Category: Review

Arisen: Operators, Volume I – The Fall of the Third Temple, by Michael Stephen Fuchs

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

From what I can tell, Arisen is a massive zombie apocalypse saga, with a heavy military focus, by Fuchs and Glyn James. There are fourteen books in the main series, but Fuchs has also spun off related sets to tell other stores set in the same universe, such as Arisen: Raiders. The Operators series appears to be another. It looks to be intended as a trilogy: at the time of writing (March), part one is out, with part two next month and the finale in 2026. It feels like subsequent installments might be more team-oriented, but part one? Hoo-boy.

Yeah, this is the first book to ever get a five-star action rating from me. It just doesn’t stop. There’s a sub-genre called “hard SF,” which according to Wikipedia, is “characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic.” I suggest this could be labelled as hard action, with a great deal of information about hardware, like guns and vehicles. Here’s a sample paragraph: “The boat itself is a low-observable, reconfigurable, multi-mission surface tactical mobility craft with a primary role to insert and extract SOF in high-threat environments, but can also be used for fire support, maritime interdiction, and VBSS missions, as well as CT and FID ops.” I’m not sure what much of that means. Though I suddenly have a strong urge for a glass of whisky and a cigar.

The heroine here is Yaël Sion, an Israeli special forces soldier, who lost her parents in a terrorist attack when she was young, and has become utterly self-reliant as a result. We begin with her part of an operation against Palestinian terrorists on the West Bank. But it’s not long before the pandemic strikes, and political concerns become irrelevant, as the world turns into a hellhole. Every hour brings a new, ferocious battle for survival, and any sanctuary can suddenly become a deathtrap. It’s positively relentless, Yaël needing to fight not the infected, but the living. Things perhaps peak in an ocean-side fire-fight simultaneously involving the Israeli military, Hamas terrorists, civilians desperate to escape, and the undead. And Yaël, who just wants the boat described above.

While the open water is relatively safe, it’s hardly the end of her problems, as she encounters survivors, good and bad. It’s a chilling realization that survival means suppressing the natural human desire to help, even when this means condemning them to death. Yaël is utterly ruthless when she needs to be, and certainly has the skills to handle the situation. I’d love to see a movie made of this, though to some extent we already did: World War Z is a clear touchstone, with other genre classics also referenced, such as Aliens. The action here is almost non-stop, very well written, and considering the book is 573 pages, I raced through it. If any of the other entries are GWG-oriented, I’m certainly going to check them out. Just as soon as my heart-rate returns to normal.

Author: Michael Stephen Fuchs
Publisher: PF Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 1 (for now) in Arisen: Operators. But as discussed above – it’s complicated…

Bikini Nuns

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★½
“Nunacceptable.”

On seeing the title and poster (which looks suspiciously AI-generated, and I know AI-generated warrior nun imagery) for this, I immediately knew two things. Firstly, I had to review it for the site. And secondly, it was going to suck like an Electrolux. And, verily, the prophecies did come to pass. Here is the review, and it is, indeed, pretty terrible. Chris’s sarcasm did flow mightily, and I’m going to have watch a large number of episodes of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations with her, to make up for this abomination. Not that there isn’t scope for an interesting story, involving a cadre of warrior nuns, seeking revenge for a long-past atrocity. It’s just that this is not that movie. Indeed, it’s barely a movie at all. 

The three Sisters of No Mercy here (have I used that joke before? It feels vaguely familiar) are Mary (Wunna), Sarah (Rakhvalova) and Eva (Legallais-Moha), operating under the guidance of a priest (Kouros), and seeking to find those responsible for the 1992 massacre of an orphanage. Quite why they have waited so long before embarking on this mission is unclear, as is why they insist on questioning people far too young to have been in any way involved. Except possibly as orphans. They gradually work their way up the chain, in scenes which are excruciating only in their lack of pacing to find the man supposedly at the top, Victor Vargas. Only to find – gasp! – there’s one final twist as to who was behind the incident, and its purpose.

