Category: Review

Miss Adrenaline: A Tale of Twins

  By

★★★
“Life going in cycles.”

The concept of twins, separated at birth, is one which has been used frequently in films and television. Sometimes for comedic effect, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito in Twins, or the two Jackie Chans in Twin Dragons. But also for dramatic impact: the most famous example is probably that of Luke and Leia in the Star Wars franchise, who were parted in order to hide them from their father. In our genre, Orphan Black works along similar lines. But this Colombian telenovela goes full-bore into it, across almost the entire duration of its sixty-seven episodes, with the concept a young woman adopting her twin’s identity being at the core of the show.

It begins with Romina Paez (Molina), who is a BMX champion in the Mirla, a poor neighbourhood. After winning a race, she uses the interview to rail against the loan sharks who prey on the locals, offering much-needed money at extortionate rates, and extracting repayment with brutal violence. This interview has two results. Firstly, the Chitiva brothers who run the loan sharkage, are unimpressed, and decide Romina should pay. Secondly, it brings Romina to the attention of rich girl Laura Vélez (also Molina), who sees Romina is her spitting image. She goes to investigate, and finds that they actually have a common mother. Mom used to work for Laura’s dad, got pregnant and had them both. Dad took Laura to his family as “an adoptee”, while Romina remained with her natural mother.

These two elements clash, when the Chitiva brothers order the assassination of Romina and her mother. Except, it’s actually Laura is killed, while visiting her mother in the barrio. Romina escapes, and decides the best option is to pretend to be dead, and indeed, pretend to be Laura. However, Romina/Laura is intent on bringing those responsible for “her” death to justice, and it’s not long before reports of Romina’s ghost haunting her old stomping grounds are passing around. Investigating from the position of law is honest cop Cristobal “Whiz” Ruíz, who eventually comes to know Romina’s secret. But in another twist, the crime lord at the top of the tree, above the Chitivas… is Laura’s mother, Virgina Vélez (León).

Yeah, it’s a fairly ridiculous concept, and what unfolds over the rest of the show often teeters on the brink of implausibility. While I get the “twins” thing, the idea that after twenty entirely separate years of upbringing, in utterly different circumstances, they would still perfectly resemble each other physically, to the extent that even their own parents can’t tell them apart, strains credulity. Romina basically blames everything from the sudden loss of memory to her changes in personality on a head injury, and after a quick visit to the doctor, who naturally pronounces her right as rain, that’s the end of the matter. She still has to manage her double life, and the ever-expanding circle of people who know about it, on both sides of the class divide.

Inevitably, there’s a whole lot of soap-opera nonsense going on here, across the uniformly photogenic cast. Laura’s boyfriend falls for Romina, Whiz falls for Romina, Whiz’s colleague falls for him, and it all gets incredibly messy emotionally. This is probably the least interesting part of the show, though it does occasionally work. The final episode, for example, has Whiz pouring out heart in wedding karaoke, but it’s done with such obvious and heartfelt sincerity, that it powers past the obvious schmaltzy aspects, and I was genuinely happy for the man. On the other side, Leo Chitiva (Bury) is the most interesting of the low-level villains. He’s another one who loved Romina, but his criminal life is incompatible with that, leaving him with difficult, yet interesting, choices.

I say “low-level,” because I think my favourite character is likely Virginia, especially as the show proceeds and she needs to become increasingly ruthless (as shown, top) as she struggles to escape the net closing around her. I would love to have seen a prequal series, explaining in more details exactly how she went from humble origins, both to running a major criminal organization, and also marrying her, apparently utterly oblivious husband. I get that some spouses are oblivious to their other halves being a serial killer, and also there’s Virginia’s “charitable foundation” which probably operates as a front. Still, I suspect I’d have at least something of a clue, if Chris was running the Cuban mafia out of the office here.

