Category: Review

Hamlet: The Drama of Vengeance

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★★★
“To she, or not to she…”

Asta Nielsen was not the first woman to play the part of Hamlet, even on film. As we’ve mentioned before, a short reel of Sarah Bernhardt performing the role was made as early as 1900. But this silent Danish movie, celebrating its centenary at the time of posting, is the first full-length feature to gender switch the role. It was inspired by Edward P. Vining’s book The Mystery of Hamlet, published in 1881, which suggested that the character made a lot more sense if you considered Hamlet to be a woman. An interesting idea, to be sure, and obviously changes significantly the relationship between Hamlet and both best friend Horatio, and Ophelia.

Of necessity, there are therefore some changes to the story. It begins with a prelude in which Hamlet’s father is away at war when his wife Gertrude gives birth. Fearing for her husband’s life, and wanting to secure the throne’s succession, she announces the girl child as a boy [a similar plotline was used in the Indian fllm, Rudhramadevi]. On her husband’s return, they vow to keep up the pretense. We also see more of Hamlet’s youth, attending the University of Wittenberg and forming her relationship with Horatio (Stieda), before being called back to Denmark. That happens when the king is murdered by her uncle, Claudius (von Winterstein), who has quickly married her mother, Queen Gertrude (Brandt). The supernatural element of the ghost of Hamlet’s father is also removed, in favour of Hamlet discovering Claudius’s knife in suspicious circumstances.

Thereafter, however, it follows familiar lines, with Hamlet faking madness in order to be able to investigate freely, and not be considered a threat. It’s probably this version’s weakest section, since it doesn’t seem she does much actual investigating, and watching someone pretend to be insane is kinda dull, especially in a silent version, with the inevitable tendency towards the over- side of acting. There’s also an absence of the Bard’s classic dialogue, for obvious reasons: no “To be, or not to be” in this version. When Hamlet stages a play re-enacting the death of her father, things perk up and head towards the rousing if tragic finale [spoiler: just about everyone dies].

This is not quite the oldest film reviewed here, Joan the Woman preceding its 1921 release by five years. Hamlet isn’t as successful, replacing the rousing battle scenes of Joan with some fairly stagey sequences of emoting by Nielsen, which at times did struggle to hold my interest. That said, Nielsen is actually very good in the role, and some scenes have power, such as her intense slithering across the floor to watch Claudius’s reaction to the play. I’ve queued up some of her other performances for later perusal. There’s something endearingly Goth about the production here, with her Hamlet being all dressed in black, with floppy hair and eye make-up. At times it almost looks like a promo video for The Cure. But other elements, such as Ophelia’s funeral, are highly Expressionist, with the film using bold tints to indicate location.

If what has been written above has piqued your interest, the whole thing is available on YouTube. While probably not something I’ll re-visit, I can’t say I felt like my two hours were wasted. It’s certainly an interesting take on a character which continues to fascinate and provoke debate, over 400 years after the play was first published.

Dir: Svend Gade and Heinz Schall.
Star: Asta Nielsen, Eduard von Winterstein, Mathilde Brandt, Heinz Stieda

Lady Mobster

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★★★
“Because ‘Lady Accountant’ wouldn’t have sold as well…”

The salacious sleeve promises considerably more than this can deliver. For we are actually talking a TV movie from the eighties here, with all the limitations that imposes on content and execution. Yet, if sold a lot more on sizzle than steak, and it did come very close to not qualifying here – likely the last scene being when it finally reached the finish line – I can say I was never bored.

Long-time soap opera queen Lucci plays Laurel, the young daughter of a mob family, who witnesses her parents being killed as part of a war between Mafia groups, over whether or not to go legitimate. She’s then taken in by one of her father’s allies, Victor Castle (Wiseman), and grows up as part of his family, becoming a lawyer and eventually marrying his son, Robert (Born). Castle has never given up the dream of getting out of the mob world, and with Laurel’s help is working towards that goal. However, the more traditional families are no less reluctant than they were decades previously, and the resulting feud comes once again to Laurel’s house and loved ones. She ends up taking over as the head of the family, and is now determined to find both those who killed her parents, and those intent on perpetuating the beef now.

