★½
“Boudica: The Moping About the Forest Years”
I try and not let my expectations influence my reviews: a movie deserves to be judged on what it is, rather than what I expected it to be. A film-maker usually doesn’t get to decide, for instance, the DVD sleeve. But when you invoke the name of Boudica in your title, this creates certain requirements with regard to your content, especially when combined with the words “warrior queen.” These are requirements which this movie is utterly incapable of meeting. Technically, the word “rise” is probably the only accurate element to be found, on the cover, which certainly counts as among the most inaccurate in recent memory.
At least it is set in Britain, during the Roman occupation not long after the birth of Christ. Boudica (Peel) is scheduled to be wed to the son of another tribe, to cement their anti-Roman alliance. But virtually on the eve of the wedding, her mother, Lucilia (McTernan) spirits her away. Mom, y’see, had gone through the whole arranged marriage thing to Boud’s brutish Dad, Scavo (Pengelly), and is damned if she’s going to let her little girl suffer the same thing. Quite why Lucilia has a Roman name is never explained. Anyway, they set up home in the woods, while Scavo and the husband-to-be roam the countryside looking for them. But one day, Boudica discovers an injured warrior (Cooke) near their home.
At no point does Boudica dress in the manner depicted on the cover. There is no castle to be seen: a mud hut is about it. There appear to be thousands of extras present, when I don’t think there was a scene where the count of players reached double digits. And I’m not sure where the “epic battle scenes” allegedly experienced by the “Geek Legion of Doom” (whatever that is) are. But they would seem to be full of shit, because they ain’t in this film. What you do get, is the sure and certain knowledge that whiny teenage girls bitching continually at their mothers is not a modern invention, and was in full effect in 47 AD. Boudica, of course, falls for the warrior, about whom Lucilla has qualms, causing the daughter to fling back her mother’s words about following her heart.
This soap-opera nonsense is, apparently, what is meant by a warrior queen rising. Who knew?
Based purely on content, this probably doesn’t deserve to be here, but it is technically about one of the most-renowned women warriors in history, so I feel under an obligation. For the first hour-plus, the closest we get to seeing Boudica in action is whacking a tree with a stick [I would at least have laughed, if she’d yelled repeatedly while doing so, “Why are you hitting yourself?”] Eventually, the warrior turns out not to be who he seemed – that’s a shock – leading to about the only sequence which could even remotely be described as the “passionate fighting spirit” claimed on the cover. Though you’d still need to be squinting from the right angle, to see even that. I strongly recommend you don’t bother.
Dir: Zoe Morgan
Star: Ella Peel, Michelle McTernan, James Cooke, Simon Pengelly
Grace deHaviland is a former cop, fired from the force in Columbus, Ohio under circumstances which remain murky. To continue in the justice field, she turns to bail enforcement, bringing in perps who have gone on the lam in exchange for a percentage of their bond. They don’t necessarily want to come in, as we find out right at the start; her first target causes Grace almost to become a victim herself, save for the grace of her stun-gun. Following this, she gets to take on what should, in theory, be a nice, simple case: locating white-collar criminal Barry Keegan. He was the accountant for a pharmaceutical firm engaged in shady financial practices, and has skipped bail shortly before the trial involving him and the company’s head honchos.
Make no mistake, 
Many of the changes are relatively small – tweaks, rather than significant changes. For instance, rather than the landlady having a dog, Liang herself has a cat. Though in a morbid twist, she feeds her kitty some of the remnants of her victim. The gang attack is preceded by a battle between two different groups, both of whom have tracked Liang to a deserted Hong Kong park: the winners get… Well, gunned down by her. There is, 
The city of Silver Creek is on the way out, and many of its inhabitants are leaving, including town doctor Bob Ridgeway (Nixon). Originally heading to Kansas City, he is convinced at gunpoint to take up a position instead in “Las Mujeres.” That’s Spanish for “The women,” and is an appropriate name since the place is a gynocratic society, where the ladies are in charge. Top of the heap is Iron Mae McLeod (Windsor), who runs the local saloon and ensures that the the other women in the town are kept safe from exploitation. She does, however, have to navigate the straits between aspirational gambler Woody Callaway (Rober) and outlaw Frank Slater. Ridgeway, meanwhile, because the target of affection for both Beth Larrabee (Balenda), one of Mae’s enforcers, and her big sister and star of the saloon’s show, Ellen. But when all of Mae’s money is about to be transferred out of Silver Creek, and becomes a target for Slater and his gang, romance has to take a back seat.
