Category: Review

The File, by Gary Born

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

Not many novels come with a ringing endorsement from a former director of the CIA, but Gina Haspel calls this “A thoroughly enjoyable, engrossing thriller.” Argue with her, and she’ll send you an exploding cigar, or something. While it certainly isn’t bad, the rating above reflects its likely moderate appeal for readers here. A general audience might be more impressed, especially with regard to the second half, where the heroine becomes more of a passenger. Things begin at the very end of World War II with a flight out of Berlin carrying documents intended to secure the future of the Reich. It doesn’t reach its destination, crashing in the depths of the African jungle.

Almost eighty years later, a botanical expedition stumbles across the downed plane and its cargo. When word seeps out, various very interested parties converge on the Congo, intent on securing the contents by any means necessary. Surviving the initial onslaught is Sara West, daughter of the expedition’s head, who bails with the documents, and the parties in hot pursuit. In the jungle at least, Sara has more experience and proves eminently capable of turning the tables on her pursuers. After escaping the wilderness, she convinces one of the hunters, CIA agent Jeb Fisher, to change sides, and his assistance becomes increasingly valuable as they head through Africa, into Italy, and eventually to Zurich. There, they make a final stand, in the unlikely location of a venerable Swiss bank.

The above should hopefully explain why this feels like a book of two halves. I really enjoyed the first half, with Sara using all her knowledge, built on years of living in the jungle, to stay one step ahead of the opposition – or sneak up from behind on them. She rarely over-powers her enemies, relying more on stealth, wits and turning their own resources against them. It is still a bit of a stretch to imagine a young woman, untrained in combat, taking out a whole slew of Russian special forces. However, Born certainly sells the illusion well enough to work. The problems arise with the arrival of Jeb, not least the ease with which he disobeys orders to take Sara’s side.

Thereafter, he also becomes the main protagonist. While it makes sense that his skills would become more important outside of the jungle, it results in Sara being somewhat (though not entirely) sidelined. There’s also the almost inevitable romantic dalliance, and I feel that having a Jebina instead of Jeb, might have addressed that, and a lot of the problems I felt hampered the second half. It’s still a decent enough read on its own terms, building nicely towards the grandstand finale – although I can’t imagine even Swiss authorities taking so long to get to a hellacious firefight in downtown Zurich! But I feel it does not do Sara the justice she deserves, especially after the impressive heights reached earlier on.

Author: Gary Born
Publisher: Addison & Highsmith Publishers, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Standalone novel

Role Play

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★★★
“Until death do us part.”

If a little light on the action front, this probably makes up for it in heart. On surface, the Brackett family are largely like any other. Sure, mom Emma (Cuoco) spends a lot of time out of town on business. But she loves husband Dave (Oyelowo)  and her two kids, even if she’s a little unfocused, forgetting their anniversary. The problem is, as we know from the start, that Emma is a hitwoman, who used to work for an organization called Sovereign, before turning freelance. They’re still after her. And that’s where the problems start, as on a make-up anniversary date at a hotel, she’s spotted by Bob Kellerman (Nighy), another freelancer, interested in collecting the reward on Emma’s head.

While she is able to fend him off, the fracas blows her cover and she has to hightail it to Berlin. Given she told her husband she was going to Idaho, this understandably leaves a very confused Dave in her wake, trying to come to terms with the woman he loved, not being the woman he loved. The cops believe he was involved in the hotel incident, with special agent Gwen Carver (Nielsen) intent on using him to get to Emma. He heads off to Berlin in his spouse’s wake, only for them both to get captured by Sovereign, who make Emma an offer she can’t refuse. To save her kids, and come back into the company fold, she has to kill Dave herself. 

In general, this appears to be more interested in the dramatic than the explosive. I’m fine with that though, since the performances are all up to the mark. We knew Oyelowo mostly from his time playing a spy on MI:5 (a.k.a. Spooks), so it was somewhat ironic to see him as a naive but doting husband, unwittingly married to an assassin. Cuoco is best known for her time on sit-com The Big Bang Theory, and I was a little concerned about her ability to play a professional killer. However, she’s fine, and Nielsen makes a good antagonist for her. But it’s probably Nighy who delivers the best performance, in a small role that’s just off-kilter enough to be memorable, while always seeming one step ahead.

The fight scenes here are typically brief: do not expect any Atomic Blonde style brawls. It feels they’re trying to depict Emma as a tersely efficient executioner, and given the actress’s lack of combat experience, this approach is probably for the best. This seems slightly like a low-key version of The Long Kiss Goodnight, though the family life here is deliberate, rather than the product of amnesia. It relies a lot on the relationship between Dave and Emma, and that’s good enough to counter the limited quantity of action. This was especially true at the end, where I expected a better battle between Emma and Gwen. Truth be told though, I didn’t mind too much, even if this is perhaps mostly role-playing as an action film.

Dir: Thomas Vincent
Star: Kaley Cuoco, David Oyelowo, Connie Nielsen, Bill Nighy

Roadkill

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★½
“As appetizing as its title.”

To be one hundred percent clear, the best thing about this is the rather arresting poster. A far better film than what we have here, would struggle to live up to it. Instead, we have a classic example of vanity cinema, where one man decides to write, direct and play a major part in his own movie. The over-ambition here is palpable, to an often accidentally amusing degree. Perhaps most obviously, a pair of “car chases” – and I use the quotes deliberately – which unfold at a stately 15-20 mph, involving a muscle car on which the production clearly could not afford a single scratch on the paint. They’d have been better off not bothering. 