There is a bit of weirdness here: the Colombian version of the show runs for 67 episodes, but there are only 65 on Netflix. It’s possible there may also be differences in the ordering, but I haven’t been able to confirm that. I’m not sure why two episodes would not be available on Netflix. While other streaming services have removed episodes for content (such as the blackface episodes on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, I can’t think of anything here which would be so contentious. My instinct might be music rights: the show uses a lot of popular Colombian songs and artists, and getting clearance globally could have proved too problematic. I can’t say I noticed at the time, though it isn’t really the kind of show that demands 100% of your attention.

I would like to have seen Romina make more use of her BMX skills. This is significantly stressed earlier, but definitely fades out of the picture as we get deeper into things. But between Virginia and some of the other women characters, such as Whiz’s partner Alex Bedoya (Camila Rojas), who is occasionally a bit of a bad-ass, it does end up qualifying for the site. It ends more or less as you would expect, but if my somewhat shaky Spanish is to be believed, there is a second series on the way. Though with the Spanish language title perhaps being Romina Embarazada, which translates as “Pregnant Romina,” I’m not certain I’ll be writing about it here!

Dir: Rafael Martínez Moreno 
Star: Juanita Molina, David Palacio, Zharick León, Kevin Bury 
a.k.a. Romina Poderosa 

Apaches: Gang of Paris

  By

★★★
“Creuser deux tombes”

I guess the title is trying to riff off Gang’s of New York, though this is set significantly later. It begins in 1884, when the Apache gang run the Parisian underworld. Young orphans Billie, Paulie and Tricky are on the fringes, until Tricky is killed when forced to play Russian roulette by the gang’s leader, Jésus (Schneider). Billie is framed for the death by a corrupt cop, and spends fifteen years in jail. When she gets out, now a grown woman, Billie (Isaaz) seeks revenge on all those responsible for Tricky’s death, infiltrating the Apaches to get close to Jésus. Matters are complicated, by the presence in the gang of Paulie (Paradot), who was brought up by Jésus, and also by the seductive nature on her of the Apache lifestyle. 

There’s a fair bit of truth to the history here. From what I’ve read, the Apaches were a force to be reckoned with in Paris, from about the turn of the century through the outbreak of World War I. They valued style as much as savagery, preying on the middle- and upper-classes. I’ve not been able to find any indication women were a significant part of the Apaches, beyond using prostitutes as decoys to lure and distract the intended targets of a mugging. Still, can’t argue Billie makes the necessary impression, stabbing the Paris police chief (who is also the man who framed her) to death in a cinema, when she was indeed supposed just to be there as bait.

To this point, the film has done well at generating the atmosphere of a wild, anarchic setting, and populating it with interesting characters. It even manages to overcome the deliberate use of anachronistic songs on the soundtrack, opening up with the not-so sultry 1880’s sounds of… um, Iggy Pop? The problem is, the further in we and Billie get, the less interested she appears to be in her vengeance. The turning point might be when she goes after someone who has abandoned the Apache lifestyle entirely. My reaction to this was, “Oh. Is that it?” – and not for the last time either. You may well find yourself saying the same thing when the end credits abruptly roll.

The problem is less her diversion from revenge, than the absence of anything significant to replace it. I’m usually the last person to want romance in a genre film, but that would at least have helped explain her growing indifference to something which clearly sustained Billie through her fifteen years in jail. The nearest is when Paulie tries to kiss her and she repels her advances. It’s only when Jésus gives her an order she can’t obey, that Billie remembers why she’s there, though what results is hardly redemptive. I’ve read the budget was 4.5 million Euros, and if that’s true, I’m very impressed, since it looks consistently good. With a decent lead performance too, it feels they were just half a script short of having a successful feature.

Dir: Romain Quirot
Star: Alice Isaaz, Niels Schneider, Rod Paradot, Artus

[A version of this review previously appeared on Film Blitz]

Peggy

  By

★½
“Amateur hour and ten minutes.”

An early contender for widest gap between synopsis and reality in 2024. On the one hand, we have “After years of torment, Peggy finally gets revenge on all those who wronged her in the past.” On the other? A dumb, microbudget not-a-horror, not anything really. It’s probably most notable for the unexpected appearance of Tom Lehrer on the soundtrack. I guess the basic concept is there. Peggy (Van Dorn) is almost thirty, but still lives at home with her doting dad (Williams). Her main hobby is abducting and torturing those who “wronged her” – though quite what they did to deserve such punishment is never made clear, which makes it kinda hard to feel empathy for her.

