Category: Review

Lady Psycho Killer

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★★½
“Teenage angst with a body-count.”

Ella (Daly) is a shy college student, whose psychology lecturer gives the class an unusual project: break a sexual norm. Unfortunately, Ella is rather confused about the intersection between sex and violence, in part because of genetics, for her father was a serial killer, before abandoning her pregnant mother (Heinrich). As a result, Ella’s attempt to carry out the assignment by auditioning at a strip-club, ends with her slitting the throat of the owner (Ron Jeremy, being appropriately grubby). This awakens the serial killer dormant inside her, and she starts taking out the sleazy men around her. The problem is nice guy Daniel (Andres), whose unwillingness to match her stereotypical opinions of masculinity, triggers further conflicting feelings in Ella, as her acts of murder become increasingly more blatant.

A lack of subtlety is also a problem when it comes to the film’s social commentary, though some credit is due for being a couple of years ahead of the #MeToo movement. Still, the almost constant use of voice-over as a narrative tool is lazily problematic, even if you can get past the ludicrous nature of the plot, or that Michael Madsen plays the least convincing college professor in movie history [Malcolm McDowell fares better as Ella’s creepy next-door neighbour]. The most interesting thing is perhaps the heroine’s relationship with her mother, which plays a little like a suburban version of Carrie, without the religious angle to the over-protective mom. I’d like to have seen this explored further.

Daly’s performance isn’t bad, having to cover a lot of emotional range from naively innocent to stone-cold killer, while also portraying the confusion of transforming from a girl into a woman. It’s a role that would challenge any actress, and hardly a surprise that Daly can’t quite convince across all the necessary aspects. She does fare better than the men in the script, who are given almost nothing to work with beyond “be creepy.” Perhaps this is intended as a sly commentary on the shallow depiction of female victims in many horror films? Let’s charitably assume that is indeed the case, though this could equally well just be more lazy writing.

For it is the script which hampers the film most of all, with almost every development triggering a roll of my eyes. What college professor would really hand out such an assignment? What cop would just let a confessed killer go, without any interrogation or further investigation, simply because a similar murder took place? What mother would affect little more than mild concern – especially, knowing her familial history- when her daughter comes home from a date, covered in blood? By coincidence, the day after seeing this, we re-watched American Psycho, a film which is clearly a significant influence on Oliver, in more than just its title (especially the original one, which omitted the word “Lady”). Its superiority is equally undeniable: he’d have benefited by learning a bit more from the source, especially in the area of writing.

Dir: Nathan Oliver
Star: Kate Daly, Dennis Andres, Meredith Heinrich, Josh Dolphin

Yoga and the Kungfu Girl

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★★½
“Your flexible friend.”

I’m trying to figure out if the “the” in the IMDb title used here is superfluous. “Yoga and Kung-fu Girl,” as on the DVD sleeve would make more sense, given the heroine’s martial arts are a combination of traditional skills with extreme flexibility. In some ways, it’s a slightly less exploitative version of things like The Crippled Masters, with its amputee-fu. The heroine here, Phoenix, could similarly make a living as a carnival exhibit, given her contortionist abilities, which are here shoe-horned into use to provide a style of fighting. To say this works with variable success would be an understatement. There are moments when her talents and flexibility are genuinely impressive. However, there are others where her limitations and lack of training are painfully apparent.

The story has Phoenix (Chan) as an orphan, taken in by the formidable Madame Kao, who brings Phoenix up as part of her troupe of martial artists, while providing herbal remedies to the local people [I must say, the transition that had her foster kids flipping across the meadow, to become adults at the far side, was kinda neat] Phoenix’s best friend is Ho Fei (Chi), but he has a bit of a gambling problem, stealing from Madame Kao to fund his habit. Trouble ensues, not helped by a jealous rival trying to frame Kao for bad medicine, and additionally, Ho ends up accused of a murder he didn’t commit. It’s up to Phoenix to lead the charge against the villains responsible.

This appears to have been made as a vehicle for Chen, but it doesn’t seem she ever appeared in anything else after this – whether due to commercial failure or a lack of personal interest. Perhaps wisely, the script makes her character mute, limiting the need for actual acting: she communicates in sign language instead. Her skill-set provides the movie with its sole gimmick, and apart from that, this is largely indistinguishable from any other genre entries of the time. The only area where it makes an impression is the final fight, where Phoenix, Ho Fei and another of Madame Kao’s orphans face off against the big boss.

