Category: Review

And Tomorrow the Entire World

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★★★
“Chewy, yet slightly crunchy.”

Plenty of films in our genre use violence, either as a tool of the plot, or simply for entertainment purposes. Fewer consider the philosophical and moral underpinnings of violent acts, in the way this does. Luisa (Emde) is the daughter of a rich, aristocratic family who is now a law student. She rebels against her upbringing by joining the P81 commune which is fighting against extreme right-wing groups in Germany. But there is a growing schism in the commune, between those who are opposed to injurious violence, and those who feel the ends justify the means. As Luisa drifts into a relationship with group leader Alfa (Saavefra), she finds herself drawn increasingly to the latter camp – albeit without an appreciation for the potential consequences.

It would be easy for this to descend into political polemic, yet it largely manages to avoid that. Luisa and her pals may be “fighting the good fight,” but they’re clearly not without significant flaws. For instance, Alfa regards the group as his own, personal all-you-can-eat buffet of young women, with Luisa just the next platter. It also does a good job of illustrating the slippery slope, from civil disobedience through property damage to full-on violence against people. At which point, I’d say you lose the moral high ground, and the film acknowledges it can become counter-productive. As someone says after a clash between left- and right-wing factions: “They are angry, really angry, and who’s going to pay? You, Alfa? No, it’ll be someone, somewhere, who had nothing to do with this.”

It’s still a shock when the full force of the German state and (the apparently infamous) Section 129 of their criminal code, is dropped on P81, making Luisa and Alfa fugitives. They hide out with Dietmar, a former activist in the 80’s, who spent time in jail for his acts then, and now lives quietly, working as a nurse. He offers a particularly cynical view regarding the futility of their actions, based on his own experiences: “We were absolutely convinced that we could build a new society. I was going to be a minister.” This is lost on Luisa, who steals a hunting rifle from her family’s home and prepares to launch an assault on an enemy gathering.

The film opens with her tossing away the gun, but at that point it’s not clear whether this was after, or instead of, its use. It’s on that decision that the film’s climax pivots: will she step back from the precipice, or embrace wholeheartedly what it means to take a life, even of someone you regard as lower than an animal? [Pointedly, Luisa is vegetarian…] This was Germany’s entry for the 2021 Best Foreign Film Oscar, though it did not make the final list of nominees. It definitely has that sense of earnestness the Academy likes, and is not so much biased ignores any other side exists – which may be the point, it being easier to hate someone who is kept distant and seen only as “the enemy.” But even an entrenched old hack like myself still found it more thought-provoking than I expected.

Dir: Julia von Heinz
Star:  Mala Emde, Noah Saavedra, Tonio Schneider, Luisa-Céline Gaffron

My Name

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★★★★
“Squid Games? They’re over-rated.”

What is it with Koreans and revenge? From Lady Vengeance through Princess Aurora to The Five, it seems an integral part of about half of their cinematic canon. This goes down the same line, but despite that familiarity, delivers an intensity that’s hard to resist, and provides an excellent action heroine. Indeed, in terms of Netflix series from Korea, I’d say this was more worthy of worldwide acclaim than Squid Game. But I guess there’s no accounting for taste.

The central character here is Yoon Ji-woo (Han), a teenager whose father is part of the Dongcheon, a major criminal syndicate. She’s somewhat estranged from him, but when he is gunned down, literally on her doorstep, she wants vengeance on those responsible. The cops seem largely disinterested in solving the case of a dead mobster, and the only person who wants to help is her late father’s boss, Choi Mu-jin (Park), the head of the Dongcheon. He tells Yoon her father was killed with a police revolver and sets her up as his undercover operative in the force, in order to identify the murderer and take her revenge.

It’s a long process, taking several years. It begins with her training in martial arts in the Dongcheon gym, then adopting a new identity of Oh Hye-jin, joining the police and working her way to the department run by the man suspected of her father’s killing, Cha Gi-ho (Kim). There, she bonds with another detective, Jeon Pil-do (Ahn), but the moral landscape gets increasingly murky. It turns out that there may be more to her circumstances than she has been told, with one revelation in particular upending everything she had believed since her father’s death.