Possibly even more irritating are… well, everyone else, to be honest, but I suspect the local cops are top of the list. Even when Peggy carries out a mass poisoning at the bar where she works, when a customer makes an off-colour remark (have the makers ever been in a bar?), they do basically nothing. Mind you, Dustin (Guiles) is picking up evidence at a murder scene with his bare hands, so there’s that. The victims, including former high school Queen Bee Rachel (Osoki), are slightly noxious. But again: nothing to merit death, unless you consider dropping the C-bomb a capital crime, as Rachel does on a couple of occasions. [If so, I’m in trouble: being Scottish, it’s locked in to my sweary vocabulary].

There’s no particular sense of escalation, development or anything much. Spoiler, I guess, but it ends with Peggy simply announcing she has decided to go on a road-trip. The end. Well, if you discount ten minutes of the world’s slowest end-credits, which live up to the term “title crawl”, despite including an alternate ending that adds nothing of note or interest to proceedings. Including this, it still barely reaches an hour and ten. But, you know what? I’m not even mad about it. Indeed, half a star is probably for the film appreciating the line from Hamlet: “Brevity is the soul of wit.” Though given the lack of wit here, the saying needs to be reworked as, brevity is the soul of brevity. 

Performances range from the acceptable (Van Dorn) to the “actor no-showed, but there’s a homeless guy hanging around outside the 7-11” level. There aren’t even any decent exploitation elements which might have provoked some interest, with no nudity and gore limited to the occasional squirt of red-tinged corn syrup. To be fair, I get that making movies is hard. Making good ones is more difficult still. Yet when I sacrifice part of my hard-earned day off to this low-grade nonsense, I feel I have earned the right to be moderately aggrieved by the waste of my time. I never did figure out about the “years of torment” allegedly suffered by Peggy. I sincerely doubt it was significantly worse than the hour of torment this inflicted on me.

Dir: Brandon Guiles
Star: Tiffani Van Dorn, Brandon Guiles, Brian Williams, Katie Ososki

Legacy of the Lost, by Lindsey Sparks

  By

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

Cora Blackthorn’s teenage life has been severely hampered by an untreatable condition, which triggers a severe, painful reaction any time she has physical contact with another human being. She spends her live sequestered on Orcas Island, off the coast in the Pacific Northwest, but has found solace in the world of online gaming. Her mother, however, is a globe-trotting archaeologist, explorer and… well, let’s be honest, tomb raider. [Small letters, please, to avoid copyright suits] Then, Mom vanishes, the only clue being a cryptic package she sent back to her daughter. Cora now needs to come out of her seclusion, with the help of childhood friend, ex-soldier Raiden, and travel to Rome and the catacombs under the Vatican, in search of the truth about both what happened to her mother, as well as Cora’s own origins.

For, it turns out, there”s quite a lot going on. Top of the list is that Cora is not of this Earth, being an alien embryo, part of the race who were known in ancient history as Atlanteans. who was implanted in her mother after she stole it from an ancient Catholic order, the Custodes Veritatis, and is now coming into her ancestral talents, based on the genetic material from her ancestor, an Atlantean called Persephone, which include all of Persephone’s memories, and holy run-on sentence, Batman. Yeah, it’s a lot to swallow, both on the literary and story level, and Sparks leans heavily on not one, but two, writing clichés. Firstly, the mental link to Persephone, whose memories and abilities conveniently pop up when necessary to the plot; secondly, a journal left behind by Cora’s mom for her daughter, which explains exactly the amount of information required at that point. Cora trapped in a situation with no hope of escape? Oh, look: here comes Persephone, and/or an alien artifact to get her out of trouble.

