Category: Review

Kat’s Rats by Michael Beals

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

I reviewed the first book in the series last year, and to be honest, found it a bit of a mixed bag. I was thus a bit surprised when the author contacted me and offered me a copy of volume two, in exchange for an unbiased review. Kinda brave. The good news is, this is a genuine improvement. Not perfect, certainly. But it has got one of the best ‘Final Bosses’ I’ve ever seen in a book.

To rewind. Katelyn Wolfraum is a German expat who has switched sides, and is now operating in North Africa as an agent of MI-6. This one starts off with her in and around Morocco, preparing for a looming Allied invasion. However, the water is thoroughly muddied by the presence of various, more or less unaligned groups, from Vichy soldiers to Jewish partisans, with whom Kat and her team of under-the-radar operatives have to interact. With the mission constantly evolving, she has to be quick in her ability to adapt, and fearless in her willingness to go up against enemies, the likes of which the world has never seen.

Which brings me to that Final Boss: an experimental German weapon known as the Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte. It’s a tank which weighs – and this is not a misprint – a thousand tons. For comparison, the heaviest tank currently in operational service, the M1A2 Abrams, weighs just 62 tons. This Landkreuzer is mounted with battleship guns, has impenetrable armor and its 16,000 horsepower engines mean literally nothing the Allies throw at it can stop the Landkreuzer. Oh, and Kat’s Nazi father is on board, for extra plot points.

The most startling thing might be, this monster wasn’t just some fever dream of Beals’s. It was actually proposed in 1942: Hitler loved the idea, but wiser heads prevailed. However, this book offers a glimpse at what this behemoth might have been like in action. And if you’re a fan of absolute mayhem, like I am, it’s glorious. There’s even an explanation offered for why this action was wiped from the historical record – basically, to make General Patton look good. He’s one of a number of genuine historical figures on both sides who are sprinkled in, adding a certain authenticity. Hence we get cameos by Audie Murphy and Claus von Stauffenberg, and the chunk in Morocco seems slightly influenced by a certain Humphrey Bogart film.

On the downside, the middle section, before the Landkreuzer shows up to provide focus, seems to consist of random action scenes bolted together, severely lacking in narrative flow. Then there’s things like the comparison of the machine to Godzilla: while perhaps not wrong, Godzilla didn’t appear until 1954. And Beals’s strength seems at the “big picture” level: there were times when I was less than clear about the details of who was doing what and to whom. But if you assume the answers to those questions are a) Kat, b) killing them and c) the enemy, you’ll probably not be too far off. Given my main complaint about book one was, “It needs considerably more Kat”: consider that addressed.

Author: Michael Beals
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
2 of 4 in the Adventures of Kat’s Commandos series.

Tribal: Get Out Alive

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★★★½
“You had me at homeless cannibals.”

The IMDb omits the colon from the title, making rather less sense. Though it’s not inappropriate, because sense is likely not this film’s strongest suit. Indeed, I’d be hard-pushed to call it a “good” film. It is, however, consistently entertaining, and a fine piece of B-movie making. Ex-soldiers Caitlin (Phythian) and Brad (O’Hennessy) are bailiffs… Wait, is that a thing outside the UK? Just in case it’s not, let me quickly explain: they are not quite cops, but are still legal officials who can, for example, impose evictions or collect debts.

In this case, they and their team are sent to clear a farm which was used as a camp by homeless people, with the permission of the former owner. He has now died, and his son, Richard Kenning (Dodd), wants them chucked off the land. Except, turns out dear old dead Dad was more than a bit of a mad scientist, and was using the tenants for his experiments to create a serum that would enhance human strength and speed – though reducing them to little more than animals. Caitlin, Brad and their colleagues are about to discover that, since his death, the subjects have escaped and have formed a brutal community in the tunnels below the farm. And they have no intention of leaving peaceably – or letting the bailiffs leave at all.