This is a very strong effort, particularly at the beginning and end. Yoon’s status as a “take no shit” type is quickly established with a classroom brawl against bullies, and her tenacity and persistence in the search for her father’s killer is absolutely relentless. You can knock her down – and many times, that’s exactly what happens – but she keeps on getting back up. The action scenes here are extremely well-staged, and Han is clearly doing almost everything herself, rather than a stunt double. I did feel the show lagged somewhat in the middle, with the focus moving to Choi and his struggle for control of the syndicate. In particular, there’s a thoroughly unpleasant rival whom he kicked out, but who returns, with venom, for a take-over bid. Yoon ended up rather backgrounded in parts 3-5 of the eight episode show.

But the ending of part 6 is the revelation mentioned above, yanking the carpet out from under the viewer, every bit as much as Yoon, and gets the show firmly back on track. It’s not the final shocking moment, though I do have some questions about the motivation of certain characters for their actions. Still, it builds to a climax which, in hindsight, should have been almost inevitable from the start. It ties up everything nicely, and in an emotionally satisfying way. Where are the Western shows that offer such a solid combination of action and drama?

Dir: Kim Jin-min
Star: Han So-hee, Park Hee-soon, Ahn Bo-hyun, Kim Sang-ho

Too Hot to Handle

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★★★
“If you can’t stand the heat…”

Director Schain had already worked with his wife Caffaro on the Ginger trilogy, in which she played (per Wikipedia), “a tough and resourceful bed-hopping private-eye and spy.” Here, the character isn’t too different, though her day job is rather more morally questionable, being a professional killer. “Samantha Fox” (Caffaro) is the identity she has adopted, as she works on a series of hits in the Philippines. On her trail is the local chief of detectives, Domingo De La Torres (Ipalé), who first views Samantha as a suspect, but their relationship quickly becomes more intimate. It feels almost like a precursor to Basic Instinct, in that there’s a cop obsessed with someone he’s supposed to be investigating, and really doesn’t care whether or not she’s a murderer.

The film does aim to make Samantha quite a sympathetic character, in that all the people we see her kill, as ones without whom society is better off. But there are a couple of moments where she seems clearly psychopathic, to Villanelle-esque levels. For example, she takes pleasure in sitting and watching her first victim slowly suffocate to death. This is not by accident. When Domingo takes her on a shooting trip, she states, “It’s much more of a turn on to watch something die slowly. Even then, the greater the distance, the less the fun.” It’s an attitude we see in action, at a cock-fighting event which is apparently her idea of a date night (I’m pleased to report Chris is perfectly happy with dinner and a movie). While watching animals fight to the death, she is simultaneously dreaming about having sex. This seems… not exactly normal.

Yet, Samantha is still depicted as nicer than her victims: it’s not as if her twisted fantasies hurt anyone else. Well, except for her victims, anyway. I did like the way she rarely used physical means to take them down, outside of a duel against an operative De La Torres sends to the boat where she lives. Mind you, that scene is functional rather than impressive, and so it makes sense for the film-makers to script it so that she relies on her smarts. She’s fond of disguises, whether it’s pretending to be an art journalist, or going full brownface as she pretends to be a local maid. Caffaro clearly also has no inhibitions about shedding her clothes, though her figure is on the lighter side for my tastes.

Less effective in general is Ipalé, who became well-knows twenty years later, as Pharaoh Seti in The Mummy and its sequel. It feels as if he learned his lines phonetically, and he makes little overall impression here. I was more excited to see veteran Philippino actor Diaz as De La Torres’s lieutenant, for once getting to play a good guy. Overall, while nothing particularly special, this is reasonably entertaining, and considerably more twisted than I expected in terms of its protagonist and her psyche.

Dir: Don Schain
Star:  Cheri Caffaro, Aharon Ipalé, Vic Diaz, Corinne Calvet

Skull Forest

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★½
“Going Dutch can be a very bad thing…”

I think Len Kabasinski probably is the director with more  films reviewed here than anyone else, save perhaps Andy Sidaris. This is the fifth; the previous four have seem palpable improvement, from the near-unwatchable Warriors of the Apocalypse, to the reasonably competent Hellcat’s Revenge II: Deadman’s Hand. This, however, is one of his earlier efforts, and you have to peer pretty hard past the dreadful film-making style to see any worthwhile elements.