The story concerns an unnamed young woman, referred to in the credits only as The Driver (Carmichael). She picks up a vagabond, similarly called just The Hitchhiker (Knudson), as she is on her way to… Well, that’s left largely vague until late, though not as much as why she picks him up in the first place. The reason provided at the time, doesn’t make much sense in the light of subsequent events. Also operating in the area is a serial killer called the Highway Hunter, who is being sought by all the resources law enforcement can bring to bear. Which in this film would be a grand total of two (2) officers: Sheriff John Teagan (Fast, the director deciding to give the character he plays an actual name) and his deputy Corey Vernon (Hudson).

It isn’t particularly a whodunit, in the sense that the identity of the Highway Hunter is no great secret. It feels a little like Fast is trying to capture the spirit of The Hitcher. There’s an innocent, who is trapped by association on the road with a complete psycho, the police blaming them for a string of brutal murders. However, not a single element is anywhere in the same league, most obviously the gulf separating this from Rutger Hauer. Carmichael is rarely close to convincing, while Knudson looks like the makers ordered Keanu Reeves on Temu. Not helping matters: the faux film effects like scratches applied to the print. Fortunately, Fast seems to forget about this pointless affectation after the first few minutes of prologue.

There are times when it feels this might be intended as a bone-dry spoof, rolling out idiocy with a deadpan face. Witness the way The Driver manages to strangle someone when a) they are lying on top of her back, and b) her hands are handcuffed behind her. I suggest you get a partner and role-play that out, if you need convincing of its implausibility. Things escalate from there, by which I mean they become both dumber and less interesting. I was genuinely surprised to learn Fast has a previous feature, because almost every aspect of this screams “No experience”. Let’s hope he learns from this. Ideally, learns not to bother making any further films.

Dir: Warren Fast
Star: Caitlin Carmichael, Ryan Knudson, Warren Fast, Trenton Hudson

 

They Turned Us Into Killers

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★½
“They turned us onto another channel…”

Well, this is a spectacular mess. Except, the word “spectacular” implies something of interest, and that’s far from anything this delivers in its boring trudge towards a predictable ending. It demonstrates the perils when you, as a film-maker, decide to take your story and fragment the timeline. This only works if the script is able to maintain coherence around the jumps back and forth. This painfully fails on that count, beginning in the middle, but then bouncing back and forth to the point you know little and care less about any of the participants, or what happens to them. How bad is it? It gets the rare honour of me starting on the review, when there’s still half an hour to go.

Loosely, it’s the story of Star (Scout-Compton), who decides to go full vigilante after her best friend, an addict called Karma (Francesca), had enough of life and killed herself. Fortunately for the plot, Karma left a letter behind which explained, in tedious detail, the reasons why she committed suicide. This would largely be the result of abuse at the hands of her boyfriend, BJ (Miller) and various members of his scummy family. Meanwhile, there’s also a connection to a vicious murder that took place forty years ago, and a police investigation, including a homicide detective sporting the most implausible Swedish accent this side of The Muppet Show. What there is not, however, is any reason to give a damn about any of it.

The makers even manage to waste the talents of a triple-bill of horror icons, in Michael Berryman, Kane Hodder and Bill Moseley, all of whom are capable of carrying films on their own. Here, they just kinda… exist, wheeled on screen and then shuffled off again without making any significant impact. Instead, it’s mostly Star yelling at BJ and their relatives, as they are abducted with remarkable ease, and tied up in a shed somewhere. This proves sufficient to reduce them to snivelling wrecks, apologizing for whatever they did. The notion that Karma might – as her name ironically suggests – be in any way responsible for the unpleasant consequences of her own actions, is never breached to significant degree.

I was certainly left asking myself questions. Unfortunately, the questions were along the lines of, “What happened to Taylor Scout-Compton’s once promising career?” or “How many incriminating photos does the writer/director have, in order to get this financed?” Because what you have here is an ugly, uninteresting mess, which fails on the level of basic coherence, and has almost nothing to offer the viewer. It’s startling to see an 86% audience score for this on Rotten Tomatoes; looking at the far more credibly harsh reviews on Letterboxd, I’m certainly leaning shill. Not even going to bother reaching my usual 500 words here. This simply doesn’t deserve it.

Dir: Thomas Walton
Star: Scout Taylor-Compton, Lauren Francesca, Bryce Draper, Taryn Manning

Place of Bones

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★★★½
“Grave encounters.”

I’ve followed director Cummings since we screened her debut feature Berkshire County, at our film festival. Here, we reviewed the impressive She Never Died in 2019. Both films were distinctly horror-tinged, so it was a bit of a surprise to see her attached to what seemed a Western period piece. Having watched it… let’s just say, things make more sense now. For right at the very end, the film takes an abrupt turn into darkness, that may remind the viewer of Bone Tomahawk – albeit nowhere near as graphic. I’ll say no more than that, except: well played. Things unfold in a remote part of the West, where Pandora (Graham) is bringing up her daughter Hester (Robillard) after the death of her husband. 