It is kinda interesting to see Cora develop over the course of the novel, but it just does not feel like a natural arc: at times, she feels like a meat puppet, not operating of her own free will. The inevitable romantic angle with Raiden feels dutiful rather than organic, and he’s entirely abandoned for the final quarter of the book, having outlived his usefulness to the plot. There is a decent sense of place, with Sparks clearly having done her research regarding Rome, and when things are in motion, you do sense Cora being involved in a grand conspiracy beyond anything she could have imagined. Yet the clunky elements repeatedly derail this progress. I think the point at which I abandoned hope, was when Cora needed a detailed map of the Rome catacombs, and her online BFF, just so happened to have spent the past few years researching exactly this. I kept expecting BFF to be part of the Custodes Veritatis, or something to justify this outrageous leap. No such luck. At least not in this volume, and I won’t be engaging with future ones.

Author: Lindsey Sparks
Publisher: Rubus Pressg, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in the Atlantis Legacy series.

Good Morning, Verônica: season two and three

  By

★★★
“Good afternoon and good night.”

I’ll treat these two seasons as one entity. Indeed, there’s a case to be made that you could include the first season as well, given the way they are inter-connected. However, it feels that the second and third are more directly linked. If you recall, the initial series had Sao Paolo cop Verônica Torres (Müller) looking into a domestic abuse case. However, this turns out not be as simple as it appears, with the abuser being protected by a mafia-like group, whose tentacles are embedded in a selection of power structures, including the police force. Series #2 and #3 take a broader scope, Verônica looking to take down elements of the group, and end their systemic abuse of women.

The second series focuses on Verônica’s efforts against a church run by sketchy and abusive faith healer Matias (Gianecchini). He has a line in inviting poor hurt souls – albeit only attractive, young women – to stay on the church’s property, where bad stuff happens to them. His wife is firmly beneath Matias’s thumb, and Verônica is now operating more less unofficially, though with tacit help from some on the force. Her only hope is to get to the daughter, Angela (Castanho), who is lesbian because Netflix. If she can convince Angela her father is not the saint his public persona appears to be, they might have a chance to expose his crimes. But doing so simply removes another layer of the conspiracy, with the shadowy “Doúm” remaining at large.

Which is where the third series comes in, as she finds Doúm to be horse breeder Jeronimo (Santoro). Initially, he seems on her side, which is remarkably naive of her, because he set my alarm bells ringing from the very start. Doesn’t help that he looks like a creepy combination of Liam Neeson, Kid Rock and Tommy Wiseau. And that’s before we learn about the questionable relationship with his mother, or that he grew up in the same abusive orphanage as Marias. Such concerns are very justified, because it turns out Jeronimo is not just breeding horses for fun and profit. He has his eye on both Angela and Verônica’s daughter, as the next brood mares, ready to be auctioned off to rich clients.

I felt it all got a little silly and excessive in the third season, with the plot requiring events which stretched plausibility to a breaking point. It’s likely a good thing it was only half the length of the second series, at three episodes rather than six. While it ends with Verônica looking to continue the fight for justice in her extra-legal capacity, the show was canceled, and I feel that’s wise given the steadily diminishing returns. There was a nice sense of circularity, series 3 ending in a suicide, the way the very first episode opened. However, the televisual cycle of abuse was becoming repetitive, although both the second and third seasons had some interesting revelations about Verônica’s family background. While Müller’s performance held things together, it’s likely better this stopped too soon, rather than too late.

Creator: Raphael Montes
Star: Taina Müller, Reynaldo Gianecchini, Klara Castanho, Rodrigo Santoro

Special Delivery

  By

★★½
“Good only in car parts.”

Based on the trailer, I was hoping for something like a Korean version of The Transporter. It seemed to promise this, with Jang Eun-ha (Park) playing a courier for Baekgang Industries, a company who will transport things – mostly people, it appears – from Point A to Point B, when regular delivery methods are not possible. For example, because the passenger in question is being chased by enemies, and needs to make a quick exit from the country before he’s found. Her latest mission involves baseball pitcher Kim Doo-shik, who has blown the whistle on a match-fixing scandal, so needs to escape before those behind it get hold of him and young son Kim Seo-won (Jung).

