Category: Review

The Courier

  By

★★★ [plus an extra ½ for hardness!]
“The night Olga decided to paint a British parking garage red”

For one reason or another, in the last few years Great Britain has become the place to go for medium-budget action thrillers. Examples include the Pierce Brosnan-Milla Jovovich-actioner Survivor (2015) or the Noomi Rapace agent movie Unlocked (2017). Maybe this has to do with the “action-thriller” as a general genre, seeming to die out slowly in North America, where the comic book superhero genre appears largely to have replaced it. Be that as it may, The Courier belongs to that “dinosaur” genre. Released at the end of last year, it was not well-received by critics, though one has to ask: why?

No one expects profound thoughts on human nature or the state of society from an action movie. At least, I don’t. What I want to see when watching one, is a more or less well-connected story, nice visuals and definitely convincing action scenes. And though this may have several plot holes, that if you think about them, make the whole story fall down like a card house, it delivers on all of the above-mentioned elements. So I just can’t agree with the many critics who seemed intent on tearing down the movie for no reason at all. This isn;t to say the film hasn’t its problems: The movie opens with music over several photos and headlines of newspapers, and is all over a little bit too quickly, before you can realize this is the backstory (though later, the film uses flashbacks to explain certain things). I was also initially a bit clueless about who would be the main character, as she had not appeared yet.

Crime lord Ezekiel Mannings (Gary Oldman) is taken into police custody while sitting in an American church. As he is under arrest, he can’t do anything against witness Nick Murch (Amit Shah) who is going to testify against him, via internet live feed while sitting in a British safe-house. So it’s up to his daughter Alys (Calli Taylor) to make the necessary arrangements. Unfortunately for Nick, these are for a courier who will deliver a package, supposedly with equipment needed for the online interrogation. But they will unknowingly deliver a device that will release cyanide, killing off the witness and his guards – as well as the courier, who will be made to look like the murderer. [This part reminded me a bit of Unlocked]

Unfortunately for the bad guys, said courier is played by Olga Kurylenko. Kurylenko has made a moderate name as a regular in action movies and thrillers, since she first was seen by a large audience as the Bond girl next to Daniel Craig in Quantum of Solace (2008). In the past she could be seen in genre movies such as Hitman (2007), Centurion (2010), Oblivion (2013), The November Man (2014) or Momentum (2015). Here, dressed in black skin-tight leather and on a motorbike, she evokes visual memories of Lisbeth Salander or maybe Milla Jovovich in Ultraviolet (2006). Personally, I think she is not such a good actress and a little expressionless. But in the context of an action movie, that might have starred Bruce Willis in the 80s, she works perfectly well. There is some good-natured banter between her and Shah (who’s cursing is not entirely convincing), that is funny without becoming ridiculous.

Naturally, it goes without saying that the involuntary heroine has to rescue Nick. Equally naturally, that won’t be easy, for Mannings’ daughter has already called in the heavyweights to finish the mission. Mayhem with fatal consequences ensues. 😉 The movie is R-rated in Germany, and I think that’s justified, with the fights and kills more graphic than we’re used to in an average action thriller today. There is quite a bit of bloodshed, and also remarkable inventiveness, the Courier’s opponents using anything from snipers to drones to master that merciless woman. Meanwhile, she herself has a computer-equipped motor-helmet that could be right out of Tony Stark’s workshop.

If Kurylenko’s character never reveals her name, at least some backstory is given as to why she is such a badass fighter. She used to be an Ukrainian soldier, part of a special forces battalion in Syria. After the death of her brother, she deserted and went to ground, taking menial jobs like this one. So for once we’ve got an explanation, as to why a smaller woman can take on big men who are professional killers. The fact that she is not just throwing them over her shoulder to the wall – like, let’s say, Angelina Jolie in Salt (2010) – adds a more realistic feel to the fights. We regularly see Kurylenko bleed, or even get overwhelmed. When she wins, it’s usually due to her quick thinking, using whatever the situation offers to kill off her opponents, or her army experience.