That it requires three of them to take him down is quite understandable, and it’s about the only moment where Phoenix’s unusual and acrobatic style of kung-fu works, because it’s one ingredient in the recipe for the resulting fight, not the entire dish. When it (or she) tries to stand on its own merits, there just isn’t enough to sustain the interest for more than a few minutes of “Ooh: I didn’t realize spines could bend to such a shape”. It’s possible, had she persevered, that the rather homely leading lady might have eventually managed to go on to develop into someone capable of carrying a feature. However, you would be hard pushed to feel that the world of martial arts movies is a poorer place, because the sub-genre of contortionist-fu never apparently managed to establish a foothold past this singular entry.

Dir: Sun Yung
Star: Phoenix Chen, Chi Kuan Chun, Pai Ying

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

  By

★★★
“Girl with a ray-gun”

When this came out, all the way back in 2016 [so much has happened in the Star Wars universe since then and the way we regard LucasFilms…], it was met with a split reaction. Admittedly, the film never resulted in the kind of angry war that resulted from The Last Jedi the following year. While some praised Rogue One to the skies for being so different, dark and down-to-earth (some even went so far as to rank the film as the best movie of the series since A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, others – including myself – were more like: “…meh!”

This rather mixed reaction came after the entertaining roller-coaster ride The Force Awakens had provided. The more serious, less “fun” approach of RO made the new movie a much less-liked, some may even say “ignored”, entry in the new cycle of Disney-produced Star Wars movies. As usual, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Personally, I was left cold by the movie, after having really enjoyed TFA. But, while RO has some real flaws in my humble opinion, and a problem in its basic conception, it is not a bad or mediocre movie. Just a flawed,”okayish” movie, and I’ll explain why I think so in more detail.

The story begins a couple of decades before the events of A New Hope. Scientist Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) is recruited by the Empire through Director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) to work on a new super weapon in development – which we all know today as the “Death Star”. Galen can’t refuse: he is abducted, his wife is killed during the kidnapping, and only his young daughter, Jyn, escapes.

Fast-forward to meet the now twenty-something Jyn Erso (Jones) again, as she is freed from prison by the Resistance. Together with spy Cassian Andor (Luna) and a couple of other misfits they meet along the way, they’re tasked to find out about that new deadly weapon in whose construction Jyn’s father was instrumental. That involves either freeing him from the Empire or, it’s implied, killing him so he cannot serve his masters any more. This could potentially pit Jyn against Cassian, though nothing is ever made of that interesting premise. As usual in Star Wars, it all ends in a big battle, this time, on and over the tropical island planet of Scarif. And [spoiler warning] this sees the surprising death of all the main characters, save those who will become main characters in its sequel, ANH, such as Leia, Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin.

It doesn’t sound uninteresting but despite all the good points, there are also some serious flaws. For much of the time, the film is dragged down by expository scenes, flying from place A to B to accomplish this or that, getting another new character onto the ship and so on. It also suffers from the common bane of all prequels: telling a story nobody ever asked for, where we all already know the ending! What saves the film mainly, is the finale. Unlike the duo of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller on Solo, director Gareth Edwards wasn’t fired; his name is still attached to the movie. Yet there were reports about massive reshoots of the ending, by Tony Gilroy who also was responsible (together with Chris Weitz) for the screenplay. Certainly, the surprise introduction of Darth Vader into the plot and many snippets of scenes which were only in the trailers, seem to indicate the movie may have originally had a different direction.

This leads me to the subject of expectations. I recently saw a clip where some celebrity remembered an experience he had years before: “I saw Pulp Fiction in the cinema and in front of me were two teenagers who where definitely displeased by the movie, which I thought was great and original. On the way out, I overheard one of them say: “That must have been the worst Bruce Willis movie, I’ve ever seen!” That shows me, cinema has a lot to do with your expectations and your anticipation!”

That hits the nail right on the head, and I feel the same here. For some people RO was satisfying enough (or even great) because they got their “dark, gritty Star Wars-film”. Every fandom seems to have people who can accept something only if it is “dark and gritty”, which has led to some very unpleasant DC and James Bond movies in the past decade. However, I was disappointed, because I expected not only something very different, but also imagined a movie much better than the one I was served.

It all started with the trailer, that introduced us to Felicity Jones’ Jyn Erso like a hardened criminal in handcuffs with SW-regular Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) listing off what seems to be Jyn’s juvenile record. Honestly, I wouldn’t have minded that at all, and would love to see a character like that in a SW movie. But they should have gone full throttle, and made her like Revy from Black Lagoon. Heck, make her the Snake Plissken of SW! But unfortunately, they didn’t do that.

Even her lines in the trailer: “This is a rebellion, isn’t it? So I rebel!” are just pretense: a hardness that is never proven, only claimed. But this line is also never said in the final movie. “Trailer-Jyn” seems to be a tough one, rejecting authority, while “Movie-Jyn” seems toned-down, and therefore quite a bit more bland. This had the potential to be highly interesting, and unfortunate that they never followed it up in the movie. For example, at the beginning we meet Cassian Andor: he shoots another spy who delivers vital information to him, fearing the comrade could endanger him by getting captured by Stormtroopers. You can think of many scenarios how Jyn and Cassian could work together, what kind of uneasy relationship they would establish. Cassian might be ready to kill her father – and potentially also Jyn when she causes trouble.