In particular, it feels as if it was made as a wager, after someone bet him he couldn’t make an entire film with the camera pointed at a 30-degree angle. The Dutch angle shot, in which the camera is tilted to evoke a sense of unease, is a well-known cinematic technique, used by the likes of Hitchcock. But it’s one that needs moderation. In a famous review of Battlefield Earth, Roger Ebert said of the director, “Roger Christian, has learned from better films that directors sometimes tilt their cameras, but he has not learned why.” The same is true here of Kabasinski, who appears to think every shot is better at 30 degrees off vertical. Or perhaps he was just drunk throughout filming. Then there’s the excessive close-ups and violent shaking of the camera. No. Just, no.

The story open with a quote from The Most Dangerous Game, and that’s what we get. Four women, on a weekend getaway, find themselves targeted by a group of rich hunters, and have to fight for their lives. That’s the entire plot, and I’m fine with that. The action is no great shakes, to be honest; a lot of something happening off-screen, then cut to a not-too-convincing make-up effect. The only sequence that succeeded in holding my attention, was when two women among the hunters had a falling out, and ended up fighting each other. Kabasinski plays another one of the villains, and I’m not sure which is more distracting: the single contact lens his character wears, or the bad English accent employed, for no apparent reason.

However, there is a surprising amount of nudity, so the film, clearly aiming at shallow exploitation (and I’m fine with that too!), does at least deliver on this score. Though it is a bit of a mixed bag; Playboy model Neeld looks the best, but Brooks has the most memorable (if not exactly erotic)  shot, clawing her way naked out of the shallow grave in which she was left for dead, and beginning her quest for vengeance. However, the impact of these and any other credible moments, are sucked away by the truly dreadful camerawork employed. It seems likely to induce motion sickness and/or a migraine. If he’d simply nailed the camera to a tree, it would have been an enormous improvement, and likely been worth close to another whole star. I guess this was early enough in his career Kabasinski was still experimenting. We should be glad it’s not a style with which he persisted.

Dir: Len Kabasinski
Star: Sara Brooks, Lisa Neeld, Pamela Sutch, Melissa Scott

HellKat

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★
“Contains far too much pussying about.”

Rarely has there been a bigger gap between expectations generated by a synopsis, and the underwhelming reality of the actual movie. The former: “A fallen MMA fighter must win a netherworld no-holds-barred death tournament against man, beast and demon to save her soul. ” While I guess it’s not technically inaccurate, you will be forgiven for expecting something like Mortal Kombat on ‘roids – and not the recent, fairly crappy remake. Instead, you get a film which dillies, dallies and faffs about for the first forty minutes. Considering it runs less than eighty in total, including the end credits, this is not a good thing. And the “netherworld no-holds-barred death tournament”? It’s a boxing ring lit by red lights, in which the heroine has a couple of fights against people in remaindered Halloween masks. You should now understand my palpable disappointment.

When you are a low-budget movie (actually, true for any level, but especially on smaller budgets), you typically need to hit the ground running, and grab your audience’s attention quickly. It’s okay if there’s a lull thereafter, but in today’s world of short attention spans and other entertainment alternatives, if you lose people, they’re probably gone forever. Unless, that is, they run a site devoted to action heroines in popular culture, and thus feel obligated to soldier on, for review purposes. Though even they maybe spend more time than is ideal checking their email, eating snacks, and wondering how in hell they are ever going to write 500 words about this.

In this case, it begins with ex MMA fighter Katrina (Cohen), who is on the road in murky circumstances. Her car breaks down, and she accepts a lift from a stranger, whom she ends up having to shoot. She then goes to a bar, and hangs out there for a bit, being paid in tequila for mopping up patrons’ puke. The customers are an unprepossessing lot, abusive to each other and to Kat, even though the barman (Bouchet) wields a sawn-off shotgun at the slightest provocation. Again, we get forty minutes of this before the Devil, or a representative thereof, turns up in the shape of the man who gave her a lift. He is Satanic fight promoter Jimmy Scott (Davies), who gets Kat’s signature on a contract and the tournament is finally under way.