Their isolated life is disrupted when Hester finds a badly injured man near the cabin. This is Calhoun (Nemec), who also has two saddle-bags of money, the proceeds of a bank robbery. Calhoun subsequently had a violent falling-out with his accomplices. However, Bear John (Hopper), the brother of one of the deceased criminals, is growing concerned about his sibling’s disappearance, and is closing in on Pandora’s cabin. It’s going to be up to her, a crippled robber and a teenage girl to withstand an inevitable assault from career criminals, with limited resources in the way of arms and ammunition. On the positive side, it’s clear from the way Pandora deals with Calhoun, that she is not somebody who should be taken lightly or underestimated. 

This is definitely a slow burn. The first hour is more concerned with depicting the life of Pandora and Hester, along with how Calhoun’s arrival changes things. Though I have to say, after how the film shifts at the end, you’ll find yourself viewing these early interactions in a very different light. Bear John doesn’t even arrive on screen until well into the movie, in a well-handled scene which does a good job of depicting his gang and their relationships. Thereafter, there’s a looming sense of threat, with a ticking clock of escalating tension as the cabin’s inhabitants try to get ready for the violence to come. Again, without revealing too much, mother and daughter may be more ready for this than they seem.

I do admire movies where you reach the end and are forced to reassess everything that has gone before. Even the title takes on a different meaning by the time the end credits roll. This certainly helps a film which, otherwise, would be a fairly generic Western siege pic. Graham has always tended to be under-rated, and it’s nice to see her get a chance to exercise her acting talent. Nemec is a good foil, and their interplay helped guide my interest through a fairly languid first two-thirds. Once things kick off, the pace ups considerably and by the end there’s little doubt it deserves inclusion here. It may still be a little too horrific for Western fans, and too Western for horror fans. Yet if you like both, this is an interesting combination. 

Dir: Audrey Cummings
Star: Heather Graham, Corin Nemec, Brielle Robillard, Tom Hopper

Louisiana Longshot, by Jana Deleon

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

A Goodreads friend gave this novel (the first book in the author’s Miss Fortune Mysteries) five stars, which put it on my radar; and I downloaded the e-book edition when I discovered that it’s offered for free, as a teaser for the series. While my rating isn’t as high as my friend’s, and I didn’t expect that it would be, I did turn out to like the book somewhat more than I expected to.

Our protagonist and first-person narrator here is “Fortune” Redding. We’re not told her real first name (“Fortune” is the handle she’s used to answering to, but it’s indicated, well into the book, that it’s a nickname, short for “soldier of fortune”) or her exact age; but she’s worked for the CIA for eight or five years, depending on which figure we go with, since we’re given both in different places. (I took the first one to start with, so picture her as about 30, joining the Company just after college.) The affiliation was a natural one for her; her father, with whom she had a prickly relationship, was a top CIA agent, and after his death when she was 15, her remaining teen years were overseen by a couple of CIA officials, one of whom is now her boss. (Her mother had died years earlier.) She’s a seasoned assassin (of verified baddies), with a VERY long list of kills to her credit, and zero compunctions about her line of work. But she’s neither a psychopath nor a moral nihilist; on the contrary, she’s basically a kindhearted person (albeit an emotionally-constipated loner with no confidential friends), who sympathizes readily with those in danger and distress.

That trait got her in trouble on her latest mission. It wasn’t supposed to be a hit; she was simply posing as the glamorous mistress of a drug dealer, delivering money for him to a Middle Eastern crime boss. But (as we learn along with her, at the debriefing in the first chapter) her meeting was compromised by an unknown leak in the CIA, who’d tipped the bad guys off as to who she was. They’d decided to test the tip by setting up a situation where she’d have to act to try to rescue a 12-year-old sex trafficking victim, figuring that she could then easily be dealt with, since she’d come unarmed. Unhappily for them, Fortune’s quite adept at improvising a weapon when she has to; though she doesn’t care much for high heels, she dispatched the head honcho with a stiletto heel on the shoes she was wearing, and got away clean, presumably with the 12-year-old. (We learn about this only in a terse second-hand report; I’d have loved to read it in real time!) Now, the deceased’s brother Ahmad, also a big-time crime lord, has put her picture all over the Dark Web, with a million-dollar price on her head (ten million, if she can be delivered to him alive to be tortured).

If Ahmad can be taken out, the contract on her will be moot, but in the meantime, she needs to be stashed in a safe place –and one that can’t be compromised by the unidentified leaker. Luckily, her boss’ niece, librarian and former beauty queen Sandy-Sue Morrow, just inherited a house in Sinful (population 253) in the bayou country of southern Louisiana from a newly-dead aunt on her mother’s side. The two weren’t close; Sandy-Sue has never been to Sinful, and she has no social media presence due to a stalking incident years ago. With summer just starting, she’s scheduled to go down there to inventory the house’s contents and prepare it for sale. Before the very unwilling Fortune can say “culture shock,” her boss has packed the real Sandy-Sue off for a summer in Europe, and our heroine is in route to Louisiana to hide under this new identity. It’s only supposed to be through the summer months; and in a small, quiet southern community, nothing’s apt to go wrong, right? But the flooding caused by a recent hurricane unearthed and moved a lot of debris in the backwoods, and on Fortune’s first evening in town, the late aunt’s dog fishes a human bone out of the bayou behind the house. It proves to have belonged to a very wealthy, and universally hated, town resident who disappeared some five years ago….

