Category: Review

Arcane – League of Legends: Season 1

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★★★½
“A tale of two sisters.”

I’ve never played League of Legends, but the good news is, you don’t need to, in order to enjoy Arcane. While that may provide some extra depth, it works perfectly well on its own. There is a degree of over-familiarity with the high-level scenario, which is Generic Fantasy Plot #3. Per Wikipedia’s premise, “Amidst the escalating unrest between the advanced, utopian city of Piltover and the squalid, repressed undercity of Zaun…” Yeah, it’s class war time again, cut from the same basic stamp as Mortal Engines, Alita: Battle Angel and The Hunger Games. To this series’s credit, it does show more nuance than some, with good and bad on both sides of the divide. Perhaps a bit too much though, as there were points where it felt like new characters were being thrown at the viewer, even late into the nine-episode series, when the time might have been better spent developing existing ones.

The central pair are sisters Vi (Steinfeld) and Powder (Purnell), orphaned after a failed rebellion. They’re brought up by the leader of the rebellion, and subsequently get entangled in the web of crime, politics, magic and science which powers both sides of the divide. There’s a lot going on here: simply summarizing it would fill the rest of the article. But there are a couple of key points. Powder becomes estranged from her sister, changes her name to Jinx, and goes to work for crime lord Silco (Spisak). Scientist Jayce Talis (Alejandro) creates a technology called Hextech: this (Generic Fantasy Plot #7…) allows for the control of magical energy, which can used for good or evil. It also does… well, whatever the plot needs, from curing illness to blowing things up. Intrigue ensues. A great deal of intrigue.

I did appreciate the script’s complexity, which stands in contrast to most video-game adaptations. I think the greater length (9 x 40-ish minutes) than a movie, gives the writers time to explore things in more depth, and I can’t complain at all about the overall world-building, either in story or artwork. Its French origins perhaps explain the look, which sometimes resembles a bande dessinee. Indeed, the show does almost all the big things right, from animation that’s top-notch, through good voice-acting, and some very well-constructed fight scenes. Vi does not mess around, and proves more than capable of going toe-to-toe with the biggest and baddest both Piltover and Zaun have to offer. Animated combat often lacks the impact of live-action – it’s an almost inevitable result of the medium – but that is not the case here. Blows pack a real punch, if you see what I mean. 

However, there were a number of elements which did hamper the show, and for me, left it short of Seal of Approval level. I mentioned above the reliance on over-familiar tropes. This extends to dialogue which sometimes topples over into clichés, e.g. Vi telling Powder, “What makes you different makes you strong.” Pardon me if I roll my eyes and quote Chuck Pahluniak in response, “You’re not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else.” I also didn’t like the use of indie rock and rap music, finding it too distracting and not a good fit for the environment. I like Imagine Dragons as much as the next person, but… This felt too much like a soundtrack CD in search of a film. Contrast the fight at the end of episode 7 (I think?), accompanied instead by orchestral music, which is perhaps the best in the entire show.

Still, there are absolutely no shortage of strong female characters, even past the sisters. For example, Caitlyn Kiramman, the daughter of a noble family who taken on the difficult job of policing the streets, or Mel Medarda and her mother. While the society portrayed in the show has its issues, gender (and race) don’t appear to be among them, rarely even cropping up. I’ve tended to skip a lot of the Netflix animated shows, for one reason or another, but this definitely was not a waste of time. The way it finishes though… I can’t discuss it in depth for spoiler reasons. But if they hadn’t already announced a second series is coming, I would be severely peeved. I hate that kind of ending in books, and it works no better in a TV show. Do better next time, please.