It’s pretty obvious we’re not in the real world from the get-go, e.g. Scott possesses demonic teeth and doesn’t die after getting shot. A bar patron survives a shotgun blast to the head with nothing more than a bad attitude. The number of moons exceeds the customer “one”. Kat, however, is so oblivious that none of this makes any impression on her. Any of this would have been forgivable, had the fight scenes – when they show up – been solid and effective. They aren’t. There’s a couple of decent moments, and Cohen’s stunt double [yeah, it’s kinda obvious] is athletic enough. Then it’s back to the chit-chat once again. Nobody cares. If there is a hell, it probably involves watching this on endless repeat.

Dir: Scott Jeffrey, Rebecca Matthews
Star: Sarah T. Cohen, Ryan Davies, Serhat Metin, Adrian Bouchet

The Flower and the Blackbird, by Liane Zane

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

My friend Liane Zane kindly gifted me with a paperback copy of this second of her Elioud Legacy novels, as she did with the first one (The Harlequin & The Drangùe), in exchange for an honest review. Having liked the first book, I was glad to accept; and I wasn’t disappointed with the sequel!

The premise of the Elioud Legacy builds on the idea, based on a passage in the book of Genesis, that in the days before Noah’s flood, “and also after that,” there were matings between angelic beings and humans, resulting in mixed-race offspring, here called the “Elioud.” On that foundation, Zane builds the literary conceit that these pairings are still going on at times, that a fair number of humans with some angelic genes still walk the earth, gifted with more-than-human abilities and perceptions in proportion to their angelic ancestry (although using these usually takes some training), and that those who know their ancestry may consciously ally themselves either with God or Satan. Though some, the “Grey Elioud,” would prefer to stay out of the whole cosmic battle….

Readers of the first book will already know the above; and I definitely recommend reading the books in order. Here, events from the series opener are referred to in a cursory way; but you will understand the characters, situation, and prior events better with a reading of the first book, and that one lays an essential foundation for what follows. In the first book, CIA agent Olivia Markham and her two close female friends and fellow 20-something intelligence agents (though from different European countries) met Albanian tycoon Mihail Kastrioti and his two fellow long-lived Elioud warriors for the Lord –and the ladies learned that they also have Elioud blood. That book pitted the two threesomes against the demon Asmodeus and his human acolyte, Joseph Fagan, who happens to head up the CIA’s Vienna office, but who has an agenda and proclivities that his superiors wouldn’t like. (A serious psychological evaluation on him before he joined the Company would have been a really good idea!) But equally importantly, we also learned that each member of the two trios felt a mutual strong attraction to a member of the other one. Since the series is projected to be a trilogy, and it’s in the paranormal romance sub-genre, I figured that each book would feature the story of a different one of these couples, and focus on their relationship.

Here, we focus on Italian intelligence agent Anastasia (“Stasia”) Fiore and Mihail’s side-kick Miro Kos. (“Fiore” is Italian for flower, and “Kos” means blackbird in his native Croatian, hence the book title.) Neither are unaware of feeling attracted to the other, but neither of them welcome it. Stasia’s not immune to male charms; but as a largely secular-minded young woman who mostly goes with the flow of her culture’s mores, she’s always opted to keep her sex life strictly casual. And she’s put off by the whole eternal cosmic battle revelation, and wants no part of it; she wants to keep her feet firmly planted in the familiar mundane security of the “real” world she’s always known. For his part, Miro has psychological baggage going back a long time (to the era of World War I, in fact!); his only venture into romance didn’t end well for him. But circumstances are about to throw these two together.

When last we left Asmodeus and Fagan, the former was in a coma and the latter had been on the receiving end of a partial memory wipe. But some weeks have elapsed since then…. Now, on loan from her agency to the Art Squad of Italy’s national police force, Stasia’s on the track of the thieves of a couple of valuable paintings, one of them a long-unknown, recently surfaced work by Rembrandt, “The Judgment of the Watcher Angels.” This case will be the tip of an iceberg involving not one but two demons, secrets of the classical art world, and high-stakes derring-do and fighting action that will give all six of our favorite Elioud a dangerous work-out, on both a physical and a spiritual plane.