As mysteries go, this one is not deep or in some respects very plausible, but it is entertaining. Despite the author’s use of a humorous tone in most of it –though it has its serious moments, some of them deadly so (literally!)– it’s not really an example of the “cozy” subgenre, nor even of the broader stream of more “genteel” who-dunnits in general. That tradition features more actual detection in terms of sifting physical clues and witness statements, and eschews directly-described physical violence. There’s little of the former here, and definitely some of the latter in the denouement. (Action-heroine fans may be pleasantly surprised to find that Fortune’s combat skills won’t necessarily have to go to waste in this new environment!) But the mystery of who killed Harvey Chicoran doesn’t necessarily have an immediately obvious solution (many characters, and no doubt readers, may assume that the widow did it –but did she?). There will be twists and turns in solving it, and Fortune’s involvement in that effort will provide her –and readers– with challenges, adventures, excitement and danger.

A weakness of the book is that a lot of the humor exaggerates the quirkiness and peculiarities of the Louisiana bayou country’s rural inhabitants to the point of caricature. It plays to stereotypes that too many urbanites have about the South, and rural people in general, which reflects culpable ignorance of cultures outside their own. Fortune herself is a prime example; she seriously wonders, for instance, if the community she’s going to has electricity. (Rolls eyes profusely.) She also has a tendency to reduce women with Sandy-Sue’s background to despised, stereotyped “Others.” Some characters, like the members of the Sinful Ladies Society (membership is only open to “old maids” or widows of 10 years standing, to avoid contamination by “silly man thinking”), are steeped in misandry, and Deleon views that as funny. This is mitigated to a degree by the fact that she’s native to the region (which I’ve visited) herself, does reveal some basic affection for it, and depicts it with some realistic local color; and by the fact that she does portray a couple of male characters positively. There are also a few inconsistencies that should have been caught and edited out.

On the positive side, this is a tautly paced book that keeps you turning pages, or in my case clicking frames (I read the first two-thirds of it in one sitting, and could and would have read it all if time had allowed!), with a tightly-compressed plot that unfolds in less than a week. Even if you disagree with some of Fortune’s attitudes, she is honestly likable, with a wryly humorous narrative voice that’s appealing (at least to this reader). She exhibits a willingness to look at herself and grow through exposure to new experience, which I like; and I appreciated the strong depiction of female friendship and loyalty. There’s a certain amount of bad language here, mostly of the h and d-word sort or vulgarisms, but not much profanity and no obscenity; and there’s no sexual content nor any romance at all (though I understand that a romance develops in subsequent books in the series). While Fortune describes herself, though not out loud, as a “heathen” (when she’s informed that everybody in Sinful who’s not one of the latter attends one of its two churches), and some humor based on the foibles of the church-goers, there’s no actual pushing of an anti-Christian agenda.

I only read this book as a diversion, because it was free; I don’t plan to follow the series. But I don’t regret making Fortune’s acquaintance, nor visiting her in her new-found community. :-)

Author: Jana Deleon
Publisher: Self-publihed; available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a print book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

The Dive

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★★
“Breaking bad.”

This is an English language remake of Breaking Surface, a 2020 film from Sweden. It is also a sterling demonstration of what happens when you do not follow the Golden Rule of Remakes. “Only remake a film if you can improve on the original.” The first red flag here is the quick turnaround, just three years after the original. It’s clear that the idea here is simply to copy the film, for an English language audience who don’t want to read subtitles. We’ve seen this kind of thing before, when Nikita was turned into Point of No Return, also three years later. There, as here, the remake is entirely superfluous if you’re familiar with the original, and does not fare well in any comparison. 

As you’d expect, the basic story is the same. Sisters Drew (Lowe) and May (Krause) have drifted apart over the years. But a shared passion for diving brings them back together for a trip on a remote stretch of coastline, to explore an underwater cave system. Initially, it goes well, until a rock slide leaves May with her leg pinned at the bottom of the sea. Her oxygen running out, it’s up to Drew to return to the surface, call for help, and bring down fresh tanks to keep her sister breathing. Naturally, it’s not as simple as that, with Drew having to overcome a slew of obstacles, from a car boot that won’t open, to equipment that malfunctions.

I’m quite hard-pushed to work out specifically why this had more or less the same ingredients as Breaking Surface, yet is so much less effective. It just feels like each element is a third- or fourth-generation photocopy of the original. The sisters, for example, are less appealing. There’s the same dynamic, in that May is the calm and collected one, while Drew is not suited to handling a crisis. But May comes off almost as robotic, while Drew is shrill and aggravating. There’s also a similar back story, involving a childhood incident. Here though, it seems to get in the way of the main plot, rather than enhancing it, with useful or interesting background. It sometimes feels like you need to know diving stuff too, and I don’t. 

To be fair, if I hadn’t seen the original, this would certainly score higher, perhaps around three stars. It’s still a good scenario, and I did like some elements, like the pointed note the sisters’ car is a rental. I just hope they got the damage waiver. But most of the changes, such as swapping out the chilliness of a Scandinavian fjord for the warmth of the Mediterranean (Malta, to be precise), seem pointless at best, and a detriment more often than not. By the end, which seems significantly more contrived in the original, I had an overwhelming urge to run off and watch Breaking Surface again. Though it did reaffirm my beliefs that caving = nope, diving = nope, and cave-diving = nope squared.