I’m not sure how much this is an official remake of The Inspector Wears Skirts, the 1988 franchise-launching action comedy which we covered earlier this month. It is certainly very close in both content and tone, but I’ve not seen a formal acknowledgement of this from anyone involved. While I’m obviously happy to see a reboot of one of the pioneers of the Hong Kong girls-with-guns genre, I just wish they hadn’t also rebooted the weaknesses as well as the strengths. In particular, they could have left all of the lame comedy in the eighties, and I’d have had no complaints at all.
After a disease has wiped out all adults, the town of Potters Bluff has divided into two camps, delineated by the river running through the town. On the west are the Titans, a quasi-fascist order of jocks operating out of the old high school and led by Jeremy, whose motto is “Strength, power, respect.” On the east are the free-spirited remainder, living under and protected by Jack (Bourgeois). However, after hijacking the contents of a Titan truck, Jack is abducted by them and held hostage. A three-person party sets out on a rescue mission: Jack’s sister Nat (Iseman), her best friend – and painfully obvious lesbian, right down to the mohawk – Scratch (Kwiatkowski), and Sony (Friese), a former Titan who recently defected to the East, and whose inside knowledge is essential to their survival and the success of the mission.
The above is the Polish for “seven”, and in the first half-hour, you’ll be forgiven for thinking that’s what you’re watching: a Polish knock-off of David Fincher’s Se7en. Homicide cop Helena Rus (Kożuchowska) is struggling to come to terms with life, after her boyfriend is killed by a drunk-driver and, for political reasons, the criminal is allowed to go free. A welcome distraction comes in the shape of a series of ritualistic murders: every day at 6 pm, a body turns up on the streets of Wroclaw. The victims have been killed in strange and unusual ways – the first, for example, is sewn inside a cow-hide, which shrinks as it dries, crushing the victim to death. Each has a word branded into their flesh, such as “Degenerate”.
Revenge, as the saying goes, is a dish best served cold. Or, from another saying, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Illustrating both are the story told here. Jasmine Albertson had already gone through the lows and highs of life, before meeting and getting married to Stu. But when Stu’s business partner John Mickelson makes him take the fall for John’s embezzlement, leading to Stu’s suicide, Jasmine vanishes off the grid in Los Angeles. She moves to New York and sets her sights on a long-term plan to make John pay. And not financially: as she tells her gay best friend Tory, “I want him to know he fucked with the wrong people when he fucked over Stu and then me. I want him to suffer. And then I want to send him to hell.”
It’s the first day as a pizza delivery gal for Samantha Craft (Griffith), and things aren’t going well, with no tips being received. When given the chance of a delivery to a rich neighbourhood, she pounces – only to find herself getting stiffed again. This time, she sneaks in to demand her gratuity, which drops her in the middle of a satanic ceremony overseen by coven head, Danica Ross (Romijn). They’re attempting to summon Baphonet, but have hit a snag. Their intended vessel, Danica’s daughter Judy (Modine), no longer qualifies as a virgin, so Sam’s presence is highly convenient. For Sam? Not so much. Though perhaps to her benefit, there’s a bit of a power struggle in the coven, with Gypsy (Myrin) fed up of playing the second satanic banana to Danica.
Spun off from the popular Lucky Stars series, this takes Madam Wu (Hu), who had first appeared in Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars, and branches out into its own saga. After an unfortunate incident involving a sheik’s wife, the local police decide to set up a special group of women officers, who can handle similarly sensitive missions. Wu is given the task of licking the candidates into shape, with the help of Interpol’s Madam Law (Rothrock), and despite the disdain of Inspector Kan (Fung), who is training a similar group of men. Needless to say, the male and female squad members compete, both for success and each other’s attentions, but both are called in to provide security for a showcase featuring priceless jewels. Will the ladies finally be able to prove they are worthy of serving alongside their gentleman colleagues?
For the first hour, this is among the most miserable of action heroine sequels ever to come out of Hong Kong. It’s right down there with Naked Killer II: Raped by an Angel, in terms of the gulf in quality and entertainment value separating it from the original. While Hu and Fung return, as leaders of the male and female squads respectively, outside of a minor battle in the lunch-room, there is almost no significant action to speak of, until the final 20 minutes. It’s almost as if the makers forgot entirely about this side of things until the last week of shooting, and were forced to make up for lost time. It’s certainly brisk and not badly put-together. However, if you’re anything like me, you’ll be ramming your head into the wall and praying for unconsciousness, long before all that shows up.
While still packed with crappy humour, this was at least crappy humour that occasionally made me laugh, rather than roll my eyes. The fourth and final installment went out on a relative high. It demonstrates that it helps when making an action-comedy, to have actors who know their way round the action part. Here, that’s Lee and Khan, both of whom were veterans in the Hong Kong GWG field, and the martial arts here are pretty close to the quality we saw in the first installment.