I do remember how my head-cinema went into overdrive when I heard Forest Whitaker’s voice in the trailer proclaiming: “What will you do when they break you? What… will you become…?” That really got my mind going, in combination with Jyn appearing in the trailer in a civil Imperial uniform. What could that mean? Would she go undercover, maybe for years to spy within the Empire? Leave her comrades and everyone she did know for good? Maybe figure as an elder version of herself in a future “Rey”-movie, or even turning out to be Rey’s mother? Remember, at this point I didn’t know anything at all about the upcoming movie. Would she have “Force powers” like Rey? Fall to the “dark side”? Perhaps, having been kicked around her whole life, she would decide that the “rebel scum” had no chance of winning at all, and join the Empire? After all, Telly Savalas was instrumental to the downfall of The Dirty Dozen, and this plot claimed to be cut from the same cloth.

Another ideaarose on hearing that Mads Mikkelsen would be cast as her father. Jyn having to decide between accomplishing her mission, which would mean killing him if he tried to stop her, or joining him because she wanted to be reunited with her father. [In today’s SJW-storytelling environment that kind of plot wouldn’t be very far-fetched anymore…] And when I heard Darth Vader was in the movie it became even more fascinating. Would she maybe fight him, with Force powers? Would Vader threaten to behead her father in front of her, if she didn’t give up? “What… will you become?” indeed!

Or, hearing about martial arts actor Donnie Yen playing Chirrut (whom I thought of as a blind Jedi master at that point), my head-cinema saw the first Kung Fu-based “Force fight” between Darth Vader and Yen (with Yen obviously losing, since we all know Vader is alive in ANH). See how many colourful and fascinating ideas a few trailers, pictures and cast announcements can generate in someone’s mind? And you can also understand how terribly disappointing the movie we were served, proved to be for someone like me.

Understand, that I’m always looking at things from a dramatic standpoint. I want great drama that has an impact on me as an ordinary cinemagoer. I find it deplorable when I see good story material, not living up to its potential. I somehow can’t help feel that in all the original shot material that was indicated in the trailers, a much better, more interesting and dramatic film is hiding. It’s one we are never going to see because it either was never assembled or that edit vanished in Disney’s cupboard. But maybe I’m just as delusional as those DC fans who still call for the “Snyder-cut” of Justice League…

My personal feeling is that, maybe the first version of the movie was too hard and uncompromising for Disney and Kathleen Kennedy. Or higher-ups above her decided they didn’t want to reject the dollars of the 12-year olds, resulting in a much more toned-down version that, frankly, appears tame and comparatively harmless. Remember, this was supposed to be the “war” movie of the SW-franchise. But if you want a “hard, dark and gritty war movie” than for heaven’s sake do it, don’t make something that’s only half-baked!

Even if I don’t look at Rogue One from the perspective of what it could or should have been, just from what could have been objectively expected, the film sits well below the bar. For example: you hire the original “Ghost Dog” as stepdad for Jyn, then don’t have him fight with a laser-sword in the big battle? You only give him a small supporting role, playing “exposition dwarf” for Jyn? Really? Same with Donnie Yen, whom I imagined doing so much more. Why even bother hiring a famous and well-beloved martial artist, then not using his abilities. That hardly makes sense.

But you have to wonder why somebody thought it would be a great idea to make a Star Wars film without the Force in the first place. Isn’t it the kind of wish-fulfillment that makes these movies partly so great? Instead, the approach of this movie makes as much sense for me as a James Bond movie without any gadgets (sorry, Mr. Craig!) or the second Wolverine movie, with the hero robbed of his quick-healing abilities.

I do understand that certain people love to make stories which are more “realistic”. Yet why are these people (screenwriters, directors, whatever) hired at all to make movies that are MEANT to be escapist fantasies? That just doesn’t gel with me. While acknowledging how successful the Nolan Batman movies were, I really think it’s time to return to the FANTASY in big fantastic movies. Embrace those aspects wholeheartedly, instead of always putting a tight leash on the stories, and showing the audience what a “grown-up” storyteller you are.

Then there is Darth Vader. He might be the most “beloved” villain in the SW-universe. But instead of showing what he may have been doing between Episodes 3 and 4, he is terribly underused in all the Kennedy productions. I do understand the character was brought into this at the last minute, and as fan-service goes, he does miracles – as shown by the reactions of SW fans when his involvement was announced. His role here is still too small, merely an after-thought to save a probably not too satisfying movie. If I had been a decision-maker on this movie, believe me, he would have been much more central to the storyline and made a much bigger impact on the heroine. There would definitely have been a face-to-…helmet battle against Whitaker / Yen / Jones in my version.