Dir: Pascal Charrue, Arnaud Delord
Star (voice): Hailee Steinfeld, Ella Purnell, Kevin Alejandro, Jason Spisak

Shadow Corps, by Justin Sloan

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

After a brisk start, this fades into mediocrity, half space opera (that would include the “space dragon”) and half LitRPG. The latter was particularly unexpected, and poorly integrated into the rest of the story. I mean, you’re supposed to be fighting with the fate of the galaxy at stake. Why do you need to level up in order to get abilities? It’s like recruiting the best fighters from across the universe, then sending them into battle unarmed, because they don’t have the necessary experience points yet. No. You should give them all the best tools, right from the get-go, simply because it will help them survive. It just doesn’t make sense.

Anyway, this begins in better shape, with an alien invasion of Earth already well under way, and it largely under the heel of The Syndicate. The LRR – Last Remaining Resistance – are trying to fight back, and among their members is Samantha, a sixteen-year-old girl who can barely remember a time when she wasn’t fighting from her life. However, she is snatched off Earth by Hadrian, to become part of an elite team, comprised of multiple different intergalactic races. For The Syndicate are basically small fry compared to the true Big Bad, who have already destroyed many worlds and races, including Hadrian’s. Earth is among the planets now coming up on their “to do” list.

It kinda reads like a more serious version of Guardians of the Galaxy, with Samantha in the Star-Lord role. She ends up becoming appointed leader of the group, despite her lack of age and experience, and has to meld the disparate personalities into a cohesive whole. Though, to be honest, she doesn’t really do much “leading.” and everyone more or less just does their thing. Indeed, I’d be hard pushed to point out much in the way of Samantha’s development as a character over the course of the book. Well, apart from the obvious levelling-up that occupies a chunk in the middle. If my teenage self had been vacuumed up off Earth and dropped in the middle of an interstellar conflict, I suspect it would likely have changed me, just a bit.

I can’t argue about the action here, and Sloan does have a better handle on this than the characters. Despite my slightly mocking tone above, the space dragon actually sounds pretty bad-ass, though you only get to read about it in full effect, at the end. It perhaps should have been more like the Death Star: destroy a planet or two, to establish its credentials. Despite the copious amount of firefights and hand-to-hand battles, I never felt particularly concerned about the safety of Samantha, or any of the team. Maybe one or two minor characters could have been killed off to give a sense of danger which seemed oddly lacking, given the copious amounts of collateral damage? But the lack of emotional investment would still likely have capped any connection.

Author: Justin Sloan
Publisher: Elder Tree Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 4 in the Shadow Corps series.

Enhanced

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★★½
“X Offender”

The German title for this is, apparently, Mutant Outcasts, and that perhaps gives you a better insight than the official, relatively generic title. There’s more than a hint of X-Men to this, though the superpowered members of humanity in question here, are artificial constructions, created as part of a secret research project by the military-industrial complex. They are now out in the world with the regular population, but are being recaptured by operative George Shepherd (Tchortov) and his squad. Their latest target is Anna (Bale), who had been living quietly as a car mechanic, until she’s forced to use her powers after a gang of thugs show up. That gets her on George’s radar – but also that of David (Mark). While initially, he seems on Anna’s side, turns out he has been killing the superpowered citizens, and absorbing their powers into himself.

There’s a nice mix of grey here, in that George shifts sides as he realizes the truth. But the authorities, such as his boss Captain Williams (Holmes) are not “evil,” as such, but genuinely believe the escapees present a serious threat to the rest of the population. To some extent, he’s not wrong, as the potential for their powers in the wrong hands e.g. David’s, is very significant. It might have been nice if he had been one of them too, for balance; the actual explanation is, I must admit, rather implausible, even in a film about vat-grown mutants with paranormal abilities. It all builds in a rather predictable way to the face-off at the headquarters of Military-Industrial Incorporated, where David walks in, and starts tossing bodies about like rag-dolls.

The director’s background is in the stunt world, and you can tell this, with plenty of scenes of his colleagues throwing themselves around enthusiastically. I was rather disappointed with the lack of screen-time given to Anna’s powers, though this is somewhat redeemed by a good hand-to-hand battle between her and David which forms the film’s climax. To that point, I was seriously wondering whether this should even be reviewed here, but it managed to push the needle over the necessary red line. Most of the time, this is adequately entertaining, though comes off more as an upper-tier SyFy original movie: workmanlike, rather than memorable.

