Category: Review

Fall

  By

★★★★
“Nope. NopeNopeNope. Nope.”

I never considered myself to be afraid of heights. I respect them, sure. But I am capable of going up the ladder to change that annoying smoke alarm battery without a safety net. This film though, literally gave me sweaty palms. It’s about climber Becky Connor (Currey) who lost her husband Dan (Gooding) in a rockface accident a year before, and has spiralled down into alcoholism and depression since. Her father (Morgan) gets her best friend Shiloh Hunter (Gardner) to intervene, and she convinces Becky the best thing is to get back on horse, with a climb of a two thousand feet tall, abandoned TV mast. 

The journey up is where the moist hands started. I don’t care how nice the views might be, I’m afraid it’s going to be a no from me, dawg. Adding to the fraught tension, is the focus by Mann on the decaying structure: rust, missing bolts and general creakiness. It’s like Final Destination: you know something is inevitably going to go terribly wrong, it’s just a question of when, and the specifics. It duly does, leaving the pair stranded near the top, on a platform about the size of our dining table, with no route down or way to call for help. The rest of the film is the struggle of Becky and Hunter (she uses her last name, or her social media identity of “Danger Deb”) to find a way to do one or the other. 

Most of it is well-written, with the two women using every bit of ingenuity, as well as both their physical and mental strength, in that struggle. While I was ahead of the plot a couple of times – some of the foreshadowing isn’t as subtle as it could be – there was one doozy of a twist near the end, that we definitely did not see coming. By the end, there’s no doubt Becky is an utterly badass, prepared to survive by any means necessary. My main complaint, storywise, was the clunky shoehorning in of a wedge issue to divide her and Hunter. This served no dramatic purpose, and had me rolling my eyes at the incongruity of it all. Hello: you are two thousand feet in the air!

Technically, however, it’s very well done, giving the viewer a real sense of what it must be like. If you are the slightest bit sensitive about heights, this film will find out, force its way into those cracks, and use them as leverage, to an almost queasy extent. I found it easy to believe they were genuinely up there, even if neither lead actress has quite the ripped physique of a real climber, someone like Slovenian Janja Gambret. I did wonder if it was potentially going to go full The Descent on us at the end, and embrace its inner bleakness. I won’t say whether or not it does. However, I suspect that the next time our smoke alarm starts to beep, its battery will have to change itself.

Dir: Scott Mann
Star: Grace Caroline Currey, Virginia Gardner, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Mason Gooding

Kimi

  By

★★★
“Blue is the warmest colour”

Angela Childs (Kravitz) is a computer programmer who fixes bugs on the new smart speaker “Kimi”. It’s a perfect job, as she suffers from agoraphobia but can work at home, interrupted only by occasional sex with friendly neighbour (Bowers). When she finds a recording she thinks is a sexual assault on a woman, she contacts her superiors, who don’t seem eager to contact the FBI. Angela experienced an assault in the past herself (causing her agoraphobia), and goes directly to an executive at the central office, Natalie Chowdhury (Wilson). What she does not know is, that her company is about to go public and the woman she heard, the lover of its CEO, is already dead. Not only are the authorities uninformed, her own company has sent hired killers on her trail, with state-of-the-art tech to locate Angela. She must leave her home, agoraphobia or not.

This movie got my initial attention when I saw the poster with a blue-haired Zoë Kravitz and the word “Kimi” over it – I originally thought that would be the name of her character. I don’t know if this movie was actually shown in cinema in the US (Jim: no, it went straight to streaming), here in Germany it ran in a few cinemas for about 2 weeks. In America it can be seen on HBO Max; here in Germany it is available on Amazon-Prime. This is good as there is – unlike the US – no German DVD release. I worried this would be another one of those “woke” movies: it’s not. Written by first-class screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Mission Impossible“, Spider-Man (2002), Indiana Jones 4) and directed by Steven Soderbergh, this movie proves to be very effective.

We see Kravitz living quite comfortably in her large flat and though she can only see her mother online and isn’t able to go downstairs to meet her friend for some fast-food in front of the door, she isn’t missing much. She more or less has everything she needs at home. In that respect the movie perfectly mirrors the situation many of us around the globe experienced during the lockdowns, when we were asked to work from home if we could. Let’s face it, quite a lot of people got used to this kind of situation, and companies could save a lot of money, not needing to have their employees actually in a dedicated working place.