There’s about enough material in this for a quarter-hour short. It actually runs ninety-eight glacial minutes. The difference is filled with scenes in which one of the nuns walks into a room in her underwear and puts on her nun attire, with no sense of urgency at all. Seriously, if there’s one of these scenes, there’s at least six of them. They are seen lounging by the pool in bikinis once, so I’m not going to claim the title is entirely inaccurate. But I feel that Nunderwear would have been more appropriate. I will defer to the experts over at Nunsploitation.Net to pick apart the film’s accuracy, for things like nun accessories worn inside out, etc. I wasn’t expecting accuracy, or even anything convincing.

But, if I may be forgiven an appropriately religious appeal: Christ, this is dull. Witness the strip poker scene which had us wondering if we had misunderstood the whole purpose of the game. I mean, why do you need poker chips? Don’t you bet with your clothes? Isn’t that the point? If the makes had actually bought wholesale into the premise, and had fun with it, this could have worked. There is a tension between Old Testament vengeance, and New Testament forgiveness, which could have been fertile ground for exploitatative exploration. Instead, this would have had more energy if performed by a troupe of sloths. Blasphemy has never been so dull. 

Dir: Sushank Kini
Star: Chrissie Wunna, Clara Legallais-Moha, Christopher Kouros, Anna Rakhvalova

Girl Fight: A Muay Thai Story

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★★★
“How to get punched in the face.”

When you think of the martial art form known as Muay Thai, New Jersey is probably not the first place to come to mind. But it’s in the town of Toms River, on the Jersey Shore, that Prairie Rugilo set up an all-women’s gym with the aim of teaching students Muay Thai. It began as occasional classes she taught in the Brick Police Athletic League, but demand allowed her to set up her own, dedicated space. If you don’t know, Muay Thai is described here as “the art of eight limbs”, which personally, raises more questions than it answers. What are the other four limbs? Was it developed by Thai spiders? Let’s just call it a form of kickboxing, and move on.*

Rugilo and her girlfriend, Jaime Phillips, a detective sergeant with the Ocean County Sheriff’s Department, train their students in the style. For some, it’s just a way to get fit, but others want to put their skills to practice in the ring, and this documentary follows two in particular: DeAna Mendez and Hazelle Dongui-is. We see them going through the preparations, their first fights, and the aftermath. Though the film seems least interested in the actual bouts, where it feels like we get to see more of the audience, than any coherent footage of the action.

But that’s actually ok. Rugilo loses more fights than she wins, and her students achieve mixed results too. For example, Mendez loses her first bout, and has a chance at redemption yanked away, because her opponent has to withdraw after Lasik surgery. She ends up going to another gym where she can train along with her young son (an issue with that whole “women only” thing). Dongui-is is the most successful, but we see least of her. What I did find particularly fascinating was a strong emphasis on the mental elements. Rugilo reckons her first loss is largely because her opponent was switched out at the last minute, and she couldn’t get into the right head-space. It seems the result can be decided before you enter the ring.

I did like Rugilo, who has an impressive attitude, and takes victory or defeat in her stride. I loved her speech at the end: “You know life isn’t always gonna go our way. It’s not always easy, and it’s not always happy, but we learn to overcome those setbacks… We can just learn from them and get stronger and be a better person on the other end of it.” That’s empowering, even as a I sit here on my couch with a bag of Doritos. You may well leave this with a little more respect for those willing to get in the ring, and be punched in the face. And a little less interest in ever doing anything like that yourself.

Dir: Matthew Kaplowitz
Star: Prairie Rugilo, Jaime Phillips, DeAna Mendez, Hazelle Dongui-is

* – I subsequently found out the eight limbs are two each of the hands, elbows, feet and knees. Never say this site is not educational.

Run Baby Run

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★★★
“Don’t run before you can walk.”