In terms of messaging, stylistic features, and the quality of the writing, this volume is much of a piece with the preceding one. We have the same Christian grounding (the author is a Christian, of the Roman Catholic denomination) and strong good vs. evil vibe. Also in evidence is the same quick narrative pace, vivid characterizations (all six of our principal characters have quite distinct personalities, rather than being clones of each other), local color clearly based on serious research, capable depiction of action scenes and high technology, and solid knowledge of the actual geography of the locales where events take place, which I’m guessing comes from very extensive use of Internet maps and pictures. The relationship between the hero and heroine develops over a period of months, so we don’t have the same insta-love problem as in the first novel. Readers interested in the shady side of the art world, including art theft, will appreciate the use of that angle here (in that respect, the book might appeal to fans of such novels as The Collection and Zrada by Lance Charnes, though his works don’t have any supernatural elements).

Unlike the first novel, this one does have some explicit (and unmarried) sex, though it’s described in a way that comes across as loving rather than lewd. The author is aware that this poses issues; but it’s also, in the circumstances, not an unrealistic development, human nature being what it is. This is a stirring tale of a strong, respect-worthy hero and a tough, straight-shooting (in more ways than one!) heroine fighting evil and finding a committed connection to each other along the way. Though I don’t recommend starting the series here, I’d recommend this book to any reader who liked the first one!

Author: Liane Zane
Publisher: Zephon Books; available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

 

Planet Dune

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★★★
“Tremors in Space.”

On the one hand, this is obviously The Asylum’s mockbuster version of Dune, and that carries with it weightily low expectations. But, dammit if I didn’t actually enjoy this more than Denis Villeneuve’s ponderous epic. This is about seventy minutes shorter, for a start, with considerably better pacing and rather more of what we wanted to see: sandworms. Admittedly, the sandworms here are sometimes very poorly-animated – the sandworm riding scene… yeah, they should probably not have bothered. But it has energy, and the characters appear to care considerably more than Paul Atreides, for whom simply getting out of bed seemed like a chore.

The heroine here is Astrid (Killian), a pilot in the Space Force who gets cashiered after disobeying orders, and rescuing a Russian astronaut. As punishment, she’s assigned a crappy ship, with a crappier crew, and sent on a crappy mission to a crappy planet to pick up a craft with which contact has been lost. Of course, it turns out to have been preyed upon by sandworms, making Astrid’s mission considerably trickier, as these worms feed on iron, can smell your blood and are hungry as all get out. Fortunately – and this is just the first of many similarities to Tremors – they can’t get you if you’re on rocky terrain. You’ll certainly be forgiven, when Astrid starts making home-made explosives, for muttering “A few household chemicals in the proper proportions…”

If this is Dune, it has had all the political and religious overtones removed, and stripped down to a pure slice of action SF. I can’t say I mind too much, since what’s gone was probably my least favourite aspect of the bigger movie. I also have to respect the great way in which nobody makes a fuss about how, including Astrid, three-quarter of her new crew are women, along with her commanding officer (Young, looking a bit puffier than when she appeared in David Lynch’s Dune. Mind you, that was 37 years ago. I’m a bit puffier myself than I was in 1984). This is the way gender equality should be in the future: completely unremarkable. Again, an improvement over Dune which is as archetypal a example of male saviour complex as you could want.

There’s certainly an extraordinary amount of running about (Sean Young excepted…), to the level of a particularly energetic Doctor Who episode, and I liked Killian as a heroine: she’s very tenacious, and doesn’t let bureaucracy get in the way of doing the right thing. While the worms may not have been all that, some of the space effects were actually perfectly serviceable – likely as good as anything The Asylum have ever produced. If you are expecting Dune, you are clearly going to be massively disappointed. Hell, even if you are expecting Tremors, you’ll be underwhelmed. But as a cheap, B-movie slice of pulp SF, I found this perfectly fine. I just wish Astrid had yelled after taking care of one of the worms, “Broke into the wrong goddamn space-ship, didn’t you, ya bastard!”

