Category: Review

Super Bitches and Action Babes, by Rikke Schubart

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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

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★★★
“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

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★★★
“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

Lady of the Law

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★★★
“I am the law…”

I kept moving between 2½ and 3 stars for this. It is pretty chatty, and the focus is not as much on the title character as I might have hoped. But there’s no denying that Leng (Shi) is a very solid character, and when she gets her chances to shine, does so in a memorable fashion. This is nowhere better illustrated than her final battle, where she takes on an enemy – who just tried to molest Leng, believing her drugged – while they both balance on a tight-rope. There’s no particular reason for the fight to take place in such an environment. The ground would have been perfectly fine. But it adds an extra dimension, and the way it’s filmed makes it feel surprisingly possible that they were wobbling about up there.

To get there is, however, quite a process. There’s a rapist going about China, but when he eventually escalates to murdering the concubine of a high official, something must be done. That something is Leng, a smart and persistent officer of the law. However, the real rapist, Chen (Shek), and his rich father frame Jiao (Lo) for the crime; he flees, with Leng in pursuit. The Chens seek to make sure Jiao can’t testify. They also seek to sideline and silence an incriminating witness – a blind man who can identify the rapist by his voice. As a result, he could both exonerate Jiao and pin blame on the real culprit.

Once this gets going, it is, however, mostly a pursuit, with Leng tracking Jiao across the countryside. The best sequence likely has him hiding out in a palace whose owner has a massive harem of Warrior concubines. They’re… quite pleased by Jiao’s arrival, but their owner refuses to help Leng in her quest, unless she can defeat the entire harem. It’s a nicely staged sequence, which must have required Shaw Brothers to hire just about every woman at the time in Hong Kong, who knew how to operate the business end of a sword. On the other hand, Lo is top-billed for a reason, and definitely gets a good slab of screen time, despite the title of the movie. 

There’s even a prologue where we discover the same men who framed him was responsible for the death of his father, and the child Jiao was only saved by the intervention of the child Leng. This doesn’t add much to proceedings, and can safely be ignored. The same goes for Jiao’s secret mastery of the Flaming Daggers technique: demonstrated, the completely forgotten. I’d rather have seen the time used to develop Leng’s story, such as the intriguing relationship with her white eyebrowed, Taoist mother. Shih apparently took over at Shaw Brothers as their star, after Cheng Pei Pei moved to California in the early seventies. This, which I’ve read sat on the shelf for several years, is the first film of hers I’ve seen (outside of bizarre Shaw/Hammer co-production, The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires). However, there was enough here to make me interested in finding some of her other work.

Dir: Siu Wing
Star: Shih Szu, Lo Lieh, Chang Pei-Shan, Dean Shek

Kung Fu Girl Fighter

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★★½
“Could have been a contender.”

Yeah, I think if I’d seen this under the alternate title of On the Waterfront, I might well have passed it by. Though that is probably a slightly more accurate description of the contents here, even allowing for the complete absence of Marlon Brando. [At least we didn’t have to deal with the expectations set by the Italian title, which translates as “The merciless hand of Bruce Lee strikes again”!] It takes place around the Whampoa wharves in Shanghai, where various crime families are jostling for position and control, with varying degrees of morality e.g. whether or not they approve of drugs and/or sex trafficking as a means to make money. Particularly of note here are Red Rose (Tang) and Zhou (Chang), who eventually end up allies against their common enemy (Chen).

Key word: eventually, as we take a meandering route to that final 15-20 minutes, where things seriously kick off. Up until then, it has been fairly low-impact. During the first half, there’s only about one good fight, Rose (or Red? I’m not sure what to call her) fending off a slew of attackers seeking to return Zhou’s gambling winnings to the casino. At the half-way point, there’s also a restaging of a scene from the same year’s Fist of Fury, where Bruce took exception to a “No Chinese or dogs” sign in a park. Rose goes berserk on seeing park guards beating up Chinese kids. Otherwise though, it’s mostly plot-based shenanigans, before the admittedly somewhat impressive finale.