For a good while, this struggled to retain my interest, and when it did, the problems outweighed the positive aspects. Fortunately, after a solid hour of faffing around in ways that provoked mostly rolling of my eyes, the film found its stride. That’s funny, because it’s a running reference. Ok, not very funny. Down the stretch it both figuratively and literally pushes the pedal to the metal, in quite an impressive manner. My reaction was divided. Part of me wondered, where the heck this was earlier on? However, rather than petering out like a sad trombone, there’s no question it’s better for a film to finish strongly, and give the viewers something positive to take away with them. 

The story is relatively simple. Diana (Leira) is out running on a forest trail, when she finds herself being stalked by a mysterious figure in a hooded sweatshirt (Cowell). That, basically, is that. And it is probably both the film’s greatest strength and its biggest weakness. There’s some stuff around the edges, such as Diana being deaf. This is never particularly relevant – yet I liked that it wasn’t, because it never became her defining characteristic. The nature of the story also means there’s relatively little dialogue. It’s probably a good thing, since this Spanish film is in English (and, oddly, French), with some line-readings fairly clunky as a result. It also means the music has to do a lot, and sometimes, it’s guilty of trying too hard. 

The main problem though, is the story, which is embarrassingly obvious to anyone familiar with the wilderness survival genre. For example, when Diana stumbles across some abseiling equipment and decides (apparently randomly!) to rappel down a cliff face. you just know that her stalker is going to appear at the top, when she’s midway through the descent. Similarly, accepting a lift from a truck driven by a large, hairy man… Yeah, surely there’s no possible way that could end badly. Cue the eye-rolling. Yet, it’s from then on the film begins to succeed, embracing the increasing insanity. For example, Diana also has to fend off a mad, old French woman, with incredible strength, who keeps a teddy-bear in a cage. 

This perilous situation is eventually followed by a lengthy car chase through the countryside – I guess it’s the engines that are doing the running there. That’s funny, becau… Oh, never mind. It’s actually very well-staged, with a genuine sense of speed and danger. that I found effective. Things are tied up with acceptable neatness, although I wouldn’t have quite done what Diana does at the very end [he said, vaguely, to avoid spoilers]. The final twenty-five minutes or so demonstrate a laudable level of energy – ironically, it’s the section of the film where the heroine does the least amount of running. Given it’s also the most entertaining, I’m not inclined to carp about the accuracy of the title.

Dir: Toni Andújar
Star: Catuxa Leira, Cody Cowell, Muriel Halloint, Oscar Foronda

The Zwickys

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★★½
“Half-baked”

This is distinctly a film of two halves. The first is undeniably more impressive, taking the revenge motif and going in an interesting, and at least somewhat novel, direction. However, not long after the half-way point, the script decides to change direction radically. This leaves behind the grounded entity which we’ve had so far, in favour of something with distinct supernatural tendencies. I’m not averse to these per se. Yet they’re an ill fit with what has gone before, and need to be integrated considerably better. Then, things derail completely for the finale, pulling things out of nowhere to achieve a solution, in a gobbet of exposition that completely lost my interest. So, probably 3½ stars for the first half, 1½ for the second. 

It’s the story of the two titular sisters, Kayden (Arias) and Julie (Bennett) – Americans, but now living in Honduras. So if nothing else here, that’s another country crossed off the action heroine map, with the story unfolding in a mix of Spanish and English. Kayden is married (though I guess, hasn’t changed her surname). Or, rather: she was, until her husband is shot and killed by an intruder, when Kayden is out. The local police are useless, whether through incompetence, laziness or corruption, it’s hard to tell. Kayden decides she’s going to take revenge. There are some problems with this. Firstly, she doesn’t have a gun. Secondly, she doesn’t know who to take revenge against.

It’s here where the film is interesting, because a complete lack of experience isn’t something you see often in the vengeance subgenre. It’s quite striking, along with Julie being the voice of reason, and the film’s strongest scene is probably when the sisters are negotiating for a gun with a local dealer. They’re utterly out of their depth, and I was looking forward to seeing how this might all play out. How would they find the target? The answer? A seance with local shaman Miguel (Lagos). Betcha didn’t see that coming. He’s not even particularly helpful, beyond suggesting that Kayden might actually still be in danger. It takes the instigator – and it’s someone I think we’d barely seen, if at all – to show up at Kayden’s house and explain everything.