Dir: Glenn Campbell, Tammy Klein
Star: Emily Killian, Anna Telfer, Manny Zaldivar, Sean Young

The Long Kiss Goodnight – 25 years on

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★★★
“We have a mommy who slays the monsters for her daughter – but the monsters are real.” — Shane Black“

As mentioned in my review of Kate, I was startled to discover I had never reviewed this, since it is one of the most well-known entries in the action heroine genre of its time. Since its time was almost exactly 25 years ago  – the movie was released on October 11, 1996 – now seems as good a point as any to rectify the omission. It was the second collaboration in our field between Renny Harlin and then-wife Geena Davis. The first was Cutthroat Island, a film whose troubled production and spectacular failure we have previously covered. But that did not dissuade either Harlin or studio New Line Pictures from trying again, albeit without the troublesome period setting and sea-going. As a result, the budget here was $65 million, a third lower than Cutthroat.

Some aspects were still not exactly cheap. Writer Shane Black was, at the time, a ‘rock star” screenplay author, having written Lethal Weapon – though subsequent efforts The Last Boy Scout and The Last Action Hero had not lived up to commercial expectations. Still, the script for this provoked a bidding war between New Line, Warner Brothers and Columbia Studios, eventually costing the first-named $4 million in July 1994, including a $500K producer’s fee for Black. That was a new record for a spec script, one which would last more than a decade, breaking the previous high of $3 million, paid to Joe Eszterhas for Basic Instinct. This was before filming on Cutthroat Island had even started, so production of Goodnight was put on the back-burner. Consequently, shooting did not begin until 18 months after the script was purchased.

It took place from January-May 1996 in Ontario, Canada, and the conditions posed many issues for the cast and crew. According to Harlin, “The coldest night was when we were working on the bridge in the end sequence. It was a night when the wind was blowing 70 miles an hour and it was minus 98 degrees with the wind chill.” Though it was probably Davis, who had to pretend she was unconscious and lie on the ground, who experienced the worst of it. Harlin had nothing but praise for her: “Geena’s particularly tough. She’s very athletic and very determined. So, if there’s anything she feels that she can’t do, she’ll put all her energies into making sure that she can learn it, and by the time it is needed, she can do it.”

Generally, however, production went smoothly – save for a historic location burning down.  But if you read Black’s February 1995 script, you can see the violence has been significantly toned down by the time it reaches the screen. For example, this line depicting a character, shot in the head in a diner: “Mr. Shotgun dies on his feet. Outgoing matter. Flung. Spattered on the grill where it sizzles along with burnt hamburger.” Ick. A test screening also triggered a significant change. Jackson’s character, private eye Mitch Henessey, was originally intended to die, but the audience reaction was so negative, that Harlin went back and shot additional footage. “That’s right! You can’t kill me, motherfuckers!” now crows Henessey, as he comes back from the dead.

While not the disaster at the box-office which was Cutthroat Island, it wasn’t a great success. In its opening weekend, it came in at #3, well back of fellow new release The Ghost and the Darkness, and even behind The First Wives’ Club, in its fourth week out. By the end of its run, it had taken $33.4 million, though did better overseas, with $56 million. Still, that $89.4 million was not much more than the production budget and after promotion and other costs, profits will have been slim to non-existent. Was it a hang-over from Cutthroat? Poor marketing? Or simply having an action heroine? Black reckons “It might have made more money” with a male lead. That all said, how does it stand up, a quarter-century later?

Truth be told, I’ve seen this several times over the years: it always feels I should like it more than I do, and I come away feeling a little disappointed. Especially now, it is a product of its time, and certainly, pales in comparison to not dissimilar spy movies since, such as Salt or Atomic Blonde. The pacing feels particularly leisurely, with it being close to an hour before Samantha Caine (Davis) gets fully in touch with her inner assassin, “Charly” Baltimore. Charly suffered amnesia after a fall on a mission eight years previously, and had become happy housewife Samantha, complete with boyfriend and adorable little moppet. But a blow to the head reawakens Charley – much to the concern of a number of people, not least of whom are her former employers, to whom she could now become an embarrassment.