It does play like a low-rent version of The Godfather, with Lucci playing the Michael Corleone role of someone who doesn’t really want to get involved in the criminal enterprise, yet finds herself increasingly drawn into it. As such, she’s good in the role, exuding the necessary confidence to make her facing down a room of Mafia dons at least plausible, if still somewhat unlikely. There’s an effective scene early on, when she has a meeting with a prospective partner of the Castles, and rips him a new one for false accounting and fraud. This establishes her character as at least a financial bad-ass, even if there’s precious little gun-play for her to do over the first 85 or so minutes.

Still, director Moxey has been doing this kind of thing for what seems like forever – he directed the original Charlie’s Angels pilot – and keeps the story-line progressing consistently. Certainly, Lauren’s resulting character arc is the best thing the film has going for it, as we see her develop over the course of the film. If this does resemble a pilot episode for a series that never happened, the way it finishes makes it one I would be more than slightly interested in watching. It feels a bit like an eighties version of La Reina Del Sur, with its story of a woman whose family ties to organized crime prove eventually to be a critical formative influence in her life. At the time, that was positively radical, and even if the treatment here is undeniably milder than I’d have preferred, I wasn’t left feeling like I’d been too badly deceived by the cover.

Dir: John Llewellyn Moxey
Star: Susan Lucci, Michael Nader, Roscoe Born, Joseph Wiseman

Feral Recruit, by Ginger Booth

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

While this does take a bit of time to get going, it’s worth persisting with. For there’s some particularly impressive world building here, and characters who are not your typical young adult fare. This takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, after an Ebola outbreak has devastated the United States, causing it to disintegrate into a collection of “superstates”, combining various old states into larger, autonomous territories. New York was, to borrow a (profane but accurate here) line from Snatch, “Proper fucked.” After the disease broke out, the city was sealed off and the epidemic left to burn itself out. The population was decimated, both by Ebola, and the lack of food which followed, known as “The Starve”. Only now, years later, has the city been re-opened and the survivors are beginning to rebuild.

The heroine here is Ava Panic – originally pronounced “Pah-nich”, but no-one bothers now. She survived as a gang rat in the White Rule group, rising to become “Queen Bee”, alongside its leader, Frosty. Eventually growing disenchanted, she left for a more official life and work, running one of the crews involved in rebuilding Manhattan. But an opportunity arises with the army looking to recruit new soldiers for the security forces. While they’re prepared to overlook Panic’s questionable past, how can a tiny girl, no matter how fierce and capable, cope with the ferocious physical demands of basic training? Never mind the discipline required by the military, a sharp contrast to her lawless gang rat life.

At times, it does feel like I was thrown in the deep end; there is a whole series of prequels available, which might have addressed this. A Book 1 needs to be able to stand on its own, and this was on slightly shaky ground there early on. But the depth of the world gradually made sense, and I appreciated the gutsy way in which Booth made her heroine imperfect. Indeed, making her a white power supporter – even a former one – is kinda risky, in terms of evoking heroine empathy. Admittedly, she joined White Rule after a particularly shocking incident, and Booth manages to make both Ava and Frosty more than the obvious Aryan stereotypes.

There has clearly been a lot of thought put into the detail of how society might be rebuilt after a world-shattering event like this – and another follows in the second half, when a tsunami triggered by the collapse of the melting ice-caps, sweeps the East coast of America. Perhaps it gets bogged down a little too much in those minutiae on occasion, though it’s never long before Ava’s progress forward continues. Interestingly, it doesn’t end quite the way I expected from the synopsis, but it’s always good when some problems are too much for a heroine to overcome; it makes them more human. This first installment finishes with Ava’s life heading in a different direction, and it’s one I’d be curious to follow her into.

Author: Ginger Booth
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 4 in the Calm Act Feral America series.