Kimi indirectly discusses this attitude, but also seems to make a clear point that there is a need to leave your own four walls sometimes, because not everything can be handled from your laptop. That said, it’s quite disturbing how much can be done by digital tracking, and this results in a real “woman hunt” through the city, with Angela’s chances rising when she gets rid of her mobile phone. The world outside is frightening through her eyes: some people are out but it’s not too crowded until she gets into a demonstration. Most shocking is the way she is almost kidnapped there by the assassins, in broad daylight. I’d also like to mention the unusual but good and very interesting score by Cliff Martinez, such as when she escapes from the central office.

It is not until about an hour that Kravitz leaves her apartment. But ultimately her journey leads back home: in the end no one can help, not even a friendly stalker from across the street – only herself. The movie has been from time to time mentioned in comparison with Hitchcock’s Rear Window which I think is a bit too high praise. Other movies such as Blow Out (1981) by Brian de Palma, Enemy of the State (1998) with Will Smith and Gene Hackman, or the recent Netflix thriller The Woman in the Window (2021) with Amy Adams come to mind. The last one especially shares the basic situation of the protagonist with this, though Window is much less successful. Kimi is also part of a long line of what could be called “digital surveillance thrillers”.

David Koepp himself once wrote a similar movie: Panic Room (2002) in which Jodie Foster had to defend herself and her daughter from that location against burglars. But while in Panic Room the main idea was to escape and get help, here there is no more security outside. The authorities can’t (or don’t want to) help, and your employer or company have turned against you. It’s a subject Soderbergh has previously covered in Haywire or Unsane. So, while Koepp and Soderbergh don’t tell an entirely new story here, they have put it on a contemporary level. This works, giving a new coat of paint to the old thriller genre, that has become a bit stale and isn’t seen so often anymore. Modern Hollywood seems more interested in the newest superhero movie or the latest Tom Cruise blockbuster.

Kravitz gives in my opinion a very good performance. I’ve never been a real fan, though she seems to have had a breakthrough as Catwoman in The Batman (2022), opposite Robert Pattinson. Here, I can’t complain: I was convinced the heroine was both agoraphobic and quite stubborn. The other actors here are largely unknown, yet give good, fitting performances, and it all comes together well. There are some nice audio ideas in the movie; for example when Angela puts on her headphones everything becomes quiet. This is the same thing we do on a daily basis: just try to fade out the real world. Kimi seems to be saying that we maybe shouldn’t do this so often. We should go out and involve ourselves, and take a stand for things we care for. That’s not a bad message, I think.

Dir: Stephen Soderbergh
Star: Zoë Kravitz, Byron Bowers, Rita Wilson, Erika Christensen

Rendez-vous

  By

★★★★
“There’s so many crazy people out there…”

I did not originally expect to be reviewing this here. I watched it because of the technical elements, which I’ll get to in a bit. However, by the end, it does qualify – though you certainly wouldn’t think so from how things begin. It gets underway with Lili (Puig) waiting for a date arranged over the Internet with Eduardo (Alcantara). He shows up late, very apologetic after having been mugged, and having had his phone taken, but is utterly charming, and the chemistry with Lili is immediate. They end up back at his place for dinner. But as he’s cooking on the kitchen, the tone of the evening changes, when she hears his supposedly stolen phone going off in his jacket…

That’s the beginning of a shift in content from warm romance into something considerably darker, and in which the dynamic changes several times before the final credits roll. As the above indicates, it initially seems that Eduardo is the problem. However, it’s considerably more complex, with Lili also having her own secrets. Quite how it’ll play out remains in doubt until the final scene, with the best-laid plans going astray along the route. I will say this though: if I ever engage in a kidnapping scheme, I won’t be answering the door to visitors. This does deliver some black comedy, when a drunk pal of Eduardo swings by, and wildly misinterprets the situation unfolding in front of his booze-filled eyes.