Firstly, what is it with Black and hyperviolent Christmas film? Like Die Hard, and much of his output, this takes place over the festive season because… I guess it’s a counterpoint to that hyperviolence. That aside, this is mostly the journey of Charly to rediscover her past, but the terrorist mission she was targeted with disrupting, is about to happen in a couple of days – what are the odds? – as a CIA false-flag operation, under Assistant Director Leland Perkins (Malahide). As leverage against her, Perkins’s minion (Bierko) kidnaps the moppet. Big mistake. Charly storms in and rescues her daughter, before having to stop the planned attack. I must say, the moppet is remarkably resilient, surviving being thrown through a hole in the wall of her house, and a hellacious tanker crash, with barely a scratch.

It might have been more fun to have sustained the housewife/spy duality for longer e.g. having Charly turn up at the PTA, or deal with the thousand and one microaggressions of everyday suburban life. Instead, we get rather too many scenes of her driving round with Henessey. These are kinda fun – there’s an entire film to be made about the shady PI, with his sideline in blackmail – yet in a movie that’s two hours long, feel like needless padding. The bad guys are basically stupid, wasting any number of opportunities to take care of the problem i.e. Charley, and go about their plot in a way that… well, let’s be charitable and say, maybe it made sense in the mid-nineties. That is not the only aspect to have dated poorly. The whole “false flag” thing now has the distinct scent of conspiracy nut to it, since we’ve heard this claimed for virtually every attack since 9/11.

It’s certainly not all bad though. Davis is great on both sides of her split personality, eventually merging them into a whole which feels comfortable. There’s no denying her derring-do, and on several occasions, Harlin shoots things so you feel certain it’s a stunt double assembling a gun, or ice-skating, only to pan up and show – nope, it was Geena. The final explosion at Niagara Falls is as spectacular a giant fireball as you could hope to see, and the action scenes in general are top-notch stuff, from a time before you assumed CGI was always involved. However, I think I preferred Cutthroat, not least due to its more consistent tone. Black always wants to seem both hard-edged and jokey; he doesn’t get it right here, leaving each side pointing a finger at the other, in accusatory fashion.

Both Jackson and Harlin speak fondly of the film. Jackson calls Long Kiss the favorite of his own films to watch, and Harlin agrees. Despite the initially underwhelming return, its cult status has helped to feed discussion of a sequel over the years, though Davis – long divorced from Harlin – would not be involved. The director said it would be about Jackson’s character crossing paths with an adult version of Davis’s daughter. Harlin now lives in China, where the film is apparently well-regarded and said that “Several people, producers and financiers, here in China have talked to me about doing either a Chinese remake or doing an English-language sequel.” As of June 2021, he still wants to make a second part.

Will it ever happen? Only time will tell, though given how long since the original movie, it seems doubtful. But we’ll always have that, and the moderate yet violent delights of Geena Davis as a home-maker turned lethal operative.

Dir: Renny Harlin
Star: Geena Davis, Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Malahide, Craig Bierko

Babysitter Must Die

  By

★★★½
“The babysitter, murders”

Josie (Scott) is a babysitter, though her real interest is her work as a leader in the Girl Guide-like “Mustard Seed” summer camp. In this she mentors young girls, and accumulates some nifty skills of her own. This is relevant, due to her current situation.  She’s taking care of Sophie (Hazen), the youngest daughter of the Castillo family. The father is a rich music mogul, and they live in a remote mansion, deep in the Utah mountains. The family come back early, but before Josie can leave – she’s playing hide and seek with Sophie – there’s a home invasion by three people, under the leadership of The Woman (Yeaman). They’re no regular burglars, but members of a Satanic cult, intent on retrieving artifacts hidden in the house by its previous owners. These can then be used to sacrifice the inhabitants, and open a portal for… something not very nice to enter our world. 

It’s quickly made clear that the new arrivals have no problems with killing anyone who attempts to interfere with their mission. But they don’t initially know about Josie’s presence. You can probably work out how the rest of the movie goes from there – and you’ll be more or less right. Josie gets caught, escapes and taps into her inner warrioress, to ensure at least Sophie survives the night. She picks off the intruders, one by one, before eventually facing off against The Woman. 

