 2022), I’ll still be tuning in for the finale. There’s just enough potential, even if my expectations are quire restrained.

Dir: Park Hoon-jung
Star: Shin Si-ah, Park Eun-bin, Seo Eun-soo, Sung Yoo-bin 

Black Site (2022)

  By

★★★
“Better Red(box) than Net(flix).”

This has a fair amount in common with the disaster which was Interceptor. Both films were produced for streaming companies, and are about a sole woman in a remote military location, that is attacked by a terrorist or groups of terrorists. She then has to survive, take on the threat, deal with treachery on the inside, and handle a ticking clock scenario. It is fairly basic storytelling, occasionally dumb, and there’s nothing of note in either, we haven’t seen a hundred times before, with male or female leads. However, this is significantly more watchable, perhaps because it doesn’t push the envelope. One problem with Interceptor was its #MeToo messaging. There’s no such soap-box concerns here, and Black Site is better for it.

The heroine is Abby Trent (Monaghan), a CIA analyst whose husband and daughter were blown up in a terrorist attack on an “Istanbul” hospital. I use quotes, because when the camera zooms out to a satellite view, Istanbul has apparently relocated, from Turkey to somewhere down the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia. It’s not the last time the film’s geography is shaky. Anyway, Abby devotes her life to tracking down “Hatchet”, the man responsible, and is currently working at a secret interrogation facility in the Jordanian desert. Two things about it made me go “Hmmm.” Firstly, it doubles as a data storage location: that’s a no from me in IT. Second, a Mossad (Israeli intelligence) agent is wandering about. Seems unlikely.

Anyway, #2. Hatchet (Clarke) is captured and sent to the facility, only to escape almost immediately. A lockdown is put in place, but comms get cut off, and the rules – at least in this movie – are that after an hour, they’ll be deemed compromised, and a drone strike will wipe everyone out. Abby has to figure out Hatchet’s agenda, deal with insubordination and flat-out double-agents on her side, and discover the truth about the hospital bombing before the clock runs out. Despite the various idiocies noted above, it is all kept moving forward at a decent pace. Once things kick off with Hatchet’s Houdini-like escape and particularly vicious stabbing of his first two victims, there’s little slack or down-time until things go boom.

I’d like to have seen Monaghan given more to do on the action front. There is a decent fight against the in-house traitor; otherwise, she is largely limited to creeping about corridors with a gun. There are subplots, such as the team member who thinks his active experience puts him above taking orders from Abby, which ends with him taking on Hatchet hand-to-hand in a decent battle, albeit with an entirely expected outcome. Indeed, the same can be said for the film as an entity. There are no surprises, yet the action is handled in a professional manner, and this helps paper over the obvious flaws. Director Banks does solid work, considering this was her first feature, so we’ll see where she goes from here.

Dir: Sophia Banks
Star: Michelle Monaghan, Jason Clarke, Jai Courtney, Pallavi Sharda

Death Hunt

  By

★½
“What a stupid hunt…”

Despite a striking poster (well played, PR team), for the first hour, you’ll probably be wondering why this is included here. Corporate lawyer Ray Harper (Tucci) is on the road, trying to convince reluctant local farmers to sell their land for development. He’s also taking advantage of the away time to hook up with his bit on the side, Brooke Hamilton (Malcolm). Both these enterprises are rudely interrupted when the couple are pulled over by corrupt cop, Williams (Johnston), and abducted at gunpoint. They are the next “guests” on an island run by TJ (McDonald), where he and his pals can get together to hunt… The Most Dangerous Game. Except, they can’t find any of that, so have to make do with a middle-aged executive and his other woman.

There have been a whole bunch of these in the past, with the results ranging widely in quality. Done correctly e.g. The Hunt, they can be thoroughly entertaining. Done badly, however… Oh, look: here we are. For this gets just about everything wrong. Let’s start with the genuinely terrible audio mix, in which the dialogue is frequently buried entirely. On the other hand, not hearing the dialogue is often for the best. The redneck hunters come off the worst in this department, being given lines which Larry the Cable Guy would reject as stereotypical and cliched. Just to show how evil they are, the director hangs a Confederate flag on the wall of the island cabin. That’s the level of subtlety we plunge into here.

It’s a good 40 minutes before any significant hunting gets going, and when it does, the entire rest of the film is characterized by rank stupidity on everyone’s part. The hunters mention this is the fifth year they’ve done this, and frankly it’s a miracle they haven’t shot each other in that time, such is the level of their incompetence. They can’t even hit a target which is standing still, in the open, in front of them. Fortunately for the trio, Ray is no more blessed in the woodcraft smarts department, and this brings us to the final 30 minutes, where Brooke suddenly turns into Rambolina. This is a surprise to everyone, since there’s absolutely no foreshadowing of this, such as her being ex-army, or even having a concealed carry permit.

It could have become a sly commentary on sexual politics, with “the little woman” ending up being the one best equipped to survive the situation, going from overlooked bimbo to overpowering. However, that’s a transition which would require actual writing skill, something apparently entirely absent in the creators here. Instead, she ends up more or less handed fully loaded automatic weapons, a radio, and all the equipment needed to survive and turn the tables. Do not get me started on the box full of dynamite conveniently stashed in the cabin. At least they do appear to blow things up physically, rather than relying on crappy CGI explosions. That’s a small mercy indeed.

Dir: Neil Mackay
Star: Marlene Malcolm, Terry McDonald, Omar Tucci, Greg Johnston

Bae Wolf

  By

★★
“LARPing for all.”