However, the print circling YouTube, Tubi and Amazon Prime is flat out wretched. While it’s okay in terms of cropping, it’s so badly faded that it looks more like a pastel watercolour than a portrait of a vibrant port. There are also appears to have been some censorship issues in this English dubbed version. Another review refers to “a superbly sensual bath-house murder scene,” which is entirely missing. The last fight may also have suffered, the villain’s dozen or so henchmen apparently evaporating into bodies on the dockside without any visible action from Rose and Zhou. I suspect a decent, uncut (and, ideally, subtitled) edition might well get at least a half-star more.

Tang’s approach is relatively static in comparison to her co-star. She seems to have been more a dramatic actress, who while still a teenager, won the Best Supporting Actress award at the first ever Golden Horse awards, Taiwan’s top film honour. This straightforward plateful of chop-socky would therefore appear a bit of an aberration, yet Hou shoots her moves well enough they pass muster. It may also explain why the dramatic elements are perhaps a little better than normal for the “straightforward chop-socky” genre, though of course are also impacted by the dubbing. Still, her passionate rage during the park scene does still come through, and it’s a bit of a shame she apparently did not pursue further endeavours in the same line as this.

Dir: Cheng Hou
Star: Bao-Yun Tang, Yi Chang, Hung-Lieh Chen, Tien Yueh
a.k.a. On the Waterfront

Prey

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★★★
“Prey to win.”

The latest entry in the Predator franchise has resulted in sharply divided opinions, partly for reasons that I’m not even going to get into. And, for roughly the 11th millionth time, the reality lies somewhere in the middle. It is probably the best entry in the franchise since Predator 2. However, let’s be clear: Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf would also satisfy that criteria. So, let’s dig in. The year is 1719, and the Northern Plains see a new arrival, in the form of an extraterrestrial visitor, looking to test its mettle against any species unlucky enough to cross its path. They could be animal, or human – the latter include both French trappers and the local Comanches.

The heroine is Naru (Midthunder), a young woman who wants to join her brother, Taabe (Beavers), on the tribe’s hunting parties. He and the rest of the tribe are reluctant to let her, preferring to make use of her skills as a healer. However, after they encounter the Predator while hunting a mountain-lion, Naru sneaks off to hunt it on her own, seeking to prove her skills. It’s not long before it becomes clear she has her hands full, simply trying to survive in the treacherous wilderness, and avoid the trappers. Never mind taking on a vicious creature from another planet, in possession of technology far in advance of what’s available to Earthlings, and with a fondness for ripping spines clean out of their owners’ backs.

It’s certainly a fresh and original setting,  especially for a SF/action movie, and I’d say the makers deserve credit for using native actors across the board. I will admit to rolling my eyes at some of the early attempts to position Naru as a rebel, which felt severely like the imposition of modern traits onto a historical setting. “Why do you like to hunt?” “Because they think I can’t!” Yeah, you almost get killed. Twice. They have a point. However, once she leaves the camp and sets out on her own journey, the movie hits its stride. By the time the trappers find they are no longer the hunters, but the hunted, it’s clear Naru will need to think outside the box of standard tactics in order to win. You’ll probably have figured out the key, as soon as she mentions that a certain medicinal herb “cools the blood”…

I can kinda see why it went direct to streaming, since some of the CGI effects are of the low-rent variety, and I suspect it was a lot cheaper than the $88 million cost of its predecessor, The Predator. On the other hand, it doesn’t skimp on the old ultraviolence, and that’s the way a Predator movie needs to be. It has to be said, this seems a particularly dumb example of the alien species – fortunately for Naru. It never seems to see her as a threat until it’s too late, clearly being sexist as well as extraterrestrial. Maybe a future installment could feature a female Predator… With all of history now officially in play, the possibilities are almost endless. While still imperfect, credit is due to the makers, for taking a franchise that seemed potentially on its last legs, and giving it new life. 