Then there are conceptual flaws. Another appearance by Peter Cushing might have looked like a great idea on paper. The actual CGI-translation looks quite awkward to me; not directly cringe-worthy, yet definitely “off”. Even more than 20 years after the death of this iconic character actor, his subtle facial expressions are still so deeply ingrained in our memories, that CGI-Tarkin appears almost a cartoon character. The impression is that the artists were so enthusiastic about what they could do, within a short period of time all possible expressions run over the character’s face. Less would have definitely been more here.

Another justified complaint is that the whole movie undermines the importance of Princess Leia (here, also played by CGI) in ANH. While we never did know exactly how Leia got the plans of the Death Star, the feeling was always that she put herself on the line and retrieved the important data despite much personal danger. RO kind of retcons this: Leia’s contribution to the whole operation is being handed over the disc, safely on her ship after it felt like hundreds of people had died to get it. That’s suboptimal, as a friend of mine would say.

That all sounds probably very negative. And yes, it is. But the above focuses only on what I thought were the shortcomings and flaws of the movie. It also has moments one can appreciate. I like Mads Mikkelsen who gave a surprisingly emotional performance. I find it always surprising how good some actors can be when cast against their usual image e.g. Christoph Waltz in Alita. Mikkelsen comes across as both a loving, caring father and a scientist with principles. It would have been so easy to make him the stereotypical villain of the piece, and the decision not to do that pays off greatly, especially compared to his terribly uninspired and bland performance in Doctor Strange.

Also, Ben Mendelsohn as Director Orson Krennic is a great casting choice. Looking like a younger Ian McKellen, Mendelsohn plays Krennic as an over-ambitious employee who is instrumental to the Empire’s power. But he never gets what he wants: neither Darth Vader nor Grand Moff Tarkin (changed here characterwise to accommodate the story), both higher in command, ever respect him or feel the need to grant his wishes. That makes the character actually more human. Sometimes even Empire officials have bad days.

I didn’t think much of Felicity Jones or her “brothers-in-arms”. While Jones is probably not a bad actress, there’s little to chew on acting-wise: a couple of moments here and there, such as when she meets her father again, and I like the way she moves. But Jyn Erso is under-served by the script; we needed to see more of her past in order to connect with her on an emotional level. As this didn’t happen, neither her death – as surprising it was to see in a Disney movie – nor those of the other combatants, had the emotional impact they should have.

Thinking back to other movies that dealt with a group of diverse misfits in an extreme situation, despite being over 130 minutes long, the big problem here is time. If you watch The Dirty Dozen, you see plenty of the protagonists preparing and bonding for their great mission, establishing a sense of who they are. A classic like The Magnificent Seven constantly gives you little snippets of how these characters react, telling enough to the audience about the characters that you care for them. Heck, even epic war movies of the past like The Longest Day or The Great Escape did better, despite it seeming half of all the actors in the world appeared in them. You could still make them out as characters, and care about their success or death.

In Rogue One… not much, unfortunately. The characters stay ciphers, almost interchangeable. What do we know much about Chirrut or Baze or Bodhi Rook? Nothing really. I’ve heard there’s a “Cassian Andor” TV series in the making; so that may change for him in the future. That’s too late, and should have happened in the movie. But while the movie underwhelms in so many respects, I say again: It’s not a bad movie, just one that for numerous reasons didn’t live up to its potential. Here are some of the moments I liked:

  • Forest Whitaker in his small role
  • comic relief robot K-2SO who is so much different from someone like C-3P0
  • the scene with Jyn and her father
  • Krennic facing Vader
  • the scene where Jyn and Cassian have to retrieve the disc “manually”
  • the fight above Scarif with the protection shield that makes it other spaceships impossible to gain entry
  • the last confrontation with Krennic
  • Darth Vader slicing and dicing his way through a tube full of unfortunate rebel soldiers
  • and of course the consequential ending, saving the film from a far worse fate.

I like it shows that sometimes, protagonists just die and don’t “get better” like Superman in his tomb. or their death is not real like “Agent Coulson” of the Marvel movies. Sometimes the price for success is to give your all; that can mean death and sacrifice. May I refer you to the much darker TV-pilot of the Battlestar Galactica reboot from 2004? And it is almost Solomonic that they all die, the Rogue One crew as well as Krennic, leaving the future fights to all the other characters. somewhere in the stars. That’s a fine storytelling attitude, though my Shakespeare-approved sensibilities are used to more impactful, dramatic storytelling than this could provide. Which may say more about me than the movie!