Streets of Vengeance

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★½
“Porn stars vs. Incels”

This poorly-conceived and even less effectively executed cheapo, starts off looking like a home-video recording of a movie, taken off late night TV. There’s a bikini-clad hostess, who introduces the film, and it might not have been a bad idea, had they actually run with it. Cut into the movie for spoof adverts, bad infomercials, further host segments, etc. Yeah, could have been fun. Instead, it’s completely forgotten until almost the end, when she pops back up… purely to showcase a trailer for the directors’ next film, Slash-lorette Party. Verily, the level of cringe is strong in this one. If it had even embraced the eighties aesthetic for which it is clearly aiming, that would have been a credible substitute. But outside of the synthwave score by the very wonderfully named “Vestron Vulture,” there’s hardly any effort put in there either.

Instead, what you get is porn star Mila Lynn  (McKinney), who is about to quit the profession. Her boss, disgruntled by the news, delivers her up to a member of The Sword, a “men’s rights” group who have been abducting and torturing other adult entertainment stars, blaming them for causing addiction to porn. Mila manages to escape, beating her captor to death with a baseball bat, and sets up a vigilante squad, who will take the fight to the members of The Sword, and show them the error of their ways.

The above sounds considerably more interesting than the reality. I will say, that most of the actresses make thoroughly convincing porn stars – unfortunately, this is mostly in the way they can’t act their way out of a paper-bag. The pacing is also terrible. At 101 minutes, it’s at least twenty too long, and takes far too long to get to the meat of the matter. As a result, it commits the cardinal sin of grindhouse cinema: being boring. This is in part because it insists on being didactic, pushing its moral viewpoint to an obvious and rather painful degree. That’s another sin in which you never see good grindhouse flix indulge. I Spit on Your Grave didn’t need to spell out any obvious messages.

There’s a certain hypocrisy here, given the female nudity on view, frequently combined with things like the owners having their throat slit, New York Ripper style. None of the main actresses indulge, implying they are in some way “better” than that. It also fails to make a coherent argument against The Sword’s proposition – basically that, without porn, there’d be no porn addiction, and those who profit are no better than pushers. It’s just taken as “bad,” m’kay? Of course, the brutality with Mila and her pals react, is morally little if any different from The Sword: an uncomfortable truth the film never dares address. All of which I could probably tolerate, if this was anything like fun to watch. It isn’t, and I couldn’t.

Dir: Paul Ragsdale, Angelica De Alba
Star: Delawna McKinney, Anthony Iava To’omata, Paige Le Ney, Daniel James Moody

Golden Arm

  By

★★★½
“Arms and the (wo)man.”

The sport of arm-wrestling has been featured in the movies before, most notably the Sylvester Stallone vehicle, Over the Top. But that wasn’t a comedy – at least, not intentionally. This entry, as well as switching to the distaff side, also has its tongue in cheek, while still sporting a strong message about female empowerment, that never becomes a lecture. If you’re looking for an inspiration I’d saw the first season of TV series GLOW is very much a touchstone. As there, we have a woman who becomes involved in a sport at a difficult time in her life, only to find herself… well, finding herself as a result of her new endeavour.

The heroine is Melanie (Holland), a mild-mannered cafe-owner whose enterprise is almost out of business. Her pal, truck driver Danny (Sodaro, sporting one of the worst haircuts in cinema history), takes part in women’s arm-wrestling, but just had her wrist broken by the infamous Brenda the Bone Crusher (Stambouliah).  Seeking revenge, she eventually convinces Melanie, who has a natural talent – the “golden arm” – to enter the national championships in Oklahoma City. The goal is to win the crown, and fifteen thousand dollars that go with it, to save Melanie’s business and take down Danny’s nemesis. But the path towards that title will go through not only Brenda, but over a number of other hurdles for the rookie athlete, both physical and mental.