Dir: Dan Trachtenberg
Star: Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers, Michelle Thrush, Stormee Kipp

Last Day in Limbo, by Peter O’Donnell

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

Although this is the eighth book in the author’s trail-blazing (at the time it was written, action-oriented heroines were nowhere near as numerous in fiction as they are now) series, it’s the third that I’ve read. (Long story!) It was published in 1976; but in terms of the series’ internal chronology, just a few years have passed since the series opener. So in the book, it would still be the late 1960s, and protagonist Modesty is now about 28 years old. As is often the case, I would advise readers NOT to read the cover blurb. IMO, it discloses way too much information that’s better learned as O’Donnell chooses to gradually unfold it. When the tale opens, we find Modesty and one of her (to use a contemporary term) “friends with benefits,” multimillionaire tycoon John Dall, enjoying a white-water canoeing excursion in the remote wilds of the Rocky Mountains, accompanied only by a 60-year-old Indian guide. It’s indicated that Dall would be glad to have a more committed relationship; but while Modesty has a lot of admirable qualities and makes a devoted friend, her hellish formative years left her with too damaged a psyche for committed romantic love. O’Donnell never made that any part of her character arc, so readers shouldn’t approach the books with that expectation (or hope!). Barely two pages into the story, though, their idyll is rudely interrupted by the appearance, seemingly out of nowhere, of two gun-toting thugs, who take the couple prisoner after brutally murdering their guide. This begins an adventure that will take us to more than one locale, but principally to the dense (and deftly-evoked) jungles of Guatemala, and which will involve mortal danger, intense mental and physical challenges, and a high body count. An obvious question readers might ask is, does reading this out of order result in “spoilers” for the earlier books? I would say no, because Modesty’s adventures are each episodic and self-contained; and she and sidekick Willie don’t significantly change, either in their life circumstances or in terms of character growth. Some characters here do appear in earlier books: Sir Gerald Tarrant, for instance, is already introduced in the first book, and Steve and Dinah Collier are in the story A Perfect Night to Break Your Neck, included in the story collection Pieces of Modesty (which I did read previously), though that’s not their first appearance in the canon. The madman who calls himself (and actually believes that he is!) “Lucifer” is, I’m guessing, the title character of the third novel, I, Lucifer, and both Dall and British spy Maude Tiller have also apparently shown up before. But while having read about them earlier would make them more familiar, all of these were depicted here with enough clarity and depth that I felt I knew them fully well as people. And while occasional references are made to previous adventures, the significance is explained in each case, and for me the effect was simply to whet curiosity, not spoil it. (Of course, it’s clear that Modesty emerged from these triumphant; but that’s a “spoiler” only if you don’t grasp the idea of the word “series….” :-) ) I’d recommend reading the first book before this one, to get a basic idea of who Modesty is, what her early life was like, and the Modesty-Willie dynamic; but otherwise, I don’t think it’s essential to read the earlier books first. In terms of style and literary vision, this book felt, to me, very much of a piece with the two I’d read earlier. While he doesn’t write with the elaborate diction of his 18th-century Romantic predecessors, O’Donnell’s solidly in their literary camp with his use of exotic locales, extreme situations, and above all, frank appeals to the whole range of readers’ emotions. (In one revealing exchange, Dall tells Modesty she’s a “romantic,” whereupon she replies, “Of course I’m a romantic, dum-dum! And proud of it. There’s not enough of it about these days.”) His plotting is taut and well-constructed, with a good deal of suspense, a steady pace interspersed with frequent jeopardies and vivid action scenes. Modesty has to display her planning acuity and ingenuity as well as her fighting skill; and surviving and taking down the baddies here won’t be a cake-walk, since while she’s highly competent and a born leader, she’s not Superwoman. On the contrary, she’s very much a flesh-and-blood woman, who can bleed and cry (though she doesn’t like to do the latter in front of others); and she’ll do both before we close the book. In contrast to the cynicism of much modern literature, despite the gritty milieu we find ourselves in here, O’Donnell’s vision is a solidly moral one. Our heroine (and Modesty is a heroine, not an anti-heroine) is pitted against villains who are radically evil, and while she, Willie and their friends have foibles, they basically have a solid and instinctive orientation towards the good. And O’Donnell knows that the basic dividing line between the two separates those who care about others and try to treat them decently, vs. those who care only about self and consider all other humans as things to be used. The author’s social message here isn’t loudly delivered; but we do get a clear look at both the misery the downtrodden in the Third World have suffered (and still do), and the reality that a fixation on vengeance rather than justice can make the oppressed a mirror image of the oppressors. Content issues here aren’t too problematic, given the literary genre that this is. There’s some swearing and religious profanity (but no obscenity). There are no sex scenes, but there is reference to sexual activity, and it’s made clear that two of the principal villains are into kinky sex that involves inflicting extreme humiliation on women (though O’Donnell spares us any specifics). That such behavior exists in the world should (and does!) offend every decent human; that it’s depicted at all in a book will offend some readers. In the author’s defense on that score, I would say only that a mentality which freaks out on wielding power over other humans is realistically apt to also be reflected in warped sexuality; it warps every aspect of the personality. The language and sexual attitudes/behavior of most of the characters here are what would realistically be expected of secular folk who move in these kinds of circles. Indeed, while some readers would roll their eyes over using the term here, because of the unusual and extreme situation (“unusual,” though, is not the same thing as “impossible!”), I would say that O”Donnell depicts a wide range of life-like characters with very convincing realism, and that his characterizations are a strong point of the series. Again, I’d recommend reading the series opener before reading this installment; but otherwise, I’d have no hesitation in recommending it to any reader who enjoyed the first book. Author: Peter O’Donnell Publisher: Souvenir Press; available through Amazon, currently only as a printed book. A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