What is my final verdict? Despite definite flaws the movie has its qualities. It may be a “low-key” entry in the series but that’s fine. It doesn’t have to be “the big story” every time. Yes, thinking what it could potentially have been, makes me a bit sad. But all said and done, it’s watchable. Maybe you should see it separately, rather than together with all the other movies of the series. Ranking-wise it is less enjoyable than The Force Awakens but much much better than that terrible mess of The Last Jedi. You can easily watch Rogue One when you feel like watching a big SF movie. And it doesn’t even have to be on a rainy Saturday afternoon!

Dir: Gareth Edwards
Star:  Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Donnie Yen

Sendero, by Max Tomlinson

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

When you think of drugs, terrorism and South America, Colombia probably comes first to mind, thanks to Pablo Escobar and his cartel pals. However, it’s far from the only country in the region with a troubled history. Peru has had its fair share of strife: it produces virtually as much cocaine, and the Marxist guerillas of the Shining Path movement fought a long, bloody war against the government through the eighties. It’s during this time that the novel begins. Young girl Nina has her father killed by soldiers hunting the guerillas in her rural village, and her brother Miguel vanishes to join the Shining Path.

More than two decades later, Nina has grown up to become a cop in Lima, with the dirty war against the Shining Path apparently over – the terrorists have now, effectively, merged with the drug traffickers. She encounters Malqui, the former village priest who spent eight years in prison for protesting the murder of Nina’s father, and mentions knowing someone who had recently met Miguel. However, before she can get any more information, Malqui is picked up by the authorities and vanishes into the dark network of secret prisons. For it seems the dirty war is not as over as is publicly stated. To rescue Malqui – and perhaps be reunited with her long-lost brother – Nina is going to have to get her own hands dirty as well.

I must confess, I confused the title with “sicario,” the drug cartel term for hit-man. Between that and the cover, I was expecting something… different. Turns out, sendero is Spanish for “path” – and those who support the guerillas. Quite whether this includes the heroine is an interesting point. After the death of her father, it seems odd for her to end up as part of the government authorities, yet she becomes part of the “resistance” as she seeks to locate and free Malqui. Though by the end of the book, it’s clear that the remnants of the Shining Path are no more the solution either, with their morality little if any less problematic. The entire novel could be printed in various shades of grey: even Nina is prepared to do bad things for what she perceives as a good end.

As such, it’s a very thought-provoking read, and opened my eyes to the history of a country about which I had never known much previously, and its social and political struggles. If there’s a weakness, it’s probably the way in which Nina ends up taking a seat in the second half, with the story’s focus shifting to Miguel and his colleagues in the Shining Path [though among them, Comrade Inez does partly fill in for the lack of Nina]. It’s a shame, for Nina is an excellent heroine: one who never forgets either where she came from, or where she wants to be, and is willing to risk everything for others, in a highly altruistic manner. Hopefully, the second book is all Nina, all the time.

Author: Max Tomlinson
Publisher: Sendero Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 2 in the Sendero series.

Mardaani

  By

★★★½
“Korma’s a bitch… Uh, I mean KARMA…

Officer Shivani Shivaji Roy (Mukerji) is part of the Serious Crimes Squad in Delhi, whose approach to policing is very much “by any means necessary.” However, she is taken out of her area of expertise when Pyaari. a young girl she has been helping goes missing from an orphanage. Everything indicates the girl has been picked up by a sex trafficking ring, run by Sunny Katyal (Verma) and his partner, Karan (Bhasin), and will soon be sold off to the highest bidder and exported out of the country. Roy has to work her way up the chain to rescue Pyaari, despite opposition both from her boss, because it’s not her responsibility, and from the gang. As she gets nearer to the top, the climb becomes increasingly hard, with the criminals making it clear they won’t take lightly the threat to their lucrative business which Roy represents. It’s also clear they have friends in high places.

There’s a long-standing issue of extrajudicial action by the police in India, known locally as “encounter killings.” This film is far more likely to be the problem than the solution here, with the heroine behaving in a way of which Dirty Harry would certainly approve, yet severely at odds with contemporary Western policing methods. That’s apparent right from an early scene where she publicly assaults a culprit, punctuating a list of his offenses: “Section 143 – unlawful assembly. [Slap!] Section 147 – rioting. [Slap!] Section 132 – abetment of mutiny [Slap!]”, and so on. To see a male police officer do this in a modern movie would be shocking. To see a woman do it? It’s… kinda awesome, especially in India, a country where at the time the film came out, woman represented only 6.6% of the police force.