There’s very little new here in terms of plotting. Everything unfolds exactly as you’d expect, right down to the final which pits – surprise, surprise! – Melanie against Brenda in a best-of-three battle. Still, the joy here is in the characters and performances. There appears to be, if this film is to be believed, a significant overlap between arm-wrestling and pro wrestling, with the participants here adopting personas and cutting promos to intimidate their opponent. Melanie, for example, begins as a masked wrestler called “Freaked Out”, after the ring announcer mistakes a comment as her name. But she eventually becomes The Breadwinner, complete with a dusting of flour on her cheek.

However, the greatest pleasure is the Melanie-Danny relationship, which builds over the course of the film. They’re total opposites – “Please don’t say ‘twat'”, begs Melanie repeatedly – but there’s still such chemistry, you can see how they’d be fast friends. It’s so good, in fact, that the romantic angle between Melanie and referee Greg (Cordero) seems entirely superfluous. It actually drags down the rest of the movie, and provides nothing of substance except for an explicit reference to The Natural. That’s another apparent inspiration, in its story of a sports star rising above injury at the moment they need to most.

This is thoroughly foul-mouthed, albeit for comic purposes, and I will say, it doesn’t all quite work. For example, there’s an extended discussion over the female equivalent of “going balls out,” that’s frankly a bit cringe. However, the sheer heart on view throughout is undeniable: that powers this through the flaws, and will likely leave you with a big, goofy grin on your face.

Dir: Maureen Bharooch
Star: Mary Holland, Betsy Sodaro, Olivia Stambouliah, Eugene Cordero

Army of One

  By

★★
“Basic, and in need of training”

Husband and wife Dillon (Passmore) and Brenna Baker (Hollman) are out on a camping trip in the Alabama wilderness. They have a brush with some crude locals, led by the mountainous Butch (Kasper), but are saved by his diminutive mother (Singer), who takes no crap from anyone, and whom everyone locally calls Mama. Later, while sheltering from the rain in a deserted cabin, the Bakers stumble across a cache of arms. Before they can do anything, they are captured by the owner – Butch, of course, since his family are involved in a whole slew of criminal activities, including white slavery. Any hopes of playing the innocent tourists are wiped out when Butch finds Dillon’s police ID. Oops. He and his gang dispose of the couple, but do a poor job on Brenna. And, it turns out, she’s a former Army Ranger, who now has vengeance on her mind.

It’s a solid enough idea, albeit nothing we haven’t seen before. Hollman looks the part too, plausible enough in her attitude that she could be a soldier who has gone back to civilian life. The action, in general, is well-enough handled to pass muster. The lead actress was in Spartacus and Into the Badlands, while she is apparently going to be in the fourth Matrix movie (though I’m restraining my expectations for that). She does seem to know her way around a hand-to-hand fight sequence, and the film has some well-staged examples, helped by Durham avoiding editing them to death.

Unfortunately, the plotting is flat out terrible. I think it begins with the couple opting to have sex in the highly grubby cabin, and goes downhill from there. It’s never quite clear how Brenna survives Butch’s murder attempt, she just kinda gets up and starts walking about. Then she returns to the campsite and finds an ax. Yeah, she has a weapon… which she uses to sharpen a branch, then drops the ax back on the ground and wanders off with the pointy stick instead. She waits for daylight to infiltrate the family compound, rather than taking advantage of darkness. Brenna spends days just wandering the forest, rather than getting help or trying to leave. A booby-trapped branch appears, seemingly out of nowhere. The random Aussie guy.

The idiocy on view here goes on and on, and the missteps are so frequent and painfully glaring. They rob the film of almost all its energy, and any chance of real success. They’re too much of a distraction to ignore, and certainly stick in my mind more than the positive elements. There are few surprises as events unfold, with Butch, Mama and crew continually underestimating Brenna, even after she has wiped out half of their number. Rather than putting a bullet in her head, the idea of “breaking” Brenna and making her as docile and submissive as their other trafficked women, is just another example of the dumb writing in which this indulges. By the time the (no more plausible) ending eventually comes, it’s almost as a relief.

Dir: Stephen Durham
Star: Ellen Hollman, Gary Kasper, Geraldine Singer, Matt Passmore

High Kick Angels

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★★★★
“Die Hard in a school.”