7 Women From Hell

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★★½
“Circling hell”

About the only review online I found for this, said it “may be the worst movie released in 1961.” I can only presume the writer of that statement has never seen The Beast of Yucca Flats. Even if I admit its weaknesses, Seven is nowhere near the same league of badness. Indeed, it starts off well, depicting the sudden invasion of Papua New Guinea by Japanese forces in 1942, with “enemy” civilians being herded into interment camps. The ones on the women’s side are a multi-national bunch, including Australian Grace Ingram (Owens), several Americans including Janet Cook (Craig), a German widow Ann Van Laer (Sylvia Daneel), Frenchwoman Claire Oudry (Darcel), and mixed-race nurse Mai-Lu Ferguson (Pilar Seurat). 

Initially, life is just about tolerable, with the camp commandant being mostly reasonable. But after he is killed in a bombing raid, his sadistic deputy takes over. When one of them knocks out a guard who tried to rape her, the women escape with the help of the camp doctor. But life on the outside is little better, especially with the Japanese in pursuit. Let’s just say, it doesn’t stay at seven women for very long. Without a compass, their odds of finding their way to safety are slim. Fortunately, they come across a downed American airman who has one. The bad news: he tells them their intended destination has already been abandoned. Then they meet the estate of German-Argentinean farmer Luis Hullman (Cesar Romero). Though is he as friendly as he initially appears to be?

It is important to realize this is very much a product of its era, when Hollywood was supremely disinterested in action heroines. We were still several years before even the arrival of Honey West on televisions, and there were few cases at the time where a female-led story-line would not be driven primarily by romance. It’s on that basis that the rating above has to be seen, cutting it some slack for the time in which it was made. By modern standards, sure, it’s fairly weak sauce. But the climax, where the women discover the truth about Luis and take action, feels progressive for the time. These women are – again, for the era – remarkably independent. They don’t need to be rescued by men: indeed, they’re the ones doing the rescuing of the airman.

The weakness is mostly on the character front, as outside of their nationalities, the protagonists are not given anything like an adequate amount of depth. The script doesn’t seem to know what to do with them once they are outside the confines of the prison camp either, at one point resorting to a bathing scene which had me rolling my eyes at the indignity of it all. Credit for not making the Japanese irredeemably villainous, though I’m not convinced the shooting location of Hawaii is an adequate stand-in for Papua New Guinea. Definitely not the worst movie released in 1961, by quite a considerable margin.

Dir: Robert D. Webb
Star: Patricia Owens, Denise Darcel, Margia Dean, Yvonne Craig

Date a Bullet

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★★★½
“Sympathy for the devil.”

Alright, this needs some background first, so I’ll try my best to give the necessary information. Date a Bullet is a two-part spin-off movie from Date a Live. This was originally a light novel series, that became a manga and then an anime series. The last-named started in 2013 and is currently in its fourth season: it also previously got a pair of OVAs and one movie. This is the second film, though is essentially two episodes that were put together, and released in cinemas as a movie, despite a very short length of 50 minutes.