This comes to a climax at the end,. when she faces off against Karan, and he mocks her, saying his contacts will ensure he gets off lightly. She replies, “They can do it only if you reach the police station. But you won’t reach the police station, because this is India.” Then, when he asks, “Are you going to murder me in front of everyone?”, she responds, “In India, if 50 people take the law in their hands and kill someone, then it’s not called a murder. It’s called ‘Public outrage’.” As a rabble-rousing, cryptofascist call for vigilante justice due to corruption goes… This one certainly doesn’t hold back.

But it still works well, with Mukerji making Roy a well-rounded and sympathetic character. Her mission is driven as much by a semi-maternal rage as the usual macho bullshit, and she relies just as much on intelligence as brute force. Although the film loses steam when diverting attention to the bad guys, who are little more than cartoon caricatures, I especially enjoyed the phone-calls where Karan attempts to intimidate her, and fails completely. For Roy goes all Liam Neeson on him instead: “I don’t know what your name is. I don’t know where you are speaking from, who your boss is, or where you have kept Pyaari. But I’ve figured your type… I will hunt you down in 30 days.” Even the most liberal of viewers would be forgiven a fist-pump at the end when justice, legitimate or not, is served, piping-hot with a side of poppadoms.

Dir: Pradeep Sarkar,
Star: Rani Mukerji, Tahir Raj Bhasin, Jisshu Sengupta, Saanand Verma

Angel Strikes Back

  By

★★½
“You only film twice…”

This is a sequel to Angel With The Iron Fists, and again sees Ho playing Agent 009 – though this time, the character is named Ai Si, different from its predecessor. Whatever… Here, she’s on the trail of the unimaginatively named Bomb Gang, who do exactly what you’d expect. They threaten companies, extorting them for large sums of money, and if they don’t pay up… things go boom, courtesy of their new, highly concentrated explosives. It’s led by Xiang Xiang, a.k.a. the Specialist (Shen), who has taken over a nightclub run by her twin sister, to act as a front for the group. Though, as in Fists, the true lair of evil villainy is a delightful excess in unnecessary over-production, resembling a game-show set on acid, with bonus trap-doors.

Unfortunately, it has much the same weaknesses as its predecessor (and without even the sublime glory of that moment). There’s a good chunk of time where 009 all but vanishes from her own movie, with the spotlight instead being given over to her ally in the investigation, Deng Lei (Tang). There are certainly far too many scenes of people sitting around in night-clubs, or of one set of suits chasing another set of suits around the streets of Hong Kong. Deng ends up captured by Xiang Xiang, who attempts to seduce him into joining the gang, and after he spurns her, Deng is thrown into a cell conveniently next to the twin sister. Fortunately, Ai Si is able to locate the facility, leading to a very Bond-esque climax, in which the forces of law and order storm the complex, resulting in a massive gun-battle. Throw in some gadgetry plus a Barry-esque soundtrack (in some places, actual Barry), and it’s a surprise Eon Productions weren’t consulting their lawyers.

There are some parts here which certainly will stick in memory. The sequence where Deng upstages a strong-man in his night-club act, and is rewarded by having a poisonous spider slapped on his shoulder. Fortunately, Agent 009 is prepared with (I mentioned the gadgets) her incendiary aerosol. And so begins their relationship, albeit at the cost of his jacket being reduced to ashes. Or the bit where Ai Si disguises herself as a man, because… because a bit of cross-dressing seemed required for every Hong Kong action heroine of the late sixties. It’s about as convincing here, as it is everywhere else i.e. not very. Ho’s talents on the action front are little improved from Fists, and leave Tang to take up the slack in this department

The elements here could have been an entertaining pastiche of spy movies – though I am just not certain that was the aim. When you’re unsure how seriously a movie is supposed to be taken, the viewer is likely to be left in cinematic limbo. In the end though, it doesn’t work well enough to be a good imitation of the Bond franchise, and nor is it sufficiently lampooning to be considered a parody of it. 

Dir: Lo Wei
Star: Lily Ho, Tang Ching, Shen Yi, Chiang Kuang-Chao

Bad Grandmas

  By

★★
“Near-dead.”

There is entertainment value to be found even in bad movies. Bad action, horror and SF are sometimes just as amusing as the good stuff. But bad comedy is almost irredeemable: that’s why Mystery Science Theater 3000 rarely go there. Bad comedy just… sits there, dull and unamusing, almost worthless. And that’s what we have here. It’s a somewhat interesting idea, with some potential. Unfortunately, the execution – mostly in the script and direction – are so woefully inept that even the brave efforts of Florence Henderson, in her final film, aren’t enough to salvage it. And wasting the talents of Pam Grier needs to be some kind of cinematic capital offense.