While the occult stuff was certainly unexpected, and doesn’t really serve a significant purpose, it was at least entertaining, and Lagos makes for a creepy psychic. Admittedly, digging up the corpse of her dead husband to retrieve his wedding ring was… a bit of a stretch. Still, it’s the final section which truly sinks the film, triggering one of the biggest cases of, “Is that it? Really?” I’ve suffered over the past couple of years. None of it made sense, especially in the light of Kayden’s earlier and unchallenged proclamation that nobody knew her late spouse better than her. When a film has to lie to the viewer like that, it loses almost all credibility. Turn this off after a hour, trust me on that.

Dir: The Valle Brothers
Star: Silvana Arias, Melany Bennett, Edwin Lagos, Sheyla Downing

Extraction, USA

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★★
“Wears its bleeding-heart on its sleeve.”

Marni (Johnson) is stuck in the titular town, where oil fracking is causing problems from earthquakes to poisoning the local water supply. She’s barely scraping by as a single mom to teenage son Jason (Strange), working as a bartender for sleazy owner Daryl (McMahan), who has a bad case of wandering hands, and hustling customers at pool. Her life is upended when Steph (Carpenter) comes into the bar, kicks Marni’s ass on the pool table, and the two end up making out in the back alley. When Steph becomes aware of Darryl’s safe full of cash, she suggests they liberate it, to finance a new life for them and Jason, far away from Extraction.

Naturally, things do not go quite as planned. The first attempt ends in failure, though  do discover the source of Darryl’s unreported income. [There’s a huge plot-hole here, in that they’re seen in Darryl’s office, and end up having to knock the witness out. They would surely have been identified, yet the matter is never mentioned] Realizing her actions could put Jason at risk, Marni regrets her decision and breaks up temporarily with Steph. They reconnect and decide to make a second attempt, this one a higher-risk plan involving kidnapping Darryl and forcing him to open the safe at gunpoint. [Though weirdly, they buy Airsoft guns mail-order for this. Was Walmart closed?] However, getting the cash might not be the end of the matter.

The main issue is, it feels like the makers are more interested in checking off boxes as a good diversity and liberal ally. Fossil fuels, male chauvinism and big business are bad. LGBTQ, people of colour and feminist activism are good. The plot? Secondary, with the robbery not even being suggested until virtually the half-way point in the film. The problem is, it doesn’t quite have the impact intended on me. For example, Marni complaining about her student loans, resulting from her taking a useless degree, is not the sympathetic flex Yonts believes. Choices have consequences, sweetheart. Did she take on this voluntary debt before or after having Jason? Neither inspire pity here.

I found all these elements and questions a distraction from what should be the meat and potatoes of the plot – or given the film’s sensibilities, the tofu and garden salad of the plot. There’s a whole thread where the drugs are being sold to the oil company to make their employees work harder and… I can’t even. Crop the whole thing down to a tightly-focused heist, and we’d all be much better off. The performances are fine, certainly good enough for that,  though I’m trying to work out the ages here too, since Marni seems way too young to have a son of that age. I initially thought she and Jason were brother and sister.  The problems here are very much on the scripting side, with an ending which is as unsatisfying as the rest of it.

Dir: Mike Yonts
Star: Leanne Johnson, Marlee Carpenter, Chase Strange, Derek McMahan

Sheriff Bride, by Teresa Ives Lilly

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

This short (107 pages) novel is the series opener for the Sheriff Bride series. (The latter has more recently been marketed as the Brides of Waterhole, Texas series, which includes additional books; but my interest is just in the original tetralogy.) Each of the four books (all written by different authors) focus on a different one of the four Hardin sisters, whose unique situation is delineated in the first book, set in the later 1870s. (No date is actually given, but there’s a passing reference to a wanted poster for the notorious outlaw Sam Bass, who was criminally active in 1876-78.) Raised in eastern Texas, the sisters were reared in the Christian faith by their devout mother, who’s been dead for years. But their father was a physically abusive drunk, who resented the fact that they were born female. However, he was a tough customer well versed with firearms, and in his sober moments taught them gun skills, hunting and tracking techniques (he lived off the furs from their hunting, though he drank and gambled away most of the proceeds) and wilderness survival. By the time our story opens, his reputation for prowess at shooting has spread to western Texas.