While there’s not an enormous amount new or special in the execution, there are enough wrinkles to lift this above average for the “home invasion” sub-genre. Firstly the heroine is unusual enough to be interesting. She’s a quiet, understated type, who’d rather spend the night babysitting, than go to a party with her friends. Her background in the Mustard Seeds provides a justification for some of her abilities, though it’s an angle I’d like to have seen used more. Maybe, given the Christmas setting,  thrown in some Home Alone-style improvised defenses? The other main strength is the antagonist being a woman too, and Yeaman delivers the necessary level of intensity to pull off the role. The apocalyptic motivation is also a fresh one, and there’s enough background dropped in over the course of proceedings, to give this more depth than “because cultists”.

There are some holes in the plot. For example, at one point when Josie is fighting one of the cultists, things get a bit noisy – but the other two seem completely oblivious. There are also points where Josie’s actions seem illogical, or at least where her motivation is unclear. However, Glass keeps things moving forward with sufficient energy to overcome any issues. Credit is also due to cinematographer Neil Fernandez, who does a good job of capturing the isolation, from the opening shot as Josie drives up with her Mom to the mansion. An early game of hide-and-seek both foreshadows subsequent events, and gives us a good look at the home’s interior. For a small-scale, relatively low-budget production this was a pleasant surprise. At 76 minutes, it does what it needs to, and in a lean, efficient way.

Dir: Kohl Glass
Star: Riley Scott, Melinda Yeaman, Nic Fitzgerald, Scarlett Hazen

The Trip

  By

★★★½
“One bad trip – but in a good way.”

This is a nasty, mean-spirited piece of work. But I mean that as a compliment, for it’s clearly intended as such. The European Queen of Action Heroines Rapace (I must get round to giving her, her own tag!)  stars as soap actress Lisa, whose marriage to her director there, Lars (Hennie), is on severely shaky ground. So shaky, in fact, that Lars plans to use their upcoming weekend getaway to his father’s cabin to kill Lisa, cut up the body and dispose of it in a nearby lake, while saying she vanished on a solo hike. Except, just as he’s about to enact the plan, it turns out Lisa also intends to kill him in a “hunting accident”, and she gets the jump on her spouse. But before she can enact her plan, an accomplice of his shows up. Then three escaped convicts (literally) drop in to the cottage, with bad intentions of their own.

In some ways, it’s reminiscent of a hyperviolent version of seventies theatrical farce, something with a title like Run For Your Wife. Plot twist is piled upon twist, the characters furiously reacting to every additional complication and new arrival as best they can, in the hope of finding a way out of the mess.  The original Norwegian title translates as “For worse” – as in “For better or…”, and that’s probably a better one than the highly-generic name Netflix tacked on. You will need a strong stomach, to be sure. Wirkola’s previous work has often been in the horror genre, such as Nazi zombie movie Dead Snow and it’s sequal, and that informs a lot of the brutality here. But he also directed What Happened to Monday, also starring Rapace, and this re-union is another good effort. Not all the shots land as they should – there’s what feels like a painfully extended sequence of one of the prisoners going to the toilet on the attic floor, which frankly, I could have done without.

However, the bulk of it works well, if you’re in the mood for brutal black comedy. Having a couple who genuinely want to kill each other, and forcing them to team up against a greater, external threat, is a concept full of potential, and it’s mined with energy and enthusiasm. I particularly loved Lars’s geriatric father, who leaves his nursing home and turns up with a zero-tolerance approach to everyone. But Rapace’s character is the focus, cutting and stabbing her way through proceedings with the best (or worst) of them, while taking no small amount of damage – as the picture (top) suggests. This may not be the sort of film I want to re-visit on a regular basis; not knowing what was coming up certainly felt a significant part of the fun. However, as a bloody good time, with the emphasis on “bloody,” it delivered everything I was hoping, and a little more.

Dir: Tommy Wirkola
Star: Noomi Rapace, Aksel Hennie, Atle Antonsen, Christian Rubeck
a.k.a. I onde dager