Indeed, I watched it less than an hour ago, and already found myself having to Google certain points like character names. Bale does make a reasonably good impression; she comes over a little like a low-rent version of Tatiana Maslany. The rest of the cast, however, struggle to create any significant impact; the line between them and the generic stuntmen that go flying around is a thin one. There is definitely a strong sense of deja vu in the overall concept: if you’ve not seen several films or series about poor, unfortunate superheroes being persecuted, you’re clearly not trying! But this is reasonably well-executed as to just about get over the red line as passable entertainment too.

Dir: James Mark
Star: Alanna Bale, George Tchortov, Chris Mark, Adrian Holmes

Masquerade

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★½
“Home confusion.”

It’s never a good sign, when the first thing we do at the end of a movie, is go straight to the Internet and try to find out what happened. That’s what we needd to do here, after a “twist” left us both thoroughly confused as hell about what had happened. After 15-20 minutes of both Chris and I googling, I think we eventually achieved some kind of consensus. But it was far from satisfying, and we are definitely not happy about it. I admire the attempt made to up-end everything the audience has seen over the previous 75 minutes. Unfortunately, when the execution is as wretched as here, I wish writer-director Taylor hadn’t bothered. 

After Girl and Chick Fight, it seems to be part of Bella Thorne’s attempts to re-invent herself as an action heroine, rather than the wussy Disney Channel girl. But this appears to have mutated more into a race to the bottom, between her and Ruby Rose as to who can select the worse projects. While both actresses have potential, neither of them have found material which is decent. This definitely ranks among the crappiest, even before reaching the ending. It’s about the burglary of a mansion belonging to married art brokers, Olivia (Monroe) and Daniel, by a masked man and a woman (Samuels). The couple’s young daughter, Casey (Lind) hides after the babysitter is brutally bludgeoned to death, while waitress Rose (Thorne), who is driving the couple home, appears to be in cahoots with the home invaders. Key word: appears.

The burglars turn the power off, for no particular reason – it’s established they had already disabled the alarm. Which means that the bulk of the movie has everyone involved creeping around the house in near darkness. I don’t know why film-makers persist in doing this. I stopped being scared of the dark when was 11, and now it’s just an irritant. Not helping matters, the criminals demonstrate absolutely no sense of urgency, moving at the most languid pace possible, when you would think it would behoove them to get in and out as quickly as possible. Of course, these actions are so that the movie can happen, with Casey crawling around the attic space, desperately trying to avoid capture, as Rose looms ever closer.

Lind is probably the best thing about this, balancing nicely between being brave and resourceful, without toppling over into Hit Girl-like excess. But even here there are problems – such as, why she didn’t get her parents’ gun earlier, or make any effort to call for help, leave the house, etc. It all adds up to one of the most woefully inept scripts I’ve had the misfortune to view in a long time. I should have seen the warning signs on the poster: when the thing you want to tout most is the producers’ previous credits, you have a very weak hand. Still better than Twilight though. Albeit, only just.

Dir: Shane Dax Taylor
Star: Bella Thorne, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Skyler Samuels, Mircea Monroe

Rag Doll

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★★★
“Punching up”

Truth be told, this took me two attempts to get through. The first foundered inside about thirty minutes, because I just wasn’t feeling it at the time. The movie made so little impression I managed to forget completely I’d seen it, and so it eventually made its way back onto my watch-list. When I realized this, I almost debated nixing it again; however, I persisted, and am at least somewhat glad I did. If falling well short of being a classic – not least, because of a twist ending which is both superfluous and a terrible misfire – there is enough here to merit a review.