The book opens with the text of a short letter from one Mark Carlin, banker and leading citizen of Waterhole (population 35 in the town proper, all male), accepting John Hardin’s application for their advertised position of first-ever town sheriff. (That’s actually an authorial error, since in most U.S. states sheriffs are elected to serve entire counties; a peace officer hired to serve just one community would be a town marshal, as opposed to a Federal one.) Having celebrated his good fortune with a drinking binge, however, the inebriated Hardin died in a fall from his horse on the way home. But Carlin had sent him a generous amount of cash for traveling expenses. At the suggestion of eldest sister Sam (Samantha), not having any money or other employment prospects, Jo, Dan and Rob, a.k.a. Josephina, Daniella, and Roberta, agree to join her in traveling across Texas to present themselves as willing to share the position. As readers will be well aware, the wild West of that day wasn’t a hotbed of equal employment opportunity ideals, so the prospects for the success of the ladies’ quest in the face of ingrained male sexism are daunting.

While this is an excellent and very original premise for a novella series, though, the execution of it here has to be called somewhat lackluster. Lilly’s prose style tends to be repetitive, both in language (and in using character’s names over again where a pronoun would serve her better) and in ideas, with points often being restated or reemphasized in the same paragraph when it’s not needed; she also has a tendency to tell when there would be more effective ways of showing. Some attempt was made at editing, but the proofreading was poor (there are only a few typos as such, but I finally deduced that the three or four bracketed repetitions of a sentence in different words were vestiges of textual corrections that weren’t edited out in the final draft!).

There are continuity issues that better editing would have corrected; for instance, in one chapter characters continue talking while waiting after knocking at a door, only to arrive at the door and knock after finishing the conversation; and while the sisters arrived in Waterhole by stagecoach, in a late chapter their arrival was said to be by train. (The town has no train station.) These tended to take me out of the story. In one scene, a doctor extracts a bullet from a gunshot wound in a man’s hand; but the average revolver in that setting fired a .44 bullet, which at the short distance involved there would never have been stopped by the relatively flimsy carpal bones of a human hand. ((On reflection, though, given the position of the combatants, this is actually plausible, given that the bullet had to first pass through the target’s clenched fingers and then through the handle of the gun he was holding. But in my opinion, that still should have been explained.)

On the positive side, the story held my interest, and my wife’s (we’re reading the series together –and yes, we do plan to follow it.) The theme of women proving themselves in a demanding and male-dominated profession that requires some combat skill comes through despite the mediocre execution, and appeals to readers (like myself) who admire action-oriented heroines and appreciate an equalitarian feminist message. (In the latter respect, the ending is also particularly good.) Given that the small-press publisher here is Lovely Christian Romance, it won’t be a surprise that Lilly (and the other series writers) is an evangelical author and that Christian faith plays a role in the tale. (One character is a preacher; Christian ethics underlies the discussions about lethal force, and there’s a serious appreciation of the redemptive power of the gospel.) It also won’t be a surprise that one aspect of the story (which doesn’t swallow up the other aspects!) is a clean romance, but for me that was a plus. (Given that the main storyline takes up a bit over two weeks, it could be faulted as a case of insta-love, but I felt it was plausible under these circumstances and in this era.)

A final point that could be made is that while we’re told that Rob, the youngest sister, is only 14, we aren’t told the older ones’ exact ages, and I’d like to have been. (Their mother was married for 25 years, and died when Rob was fairly young; but we’re not told exactly how young, nor how long it was into the marriage before she bore Sam. Sam could be anywhere from her mid-30s to her very late 20s; I picture her as about 29, and the other two ladies in their mid-to-late 20s.)