This was a rather pleasant surprise. I was expecting a pretty naff entity, more interested in titillation than anything else. I actually got a thoroughly entertaining 90 minutes, with considerably better martial arts than I predicted. Sure, the story – as the tag-line above suggests – is hardly original, and the performances are… well, let’s say variable, and leave it at that. Yet this overcomes its limitations with heart and energy. It takes place in a recently abandoned school where a film club have gained permission to make a movie starring Sakura (Miyahara) and Maki (Aono). Shooting of their zombie epic is rudely interrupted by the arrival of a gang of miscreants, led by J-Rose (Morishita). They’re looking for five USB drives hidden in the school, that combine to give access to money embezzled by a previous school head. They lock down the establishment, and won’t let five schoolgirls get in the way.

First off, it helps that at least three of them are genuine martial artists, with a solid background in karate. They’re not pin-up models given a bit of training, and the benefits are obvious. The director has a good handle on making the most of their talents, too. For example, Aono is tall and leggy, so her style involves copious amounts of kicks – including some which appear to border on the physically impossible. Miyahara may be the most well-rounded in terms of all skills including weapons, however. It’s just a shame the bad guys only have one person capable of going up against them in single combat. I was hoping J-Rose would prove a worthy opponent, yet that never happens. Her daughter, a vaguely Gogo Yubari knock-off, is set up as a bad ass; the skills just aren’t there. Instead, let’s praise the slew of faceless minions, who likely endure multiple beatings from the heroines, in a variety of hoodies, caps and masks to disguise their repeat appearances.

Speaking of the villains… what is up with their eyes? Of the three top baddies, two have bizarre make-up on just one eye, while J-Rose is sprouting the most extreme eyelash extensions I’ve ever seen. They’re bright blue. Yet despite my concerns – not least the Amazon Prime poster above – this is refreshingly non-exploitative. Yes, there are certainly panty flashes, yet these feel almost inevitable given the heroines’ costumes and their actions, and certainly don’t appear to be contrived in the service of fan service, as it were.  It’s a shame the film-within-the-film is all but forgotten by the end, save for Sakura’s efforts to channel her inner movie star. I was hoping this might end up being a karate version of the glorious One Cut of the Dead, blending reality and cinematic fantasy. Sadly, that’s not the case. Yet there’s still plenty here to appreciate and enjoy. The makers have made the most what they have, to the point where I was so busy being entertained, I even stopped noticing the limited resources to hand. Can’t ask for more than that.

Dir: Kazuhiro Yokoyama
Star: Kanon Miyahara, Kaede Aono, Chisato Morishita, Mayu Kawamoto

Restless (2020)

  By

★★
“Mom on a mission”

Single mother Naomi Harper (Anderson) is devoted to her son, and he to her. In an effort to help Mom make ends meet, he gets a job working for notorious local “businessman”, Noah Oliver (Wilson). When her child turns up dead, Naomi is sure that Oliver had something to do with it. The police, in particular Detectives Emory Kota (Conell) and August Hayes ( Jeziorski), don’t necessarily disagree, but their hands are tied. This is partly due to a shortage of actionable evidence, partly because Oliver’s connections run deep into the local political and judicial establishment in Conyers, Georgia, making it impossible to take action against him. Well, at least officially. Naomi has no such limitations, and this apparently mild-mannered loan officer has a background that may prove of help.

The script here isn’t bad. There are a number of interesting angles, such as the parallel actions of a vigilante, working in same area as Naomi, and targetting those who consider themselves above the law. Naomi isn’t the only strong female character either, with Det. Kota frustrated by the restrictions of her position. Then there’s Sophia (Rachel Burger), Oliver’s right-hand ma… er, woman, who proves capable of handling herself physically as well. Though I probably would have been more impressed had Naomi not done that crappy, gangsta “holding the gun at an angle” thing, as she headed towards her final confrontation with Oliver. Nobody with experience and an interest in being taken seriously would be caught dead doing that.