Dir: Maximilian Erlenwein
Star: Louisa Krause, Sophie Lowe

Borderlands

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★★★
“Guardians of the Wasteland”

Reading all the vitriol that has been poured over this movie feels a bit like history repeating for me. I recently saw the same reaction to Madame Web and it was just as unjustified as here. What never ceases to astonish me, is how extreme critical assessments are nowadays: reviews seem to be without any kind of balancing the good and the bad. Every movie has its qualities and its weaknesses. I recently saw Alien: Romulus which I found to be pretty good but not without flaws, and many critics were able to see both aspects. Not so with Borderlands. While I wouldn’t call the film really good entertainment, the universal mauling it is receiving is undeserved. I’ve seen so much worse in my life – movies that hardly had any real plot or entertainment value – that in a way I feel I’ve got in a way to protect Borderlands from the unfair, over-the-top criticism. More about that later.

In a not deeply explained Science Fiction scenario. bounty hunter Lilith (Blanchett) is convinced to rescue the daughter of uber-nasty Atlas (Ramirez), Tiny Tina (Ariana Goldblatt), who had been abducted from a prison by soldier turned mercenary Roland (Hart). Atlas doesn’t care for his scientifically-created daughter at all, but Tiny Tina is believed to be the key to a secret cave containing some kind of “treasure” he may use for evil. The rescue party is joined by muscle-bound guardian Krieg (Florian Monteanu), the robot Claptrap (voiced by Jack Black) and weird scientist Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), who go on the search pursued by Atlas’ henchwoman Commander Knoxx (Janina Gavankar).

Let’s be clear about one thing: “Borderlands” is not really a good movie, and I will go into more detail on its many flaws shortly. But it also never pretends to be a serious SciFi epic: maybe this was exactly what “broke” it? I was oddly reminded of Tank Girl (1995), a movie that also toned down its spicier template and came along with some failed attempts of humor. On its original release, Tank Girl was also critically reviled, but has since managed to garner a small cult following. I wouldn’t be astonished if that could end up as the future fate of Borderlands, too, despite its many problems. Where to begin? Probably with the main lead. When the news came out that Cate Blanchett was cast as Lilith, fans of the video game on which Borderlands is based were in uproar. She was seen as too old to play the role, and the same went for Curtis, who is now in her sixties.

While that may have bothered the gamers, I had no problem with it at all. Admittedly, I have never played the games, so what do I know? But Cate Blanchett, who is in her mid-fifties, still looks fit and beautiful enough to play an action role – which is, at least for me, something I always wanted to see. I was quite disappointed when her villainous Hela in Thor: Ragnarok (2017) was side-lined in favor of Thor and Hulk battling it out on another planet. Her red hair here, incidentally reminded me of old dystopian SF movie Cherry 2000. Fans will always complain about how their heroes are portrayed. It’s an old story: Hugh Jackman was too large for Wolverine, Tom Cruise too small for Jack Reacher, I tend to file these under “Bond is not blond”: I don’t think these complaints should matter much, if the respective actor can fill out the role in question believably.

That said, maybe this kind of role isn’t really made for Blanchett, who comes across awkwardly as a female trigger-happy bounty hunter – it isn’t her age. It feels as if director Eli Roth may have told her to get into character as a strong, independent, tomboy, action heroine and walk around like John Wayne, always with one hip hanging below the other. It becomes quite distracting after a while, and you feel it is indeed just an outward pose, not stemming from inside.  In other words, you feel Blanchett is pretending to be a tough woman, not really “being” her. It’s odd, given she is such an accomplished actress. Considering she received an Oscar nomination for her next movie Tár,  (Borderlands was produced during the COVID era and held back a couple of years, which didn’t help opinion), I blame it on Roth’s failure to guide his actors.

Complaints were also directed at how the movie toned down the level of graphic gore and violence the games depicted, becoming a very “tame” affair. Indeed, one of the reasons the movie was delayed was the studio executives deciding, upon seeing Roth’s cut of the movie, that they had to re-work the movie. While this seems to have become almost standard in modern Hollywood (Marvel movies, anyone?), it is never a good sign in my opinion. If a movie script and style was agreed on before production – which you would expect to be the logical order- there should be no need to re-film scenes or film new ones. Yet this is exactly what happened with here, with the director for these new scenes being Tim Miller of Terminator: Dark Fate. So, essentially, it’s difficult to say to what degree the movie in cinemas is the movie Roth originally directed.

No one wants to be connected with an expensive flop. Original writer Craig Mazin (The Last of Us) had his name removed from the film’s credits, claiming he didn’t write the movie. Under Miller, a new screenwriter was brought in, and again, it’s difficult to say who is responsible for what. There’s an old proverb: “Too many cooks spoil the broth”. It seems to be exactly what happened here. You can’t really blame the studio for wanting to get the teenage audience. When I watched it on the day of release in my local cinema, six of the eight people in the audience were teens, plus me and a father accompanying his two sons. This seems to be aimed at the Guardians of the Galaxy audience, movies which have made a lot of money over the years.

But when you do a movie based on something, you could hardly make a bigger mistake than ignoring the wishes of the fan-base. Look where the Star Wars franchise stands now. You need to respect the template, otherwise the fans who made it successful in the first place, will be against you. It’s a lesson to be learned here. That said… the movie has other problems. It feels very fragmented, the characters going from one place to the next like… well… in a video game, daah! It never creates a feeling of any real palpable threat or danger, and if the heroes don’t feel concerned about their own fate, why should the audience? But for that, the characters have to be developed in the first place, since we are expected to invest time into them, right?