It’s great to see Phythian get the lead in a feature; we’ve been a fan ever since Kung Fu Darling, back in 2016. If the material here is a little basic, it does eventually give her the ability to show what she can do, albeit after a bit too much creeping around dimly-lit tunnels in the first half. Still, there’s a certain British sensibility on view here, which comes over in characters behaving more intelligently than is typical for the horror genre, and also in an unexpectedly pleasant volume of sarcasm. O’Hennessy, whom you may recognize from Game of Thrones, provides solid support, and overall, the film feels like a decent copy of Dog Soldiers. There’s the same plot core of a force finding themselves trapped and out of their depth, though Routledge isn’t able to manipulate the tension as expertly as Neil Marshall did there.

Britain also seems to be putting out some decent martial arts movies of late; perhaps the lack of guns there makes such things more plausible. Scott Adkins, probably the best screen fighter you’ve never heard of, is leading the way, but on the evidence here, Phythian and her trademark cheek-bones may become Britain’s answer to Zoe Bell. The tone is set early, after she and her partner stumble across a drug deal, and the second half has plenty of good action, building up to her confrontation with a serum-enhanced Kenning. There is a plot thread about her suffering from PTSD, though this can safely be ignored as irrelevant. Just crack open an alcoholic beverage or six, ready the popcorn, and sit back to watch Phythian kick arse.

Dir: Matt Routledge
Star: Zara Phythian, Ross O’Hennessy, Rachel Warren, Thomas Dodd

Ek Hasina Thi

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★★★
“Hell hath no fury…”

A somewhat cheesy melodrama, this throws together elements from Western pot-boilers Double Jeopardy and If Tomorrow Comes, adds a handful of Bollywood spice, and to be honest, probably overcooks the whole thing a bit. The title translates as “There Was a Beautiful Woman”, presumably referring to the heroine of the piece, travel agent Sarika (Matondkar). Into her office one day comes hunky businessman Karan Singh Rathod (Khan), and after some reluctance, she begins a relationship with him. However, it turns out he is actually a mobster, and manipulates her into taking a fall rather than incriminating him, which nets Sarika a seven-year prison sentence. Escaping from jail, she vows to destroy her former lover, and in turn, works on framing Karan with his criminal pals, by making it look like he murdered a colleague and stole money.

The most fun part for me, was the section in the middle where it turns into a Bollywood women-in-prison movie. I’d have watched an entire movie about that, as Sarika – wholly unprepared for the experience – gets dropped into the literal hell-hole which is an Indian jail. [Seriously: I don’t want to hear any complaints about Western prison conditions ever again] This is what transitions her into being the bad-ass she needs to be, to be able to take down Karan, and is where the melodrama reached its peak, right from the get-go. Her cellmate offers Sarika a biscuit, then warns her, “There’s a woman here named Dolly. Beware of her. She’s crazy. She’s a real wretch. She has committed four murders.” Of course, the cellmate is Dolly. It’s like watching an entire season of The Yard, condensed into thirty minutes.

The strong female characters aren’t limited to the heroine. There’s also the prison matriarch, Pramila (Kazmi), who takes Sarika under her wing. And on the other side, is ACP Malti Vaidya – she is portrayed by Biswas, who played the title role in Bandit Queen. Vaidya is the no-nonsense policewoman who gets the heroine convicted (what’s a little finger violence between cops and criminals?), yet also wants to work her way up the chain and catch Karan as well. I’d not have minded seeing either of them get more screen-time, perhaps at the cost of the early scenes depicting the growth of the relationship between Sarika and Karan.

For at 137 minutes, it does meander a bit much, especially when its story should be accelerating forward. I have some questions about the final act, after the heroine escapes from jail during a fire. Firstly, whoever is in charge of security for Karan’s mob friends is in for a really poor performance review this quarter. And the eventual revenge taken, would have made more sense if we’d seen Karan suffer from musophobia, rather than Sarika. Overall, however, it’s an entertaining piece of nonsense, which even got Chris off her mobile phone for its duration. If you’re averse to the Bollywood standard dance routines, you’ll be pleased to learn they don’t show up here at all.