I mentioned the technical side. The hook here is the movie unfolds in a single, 100+ minute shot. Even more startling is what director Arrayales said: “We couldn’t afford another chance to shoot the movie again, so the movie is the only take we did. We really prepared hard, for three weeks with the actors, and a week with the DP just to plan the whole movie. That was about it: four or five weeks of rehearsals and one chance to make it.” Hard not to be impressed. While certainly not the first to use a single shot, most either fake it or, at least, get to use multiple takes. It’s a tribute to the makers that, after initially being the focus, you largely forget about the gimmick, with the story and characters taking over.

A good portion of the proceedings are more mental than physical. Eduardo pushes Lili for what he believes to be the truth, while she is resolute in stating he has got the situation very, very wrong. However, it eventually becomes more direct in its action, with a hunt unfolding around the two levels of Eduardo’s house (complete with make-up and effects artists sneaking around to apply their art out of shot!). You may well figure out the final direction before it happens, yet I’d be impressed if you accurately predict the specifics of the resolution. Though it’s not especially important if you do. Between the technical execution and the other elements, there’s more than sufficient elsewhere to justify the experience. 

Dir: Pablo Olmos Arrayales
Star: Helena Puig, Antonio Alcantara

Badland Doves

  By

★★
“When doves cry.”

I am contractually obliged to appreciate at least somewhat, any film made here in Arizona. This certainly fits the bill, having been shot at places like the Pioneer Living History Museum, Sitgreaves National Forest and Winters Film Group Studio. However, it is a fairly basic tale of two-pronged revenge, with significant pacing issues. The proceedings only come to life in the last 20 minutes – and barely that. Initially, matters are more than a tad confusing, as we jump about in time and space without apparent notification. But the basic principal is eventually established.

Revenger #1 is Regina Silva (Martin), whose family were killed by masked intruders. Following that, she got shooting lessons from a conveniently passing gunslinger, and set out to find those responsible, working as a saloon prostitute because it was apparently the best way to find them. Yeah. About that… Anyway, Revenger #2 is Victoria Bonham (Penny), who just so happens to be the madam of a brothel, also seeking justice after one of her girls was murdered. Coincidentally, Regina shows up, and they eventually discover they are both looking for the same person, Pete Chalmers (Johnston). However, his father (Greenfield) wields so much power in the town, his son is basically untouchable. Victoria wants to leverage legal means against Pete, while Regina prefers more direct action, and isn’t willing to wait around forever, while the wheels of the law grind slowly away.

If you were to summarize my reactions to this, the first ten minutes would be “What is going on?”. The next twenty would likely be, “Ah, ok. I know where this is heading.” After that, we get about half an hour of, “Is anything else of significance going to happen?”, then twenty of moderate satisfaction, as Chalmers and his forces go to battle with Regina and her allies. However, the action here is underwhelming, not least because it appears the bad guys have all the shooting skills of Star Wars stormtroopers, unable to hit stationary targets from about ten paces, in broad daylight (as shown, top). Pete is an underwhelming villain too: beyond “alcohol’s to blame,” it’s never particularly established why he attacked Regina’s family or killed Victoria’s employee. Motivation: it’s vastly over-rated, apparently.

The last five minutes do offer at least something unexpected, in terms of the mechanism by which revenge is achieved. It’s about the only novel angle the film has to offer, and you sense this is one of those cases where having the same person writing, editing and directing proved problematic. I’m not convinced the story can handle the two-pronged approach, with the script leaving both threads feeling in need of development.The dual female leads aren’t bad, though I was distracted by Penny’s accent, which sounds more Antipodean than Arizona. To be fair, it’s really not any worse than Bad Girls, the far larger budgeted “whores out for revenge” film. However, that is not exactly a high bar to clear. For passion projects like this, I have no problem forgiving budgetary restrictions, and to be fair, this looks and sounds decent. The plodding and meandering script, however, is much harder to see past.

Dir: Paul Winters
Star: Sandy Penny, Jessica Y. Martin, Manny Greenfield, Daniel Johnston
A version of this review originally appeared on my other review site, Film Blitz.

Barbie Spy Squad

  By

★★
“Imagination, life is your creation”

Ah, the things I watch for you people. Safe to say, this probably hit new heights of “I am not the target demographic”, but it’s hard to argue it is outside the remit of the site. To the film’s credit, this is not as bad as I feared it might be. If I had an eight-year-old daughter – such a shame this turned up about 25 years too late! – there would be far worse things to have inflicted on me. Not that I’ll exactly be chasing down any of the other thirty-nine entries in the franchise, mind you. There will be no Barbie & Her Sisters in The Great Puppy Adventure review here. But as lightly amusing, just about tolerable to an adult spy pastiches go… this was lightly amusing and just about tolerable.