There is certainly room for reworking of the tale of Beowulf and Grendel, and making the heroines of this version female is what got me interested in it. However, the warning signs were out very quickly. Opening titles which said “Denmark… 500 AD… (-ish)” are a good sign of what to expect, for it’s clear that the makers were not happy to leave their changes at that. Indeed, they consciously embrace anachronism, especially in the dialogue, which is thoroughly modern, and could not be further from the epic poetry of the original if they tried. And I suspect they did try: congratulations on erasing one of the main reasons the story has survived down the millennia.

The basic story is, at least, largely unchanged. The land of Queen Walchtheo (Petsiavas) is under attack from the monstrous Grendel (Kern), and she sends her daughter, Princess Freawaru (Renew) out to find someone who can slay the beast. Freawaru finds a party of Danes led by Beowulf (Hill), who is disgruntled about the legends making her male: “As if you need balls to hold a sword.” They are commissioned for the job, which is where it gets murky, in a variety of ways. The Danes are a bit sketchy, in terms of delivering the contractually required slaughter; Grendel has mommy issues; and the princess falls for Beowulf, because this is 2022, and everyone has to be gay for no particular reason.

This was apparently shot at a Live-Action Role-Playing (LARP) camp, and to be honest, it shows. This is very much at the “running around in the woods” level of fantasy cinema, and at no point even remotely approaches selling its time and place. It leaves the film precariously perched between two stools, neither historically authentic nor modernizing the story. It drops contemporary characters, attitudes and dialogue into the 5th(-ish…) century, and the results don’t typically work, unless you’re playing for comedy. They can’t quite commit to that either, with a jokey tone, that simultaneously feels like it wants its opinions on gender and sexuality to be taken seriously. The net result at points feels like a political lecture delivered by someone wearing a pink pussyhat.

Yet I couldn’t bring myself to dislike this as much as I might. Beowulf and Grendel are both given more complex characters than in some other adaptations, and are helped by decent performances from the leads. I will also admit, the final confrontation between Beowulf and the much-feared dragon is a great example of how you can genuinely yank the carpet from under your viewer. Let’s just say, very little in this world is as it seems, and the film works best when playing on this line between myth, legend and the facts, along with the way they mutate into each other. If they could have developed this aspect more, in lieu of the less successful elements, the obviously low budget and clunky writing would perhaps not have been so glaring.

Dir: David Axe
Star: Morgan Shaley Renew, Josh Kern, Jennifer Hill, Rachel Petsiavas

Casey Jones Mysteries Vol 1-3 by Katy Munger

  By

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

While omnibus editions of series are often a good way to pick up a large volume of content for a discounted price, they do have their downside. Especially for someone like me, who is basically bloody-minded and regards the dreaded Did Not Finish as a badge of failure. So even when a book is not that entertaining, I still find myself slogging on: and when there are three volumes in one, its a process which naturally takes that much longer. I think if I’d had just the one story here, I’d perhaps have looked upon this with a kinder eye. Three was tough, not least because the final story was the longest, occupying a solid forty percent of the set, and is also the least entertaining of the trilogy.

The heroine is a private detective – albeit rather unlicensed, due to a previous felony in another state – operating out of Raleigh, North Carolina. Because of her status, she works under Bobby D, a 360-pound eating machine in PI form, though it seems that Casey is a little on the well-built side herself. For example, one of her breakfasts is itemized as “A pound of grits and butter – never mind the fried eggs, sausage and biscuits,” or she describes herself as “chubby at first glance, and stocky at second.” This does not seem exactly to be reflected on the book cover (right), and gluttony isn’t the only one of the seven deadly sins of which she’s fond either. She has quite the wandering eye, and at times it feels as if there’s hardly a man who crosses her path – be they cop, suspect, witness, or merely a convenient to hand bar-tender – about whom she does not have carnal thoughts, to some degree. I mean, it’s a legitimate part of her character, but I’d prefer to have seen the same effort put into delivering action.

There too, the cover’s accuracy must be questioned, offering a level of gun-toting that’s never quite achieved.  Though at least in the first couple of volumes, the plot is decent. #1, Legwork sees a political campaign derailed when a corpse shows up in the driveway of one candidate’s house, for whom Casey has been working as a bodyguard. This job gets upgraded to finding the killer, which gets her involved in a murky conspiracy of real-estate corruption. It could easily have toppled over into needless complexity, yet Munger manages to keep everything clear and moving forward. Part two, Out of Time, has her trying to clear a woman who is on Death Row for murdering her detective husband, and there’s a similarly tangled web here, this time involving police misconduct. It does actually have a meaningful and reasonably exciting climax, in which Casey is hunted through the woods by a corrupt cop.

Then there’s the third part, Money to Burn, and that’s where scenario fatigue really set in for me. It’s perhaps also where the fact these are almost period pieces nowadays (the first volume was originally published back in 1997) hurt the books most, with a slew of elements which felt particularly anachronistic to a modern reader. A tobacco company scientist is murdered, opening the door to a mess of corporate shenanigans, rich familial strife, a serial rapist and a far too long description of the heroine’s attendance at some kind of debutante ball, about which I cared not in the slightest. There’s almost a class struggle subtext here too, with Casey repeatedly feeling her low origins when operating in the world of high society. It’s an unengaging mix between Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous with The Jerry Springer Show. I persisted, yet am now completely burned out on Ms. Jones. Wild horses probably could not drag me into reading parts 4-7.

Author: Katy Munger
Publisher: Thalia Books, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1-3 of 7 in the Casey Jones Mystery series.