Dir: Sriram Raghavan
Star: Urmila Matondkar, Saif Ali Khan, Seema Biswas, Pratima Kazmi

X-Men: Dark Phoenix

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★★★
“I’m SO confused…”

I can’t believe there have been seven X-Men movies now. I think the last I saw was the second, which came out in 2003. Since then, there seems to have been a lot of mutants under the bridge, so to speak – and, it appears, some jiggery-pokery with timelines. That’s the only way to explain the death early on in this origin story, of someone I’m fairly sure was in the films I saw, which took place later in the chronology. Still, all I can do is presume it makes sense if you’ve seen the whole series, and on that basis this was fine. Indeed, by coincidence. we watched this the same day as Black Panther – and if I didn’t already know, I’d be hard-pushed to tell you which was a cultural phenomenon, and which was among the biggest bombs of the year.

It is the first Marvel feature since Elektra with a female lead, so there’s that. In this case, it’s Jean Grey (Turner), who is taken under the wing of Charles Xavier (McAvoy) after losing her parents in a car-crash triggered by Jean’s psychic talents. She joins the rest of the X-Men – though as Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) puts it, “The women are always saving the men around here. You might wanna think about changing the name to X-Women.” On a mission to rescue the crew of a crippled Space Shuttle, she absorbs a cosmic energy blast. This makes her incredibly powerful, yet also unleashes her insecurities, a situation not helped after she discovers that Xavier has been more than economical with the truth. Meanwhile, a group of extra-terrestrials led by Vuk (Chastain) arrives, seeking to use Grey and her powers. It becomes a race between them and the X-Men to find the runaway Grey.

Push comes to shove, I probably enjoyed this slightly more than Black Panther. It seemed less concerned about making statements, and more about simply providing entertainment. As mentioned, I have to take all plot-logic as read, and also that there’s an explanation for the biggest number of blue people in a film since The Smurfs Movie. I was here simply for large-scale, visually slick imagery, things blowing up and epic fight scenes, and on that level, I can’t say I was disappointed. Sure, the characterizations were often little more than obvious [for example, Grey comes from the “disgruntled orphan” school of superheroes], and Chastain is sadly under-used; that whole “not blinking” thing is sublimely creepy.

Yet it’s hardly alone among comic-book movie, in these or its other flaws, and I couldn’t find anything to justify the dire box-office fate suffered. Sure, it’s never going to be mistaken for a classic, and as a (supposed) wrap-up to the franchise, is probably unsatisfying to ardent fans. However, I am not one of those. As somebody who hasn’t seen an X-Men movie for seventeen years, this was the kind of overblown spectacle I expected – and, truth be told was wanting. Having watched rather too many over-inflated genre entries of late, that seek to be Very Important, I was fine with just seeing subway trains getting hurled around city streets.

Dir: Simon Kinberg
Star: Sophie Turner, James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, Michael Fassbender

Ava

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★★★
“Haywire. With baggage”

It has been a rough year for action heroines at the cinema. Actually, it has been a rough year for everyone everywhere, thanks to COVID-19. But for the purposes of this site, we have been sadly lacking the kind of tentpole releases which we usually write about over the summer. Wonder Woman 1984, for example, was to have come out in June. But with all venues bar the few remaining drive-ins closed, that was moved first to August, then October [and I don’t know about you, but I’m still not comfortable with the concept of cinema going]. Disney’s live-action version of Mulan opted to bypass theatres all together, and will instead be released on their streaming service.

Poor Ava is suffering a similar fate, going straight to video-on-demand in most places – except, bizarrely, in Hungary, according to Wikipedia. Certainly, given its rather high-powered cast, you would have expected better for this, in a normal world. It still, however, probably ranks as the biggest-profile action heroine movie of the year – at least for a few days until Mulan shows up. To be honest, though, it doesn’t do enough to justify that position. While Chastain is very good in the central role, it’s burdened down by too much drama to be effective, and comes over mostly like a soap-opera adaptation of Haywire.

Ava (Chastain) has overcome a troubled past to become an assassin for a murky intelligence agency, working for Duke (Malkovich). But she is increasingly questioning her work – indeed, literally doing so, having an unnerving habit of asking her targets why someone wants them killed. After a supposedly stealth operation in Saudi Arabia becomes not-so-stealthy, Duke’s protege, Simon (Farrell), takes matters into his own hands, bypassing Duke to put out a kill order on Ava. She’s none too pleased by this, obviously, and seeks to turn the tables on him.