Instead, most of the time, these characters feel like cardboard cut-outs. Apart from Lilith no one gets any kind of backstory. There are one or two nuggets about Tiny Tina, Claptrap or Tannis and that’s it. It’s even worse with the male characters, I know literally nothing about Krieg or Roland. Who are they supposed to be? Where do they come from? Don’t get me wrong, I hardly need an extensive biography: a bit more than nothing would have been nice. Also, who are these different groups? What do they stand for? Why are they fighting? Against whom? It feels as if the filmmakers expect me to know all this before I go into the movie.

Well, does at least the humour work? I mean, it’s supposed to be some kind of SF slash Action slash Comedy, right?

Oh, boy. Another German figure of speech is, “Humour is when you laugh anyway”. That’s true: but this movie showers you in bad jokes and stupid “Look how hip my lingo is” phrases, and I laughed exactly twice in the entire movie. Most of these “wanna-be-hip-and-cool” lines fall absolutely flat. They are also fired at you so fast, as if someone was afraid the audience would get bored if a second was left before the answers, that you can hardly digest them. It’s like a stand-up comedian delivering punchlines without giving the audience time to “get it”, instead immediately rushing on to the next joke. As a result, even something that could be funny falls flat. That’s how the humor here is handled most of the time.

Unfortunately, the same is true for important story details. Essential facts and plot-points are thrown away in casual info dumps, so most of the time you hardly understand what is happening and why. Take, for example, Cate Blanchett arriving at her starting point. She gives you a summary in voice-over about what just happened in thirty seconds, and obviously one or more scenes were cut out, including an action scene. I can’t blame an audience for being bewildered and switching off here. Other strange script decisions pop up in the film on multiple occasions. For instance, when the adventurers escape in a quickly moving elevator, they are tossed out high in the air. They all land intact and unhurt, because Tiny Tina used teleportation skills she just discovered that very moment, and were never mentioned previously. Then she doesn’t use them in the finale, when they would have helped.

Or there’s the finale when it is revealed the key to the chamber isn’t who we expected. It seems that everyone, including the movie, wasted our time with that little brat! But that aside, the revelation, which should have been a big surprise, has no impact because we were never told what to expect when our gang reach their destination. No momentum was built towards the twist, and as a result, there is also no feeling of an earned pay-off. Things like poorly thought-out  writing and direction that doesn’t give the characters… well, character, as well as the haphazard line delivery grind the movie down continuously. I can actually empathize with people rejecting this in its entirety. At the same time, to employ one last German figure of speech for today: “Leave the church in the village!”, meaning don’t exaggerate.

For, yes: Borderlands disappoints, whether or not you know the games. A simple comparison with James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies or his second Suicide Squad shows you that so much more and better could have been possible. Instead of a good movie you get, as with Madame Web recently, a fairly mediocre one.  But again: “fairly mediocre” is not the same as “utterly terrible”. That popular interest in action heroines seems to have largely evaporated, for a range of reasons, may be an additional factor in the clear financial failure of the movie. But I guess those in charge expected it would happen, going by the lack of marketing worth mentioning. Just compare the few interviews available online for this movie, with the huge marketing campaign that was launched for Deadpool & Wolverine.

So, what is good in this movie? Well, I like the production design, which is very nicely done. The colourful, outlandish costumes made me smile. The special effects are of a decent standard – no less, no more. I enjoyed the over-the-top action scenes. It was nice to see Gina Gershon again: long time, no see. The choice of songs seemed adequate, though they mostly pop up suddenly without reason. Most of the actors do good work, it’s not their fault the writing and directing failed them. I still like Hart, and think Goldblatt gives a very good performance, although I couldn’t stand her annoying “little brat” character. Curtis, while not having much to do, is still a pro. Only the strange stance and walk of Blanchett constantly derails what she is supposed to portray here. Both she and the hardly threatening Ramirez feel miscast.

Overall, you can enjoy the movie if you keep your expectations low. Very low. Still, this doesn’t make it the worst movie ever, maybe not even the worst of 2024. There are so many smaller, terrible movies no-one ever talks about. Everyone is always focused on the wannabe blockbuster releases, and so, here we are. I would still like to see Blanchett as a convincing action heroine in a better movie. Maybe she will be more successful in the upcoming Alpha Gang where she plays the leader of a gang of aliens who disguise themselves as 1950s bikers to invade the earth. All we can do is hope for the best.

Dir: Eli Roth
Star: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Edgar Ramírez

Av: The Hunt

  By

★½
“Puts the turkey in Turkish cinema”

The palpable sense of disappointment I felt when the end credits rolled, was all the more striking, given the decent way this opened. Ayse (Koç) is enjoying a shower after some afternoon delight with her lover, when there’s a thunderous knocking on the door. It’s her thoroughly disgruntled ex-husband. In the resulting fracas, the boyfriend is shot dead, and Ayse has to leap out of a window, and go on the run. Friends and family disown her, as the ancient concept of the honour killing still holds sway in contemporary Turkey. She can’t even go to the authorities, since the ex-husband is a policeman. 