Unsurprisingly, the heroine is Barbie (Lindbeck) and her two friends, who are so blandly forgettable I can’t even remember their names. The trip spend all their spare time doing gymnastics, until recruited by Aunt Zoe (Weseluck) to become agents in a covert organization, accessed through a secret door in the HOLLYWOOD sign. They are to put their acrobatic skills to use, catching a cat-burglar who is accumulating gems that will be used in an electromagnetic pulse weapon by the villains. [If you have not figured out the real identity of the cat-burglar inside the first five minutes, I am concerned for you.] There will be training missions! Adorable robo-sidekicks! Many, many gadgets! Valuable life lessons!

In other words, this is absolutely what you would expect: entirely safe, wholesome entertainment for those to whom Barbie is an aspirational role-model (albeit one radically toned down in physique from the original’s 36-18-33 figure). It plays mostly like a G-rated version of Charlie’s Angels, with the trio getting into and out of scrapes, while exchanging witty banter. There are moments where it appears to teeter on the edge of genuine satire, such as Aunt Zoe sternly warning the trio that this is a covert mission… while they roar through the city streets on their lurid trio of super-powered motorcycles. However, I’m not convinced this was intentional, with most of this apparently taking itself seriously. Well, as seriously as a movie about secret agent Barbie ever could be.

The sheer predictability of this does become grinding, to the extent you barely need to watch this to follow the plot. The morality on view is rarely subtle, though there are certainly worse concepts to promote than believing in yourself and supporting your friends. The animation is mid-tier: there’s not much in the way of facial expression here, though since this is replicating plastic dolls, I guess that makes sense. However, the action is reasonably well-done, even if I did find myself thinking a live-action version would have been preferable. On the other hand, I saw the live-action Kim Possible movie, which started from a much stronger foundation, yet still came up well short. Best leave Barbie in the world of imagination, I suspect.

Dir: Michael Goguen, Conrad Helten
Star (voice): Erica Lindbeck, Stephanie Sheh, Jenny Pellicer, Cathy Weseluck

Black Medicine

  By

★★★
“The Hypocritic oath…”

I guess, at its heart, this is the story of two mothers. There’s Jo (Campbell-Hughes), an anaesthetist who has been struck off the medical register, for reasons that are left murky. She’s now practicing her healing arts on the underground market, from patching up dubious stabbing victims, to carrying out unlicensed abortions. Jo lost her daughter to meningitis, and has split from her husband. Then there’s Bernadette (Brady), a wealthy but no less murky character. Her daughter is dying, and in desperate need of a transplant. To that end, Bernadette has kidnapped a young woman, Aine (McNulty), with the intention of using her as an unwilling organ donor, and needs Jo’s help for the operation. But when Aine – who would be about the age of Jo’s daughter had she lived – escapes and hides in the back of the physician’s car, Jo is left with a series of difficult decisions.

Set in Northern Ireland, this is solid rather than spectacular. It has a good central performance at its core by Campbell-Hughes, who plays a complex and contradictory character. For example, Jo has a major drug-habit, yet remains highly functioning. [I’d never seen someone administer illicit pharmaceuticals through eye-drops before. Chris, apparently, was aware of this: I bow to her superior knowledge of such things, likely stemming from her life in eighties New York!] You sense the point that what she is being asked, and eventually ordered, to do has crossed a moral line in the sand, even if her recalcitrance is going to cause more problems. That’s because Bernadette is prepared to do whatever it takes to save her own daughter – something Jo was unable to do.

It’s the contract and similarities between the two women which keep the film interesting, both being utterly convinced their actions are morally justified, although the film-makers’ sympathies are clearly more with Jo. Less effective is the plotting, which feels far from watertight. Perhaps the biggest hole is the way in which Bernadette discovers Aine’s location, after the latter places a call to her boyfriend from Jo’s landline. Aside from being very stupid on Aine’s part, and not in line with the street-smart character to that point, I’m not sure I even know anyone who has a landline. Except for my father, and he’s 85. Jo’s ex-husband seems to exist purely to give Bernadette some kind of leverage, and generally, there are a number of unanswered questions whose answers I feel would have benefited the narrative.