The above paragraph is lean, mean and would have made for a perfectly decent movie. However, the script apparently decides it’s not enough – perhaps Chastain wanted something into which she could sink her dramatic teeth. For we get a whole slew of subplots and conflicts thrown on top. These include, but are not limited, to the following. Ava is a recovering alcoholic. Ava is estranged from her sister (Weixler). Ava had a previous relationship with her sister’s boyfriend, and there are still feelings there. He has a gambling problem. Ava caught her father having an affair, which led to her leaving home. It also caused Ava to break ties with her mother, played by Geena Davis.

It’s all too much, dragging down the plot. Say what you like about Haywire, you never cared that Mallory Kane didn’t have a compelling history, for the film was too busy moving forward to look back. This one spends too much time creating, and then having to tidy up, all these loose ends from Ava’s past. I just wasn’t interested. Though those scenes did give me time to imagine ways this could have worked better.  It would have been way cool if, at the end, Davis had thrown off her motherly trappings, revealed she also used to be a government assassin [perhaps actually being Samantha Caine, Geena’s character from The Long Kiss Goodnight], and teamed up with Ava to take down Simon.

This movie writing thing is a piece of cake.

Anyway, no such luck. The stuff between the drama is not bad, though I have some… questions about seeing the 66-year-old Malkovich going toe-to-toe with Farrell [ditto the 59-year-old Joan Chen and Chastain, actually] Or Farrell’s choice of facial hair and black turtleneck, which give him an unfortunate resemblance to 1930’s fascist, Sir Oswald Mosley. Or Simon’s decisions, including calling up Ava, apparently purely for taunting purposes, then going after her by himself, rather than first sending an escalating series of minions. If the movie hadn’t spent so much time dwelling on all of Ava’s drama, maybe we would have had time for such things.

Despite the relentless slagging delivered over the previous few paragraphs, this wasn’t actually too bad. The lead actress is the main reason why. If the film feels like a cinematic opposite of Anna, where the heroine was little more than a gun-carrying clothes-horse, Chastain is able to carry the weight of all those subplots, and deliver a complex character. She has played her share of action roles previously, perhaps most notably as far as we are concerned, in The Huntsman: Winter’s War, where we said she “kicks surprising amounts of butt.” Here, this aspect is front and centre, and she acquits herself well, even if her hand-to-hand combat against considerably larger opponents could have used a force equalizer or two more, for the sake of credibility.

Two scenes likely stand out. The first (and only!) attempt on her life by Simon’s minion, in a Paris park. And the final battle against him in her hotel bedroom [again, echoes of the similarly-located fight in Haywire between Gina Carano and Michael Fassbender]. Equal credit for those probably has to go to the ever-reliable Amy Johnston, star of Lady Bloodfight, who was Chastain’s stunt double for this. I should also mention Simon’s daughter, Camille, played by Diana Silvers. The ending, though somewhat conclusive, sets up a potential future Camille vs. Ava scenario, which I must confess, I would not mind seeing at all.

Overall, it is worth a look, though its insistence on trying to insert dramatic conflicts into a vehicle that doesn’t need them, becomes increasingly annoying as the movie progresses. When it’s not doing so, however, it is a slick, Bourne-like entity, providing a decent vehicle for Chastain to show off her action credentials. as well as her already-known acting skills. On that basis, it’s a shame I suspect it’s going to end up not being seen by too many people – thanks, Coronavirus! I hope that won’t put her off further exploration of our genre, as it can always use some more high-powered leads.

Dir: Tate Taylor
Star:  Jessica Chastain, John Malkovich, Colin Farrell, Jess Weixler 

Warrior Nun

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★★
“Nun-descript.”

There’s probably a decent movie in here. An interesting premise, occupying the nexus where religion and science cross, and some very effective hand-to-hand action sequences, would potentially have made for a decent 90 minutes of fun. The problem is, this actually runs for 10 x forty-minute episodes, and the result is stuffed so full of padding, that it could be used as a sofa. The nuns of the title are members of the Order of the Cruciform Sword, a group which has been fighting demonic entities for centuries. Chief among them is the bearer of the Halo, a divine relic which bestows its owner with great powers, including rapid healing and the ability to phase through solid objects.