Author: Teresa Ives Lilly
Publisher: Lovely Christian Romance Press, available from Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Red Sonja (2025)

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★★★
“Better red than dead?”

It has been forty years since the first crack at adapting the Marvel comic series, in turn inspired by Robert E. Howard’s character, Red Sonya of Rogatino. The first stab, released in the wake of Conan, starred Brigitte Nielsen, and was pretty bad. There have been rumblings of further attempts over the years, with a Robert Rodriguez version, starring Rose Macgowan, gaining traction in the late 2000’s. Though given the dreck in which Macgowan has appeared, it’s probably for the best this never came to fruition. Instead, we have a lower profile – read, smaller budget – version from director Bassett, who previously gave us mercenary Megan Fox, and lead Lutz, who was totally awesome taking her Revenge. 

Indeed, that would make a fine “Matilda Lutz overcomes impalement to take vengeance” double-bill with this. The reboot isn’t bad at all. It certainly is miles better than the eighties version, mostly because of Lutz. She may not be quite as muscular or buxom as the comic-book version. But she does bring the required intensity, and that goes a decent way to making this watchable. The supporting cast are good too, although I was less convinced by the plot in general, which is little more than a grab-bag of clichés. We begin with the quick slaughter of Sonja’s village, then see the adult Sonja (Lutz) roaming the forests of Hyrkania. These are under threat from Emperor Dragan (Sheehan) and his psycho sidekick, Annisia (Day). 

After being captured, Sonja is made to fight in gladiatorial combat. She helps the other captives escape, and they fight a guerilla war to prevent Drakan from obtaining the other half of a mystical tome which has great power. Sonja is almost killed by Annisia – the impalement mentioned above! – but brought back by Ashera, the forest goddess, to face her enemies again. Pretty rote fantasy stuff, in other words. It’s the stuff around the edges that is more fun and, beyond the lead actress, is where the improvement is biggest over the Nielsen version. 

I enjoyed the arena scenes, which felt like Spartacus with monsters. Always nice to see Rhona Mitra (Doomsday), though her role is briefer than I’d like. I also liked Day, whose portrayal of Annisia is entertainingly unhinged, like a psycho version of Lady Gaga. Her relationship with Dragan doesn’t play out as I thought, and I would have preferred more places where the script confounded expectations in this way. I was a little disappointed by the fights, which aren’t as hard-hitting as I expected. Although they feel workmanlike and competent, the hits only seem to have much impact on a couple of occasions. Some editing might have helped: 110 minutes feels longer than necessary.

On the other hand, for a reported $17 million budget, it looks decent, and Bulgaria offers some impressive backdrops on which to paint things like the largely-CGI arena. There are occasional moments of self-effacing humour which help, such as the scene where Sonja gets her battle bikini. The end clearly wants a sequel: however, the very token cinema release (one midweek screening in theatres!) suggests the studio had little faith in it. A pity. I’ve definitely seen much worse, and would welcome further tales of Hyrkania. 

Dir: MJ Bassett
Star: Matilda Lutz, Robert Sheehan, Wallis Day, Luca Pasqualino

Country House

  By

★★½
“Well, that’s different.”

The title above is the one by which it appeared on Tubi, though everywhere else calls it Aggression. I guess both are appropriate, in different ways. Neither shed a great deal of light on proceedings here. Then again, you could argue, the film itself is largely deficient in the area of enlightenment too. It takes place in rural France, where Sarah (Nicklin) has been reunited with her sister Marie (Duchez), after twelve years living in England. The circumstances are not happy, the visit being the result of their father’s death. However, there appears to be a dark past surrounding the circumstances of Sarah’s departure. Meanwhile, Marie is mute, although this does not play into the scenario which unfolds. 

After a chunk of small-scale family drama, things kick off with a home invasion staged by Chris (Torriani) and his colleague (Jacquet), who doesn’t seem to have a name. As is common in these cases, one of the criminals is “nice”, while the other is a psycho. And similarly, Marie is timid, and inclined to run, while Sarah is… not. I probably don’t want to say much more, even if simply by not saying more, I am in fact… saying more. Let’s just add, the original title becomes considerably more relevant. That, alone, would be something we’ve seen before in the home invasion genre. However, it’s just the start, because things go entirely off the deep end, in terms of motivation especially.