So far, so sprightly, especially after an enthralling early sequence which showcases Eun-ha’s mad driving skills in avoiding pursuers through the narrow streets of Busan. However, the attempted pick-up of Kim Sr. goes badly awry, as he’s being chased by Jo Kyung-pil (Song). Jo is a corrupt cop who is also behind the gambling ring involved in the match-fixing. Eun-ha ends up in possession of Seo-won, and… Hang on, didn’t we write about three different versions of this story in October 2022? Yeah, for much of the rest of the film is basically another take on Gloria. Brash, beer-drinking Eun-ha is lumbered with a kid whom she cannot initially stand, yet inevitably, comes to care for Seo-won over the remaining course of the film.

Now, this isn’t all that different from The Transporter, where Jason Statham was also lumbered with an unwanted human package, in his case Shu Qi. However, there, it was the jumping off point for some cool and generally entertaining action, e.g. the classic garage fight, involving a well-oiled Statham. Here, not nearly so much, even though Jo is keen to get hold of the kid, who has a computer dongle which is key to the recovery of $30 million. While this could have been the source of multiple exciting car-chases – and as the opening shows, technically, the makers were more than capable – it feels as if director Park is more interested in how suddenly enforced maternal responsibility changes his heroine. I can’t say I’m with him there.

The concept can work, but seems incredibly trite here, and doesn’t help matters that Seo-won is a very generic child, with little personality compared, say, to Newt in Aliens, or Mathilda in The Professional. Consequently, Eun-ha’s decision not to drop the child off at the nearest police-station seems contrived for plot purposes, rather than resulting from a natural release of suppressed nurturing emotions. It’s well-enough assembled that it never becomes unwatchable, yet proceedings remain just that: assembled. It’s not without merit, since both protagonist and antagonist make for interesting characters. But it the end, Chris described it as “cute,” and that’s borderline damning with faint praise in her vocabulary – one step above “interesting.” I can’t honestly say she was wrong in her assessment.

Dir: Park Dae-min
Star: Park So-dam, Song Sae-byeok, Kim Eui-sung, Jung Hyeon-jun

Safehouse

  By

★★
“Safehouzzzzzz…”

I ended up having to watch this twice. The first time, I literally fell asleep. In the film’s defense, it had been a tough day, highlighted by a trip to the dentist to get a crown reattached [in related news, I’m now off Milk Duds]. But a couple of days later, I watched it again. While I did manage to retain consciousness this time, I can’t say I enjoyed the film significantly more than the dental work. This is mostly down to a script which seems to mistake being confused and borderline incoherent, with being mysterious and interesting. Not giving the audience enough information simply results in them tuning out, rather than becoming intrigued. 

Carla Perez (Delgado) lives in the dangerous border town of Mexicali, with her brother, and hoping to become a doctor. He’s playing a dangerous game, informing on the local cartel to the American authorities. This, inevitably, gets him a visit from their hitmen. In the ensuing gun-battle, he is killed and Carla, fleeing for her life, finds a tunnel in a scrap yard. Using it to escape, she surfaces on the other side of the border, in a residence being used by federal agents Caskill (Seay) and Marshall (Jenkins) as a safehouse for a key witness. However, before even meeting them, she finds herself on the wrong end of a shotgun being wielded by a wounded woman. While fleeing that, she discovers a corpse in the next room. 

It is, sadly, more or less downhill from here, in terms of a plot, with the film almost willfully concealing relevant details from the viewer. This simply allows us the chance to ruminate on the ludicrous central idea. Specifically, that the best place to hide a cartel witness is… right by the Mexican border. In a house which just happens to have a smuggler’s tunnel exiting in it. And when things go pear-shaped, don’t bother to call in reinforcements, or anything like that. Mind you, Carla’s actions don’t exactly make much sense, right from the point she pops out of the tunnel like a cork, and just kinda hangs around, rather than high-tailing it to anywhere else. It’s not as if she’s being chased by the carte… Er, never mind. 