When the current bearer of the Halo is killed in battle, it is embedded into another host. This is the corpse of Ava (Silva), a quadriplegic orphan who just happens to be in the wrong (or right, depending on your point of view) place at the wrong (or right, again) time. The Halo resurrects Ava and fixes her up, physically; but she’s certainly not mentally or spiritually prepared initially to become a nun and join the sisters of the OCS. However, her wants and needs are secondary to those of the Catholic Church, and there’s also high-tech company ARQ-Tech. Its CEO, Jillian Salvius. has built a trans-dimensional portal, using “divinium”, a mystical substance that can also be used to create weapons and armour for use by the OCS.

The above isn’t the problem. The issue is all the other stuff which gets added to it. For example, after her resurrection, Ava ends up becoming part of some kind of upper-class squatters’ movement, who jet-set around Europe, staying in unoccupied houses. I have no clue what the purpose of this was supposed to be. And, worse, neither does the show. The young, homeless hipsters basically vanish without trace in the second half, as if the writers realized it was a bad idea to begin with. Similarly, there’s an entire episode in which Ava and OCS colleague Shotgun Mary faff around the Spanish countryside for the duration. Really, after episode 1, you could skip the next five, while we go through the whole “reluctant heroine” thing we’ve seen all too often before.

We could have done with much less of all that, and more… Oh, I dunno: fighting demons, maybe? The action aspects generally seem underplayed, until a final mission where Ava and a small team break into the vaults beneath the Vatican, seeking a relic that… Well, let’s just say, doesn’t turn out to be quite what they expected. But until this gets under way, you might as well have it on in the background, and only pay attention when you hear the sound of fighting [here’s an example of the impressive quality I mean there]. And do not expect anything like a tidy ending either, the show instead delivering the most brutally abrupt of cliffhangers. But it probably says a lot that my reaction to it was mostly apathy.

Creator: Simon Barry
Star:  Alba Baptista, Toya Turner, Thekla Reuten, Lorena Andrea

First Strike by Justin Sloan, Kyle Noe + George S. Mahaffey Jr.

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

Not sure I’ve ever read a book with three authors before, though Amazon omit Noe from the list given on Goodreads. This “novel by committee” might explain some of the problems with this, and its failure to mesh the two strands in any effective way. It’s a pity, as it starts off in entirely blistering fashion, with the arrival on Earth of the Syndicate, an extra-terrestrial invading army. We knew they were coming, so humanity’s forces take them on, in a massive and spectacular battle at their landing site in Mexico. It doesn’t go well for us, thanks to the attacker’s vastly superior technology. Survivors are few, but include Marines Quinn and Giovanni.

The former is one of the soldiers abducted by the Syndicate and taken up into their orbiting mother-ship. There, she’s given an ultimatum: fight for the Syndicate or be turned into a mindless zombie… and fight for them anyway. With a 12-year-old daughter, Sammy, back on Earth – albeit status unknown – Quinn decides to accept the offer, but keeps her fingers crossed, so to speak. She teams up with another abductee, a scientist who might have found the germ of a way by which the Syndicate can be defeated. Though they’ll have to stop their employers from finding out about it.

This aspect isn’t too bad, with no shortage of solid action sequences, even if I’m still not sure about the method behind their plan. Except there was time travel involved. Definitely time travel. Somehow. Anyway, it’s the kind of thing I can easily imagine becoming a major Hollywood picture. That makes some sense, since Mahaffey’s bio says he’s a screenwriter – despite his IMDb listing including nothing to have ever made it to the screen. The problems are back on Earth where Giovanni has joined up with the resistance and… Well, nothing of importance happens. Possibly his character becomes relevant in future volumes, but here, he serves little or no purpose to proceedings.

Oh, except for being gay, that is. I’ve no problem with that, but it’s handled in such an incredibly clumsy way. It’s announced as he and his lover, Luke, “had largely ignored whatever it was that had happened that night between them.” Except that’s the first we heard of it. I literally went flicking back to try and see if I’d skipped something. But short of there being an entire chapter missing, there was nothing. And then there’s this sentence, which literally made me cringe when I read it. “‘FUCK ME!’ Luke shouted, and Giovanni couldn’t help but think how under different circumstances he would love to hear those words.” Giovanni’s near-absence from much of the second half of the book is likely a blessing, but his presence in the first half almost single-handedly destroyed any interest for me in reading further installments.