However, the problems here are most readily apparent in the resources here. Or, to be more accurate, the lack thereof. Even though the film tries to work within the budgetary limitations, these are so severe, they can’t be hidden. For instance, scenes which are supposed to take place in a police station, very clearly don’t. Indeed, there’s very little effort to make it look like anything, except a bare, empty room. The same goes for a number of other locations, where the bare minimum appears to have been done in terms of set dressing. Hardly less glaring are the plugs for local venue, Triplz Lounge. I’m sure it’s a lovely place.

Another weakness is that most of the actors don’t appear to fit their characters. Wilson is probably the worst offender, never being convincing as a mob boss – he’s just not intimidating or threatening enough. But to a lesser extent, the same goes for Anderson. Despite copious flashbacks to a time when her son was alive, she rarely seemed like a distraught mother, pushed into unthinkable acts by the callous and indifferent hand of fate.  She’s not a bad actress, competent enough from a technical point of view. There just wasn’t any reason for the viewer to pay the emotional buy-in to her portrayal. I’d not mind seeing what Jackson and his team could do with more money, and I’ve certainly seen worse. Here though, the challenges prove just too much for them to overcome.

Dir: Rodney Jackson
Star: Tai Anderson, Tavares M. Wilson, Robyn Conell, Will Jeziorski

Perilous Waif, by E. William Brown

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

In the future, humanity has spread across much of the universe, but has also adopted all manner of enhancements, with androids and other artificial creations likely outnumbering the people. This section of the galaxy has become a vast cosmic melting pot of cultures with worlds occupied by everything from religious cults to yakuza gangs. Alice Long is an orphan on the strait-laced planet Felicity, but clearly doesn’t fit in, possessing an unusual range of those enhancements, to go with her leaning towards delinquency. Running away from the orphanage, she rescues a woman from attack, and in exchange for her help, becomes one of the crew of the slightly grey-market Square Deal, under Captain Sokol. However, as Alice blossoms, it becomes clear her obscure heritage has blessed her with artificial talents far outstripping Alice’s new colleagues. 

Initially, I really liked this, appreciating the enormous amount of thought which has gone into the universe here. That’s clear from the multiple appendices, explaining technical aspects of how everything from interstellar travel to artificial intelligence works in this setting. I was greatly looking forward to seeing Alice rising from a lowly cabin girl to… well, wherever her skills might take her. Except, it didn’t quire work that way. Her rise is, in fact, super easy, with any impediments barely an inconvenience. For example, this is a universe in which fabricators can be used to make anything for which there’s a recipe, and Alice becomes increasingly over-powered due to all her enhancements. No matter what the situation, it seems she has an app for that. She’s certainly the smartest person in the book, and may well be the strongest, fastest and most lethal as well. Then there’s her heritage, best described as unique. And even if she were to be killed, it’s established that people can get restored from backups into a new body. Death, where is thy sting?

It’s an issue of which the author does seem to be aware, with a mention in one of the appendices of “post-scarcity society”. That seems to be the situation which we have here. Brown spent so much time on the dazzling infrastructure, he forgot to come up with the equally dazzling threats necessary, in a world whose inhabitants calmly discuss the possibility of them surviving a multi-gigaton nuclear blast. There’s absolutely no shortage of action, in particular a final third where Alice has to fight her way off a massive, derelict starship after betrayal by the people they are supposed to be helping. But, while this is currently a stand-alone book, it also has too many loose strands left dangling at the end. My overall feeling is that, while this is a fascinating universe that could serve as the basis for many great stories, Alice Long’s just isn’t one of them. Or, at least, she needs an antagonist of comparable ability and power.

Author: E. William Brown
Publisher: Independently published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book.