This is a shame, since some of the other elements aren’t bad. The performances do the job, and Street seems to have a decent amount of directorial talent, shooting the action in a way that is energetic without being hyperactive. Carla isn’t an especially action-oriented heroine, yet she shows plenty of courage, and empathy for those she ends up nursing (though the medical elements are probably not a strong suit!). Other female characters do more, such as the blonde cartel sharpshooter who shows up for the final assault (top). She’s cool. In the end though, I think that my initial reaction – falling asleep – was probably an accurate assessment of the film’s overall quality, and I should have stuck to that.

Dir: Paul Street
Star: Alondra Delgado, Robert Seay, David Thomas Jenkins, Jessica Martin del Campo

Giantess Battle Attack

  By

★★★
“…the harder they fall.”

I was expecting this to be a follow-up to the previous Giantess films, most recently Giantess Attack vs. Mecha-Fembot! But it isn’t. This is instead, a sequel to Attack of the 50 Foot CamGirl, which I haven’t seen. However, I doubt it matters. This is much the same mix of titillation, tongue-in-cheek comedy and B-movie campiness. I think it’s safe to say, if you liked the earlier movies (and, personally, I was amused more than their quality probably deserves), this will likely hit the right spot. Director Wynorski has been doing this kind of thing for over forty years, and has no illusions about it. He has a cameo in this, complaining about the gratuitous nudity, which ends with him being pied off. And why not?

Following the events of CamGirl (I guess, anyway), the gigantic Beverly Wood (Smith) is now working in a quarry. She is trying to pay off all the damage she caused in the first film, with the help of loving boyfriend and quarry foreman Mike (Gross). A chance to escape her debts comes in the form of a $50 million PPV catfight against Anna Conda (Max), who is going to be supersized for the battle. But Beverly wants to go the other way and return to normal dimensions. Meanwhile, an extra-terrestrial threat looms, in the shape of Spa-Zor (Hall) from the planet Buxomus. She saw footage of Bev’s rampage, and travels to Earth to find an opponent who can match her size and skills.

There is, apparently, a whole giantess fetish thing. It’s not something I’m into. However, I was still amused enough over the brief (sixty minute) running time. It’s clearly not intended to be taken seriously, from the opening scene on Buxomus featuring a very terrestrial doorbell sound, and lines lifted shamelessly from Star Trek. That sets the lighthearted tone, and the film does a decent job of sustaining it thereafter. Even the obligatory sexual content is an improvement on Mecha-Fembot, played in a way closer to a fifties nudie-cutie than contemporary smut. It feels as if the cast and crew are all on the same page, pulling together, and for me, this helps paper over the obviously limited resources.

Naturally, it ends in a three-way fight, pitting Beverly and Anna against Spa-Zor at an oil refinery, which comes over like a fever dream version of a Godzilla finale. This is never going to be mistaken for high art or great cinema, and it’s certainly not for everyone. I wouldn’t argue if you said it was terrible – and, I suspect, neither would Wynorski. However, hand on heart, I was more entertained by this than The Marvels, which felt like a soulless commercial item, created purely for profit. While I’m under no illusions – a goal here was to make money – it feels like that was not its only purpose. I’d argue this is therefore closer to being true art. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off for a nice lie-down in a dark room. 

Dir: Jim Wynorski
Star: Ivy Smith, Brian Gross, Masuimi Max, Kiersten Hall

Baby Assassins 2

  By

★★★
“2 Much 2 Young”

After the unexpected pleasure of Baby Assassins, it’s more or less back to the same well for the sequel. Young slacker assassins Chisato (Takaishi) and Mahiro (Izawa) are still gamboling casually through life, staggering from one adult problem to the next. The latest crisis is a massive unpaid gym bill, accumulated and ignored for several years. At the bank to pay it off, they have the misfortune to be there during a robbery, and their dispatch of the perps gets them suspended from the assassins’ association, for unapproved use of their skills. As in the first film, menial work beckons, in this case as business mascots. It… does not go well. 

Bigger problems lurk, in the shape of lower-tier assassins Yuri Kamimura (Iwanaga) and Makoto Kamimura (Hamada). They want in to the association, and the benefits which come with it – I guess, pensions, healthcare and paid time off. But the only way in, is to create vacancies by killing current members. No prizes for guessing which two come into their crosshairs. It makes for an interesting contrast, with the two young men not dissimilar to the two young women. They’re close friends, yet are in many ways socially inept: there’s an ongoing plot thread about Makoto being too shy, to ask out a waitress on whom he has a crush. They don’t have quite the same food obsession though: witness the extended post-credit discussion about dumplings between Chisato and Mahiro. 