Nora (Murray) is juggling several life elements, all of which demand more than she is able or prepared to give, and which are interfering with each other. Firstly, she has a mother, Catherine (Erb) with stage 4 cancer, requiring constant care. Then there’s her job, which involves cleaning motel rooms – and, to make ends meet, turning occasional tricks. Finally, there’s her actual passion: mixed martial-arts at a local gym, under the eagle eye of trainer Rosheen (Jones). Nora is there mostly as a sparring partner (read: punching-bag) for the more talented Aisha (Sanchez). But there’s a tournament for female MMA’ers coming up, with a $100,000 prize. That would take care of a lot of her problems, if she could win it. Life, however, appears to have other plans for her, not least her workmates’ intense, increasing dislike of her.

It’s a very earnest film, with not much in the way of light-hearted moments, beyond Catherine’s death-bed self-sarcasm. It stands almost entirely on the strength of Murray’s performance, which is intense to the point of occasionally being uncomfortable to watch. The MMA scenes are well-staged, the camera getting right in there with the participants, and incorporating some particularly good audio work (you can hear the muscles stretching). These elements work much better than the script, which is an awkward combination of sports movie cliche with kitchen-sink working-class drama, and is not particular convincing as either. In particular, there’s an attempt to shoehorn in a romantic subplot for Nora, which ends up being more cringeworthy than effective. Indeed, the same goes for the sexual tension between Nora and Aisha, though fortunately, that lasts just one scene.

The problem is that neither Nora nor the film need anyone else. She’s the very epitome of a strong, independent heroine, who is trying to make her way in life, through circumstances which would reduce most of us to a wreck in short order. Simply having her handle this would prove sufficient drama for most purposes. Neither the romantic entanglements nor the climactic tournament offer as much proof of life as, for example, her standing up against her part-time pimp. Then there’s that twist, which presumably seemed like a good idea. At some point. To someone or other. I can’t imagine when or who though. I would not be averse to seeing Murray in future, however, on the basis of her powerful performance here. Providing you are in the right mood, anyway.

Dir: Bailey Kobe
Star: Shannon Murray, Stephanie Erb, Dot-Marie Jones, Roxana Sanchez

9-Ball

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★½
“A load of balls.”

Oh, dear. There’s part of me which thinks this is what you get when you try and make actors out of pool players. For the star here, Barretta, is one of the top women cue artists in the world. She’s joined here by cameos from a couple of bigger pool stars i.e. people even I’ve heard of, in Jeanette ‘The Black Widow’ Lee and Allison Fisher, and you can’t really expect much out of any professional sportswomen, in terms of acting ability. However, she isn’t that bad, though this may just be relative to some of her fellow cast members. And, to be fair to the actors here, you could be an Oscar-winner, and still not be able to do anything with the wretched script, which is little more than a parade of cliches, when not being a shameless advert for the American Poolplayers Association and its leagues.

Gail (Barretta) is the daughter of a pool player, who saw Dad stabbed to death in the street in front of her house. Taken in by creepy Uncle Joey (Hanover), Gail has clearly inherited some of her father’s skills, and Joey makes her turn them to his benefit, hustling suckers for money in bars. But, of course, Gail has dreams of her own, meeting Nice Guy™ Mark (Kochanowicz), and wants to leave Joey to head out on her own as a professional player. Hence the largely pointless cameos by Lee and Fisher, advising Gail how to achieve her goal. Joey isn’t happy at the prospect of using his cash cow, and beats up Gail, who absconds with his “retirement fund”. Though initially sent to jail, he gets bailed out, and the time spent inside hasn’t exactly improved his temper.

I was really hoping for considerably more, and better filmed, pool. It’s  closer to being a Lifetime TVM with occasional interludes of the sport. And on the (sporadic) occasions we see Gail in action, we mostly see her striking the cue ball, or the target ball going into the pocket – hardly ever both in the same frame. What’s the point of having one of the world’s top players in your movie, if you rarely see them making their pro-quality shots?