Date a Live was (and still is) as bonkers a basic premise as anime shows can be. A catastrophe 30 years ago causes spirits to appear in our world – until now, always in the form of beautiful girls. What are the odds? If the spirit is stressed or aggravated, she causes earthquakes and natural disasters. A little advice from me: how about the defense services NOT attack at the very first sight of such a spirit? Just an idea… A secret organisation protecting mankind from them has figured out a new way of dealing with these girls. The young, naive student Shido has to approach them, built up confidence and go on a date with them. When he kisses them he “seals in” their powers by doing so. This usually results in the spirit stopping being dangerous and moving into Shido’s home (where are his parents?). For the remainder of the episodes he is busy, trying to cope with school, the emotional needs of the girls and cooking for them all.

I guess there’s something that show wants to teach young Japanese men how to deal with girls. The whole secret organisation’s spaceship team (lead by Shido’s younger sister?) is trying to figure out the best of three responses for Shido when talking to the girls, and usually chooses the worst possible. Hilarity ensues. But somehow I couldn’t feel anything for Shido except for pity, dealing with all these girls wanting so many different things from him. It can’t be easy to be one of those beloved students in what we call nowadays a “harem anime”. There are plenty more of these where this comes from! The show is based on the idea of a so-called dating-app or game that helps train your dating skills before going into the wild, where untamed femininity can overwhelm an innocent, anxious Japanese boy. The idea is not the worst: I could have used such a tool when I was younger!

But this is a different beast, because it deals with the extraordinary character of Kurumi Tokisaki (Sanada), who is really different to all the other girls Shido met in the main show. Usually, meeting a girl spirit meant that, to cut a long story short, Shido would kiss the girl, or she, enchanted by Shido’s friendliness would kiss him – it has to be voluntarily. She’d join his harem, while they all crave his attention, everyone wanting a piece of him, his time, physical contact and so on. Not Kurumi. When she first appeared in the show, she seemed the girl spirit of this half-season, so to speak, but then quickly turned the tables.

While the other girls might be complicated and have problems, like feeling unloved, being shy and, in one case, not even being into men, there always was a solution. Kurumi is… different: Shido soon found out she was there to sexually arouse him, so she could “eat him”. We can argue about the not-so subtle subtext: male Japanese anxiety about a sexually demanding and active woman. In the very same episode, some boys make sexually charged comments about her, she lures them into the shadows… next the blood is dripping from the walls.

Yeah, cute-looking Kurumi in sexy red-black lingerie is a killer, a femme fatale and if I’m not mistaken (correct me if I’m wrong), falls into the popular category of the “yangires”, female psychotic anime characters that can go on a bloody rampage at the slightest provocation. She is the killer shark among Shido’s girl. But then, she never becomes part of his actual haremm because they never kissed. Innocent Shido would have been dead meat. There may be a hint of Kurumi being abused in her former life; it could just be me, trying to read between the lines.

In a show that follows the usual rules of harem anime, a character like this is almost a provocation, riding roughshod over those unwritten rules. Kurumi is a force to be reckoned with. Her left eye features the yellow dial of a clock: with her magical calling of “Zaphkiel”, an angel that can manipulate time and appears as a giant dial, she can actually turn time around. By shooting her gun into her own head she can replicate herself and create as many clones of herself as she wants. Magically she appears to be independent, she can appear wherever and whenever she wants.

For most of the show she has been the “punch clock villain”, someone you could expect to appear sooner or later in the show. Though she seems to soften her attitude to Shido, after her first encounters with Shido, where he unsuccessfully tried to reason with and find an emotional angle on her – that worked with the other spirits. In one episode, she goes on a date with him, only to be shot by a superior version of herself at the end, This clone was obviously trying to fulfill her supressed romantic desires. In a late season 3 episode, she even helped him travel back in time to prevent a catastrophe that would send one of his girlfriends on a later revenge trip against the other girl spirits.