Initially, this seems like a lot of fun, through approximately the point of thebattle between the two heroines in their gigantic headed mascot costumes. However, it feels as if the makers don’t have enough ideas, beyond recycling concepts from last time: the mascot work feels like a mild spin on their equally unsuitable maid cafe jobs. It leaves things stretched thin. I don’t think the women actually carry out any genuine assassinations in the entire 101-minute running-time. There is, instead, discussion about desserts, an extended game of shogi, and a lot of references which I suspect may make considerably more sense to a local audience. This is fair enough, considering it was made for a local audience. It just left me feeling it should have come with liner notes.

The action remains decent though, being both imaginative and well-executed. The bank robbery was a particular highlight, and the inevitable climax, pitting our pair against the duo who have been hunting them, also works and makes good use of the environments. The characters are still fun to be around, and enough of the absurdist humour works, to make for decent enough entertainment – albeit a step below its predecessor. However, if there are any further installments in the lives of Chisato and Mahiro, I hope to see more rigour in the structure. The novelty value of just hanging out with them has now definitively worn off, and I’d need to see development of an actual, significant plot to convince me it’s worth my while.

Dir: Yugo Sakamoto 
Star: Akari Takaishi, Saori Izawa, Joey Iwanaga, Tatsuomi Hamada
a.k.a. Baby Assassins: 2 Babies

Blood Claws, by John P. Logsdon and Ben Zackheim

  By

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

I picked this up without realizing I already had another book in the _______ Paranormal Police Department universe. That was Sinister: Unhallowed, part of the Black Ops PPD series. Logsdon was also a co-writer on that, so I am going to speculate he’s the “showrunner”, for want of a better phrase, while his partners run their individual franchises. The underlying theme is the Netherworld, a realm of everything from goblins to were-creatures, which runs parallel to this one, and whose residents occasionally move to ours. To keep them in check, the various PPDs exist, acting to prevent things from getting out of line.

Is in this world that Bethany Black exists. She’s a weretiger, who has always harboured an ambition to join the New York PPD. However, there’s a problem, in that her species is a seriously endangered one. As in, there are only two left. Making matters worse for species survival prospects, the other one, Mike, is gay. So she has been basically kept in bubble-wrap, until finally convincing her minders to give Bethany the chance at her lifelong goal. While being a weretiger does certainly give her certain advantages, there’s a very large gap between how she imagined and expected NYPPD life to be, and the harsh reality of working with irascible pixie partner, the veteran Max Shakespeare. Making matters worse, when Mike pays Bethany a visit, he is abducted off the street, setting in motion a frantic search and rescue mission.

Much of what I said about Sinister: Unhallowed applies here. Indeed, if you’d told me they were written by the same people, I would have nodded in agreement, as the style is similarly fast and loose – and the same largely goes for the heroine here, too. Bethany is very much inclined to act first and think… eventually, a trait which is obviously at odds with the grizzled experience of Max. Can a pixie be “grizzled”? I feel if one ever can, it’s likely him. If you think along the lines of Lethal Weapon with mystical creatures, you are probably not too far wrong.

I think this works better once Bethany gets through her training, which is so brief as to be almost pointless – it seems to consist mostly of a fiendish obstacle course. Once there’s an actual case, things settle down, and the personal nature of the victim plays into the heroine’s tendency against measured and considered response. This tends to cause more problems than it solves, especially for the supporting characters around her, quite a few of whom do not make it to the end of the book. I’m not sure what is depicted here represents a very practical way to run a police department. But on the other hand: weretigers. Complaining about realism under the circumstances seems a bit churlish. A quick enough read, this is enjoyable without a lasting presence.

Author: John P. Logsdon and Ben Zackheim
Publisher: Independently published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 5 in the New York Paranormal Police Department series.