Mimi (Henderson) is trying to help out her friend Bobbi (Wall), who is being thrown out of her house by an evil son-in-law. She goes to confront the perp, only for him to end up dead. She and her senior citizenette pals dispose of the body, hiding it in a freezer. But this just brings them to the attention of Harry (Reinhold), the local loan-shark to who the son-in-law owed two hundred grand. He kidnaps Bobbi, demanding the house or the money; Mimi is having none of that, and when Harry sends over an associate to collect, the henchmen ends up similarly dismembered and in the deep-freeze. Meanwhile, the local sheriff (Batinkoff) is also sniffing around, initially having been investigating Harry’s financial dealings.

Henderson does her best with material which seems designed to destroy any audience sympathy. For example, her first victim isn’t killed initially, and Mimi immediately stabs him in the heart to finish the job. I remind you: this film is supposedly a comedy. If it wanted to go this “dark passenger” route [and it includes an explicit reference to Dexter], that might have worked better, and I’d have been fine with it. Make Mimi a retired serial killer, former CIA operative or something to explain her apparent psychopathic tendencies. For the ease with which she slides from genteel retirement into cold-blooded dispatch is jarring and at odds with the light-hearted tone for which the film is aiming (and, largely, falling short).

A far more egregious complaint would be putting one of the godmothers of action heroineism, Grier, in a timid, mouse-like role, beneath a poorly-considered blonde wig, and giving her next to nothing to do. I know she’s in her late sixties, but that never stopped the similarly-aged Helen Mirren from letting rip in Red. I just breathed a sigh of relief on checking Pam’s filmography to discover she had appeared in other films since. Bad enough this was Henderson’s swan-song, we didn’t need it also to be that of an unquestioned icon like Grier. I sense where this is trying to go – something similar to the Bad Ass franchise, with its similarly mature cast of Dannys Glover and Trejo. However, that knew what to do with its characters, and made much better use of them than this, a well-intentioned failure.

Dir: Srikant Chellappa
Star: Florence Henderson, Randall Batinkoff, Judge Reinhold, Susie Wall

Atone

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★★
“atone: make amends or reparation.”

I mention the above for two reasons. Firstly, because Chris wondered why the film was called “At One”. Secondly, because when it finished, I turned to her and said those four little words which mean so much: “I can only apologize…” Yes, to use it in a sentence, I’ll be atoning for picking to watch this low-rent “Die Hard in a church” offering, for some time to come. [Though the following night, I had to sit through her choice of Justice League: paid back in full, I’d say…] There were a couple of aspects here that weren’t terrible; unfortunately, the overall execution was painfully close to… well, god awful seems the appropriate term here.

Laura Bishop (Fleming) is a former soldier, struggling to adapt back to civilian life. Through her father, she gets a job as a security guard in a local megachurch which is about to open. And what are the odds, she hasn’t even been able to complete new employee orientation before a group of terrorists, led by White (Short) storm into the building and take the employees, in particular Reverend Mark Shaw (Rusler), hostage. Worse still, Laura’s little daughter is also in the building, so she has to find and take care of the moppet, as well as fending off the terrorists.

This seems to be teetering on the edge of being a faith-based action-heroine pic, which is a rate, although not quite unique entity – The Trail comes to mind. These aspects are not too badly-handled: despite the setting, they’re mostly played fairly light, and I actually found the motivation of the chief villain quite refreshing. I say this to make it clear that I’m not slagging this off for its beliefs. Especially not when there are plenty of other, perfectly credible reasons to slag it off. The entire subplot involving her daughter, for example, makes no sense, and she just kinda wanders out of an emergency exit, largely forgotten thereafter. There’s also the bizarre “street fight club” of which Laura is a member, which forms the opening scene, and is never mentioned again.

It feels as if, for every step forward this takes, there are two back. Farrelly, better known as WWE’s Sheamus, shows up as one of the bad guys, and crosses himself every time he kills someone, which is the kind of endearing quirk that works. He and the heroine have a decent bathroom brawl. But then there are amateur digital effects, poor continuity and no sense at all of escalation, as well as villains who fall astonishingly short of even basic competence. The explanation about why Lauren has her PTSD, is held back until the very end, far too late for the viewer to care one whit. It’s all a jumbled, and worse, largely boring mess. They say the devil has all the best tunes. On the basis of this, he can likely also lay claim to the best girls-with-guns films as well.

Dir: Wes Miller
Star: Jaqueline Fleming, Robert Rusler, Columbus Short, Stephen Farrelly

Ameera

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★★
“Explanations. They’re VASTLY over-rated…”

I should probably have learned from my first experience with Ms. Hu: the thoroughly mediocre jungle ensemble piece which was Angel Warriors. For her latest film, she moves from being merely one of a number of interchangeable pieces into the lead, and proves singularly underwhelming for that role. Though in her defense, this could have starred someone with far more charisma, martial arts ability and acting talent, and it would still not have been very good. For all its flaws, Warriors did at least have a fairly coherent plot. This, not so much. For example, it’s a full hour and ten minutes in before we discover what the villain’s Big Plan actually entails. To that point, we know it’s called Operation Hurricane, and little else. Why, pray tell, should we care about the bad guys achieving their goal, when we have no idea what it is?