Eastwood, making his feature debut, does have a nice style, depicting Belfast almost entirely at night, in a moist, neon-drenched way that lends it a certain exotic flavour. This would make an interesting double-bill with the similarly Irish-set A Good Woman is Hard to Find, which is also about a woman forced into an unwanted confrontation with the criminal world, by the sudden arrival in her life of an unexpected visitor. This isn’t quite as compelling, lacking the relentless sense of escalation, yet did still keep me engaged for the bulk of the running time, and offers an original scenario with effort put into developing both its heroine and the villainess.

Dir: Colum Eastwood
Star: Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Amybeth McNulty, Orla Brady, Shashi Rami

Shark Huntress

  By

★½
“Eco-garbage.”

I’ve previously talked about – OK, “ranted” may not be inappropriate – the perils of message movies. But I did wonder whether it was the specific content to which I objected. Would I dislike a film so much, if I was on board with its strident message? On the evidence here, I can confidently state: hell, yes. For this is painfully earnest and hard to watch, much though I agree with the environmental topic, that humanity’s use of plastics are threatening the oceans. An alternative needs to be found. By which I mean, I strongly suggest you find an alternative to watching this movie. The poster has clearly strayed in from a far more entertaining offering, and bears little resemblance to what this provides. 

The heroine is Sheila (Grey), who heads out to a Pacific island, after the disappearance of her mother. The body turns up, showing marks indicating she was eaten by a great white shark. Which is odd, since they’re not found within a thousand miles of the place. Sheila comes increasingly to believe the attack was not a natural occurrence, but engineered by “the plastic people” in response to her mother’s research, which threatened their business. She wants to kill the shark in question, but also expose the truth behind it, and make those responsible pay for their actions. To that end, she teams up with a group of like-minded ecowarriors, to investigate the company. Naturally, the target isn’t just sitting back and letting their nefarious machinations be exposed. 

There is the germ of an interesting idea here, along the lines of Moby Dick, only for it to be ruthlessly strangled in incompetent execution. Far too much time is spent pounding home the message about waste, which should have been used to develop the plot. There is no real antagonist, just an all but faceless corporation, whose actions make little or no sense. I mean, if you want to get rid of somebody, your plan is flying a shark thousands of miles, letting it go and… hoping it eats the target? Later, they’re quite happy to take someone out by more conventional means. Meanwhile, rather than being any kind of shark huntress, it takes Sheila over 65 minutes before she goes past her ankles, anywhere except a hotel swimming-pool for lessons in Diving 1.0.1.

I didn’t mind Grey, despite English not being her first language: there are occasional moments of effective emoting, such as her mother’s funeral. The photography is occasionally good, though the film desperately needs better colour matching. The problems are… everywhere else, such as a supporting character who literally says things like “thumbs-down emoji”. Or an ending of staggering abruptness, which involves a stabbing with a pen and a conveniently passing shark, while low-key elevator music plays in the background. I must admit, long before we reached that point, I was hoping the shark would bring in some of its mates, and consume everyone involved with this, in one giant feeding frenzy. Spoiler alert: no such luck.

Dir: John Riggins
Star: Katrina Grey, Dean Alexandrou, John Flano, Russell Geoffrey Banks

Super Bitches and Action Babes, by Rikke Schubart

  By

Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: N/A

Subtitled, The Female Hero in Popular Cinema, 1970-2006, this is non-fiction, being a feminist – I guess, more post-feminist – analysis of action heroines over the time in question. It made for an interesting read, being considerably more dense than my typical reading material: Schubert seems to be aiming at an audience that already know what she means, with a good number of terms left unexplained in the text. Yet it was equally frustrating: for every section that had me nodding in agreement, there was one where I was at least raising an eyebrow, if not snorting derisively.Parts are incisive and smart. Others exemplify the worst excesses of ivory-tower academia.