Certain Fury

  By

★★★★
“When child stars grow up”

Child actors have a difficult challenge facing them when the reach adulthood. They are not the sweet kids anymore that everyone loves and wants to cuddle with. They can’t rely on the cuteness factor anymore that made them once so successful. That can lead to tragedy. How many former kid stars became drug addicts or committed suicide because they couldn’t return to that time anymore, when in a way the world was theirs? Others were smart enough to leave film business behind them and start a new career e. g. Shirley Temple. But a few of them are indeed lucky. they stay calm amidst all the thunderstorms of early successes and puberty, manage to stay relevant to audiences and even find a new footing and grown-up roles, that cement their careers as everlasting film stars. Actresses like Sophie Marceau or Jodie Foster come to mind.

The latter is a particular success story, making the transition from child actor to grown-up movie star. In the 70s she was the regular tomboy in Disney family comedies and at one point was even under consideration to play a young Princess Leia in what would become the first Star Wars movie. Her constant competitor in tomboy roles was Tatum O’Neal. the youngest ever to win an Oscar, for her performance in Peter Bogdanovich’s beautiful tragic-comedy Paper Moon (1973), next to her father. She also played a tomboy in The Bad News Bears as Walter Matthau’s daughter. Coincidentally, Paper Moon became a TV series in which Jodie Foster played O’Neal’s role! Unfortunately, O’Neal went through the usual teen-phase, then slowly disappeared from the screen. Later she made headlines for her troubled marriage and addiction. Just a couple of years ago again when she was taken in by police because she wanted to buy some drugs.

Why this long introduction? It’s because I think it’s kind of unjust how her career went – though everyone is responsible for their own decisions and you never really can plan to be in “successful movies“. But contrast the career of Foster who had a similar basis, but persevered after making some less interesting movies for much of the 1980’s. Her second career in films began with the Oscar for Accused (1988) and then moved on from there to bigger things. It just shows that you may have talent and get credit for some time in Hollywood. But if the right movie and role doesn’t come along, and you make some bad decisions, anyone’s promising movie career can just evaporate in front of your eyes.

There are movies that are crossroads that can lead to other – maybe better – things or open up a new role type for you, maybe an entire new genre. My feeling is that Certain Fury (title in German cinemas: “In the heat of New York”) could maybe have been that for O’Neal. It just wasn’t to be.

From 1985, it checks all the boxes for a typical 80’s action buddy movie, beginning with the story. At a mass trial of young girls, responsible for different criminal acts, two prostitutes start a shoot-out in the courtroom that has to be seen to be believed. A remarkable act of violence which you hardly would ever find in a modern action movie of today where everything is usually very neat and clean. Scarlet (O’Neal) who has killed a man – in self-defence as we find out later – and Tracey (Cara, who won an Oscar herself for her song in Flashdance shortly before; the title song here is also by her) are among those who take their chances in the ensuing chaos. They run from the court building into the streets, chased by the police.

They are more fortunate than one of the prostitutes, who gets shot into the back. Really, this movie could only exist in the 80’s, and would be unthinkable for today’s Hollywood. The pair make it into the sewers, and survive an underground explosion, caused by a cop’s lit cigarette igniting sewer gas. They eventually meet one of Scarlet’s lovers named Sniffer (Nicholas Campbell) who is an especially disgusting creature. He obviously makes porn and after Scarlet has left, tries to rape Tracey in the shower. While not a particularly graphic scene, it might well work against the possibility of the film being released in the US again. 

Scarlet tries her best to get help from another former lover, the arrogant, rich, criminal Rodney, who turns out to be played by Peter Fonda. Did he ever get an Oscar for one of his movies? I don’t think so. [Jim: no, just nominated for Ulee’s Gold] It’s so strange because he’s the most well-known actor in this movie. But he likes her as lttle as her other ex, and cuts her cheek with a knife. She just returns right on time to escape with Tracey before Rodney’s men arrive to get her after he made a deal with the police. Scarlet has taken some of Sniffer’s drugs and manage to sell them in what looks like a giant derelict house in the slums. It really is a movie from Reagan era! ;-)) Her persecutor arrives on the scene, injects Tracey with drugs, sets fire to the house and has a final fight with Scarlet before meeting a fiery death.