Okay. On to Date a Bullet , which is exceptional in the Date a Live universe as it tells a story with Kurumi as the main character. There’s no Shido to be found here, none of the harem girls or supporting characters appear, It’s as if you took a bad Bond girl and gave her a solo movie. So, quite unusual! So, what’s the story? Kurumi finds herself in an alternate world where she is told she is in a battle royale. The winner gets a wish, and might even be able to return to her own world. As she is being told by a small girl who functions as comic relief, that the combatants are all “half-spirits”, Kurumi in her no non-sense manner declares her in quite clear terms that she considers herself a full spirit, not a half one. Then there is the character of the White Queen, an especially dangerous ghost she will sooner or later have to face.

The movie is well-made, though the DVD is definitely too expensive for just ran 50 minutes. It’s entertaining enough, though as expected, too short to build up much tension. But it also serves mainly to show that Kurumi has a heart, too. Flashbacks show a younger Kurumi when she was alive and in school with the one friend she had, Sawa Yamauchi, dreaming of how it will be when she will have a boyfriend. While you can easily guess who the White Queen is, Kurumi shows during the story how tough and no-nonsense she is. She is thankful for help, but this doesn’t mean she’s so naive as to trust you immediately. She has a softer side, too, saving a little cat that plays a special role in the story, and at the end seems to have found a pet that might accompany her in future. Though why she killed her best friend in the past, remains unanswered.

The film helped understand the character a bit better and gave her the limelight she deserves. I wouldn’t say we know everything about Kurumi Tokisaki now though. The character stays interesting and as Date a Live with its funny situations and cute/sexy girls is something of a guilty pleasure for me, I look forward for a dubbed version of season four, and discovering what kind of role Kurumi will play in it.

Dir: Jun Nakagawa
Star (voice): Asami Sanada. Asami Seto, Kaede Hondo, Mariya Ise

The Woman Who Robbed the Stagecoach

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★★½
“A tale of daylight robbery.”

There are a couple of points to note going in. This was one of “12 Westerns in 12 months”, a project run by the director during 2020. It also proudly pronounces itself as the first ever Western feature to be shot entirely on an iPhone. Both of these do lead to limitations. The sheer speed involved obvious has an impact, and I can’t help wondering if a more measured approach would have been better for the end product. As for the iPhone… Well, on the plus side it looked perfectly watchable on my 49″ television, especially the outdoor scenes. However, the indoor sequences seemed almost too crisp. Especially for a historical production like this, I felt I was expecting a softer look, and I found that a bit of a distraction throughout.

It’s the story of Pearl Hart, a genuine figure from Arizona history, who achieved notoriety by being involved in one of the last stagecoach robberies, at the very end of the nineteenth century (May 30, 1899, to be precise). The movie covers both her life leading up to that point, and the subsequent arrest, trial, acquittal, re-arrest, conviction, escape, recapture, eventual release – according to some, because she managed to get pregnant in jail – and final disappearance into obscurity. Actually, the script basically feels like they took Pearl’s Wikipedia page, and used that as a synopsis. You can virtually tick off the incidents mentioned in it, as they happen during the film. With the character such a blank slate, and so little verifiable information, I’d like to have seen Mills give us something not taken from the first page of Google results.

The positives are mostly from the performances. Mills pulls double-duty as Hart’s accomplice, “Joe Boot”, about whom next to nothing is known. That does allow some freedom, and Root is made into a European miner, who is largely obsessed with Pearl and prepared to take the fall for the robbery on her behalf. I did like Etchell’s portrayal of Pearl, a woman who has been fighting an uphill battle almost her entire life, and tries to make the best of her situation – often by morally questionable means, albeit out of necessity. The film also shot in a lot of the locations around where events took place, such as in Globe, with the Yuma Territorial Prison standing in for Tucson’s jail.

It’s unfortunate that the limited time and budget are often all too apparent. In particular, there’s next to no scope here, with Mills largely forced to keep the camera in close, to try and disguise the paucity of sets, or things like a lack of extras. It really doesn’t work, although it remains a story that should be told, and I’m glad to have heard it. But the almost throwaway nature of the production, combined with the rote nature of the script, does the larger than life character of Pearl Hart a disservice. They should have chosen to print the legend instead.

Dir: Travis Mills
Star: Lorraine Etchell, Travis Mills, Kevin Goss, Michael Estridge