The basic concept appears to be that action heroines fall into five archetypes: the dominatrix, the Amazon, the daughter, the mother, and the rape-avenger. Some may incorporate elements from more than one; Schubart makes the argument that The Bride from Kill Bill is all five, to some degree. To make her case, she looks at example of actresses who have made their careers in the genre, from Pam Grier through Michelle Yeoh to Milla Jovovich, and also specific entries such as Xena: Warrior Princess and the Alien franchise. There are some issues here: calling Pam Grier’s Coffy “action cinema’s first female hero,” is simply wrong. Even if you ignore silent heroines like Kathlyn Williams and Pearl White, who have admittedly fallen into obscurity, Cheng Pei-Pei is more deserving of the title for 1966’s Come Drink With Me. Schubart clearly knows of Hong Kong cinema, as her section on Yeoh indicates. So why no mention of Cheng?

Indeed, Grier is also called “the biggest, baddest and most beautiful of all female heroes in popular cinema.” While she undeniably deserves respect, I’d disagree with all three of those claims. There are some other gaffes as well, e.g. references to an Israeli fighting style called “krav manga“, which is presumably the art of hitting someone with Japanese comics. Or quoting Kill Bill as “Silly rabbit. Tricks are for kids,” and analyzing it on that basis. Perhaps Trix breakfast cereal doesn’t exist in Denmark? Or the assertion that Charlie’s Angels was guilty of “copying the martial arts wirework of The Matrix“. Um, wirework hardly started there, and in any case, that’s because they shared an action choroeographer in Yuen Wo-Ping? Other sections have not aged well, such as the blunt proclamation that “there is no historical evidence” as to the existence of genuine Amazons, and the analysis of Jovovich’s career as characters that “appear almost ugly with marked features, an androgynous appearance, and a hysterical behavior” does not stand up well from a current perspective.

On the other hand, Schubart is entirely willing to go against prevailing wisdom. For example, I can’t argue with her calling the much-derided Barb Wire “a shameless and witty remake of Casablanca” (though it gets scant coverage, considering its cover placement). She also defends Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, saying “My experience is that men who have enjoyed the ‘nauseating’ and ‘sickening’ pleasures of Ilsa have turned out to become quite normal social beings.” Guilty as charged. I must also agree – to the point that I’d like this on a T-shirt – when Schubart says, “A film is not better because it is politically correct, nor is it worse because it is politically incorrect.” In comparison to some academics, she seems utterly sane. She quotes one such scholar, the apparently borderline lunatic Richard Dyer, as saying “For the male viewer, action movies have a lot in common with being fellated.” Okay. Whatever, dude. Schubart, mercifully, largely avoids such excesses.

Largely, but unfortunately not completely, such as her claim that “Being a man is not an essence, but something which must constantly be tested and proved by, for example, raping women.” [Emphasis added] It is moments like that which do make it hard to buy into her analysis, since they appear to stem from a world-view incompatible with my own. Yet, Schubart would perhaps be fine with that, since one of the tenets of postfeminism she espouses, is a film can be read in different ways, depending on the reader’s experiences, and that all such readings have legitimacy. Seems reasonable to me: presumably the same applies to her book. That flexibility, and the five archetypes, are worthwhile elements here, which I’ll absorb going forward. “Men’s recognition of each other’s accomplishments rests on acts of violence”? Not so much.

Author: Rikke Schubart
Publisher: McFarland, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book

A Resistance

  By

★★★
“Not your usual women-in-prison film…”

This takes place in 1919-20, when Korea was under occupation by the Japanese [there seems to be quite a lot of this about; I’ve seen a bunch of Chinese movies set when that country was occupied by Japan as well]. Even demonstrating against the Japanese, or in favour of Korean independence, was sternly forbidden, with those taking part likely to be arrested and thrown in prison for months. If they were lucky, that is: an opening caption tells us 7,500 were killed in the protests or died in jail subsequently. Even for those merely arrested, this was not a “nice” prison, to put it mildly, with horrendously over-crowded conditions (24 to a cell!), freezing temperatures and meagre rations.

Once such prisoner was Yu Gwan Sun (Go), 16 years old at the time of her imprisonment: her sentence was three years, due to contempt of court being added on to the normal charge. However, she would not be cowed by the punishment, and refused to bow to the will of her captors – for example, refusing to speak to them in Japanese, even though she could. Such disrespect, and her “defiant face”, inevitably brought Yu into conflict with the authorities, including the warden, and Korean collaborator Jung Chun-young, who acts as a translator. They try to break her will, but her refusal to accept even her status as a prisoner, never mind their authority, remains defiant.