Police inspector Lt. Speier (Murdock) is meanwhile trying to find the girls, together with Tracey’s father, Dr. Freeman (Moses Gunn, e. g. a gangster boss in Shaft). The theme of Black and White working together is repeated in these characters, as in the girls themselves. This is a very positive, uplifting message but – unlike today where many movies have become a lesson about racism and discrimination – it’s not a lecture, it’s inherent in the movie’s story and characters. It makes this much more palatable for me than modern movies who lose the entertainment aspect in the background, while putting their lessons in your face.

As the two girls are believed to be dead (Tracey reads it in the newspapers; Scarlet can’t read) they consider a new life together, free in the mountains. But Scarlet doesn’t believe it’s possible, and in her brusque manner tosses Tracey away from her. When the police arrive, Scarlet still keeps on walking on a bridge, so they shoot her in the back. But the last shot shows Scarlet being hold by Tracey and Dr. Freeman saying it is not so serious, and was only into the shoulder. Guess that’s a happy ending… or something like that!

It’s all tough stuff. Certain Fury isn’t an “important” movie; indeed, you could even argue whether or not it is a “good” movie. As a matter of fact, I had a strong feeling when watching this movie that Charles Bronson might come around the corner any moment to “clean up the slums of New York“. It really looks like one of those cheap Cannon flicks that were such guilty pleasures in the video stores of the 80s (and might be even more now!). And, indeed, just a short time later, Cannon had Charlie handcuffed to a snotty teen, and sent on a similar road trip through gangster-land in Murphy’s Law (1986). Though that movie more or less dropped any social issues of the O’Neal-Cara-film and concentrated on the bloody action of Bronson versus the rest of the criminal underworld.

I note also obvious similarities to the Stanley Kramer-classic The Defiant Ones (1958) with Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier. Scarlet is not nice and understanding, she is street-wise, prone to anger and absolutely insulting. Heck, she even drops the N-word to Tracey. So the inspiration is arguably there. And who knows, maybe it wasn’t an accident that a year after this movie, The Defiant Ones got an update in a 1986 television movie with Robert Urich and Carl Weathers (also a very watchable movie). [Jim: there’s also Black Mama, White Mama, in which Pam Grier and Margaret Markov are another inter-racial pairing, who escape from prison handcuffed together]

While I mainly saw and enjoyed Certain Fury for what it was – enjoyable over-the-top action trash – the movie nevertheless put some fingers into social issues that may be as relevant today in America, as they were almost 40 years ago. Racism, social class differences, uncontrollable no-go areas, criminality, poverty, drugs and – yes – even police brutality can be witnessed in this movie. Though after the bloody mass shoot-out in the courtroom at the beginning, where hardly anyone is left alive, you can maybe understand the over-reaction of the police! I don’t think this  almost forgotten little movie offers any solutions to these myriad of problems. But it at least suggests that even very different people can understand and support each other, even if it needs an extreme emergency to do so. It’s a theme also mirrored in the very different duo of the white police inspector and the black surgeon.

Now, I wouldn’t recommend the movie if you want a high-quality social drama: too much Charles Bronson in it, if you ask me. But it’s enjoyable action trash, and interesting that at one point Tatum O’Neal could have become an action or thriller star. The latter genre was, after all, the one in which Jodie Foster found her greatest commercial success. O’Neal’s acting is very good, I think; there’s nothing left of that little brat she embodied in the 70s. Her Scarlet is an interesting character of the “hard shell, soft core” variety. She could maybe have continued in this manner; who knows? Instead of that she chose to marry tennis player John McEnroe, which obviously wasn’t the best move for her in any way.

Here’s a little confession: I feel a certain emotional connection to this movie as I discovered the trailer online and then suggested it to a German DVD label who promptly released the movie on DVD here in Germany (even with an audio commentary of two film historians!) – I think my ego is going to explode! ;-) And an interesting final tidbit: In the German-language version Tatum O’Neal is played by the voice artist who regularly dubs… Jodie Foster!

Dir: Stephen Gyllenhaal
Star: Tatum O’Neal, Irene Cara, Nicholas Campbell, George Murdock