Ayse attempts to head to the big city of Istanbul, more secular and offering a chance to hide out. This plan is derailed when a routine traffic stop leads to her capture. She manages to steal a police car, thanks to the cops underestimating her – you’ll find that is a bit of a theme. However, it crashes in fog and she’s forced on the run again, this time into the wilderness of the forest. She is pursued there by her former husband and various relatives, including a teenage cousin. They feel, to varying degrees that her actions have brought shame upon their family, and that she must pay for that, with her blood. Ayse, has other plans, especially after she wrests a weapon from one of the hunters. 

It’s the kind of thing we’ve seen quite often before: a woman being chased through the wilderness, before turning the tables on them. When done properly, it can be highly effective. Examples of the proper execution – pun intended – would include Revenge or Arisaka. This, on the other hand, manages to get just about everything wrong. Part of it may be down to an overseas audience not being aware of the honour concepts, something the makers here don’t bother to explain. That’s forgivable. After all, it wasn’t made for us. But there are any number of other flaws, such as the ease with which she can best everyone in hand-to-hand combat. Or the lengthy, almost entirely pointless scene where Ayse tries to bribe a bus-driver to take her to Istanbul. 

These pale entirely beside the ending, which is solely responsible for losing the film an entire star. For, in general, it looks decent, with some impressive cinematography, such as the drone shot that follows Ayse as she’s fleeing the apartment, and pans up to reveal the city. Despite its flaws, we were probably looking at ★★½. And then, we weren’t. I do not know what the director was trying to say with the ending. If I had to guess, something like “I have no idea how to wrap things up, and frankly, am getting bored with the entire endeavour, so I’m just going to roll the credits.” Almost makes me want to recommend watching this, purely for how bad the finish is. There’s certainly not much else to justify the experience. 

Dir: Emre Akay
Star: Billur Melis Koç, Ahmet Rifat Sungar, Yagiz Can Konyali, Adam Bay

Love Lies Bleeding

  By

★★★
“‘Roids and rage.”

In a trans-continental coincidence, both Dieter and I ended up watching and writing our own, independent reviews of this. At least we agreed on the three-star rating!

Well, you might or might not like the way this ends… However, you certainly will remember it. Credit director/co-writer Glass for apparently deciding to live (or die) by the mantra, “Go big or go home.” Literally. It’s in line with a general feeling she doesn’t want to take the easy options at any point here. It doesn’t always work. Boy, does it not. However, I respect the approach. It takes place in a small New Mexico town towards the end of the eighties, where Lou (Stewart) is a gym manager, a lesbian and the estranged daughter of Lou Sr. (Harris). He is a gun-range owner with a very shady sideline in arms dealing, and a desert ravine into which his enemies vanish.

Things are upset by the arrival in town of Jackie Cleaver (O’Brien), a bodybuilder on her way to Vegas for a contest. The two begin a passionate affair, in which Lou also introduces Jackie to the dubious joys of steroid use (though I’m fairly certain these do not work in quite the way depicted here). Lou has another situation, in that her sister Beth is trapped in an abusive relationship with her husband. Jackie decides to take care of this problem for Lou. However, doing so causes more issues than it resolves, not least in that it brings down law enforcement heat on Lou Sr. as the most obvious suspect. Dad demands his daughter fix things, causing Lou to threaten to expose her father to authorities.

It’s all a very grubby take on the lesbian-noir genre, whose best-known example is probably Bound. Stewart seems consciously to be trying to break out of her Twilight reputation, though results so far have been mixed. At least this isn’t the Charlie’s Angels reboot, so for that, we thank her. It is not exactly subtle in its gender depictions: every single male depicted here is violent, though it’s interesting how Glass embraces the view that violence is the only solution, too. Though it’s complex: Jackie declines a gun, saying “Anyone can feel strong hiding behind a piece of metal. I prefer to know my own strength.” Let’s say, that’s not a position she maintains throughout.

O’Brian, who was a bodybuilder before turning to acting, and has a black belt in hapkido, certainly has the physical presence needed for the role. I was less convinced by Stewart, feeling as if her character was stuck in a permanent sulk. The failure to establish her as likeable leaves the relationship with Jackie feeling implausible: if Lou has hidden depths of appeal, they’re apparently buried at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. The decision to wander off, on a number of occasions, into territory closer to David Lynch than the Coen Brothers is one I would not have made, personally, and is likely to alienate a significant number of viewers. A straight (pun not intended) telling of the story would have been preferred. But you do you, Rose. You do you.

[Jim McLennan]

Today on the menu: Lesbian thrillers! Somehow this seems to become the new “trend-du-jour” as a new sub-genre. This year already saw the Ethan Coen-directed lesbian crime comedy Drive Away Dolls and the novel adaptation Eileen with Anne Hathaway. Lesbian-themed movies seem to have come a long way since movies such as Desert Hearts (1985), Thelma & Louise (1991; hey, stop, were these two actually lesbians?) or Fried Green Tomatoes (1991). The difference today is that films can be more direct in their depiction of whatever they want to show. Whether this is really an advantage, is up to the individual viewer. Rose Glass (Saint Maud) shows in her second theatrical movie that she can keep up with male directors of bloody thrillers. The film was a co-operation of British TV Channel 4 and American studio A24, which seems to be building a reputation for slow-burn horror movies.