Just do not expect anything orbiting in the same solar system of a coherent explanation. The only other review of this I could find (in French) called this a giallo. After a first half where I was very hard-pushed to spot the similarity, I can see where that’s coming from. It has the same air of unfiltered madness, as well as suddenly switching to a lurid colour scheme, which makes as much sense as the plot i.e. none at all. One second, a scene will be lit in neon blue; the next shot, taking place in the same location, will be mint green. You could say this is a striking and brave choice of artistic palette. Or you could say it’s pretentious bollocks. I’d not argue either way. 

It is, I suspect, the first Lovecraftian home-invasion movie. Admittedly, after watching it, you may well understand why this is the case. I did like Nicklin, who has been seen here previously in Sister Wrath, and does the best she can in terms of selling the insanity inherent in the script. I could potentially have enjoyed the madness, had it bothered at least to attempt an explanation. Instead, the lack of anything close comes over as lazy film-making. I do appreciate a good swerve, and this undeniably ends up somewhere very different from what I was expecting. However, when you unexpectedly pull the rug out from under your audience, you need also to provide somewhere for them to land.

Dir: Rick Jacquet
Star: Sarah Nicklin, Marie Duchez, Cédric Torriani, Rick Jacquet
a.k.a. Aggression

Choppa City Queens

  By

★½
“Black to very basics.”

We return to the prolific well of Jeff Profitt, last seen here with Keisha Takes the Block. And by prolific, I mean that the IMDb lists now fewer than thirteen upcoming projects he is slated to direct. Fortunately for my backlog, most of these do not appear to be candidates for the site: I do confess some curiosity as to what Trap House Pizza is about. Anyway, both Choppa and Keisha are among the six features he directed in 2023, a number he exceeded last year. Quality is clearly subsidiary to quantity, and this has much the same problems as the last film we covered here, In particular, it’s mostly talk and not enough action.

You have three friends: Leah (Robinson), Jada (Alysha) and Shanice (Collins), all of whom are out of work and seeking a way to make money. Leah literally stumbles across a cache of weapons belonging to gun dealer Ricky (Profitt), and convinces him to let her sell his merch in the ‘hood. For the “Choppas” of the title are Kalashnikov AK-47’s, the weapon of choice for the discerning gang-banger. After the initial sale goes well, Leah gets a bigger order, and has to ask for the guns on credit. Which is a problem, first when Leah’s buyer delays paying for the weapons, and then Shanice’s boyfriend Ray discovers what she’s doing, and decides he wants in on the action. That eventually leads to the only bit of AK action this provides.

The skeleton of a decent movie is present here. It’s possible to read the above synopsis and see how it could be done in an exciting manner. For instance, tensions escalate among the group as the lure of the profits from their new, illegal, but hopefully temporary business, drags them over to the dark side, when the trio only wanted to make a living. It’s a classic tale of the slippery slope into criminality, with the net of the authorities closing inexorably around the participants. Unfortunately, the resources here do not allow for anything like that. It’s telling that the women are buying just three (3) guns at a time, and there are absolutely no cops to be found here at all. 

Meanwhile, the script is strictly of the Point A to Point B variety, without real energy. The trio of lead actresses are okay: there are a few scenes where you can believe they genuinely are friends. The main problem on the performance side is Profitt himself, who is a contender for the world’s least convincing gun-runner. Used cars? Perhaps. Cellphones? Certainly. But now illegal firearms. He’s also very white, and I speak as someone whose skin colour is legally classified as “transparent.” If they’d made him an Aryan Nation type… that would have been a wrinkle. That, however, would be too much like hard work for a film which seems to be uninterested in anything except the path of least resistance to an underwhelming ending.

Dir: Jeff Profitt
Star: Tuckeya Robinson, Jasmine Alysha, Chanel Collins, Jeff Profitt