It all builds towards an APA team tournament in Las Vegas, which at least. is a little better in this regard. Though that only shows up in the last ten minutes, leaving precious little room for any kind of tension to built. We gallop through it, to a final shot which don’t realize is the final shot, until after it has been pocketed. Even Joey’s subplot is hustled off-screen with an absolute minimum of excitement, despite him turning up at the event with a gun. There are possibilities in the idea, which I won’t deny: after all, pool is one of the few games where men and women can compete on equal terms. But they are painfully squandered by the wretched direction and script. As bar sports action heroine movies go, I guess we’ll have to wait for the Fallon Sherrock biopic.

Dir: Anthony Palma
Star: Jennifer Barretta, Kurt Hanover, Mark Kochanowicz, Jennifer Butler

Girl Force, by Jonathan J. West

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

On the one hand, this is a book in desperate, desperate need of a copy-editor. Seriously: this is littered with more typos, grammatical gaffes and clunky phrasing than any other book I’ve ever read. I don’t know what the process was, which brought this to market, but it clearly fell dramatically short of adequate. Even as a first draft, this is something of which I would be flat-out ashamed. At times, I had to read a sentence three times, just to try and figure out what was meant. I have DNF’d books for far, far less. 

And, yet… Not only did I finish this, I genuinely enjoyed the whole, lunatic experience. I don’t know if the editing got slightly better as the book went on. Maybe I just became used to the style, which flies defiantly in the face of, not just all literary convention, but the basic rules of English. Bizarrely, by the end, I found myself almost appreciative of the stream of consciousness, neo-Joycean approach. It’s better demonstrated by example, than description, so here’s a sample paragraph – neither particularly good nor bad by the book’s standards:

Terrorist fighters were all except the junior member the fifteen-year-old boy, all dead, all taken out with kill shot perception of naturality of the cold kill of special forces combat. As feeling neither angry or regret did the unit, the squad of Girl Force have. It was a job that needed to be done and done with maximum efficiency it was.

Imagine 176 pages, just like that. But for all the shortcomings in grammar. spelling, and frequently,  coherence, it doesn’t lack for sheer energy. The five women of the title are a super-secret black ops group, who carry out impossible missions on behalf of the US government, while bickering amiably about what tunes should be played [There’s a blackly funny moment involving suicide bombers and the song It’s Raining Men…] GIRL Force – it stands for Ground Infantry Reconnaissance Logistics – are a vastly disparate quintet, in terms of background and culture. They run the gamut from “hee haw rootin’ tootin’ dixie chick farm girl” Annabelle Huston, to Hannukah Jones, “at the top of the top from Persian and African royalty.” But they are all amazingly talented, in everything from dance to martial arts, loving their country (and puppies), while hating injustice with an equal and admirable passion.

The first mission is an extraction out of China, which escalates into an extended chase sequence, worthy of a Michael Bay movie, before they are swept up to safety. After a brief pause to meet their boss, General Sofia-Jones Washington in their state-of-the-art headquarters, and her nemesis, Senator Karen Mann, it’s back out into the field. For a terrorist  attack has led to the brink of World War III, and GIRL Force represents the only chance of stopping it. But can these five brave women really defeat the five hundred terrorists of ISIL splinter group Crimson Jihad? Oh, who am I kidding. It’s a light challenge. For they are so good at everything, this reads partly like a sly parody of the dreaded Mary Sue trope (which was, itself, originally created as a parody of Star Trek fan-fiction).

Indeed, I’m not sure how much of this is to be taken seriously. If forced into judgment, I’d say rather little: I’d line it up alongside the original Charlie’s Angels movie.  Taken in that light, it’s a fast, frothy read which, against all odds, did have me interested in finding out what happens next. But you definitely need a huge tolerance for what My Fair Lady’s Professor Henry Higgins called the “cold-blooded murder of the English tongue.” Never mind homicide, this may be guilty of war crimes against the language. 

Author: Jonathan J. West
Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book

And Tomorrow the Entire World

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★★★
“Chewy, yet slightly crunchy.”

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

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

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

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

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

My Name

  By

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Too Hot to Handle

  By

★★★
“If you can’t stand the heat…”

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

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

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

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

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