Principally, the movie is a modern film noir (think Coen brother movies minus the humor). But it also could be called a film soleil, like the French 1980s subgenre of film noir, with most of the story playing in broad daylight. O’Brian and Stewart give good performances, which is satisfying because my usual problem with Stewart is that in most of her films, she almost seems like she is sleepwalking. But not here. I don’t have much to say about Ed Harris who is great and convincing in anything he plays. For me the secret star of the movie is Anna Baryshnikov (yes, the daughter of ballet dancer Mikhail) as the ill-fated ex lover of Stewart’s character.

The film has a strong sense of style, though for me it felt more like the mid-80s than the end-80s. A feeling of unhealthiness permeates the whole film, be it Stewart’s constant smoking (while listening to tapes telling her how unhealthy cigarettes are), the use of drugs to build up muscle tissue, or Ed Harris growing caterpillars and beetles. The relationships of the characters here, be they familiar or otherwise, also feel rotten. It’s definitely not the ideal family promoted by the Reagan administration in the 1980s (But then, in 1989 Bush Sr. was president).

It seeks to comment on the abnormal body cult of the eighties, the decade where hypertrophic heroes like Arnie, Sly and Dolph became big stars – though female bodybuilding is still a thing today (Julian Sands’ last movie before his untimely death dealt with the subject). Also, the characters here seem weird and far from sympathetic: everyone is sweating all the time, Harris with his long hair, Stewart looking as if she is permanently on drugs. They all look like people one wouldn’t necessarily want to meet. Then there is Jackie: while never directly said, it’s implied her erratic behavior is the result of the drugs that Lou gave her.

Glass doesn’t shy away from the ugly or disgusting. One of the first scenes show us Stewart cleaning a clogged toilet (remember the scandal when Hitchcock showed us a clean toilet in Psycho!). Later, we see a body whose jaw is broken into pieces, O’Brian vomiting up Stewart in a hallucination scene and Harris eating a horned beetle. If you are a fan of beautiful pictures this movie might not be for you! Some scenes reference typical Hitchcock or classical thriller suspense scenes, like Harris looking for his son-in-law in his flat while Stewart hides in the closet, or FBI agents interrogating Stewart, when there’s a corpse behind her couch

But not everything works: for example, Lou and Jackie hooking up so quickly was not very believable. But what do I know? I’m neither American nor was I out of puberty in 1989. At the same time I never thought that Jackie might be using Lou for her own advantage, as the movie wants me to believe. So, yes: the characters in the script needed more effort to work. Glass uses some interesting techniques to enhance the creepy atmosphere. Some scenes have a distortion effect with slow motion, very bright lights, coloring e.g. Harris filmed with a red light, and disturbing sound effects. Unfortunately, she spoils otherwise competent work with a final scene which feels as if it would fit better in a fifties sci-fi film than a thriller? Whose perspective is it supposed to be? It might have been meant as a feminist or lesbian empowerment message, but logically makes zero sense.

For me the big deal breaker is the end scene: After telling her father she is nothing like him, Lou completes a murder Jackie didn’t finish. In a way, she is indeed like her father: The same way he tried to protect her out of love, she protects her new found love. Not long ago The Marsh King’s Daughter showed a similar “like father like daughter” scenario. Not that I liked Lou much before: she appeared constantly angry, snappy, possessive, vindictive and irrational. But when she kills a virtually innocent person to secure her relationship, she becomes totally unsympathetic. Probably a great role for an actress but you cannot expect an audience to sympathize or even identify with such a character.

In classic Hollywood noirs, dark-hearted anti-heroes would pay for their crimes. Among many examples, Fred MacMurray getting shot for his sins by femme fatale Barbara Stanwyck in Billy Wilder’s classic Double Indemnity (1944). Heck, even Thelma and Louise paid with their lives for a more or less accidental killing. In modern films it seems if evil is done by women, film makers are reluctant to give them the punishment they deserve, and let them off the hook. I find such story-telling hypocritical and highly questionable: what message is being sent to an audience?

It is okay to commit crimes if you don’t get caught? Killing an innocent is justified in the name of love? Female characters should get off for crimes every man in every movie would be killed for? It seems to be a double standard – I just call it inequality. If you want equal treatment, take it all, including the negatives. No, cherry-picking allowed. Please don’t call me morally sour: I had for example no problem with that famed lesbian noir, Bound (1996), a film where “Love Lies Bleeding” stole some of its ideas from, directed by the Wachowskis. There, the two heroines got away with a murder and theft but they had to defend themselves from a mad angry mafioso. This is different and feels different.

Ah, you want to know about the sex scene? Unfortunately, there is hardly anything mentionable to see here. The short scene is quickly cut and over before you can blink. Audiences are better served erotically either with the aforementioned and superior, though less stylized Bound, or Italian giallo films of the 1970s which seemed more open to  showing sexuality or nudity than modern American movies. But what can you expect, with the new guidelines in movies which require “intimacy coordinators”, primarily so the production won’t be sued. I now feel a great need to watch Basic Instinct again!

So, what’s my conclusion? Well, the film is definitely watchable, a very stylish modern bloody film noir. And if you want to see a movie with lesbians or involving bodybuilding, you might not want to skip it. But its unsympathetic characters prohibit a second viewing or a whole-hearted recommendation from me.

[Dieter]

Dir: Rose Glass
Star: Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, Ed Harris, Anna Baryshnikov