Author: Justin Sloan, Kyle Noe + George S. Mahaffey Jr.
Publisher: Elder Tree Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 5 in the Syndicate Wars series.

Cutie Honey: Tears

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★★★
“Battle Angel Cutie”

Or, perhaps: “What Blade Runner would have been like, if android Roy Batty was a good guy.” For this appears to be a mash-up of elements from that and Battle Angel Alita. While preceding the film version of the latter, it does seem to borrow elements of the manga, not least in its depiction of a future society where there is a strict, and basically vertical, division between the haves and the have-nots. After disease and pollution have pushed society to the brink, the rich and powerful live towards the top of a self-sufficient mega-city, under the control of ice queen Lady Jiru (Ishida) and her “Sodom” cyborg enforcers, leaving everyone else struggling for scraps down below. And leaving is a death sentence, due to the viruses infecting the outside world.

Falling from the sky, also just like Alita, is Hitomi Kisaragi (Nishiuchi), an android girl with the ability to transform, created by her scientist “father”, Professor Kisaragi. Witnessing this event is a young child, Hayami. Years later, he has become a journalist (Miura), and encounters Hitomi again as she stops a Sodom patrol from arresting an opponent to Jiru’s rule. He tracks Hitomi down, and requests her help in the resistance movement of which he is a member, telling her Jiru is actively causing the pollution which affects the lower levels. However, there are other members of their group, intent on taking more direct and violent action against the powers that be, and there’s also uncertainty over what happened to Prof. Kusaragi.

I really liked the look of this film: with the split between rich and poor, the style manages both to be sleekly neon and grimly dystopian, having its design cake and eating it too. Admittedly, the level of devotion to Blade Runner becomes almost slavish – somewhat ironic, watching this in November 2019, the month and year in which Blade Runner was originally set. However, I guess there are few if any better movies from which to lift. I also admired the maker’s willingness to go in a radically different direction to the previous Cutie Honey live-action adaptation, Gone is the cute bounciness, replaced by a dark, almost cyberpunk approach. It’s one best personified by the excellent performance of Ishida as Lady Jiru, who looks and acts every inch the part of an evil overlord.

The story-line, however, is severely underwhelming, with elements that are unconvincing when clear, and unclear when they are convincing. While we do get the expected confrontation between Hitomi and Jiru, the former has to deliver, with a straight face, lines of dialogue like “Because I’m incomplete, I never give up… Because I have defects, I will beat you.” Cue much rolling of eyes here. More generally, neither Hitomi nor Hayami provide enough to make you want to keep watching: Rutger Hauer and Harrison Ford, they most definitely are not. As a result, you’re left largely to admire the production design, while waiting for the next Jiru appearance. It’s not quite sufficient.

Dir: Asai Takeshi
Star: Mariya Nishiuchi, Takahiro Miura, Nicole Ishida, Sousuke Takaoka

The Yard: seasons 1 + 2

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★★★½
“Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?”

I really must get round to reviewing Wentworth. The Australian women-in-prison drama certainly deserves coverage here, and has provided some of the best television we’ve enjoyed in the 2010’s. I keep intending to do so, but suspect that will now likely have to wait until after the show comes to a conclusion, following its ninth and final season in 2021. In the meantime, however, I do get to review the Turkish remake of the show. If you’ve seen Wentworth, this version is perhaps as unnecessary as any Hollywood remake of a familiar foreign film. Yet there are enough differences – both in story and culture – that I didn’t mind too much.

The central character is Deniz Demir, a married woman whose husband is shot in murky circumstances, and is sent to prison while the investigation proceeds. There, she falls in with one of the jail’s two “queen bees”, long-term inmate Azra Kaya (Moray). Azra is engaged in a power struggle with her rival, Kudret Ozturk (Kose), the matriarch of a criminal family on the outside. Initially, Deniz is simply trying to keep her nose clean and her head down, while waiting for resolution to her case. However, it’s never as simple as that, and she soon finds herself in deep trouble, especially after being found standing over the corpse of the facility’s warden, holding the apparent murder weapon. Meanwhile, things on the outside are equally troublesome, as Deniz’s teenage daughter, Ecem (Akar) has started a relationship with Alp – who just happens to be the son of Kudret.