The historical Yu does seem to have been an unrepentant, patriotic bad-ass, sometimes referred to as Korea’s Joan of Arc, and with at least half a dozen films based on her life story. While in prison, she wrote: “Even if my fingernails are torn out, my nose and ears are ripped apart, and my legs and arms are crushed, this physical pain does not compare to the pain of losing my nation… My only remorse is not being able to do more than dedicating my life to my country.” Joe films almost the whole movie in stark black-and-white, save for occasional coloured flashbacks, and music is also used sparingly. This certainly gives a realism to proceedings, though I did feel the portrayal here was a bit too good to be true – putting the “Saint” in “Saint Joan”, if you wish.

It may also be a little restrained, with the tortures inflicted on her coming across as little more than an inconvenience. Perhaps the little things here are most effective, such as the prisoners sharing body warmth, to try and protect a new-born baby. It builds to Yu’s carefully crafted act of defiance, leading a cheer for Korean independence which flows through the prison and to the outside world, triggering further anti-Japanese protests. Even after her fellow inmates are released, she is kept in jail: the final lines of dialogue are an exchange that sums up her obstinate refusal to give up. Asked “Why must you do this?,” Yu almost shrugs: “Then who will?” [She died at age 17, still in jail, a few days before her scheduled release date.] This shines a light onto an area of history I knew nothing about, though I’m hard pushed to say it illuminated much more than the heroine.

Dir: Joe Min-ho
Star: Go Ah-sung, Ryu Kyung-soo, Kim Sae-byuk, Kim Ye-eun

Whore and Policewoman

  By

★★★
“We prefer the term ‘sex worker’ these days…”

If the title is more than a bit blunt, it’s certainly accurate. May Lin (Cheng) is a brash hooker, who runs a sideline in blackmail videos with her flatmate, Nana. But one night she comes home to find Nana near death, the victim of a brutal client. She tells the police about the video, but before she can give it to them, the perpetrator – rich and influential politician, Kao Tien Chin (Cho) – sends an army of beige trenchcoat wearing killers to take care of both Nana and May. The former succumbs, but the latter escapes and goes on the run. With the police force apparently leaking like a sieve and the case being shut down from on high, prosecutor Yin Li Shan sends his niece, Nancy Cheng (Mishiwaki), to link up with May and bring her in. But they’ll have to get past the trenchcoat mafia, among other threats, for there to be any hope of justice.

This is relatively late in the Hong Kong GWG cycle, and is rougher than most, in more ways than one. There is a nice character arc for May, who initially seems intensely dislikeable, but ends up fiercely loyal to her protector, after realizing the extent to which Nancy will go – literally taking a bullet for the prostitute. This is harshly demonstrated when May lets herself be gang-raped, to save the injured Nancy from that fate. While not in any way explicit, it’s a tough sequence to watch, May mouthing “Go away” to Nancy. Of course, there’s the usual bonding in the middle between the mismatched pair, as they realize neither deserves the scorn with which they view each other.

The plot is more than a little flimsy, with any number of points at which things could easily have been resolved. There are some remarkable moments of coincidence too. For instance, after escaping the trenchcoaters (in a rather risky-looking stunt, involving a plummeting jeep and a giant fireball), seconds later in screen time, May and Nancy bump into them again at a train station. Similarly, the rapists are coincidentally re-encountered, giving our heroines the opportunity for revenge. However, in both cases, the results are a solid bit of one versus many action, in the interesting environments of a train carriage and a food court respectively, so we’ll let it slip.

I do wonder if Nishiwaki was injured during shooting. Because when it comes to the final confrontation, at a party in Chin’s offices, Nancy is replaced by another character for the last battle, without explanation. It’s not a stand-in, it’s a completely different actress in a separate, unnamed role. Very bizarre. This may also have been the final movie of Nishiwaki’s Hong Kong career, which would lend support to the “major injury” theory. All told, this is decent enough. Not all of it works (though the crappy English sub job doesn’t help), yet a sufficient quantity does, and with acceptable pacing to ensure the viewer is never bored, at least for too long.

Dir: Kuo-Chu Huang
Star: Yim Lai Cheng, Michiko Nishiwaki, Hoi-San Kwan, Charlie Cho