Things aren’t much better on the heroine’s side. We first meet Ameera (Hu) as she takes part in a gun-battle against ill-defined opponents for ill-defined reason, on behalf of the ill-defined organization for whom she works. This goes wrong, she gets suspended, and the organization subsequently vanishes for the great bulk of the movie, so who cares? However, it turns out her mother has been kidnapped by the villains, in order to get their hands on the products of some research which was being carried out by her dad. It’s up to Ameera and her boyfriend, Jason (Hsu), to ensure they don’t get it, and stop Operation Hurricane – whatever it may be. Though before you can care, you will first have to stop snorting derisively at pseudo-science babble like a virus being “enabled with an isotope nanometers.”

I do have to say, it looks nice, with some very crisp cinematography, and was not a cheap production in terms of locations, sets and cast. This, in no way, excuses the shockingly ropey CGI effects, or the way the action is staged, so you get to see little more than the participants waving their limbs at each other. There is quite a nice car-chase round some winding mountain roads, with Jason on a motorbike chasing after the truck insude which Ameera is dangling. Again, the photography is lovely, until it’s spoiled, first by Jason’s Magazine of Infinite Ammunition, and then the MS Paint-like explosion after a car goes over the edge.

Any technical shortcomings, however, pale in comparison to a script that is spectacularly reluctant to give the viewer any meaningful information, short of having its fingernails pulled out. Both characters and plot elements show up without explanation, and you’re left trying to figure out who or what they are, and why you should give a damn. Long before the climax, where Ameera is suddenly and inexplicably re-united with the organization that suspended her, an indeterminate amount of time ago, you’ll have abandoned any hope of this being any more than incoherent if well-shot nonsense.

Dir: Xiao Xu
Star: Melrose Hu, Ambrose Hsu, Andrew Lin, Bryan Leung

Forgotten Gods by S. T. Branton

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

Vic Stratton is a woman on a mission. She’s seeking out Rocco Durant, the New York mobster who was responsible for the deaths of her parents five years ago. With the cops unable to do much, she turns vigilante, and is finally on the brink of taking her vengeance when…Well, things get cosmically weird: specifically, “something both large and seemingly on fire blotted out the whole skyline across the river with its brightness.” She ends up fishing a man out of the river, who was carrying a glowing sword which makes fast work of Durant’s henchmen. Turns out, the man, Marcus, is a former Roman legionary: centuries ago, he became a guard in Carcerum, a realm to which a selection of unpleasant deities were banished by King Kronin.

Now, Kronin is dead, killed by his oldest ally, Lorcan, and Marcus needs to find a hero, worthy of carrying the Gladius Solis, the only weapon capable of keeping the gods in check. However, they are beginning to make their presence felt on Earth, and Vic isn’t the only person to have made a new friend following their dockside encounter. Durant has become an underling to Lorcan, and has picked up some disturbing new talents and character traits. For Lorcan is planning to put together an army of the undead, and is using Durant and his contacts to further that end, creating a “vampire factory.” Durant is vampire #1.

I enjoyed this. It doesn’t hold any surprises in terms of where the first volume ends – the cover pretty much gives that away! But the ‘odd couple’ relationship pairing of Vic and Marcus works well, and is occasionally surprisingly poignant. Vic’s original misgivings seem justified, when Marcus is unable to grasp the concept of an “actor”, but the two end up needing each other more than it initially seems. He needs her as a guide through the very different modern world. While as well as learning the art of fighting, she needs him to break opens the scar-tissue of deep cynicism, with which she has increasingly been affected since her parents were killed.

I’d call this first volume mostly set-up, and it’s only at the end where Vic comes into her own. In particular, she kicks into high gear when she has to rescue Marcus from a truly hellish situation in the vampire factory. The resulting sequence, involving a pit of vampires in production, is messy, to put it mildly. It demonstrates Vic’s take no prisoners attitude: she has had that since the beginning, and when combined with Marcus’s training and the Gladius Solis, eventually make for a powerful heroine. The journey there is entertaining though, and this was very much one I “watched” as much as read, the story playing out in my mental cinema. [The ‘gangster turned vampire’ aspect reminded me of Innocent Blood] Further volumes in the series have been marked for potential purchase.

Author: S. T. Branton
Publisher: LMBPN Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in the Forgotten Gods series.