When compared to Wentworth, there are some interesting differences, both in content and style. The melodrama here is definitely cranked up several notches: after one tragic moment, it feels like Deniz spends the next six episodes weeping in her cell. However, what you won’t see here is any lesbian canoodling, or even insinuations of such things, I imagine in deference to the still fairly religious nature of Turkey. What this version does, and particularly well, is use music as background to the drama as it plays out. This begins with the domestic clash which opens proceedings, and draws out of a broad tonal range, from 17th-century classical (Henry Purcell’s Dido’s Lament gets used to great effect in the final episode) through to Turkish contemporary pop songs.

I read that, apparently, it aired in Turkey in 2½ hour chunks. Netflix has, wisely, cut these up into 45-minute episodes. It also managed to ruffle the feathers of some authorities, who proclaimed – before it was shown, naturally – that the show would “Feed into public perceptions that prisons impose torture [on inmates]… The promotion of such perceptions of prisons serve the purposes of some terror organizations.” I wouldn’t say it was as good as that… But it’s certainly not bad at all, and if I weren’t aware of its inspiration, this could well be looking at a seal of approval. As is, I do have to ding it slightly for familiarity, and would still point you in the direction of the original instead.

Dir: Yüksel Aksu, Hülya Gezer and Safak Bal 
Star: Demet Evgar, Ceren Moray, Nursel Kose, Eslem Akar
a.k.a. Avlu

Gone (2012)

  By

★★½
“But not ENTIRELY forgotten…”

The life of Jill Conway (Seyfried) is slowly returning to somewhat normal, following her abduction by a serial killer in the Pacific Northwest.  She was held in a forest pit, and barely managed to escape with her life. However, the lack of physical evidence and a history of mental health problems, helped cause the authorities not to believe her story. When Jill’s sister Molly vanishes, she’s certain the same killer is responsible, and when the police again fail to take her seriously, begins investigating herself. But when the cops find out this former mental patient is packing heat, Jill becomes a fugitive herself.

This largely falls into the category of competently forgettable. There’s precious little here that will stick in the mind either way, for positive or negative reasons. Seyfried is admirably feisty, refusing to let anything interfere with her single-minded goal of rescuing sis. This persistence and raw guts displayed make her previous escape from the psycho’s clutches that necessary bit more plausible. Post-abduction, Jill comes over as a little unhinged, and you can see why the police might find it difficult to believe some of her claims. Yet this actually works to the benefit of her investigation, because when she starts waving her gun around, you can understand why whoever the business end is pointed at, would be concerned.

There’s just precious little in the way of surprises here. For instance, we never doubt she was telling the truth about her previous experience, or that the killer is indeed real, despite her willingness to lie to anyone and everyone in pursuit of Molly. More ambivalence about this – heck, make Jill the killer in the end! – would at least have separated this from the slew of other “Is her brain making it all up or not?” thrillers. Might also have saved the director from having to resort to one of the oldest cliches in the book, the Cat Attack Scare. The lack of any meaningful background on the killer is also a problem, leaving him a vague threat of no particular intent: why does he dig a pit in the woods for his victims? Any film like this is always going to be compared, probably unfavourably, to Silence of the Lambs. But Jim a.k.a. “Digger” here, is definitely no Buffalo Bill.

This motivation matters, because some of his actions – which, unfortunately, I can’t detail in a non-spoilerish way – are hard to make sense of. I get he’s annoyed that Jill escaped him. But his plan to lure her back into the woods at the dead of night… It offers little a well-chloroformed rag would not have been able to accomplish, with considerably less fuss. The movie did just about succeed in holding my interest, and the lack of any romantic element for the heroine was pleasant. However, you won’t have to have delved very deep into the genre, to find example of this kind of thing, done considerably better.

Dir: Heitor Dhalia
Star: Amanda Seyfried, Daniel Sunjata, Jennifer Carpenter, Sebastian Stan