Some critics have called this the worst performance of Gary Oldman’s career and I just wonder how they came to this assessment. This is a solid, toned-down villainous portrayal by Oldman. You wanna see over-the-top Oldman? Go and watch Léon: The Professional (1994), The Fifth Element (1997) or Lost in Space (1998)! For me, it seems like “evil Oldman” has settled down and mellowed a bit with age. I find it more regrettable his character doesn’t have much to do, due to his house arrest. He mainly sits around, drinks whisky and listens to music – including the Diva Plavalaguna song from The Fifth Element, a nice inside gag.

There’s definitely a desire for some visual beauty and style. For example, when we see at the beginning the courier driving alone on a motorway while drenched in blue light, or flashbacks that pop up in black and white, and sometimes slow-motion. Director Adler has put more effort into this movie than other action directors usually do. Also, the very good soundtrack is worth mentioning. Though the end feels a bit abrupt, after someone turns out to be on the pay list of Mannings, only to run into a trap set by the courier and Nick.

While this might not be anything special or groundbreaking, in my personal opinion, the movie has been judged very unfairly by the critics. It doesn’t blow the feminist trumpet, where you have to point out, like an idiot and a thousand times, that this is a woman who wins against men. Oh, and have I already mentioned THIS CHARACTER IS A FEMALE? But it is a good, mindless bit of fun, of the gorier variety. There are moments in life when you are not in the mood for Bergman, Fellini or Bunuel films and just want to see some well-done bloody action. By that standard, the movie delivers, and should be judged on what it promises to be. If you were expecting something else? That’s your problem, not the movie’s.

Dir: Zackary Adler
Star: Olga Kurylenko, Gary Oldman, Amit Shah, Alicia Agneson

Don’t Cry Mommy

  By

★★½
“And the first shall be last”

I say that, since this Korean film appears to have been at least a partial inspiration for not one, but two Bollywood films which were recently reviewed here: Maatr and Mom. And, indeed, Thai telenovela Revenge also has something of the same theme: a mother who seeks vengeance against those who raped her daughter. If I’d seen this first, it would probably have had a greater impact. As is, even though not the film’s fault, it feels over-familiar. What is the film’s fault is a tone which appears engineered to be as depressing as possible, by any means possible. While fair enough in some aspects – you can’t argue it’s inappropriate for the material – this reaches its peak in an unforgivably melodramatic moment where a cake shows up with the title of the film on it. I’m fairly sure that eye-rolling and a derisive snort was not the intended reaction.

It does possess a couple of minor twists. When daughter Eun-Ah (Nam) is assaulted by a gang of fellow scholars, they videotape the attack. The threat of posting this is then used to blackmail her into further humiliating acts. It’s not really much of a surprise when this eventually triggers further tragedy. To the film’s credit, it’s not very interested in the assault, which is depicted in just a few seconds; it’s certainly not emphasized or stressed in the way some entries in the rape-revenge genre do. However, neither does it seem particularly interested in the revenge side, which is crammed into the last 20 minutes or so, in an almost perfunctory fashion. There’s no sense of catharsis to be found for Yoo-Lim (Yoo Sun), and by extension, not for the audience either. Which may be the point –  yet it doesn’t make for much… “fun”. Not that it’s impossible for a depressing film to be worthy, from Grave of the Fireflies through to Requiem For a Dream. However, it’s really not why I’m a fan of the girls with guns genre.

But the main problem is, it’s all too predictable, by no small measure. This was apparently based on a real Korean case, but in that, the perpetrator was herself raped at the age of nine, and waited twenty-one years before killing her attacker. I can’t help thinking that, while it might have been more difficult to turn into a screenplay, it would definitely have been a take with which I’m not familiar. Instead, this offers just another parade of predictable developments, ticking off boxes as it goes. If I’ve seen one scene in the courtroom where a group of smirking assailants get off with little or no punishment, I’ve seen half a dozen. It has gone beyond a trope, and the execution here does nothing to alleviate the severely cliched nature of the sequence. It is a pity, as I can’t fault either lead actress for their performance, which put over no shortage of emotional anguish. I just wish it had been in the service of a better story.

Dir: Yong-han Kim
Star: Yoo Sun, Nam Bo-ra, Shin Dongho, Yu Oh-seong

Ready, Willing and Able

  By

★★★
“Puts the ‘able’ in disabled.”

This is certainly something of a novelty and/or a gimmick. But it’s none the less reasonably effective for it. Templeton – who is a woman, despite her first name, given to her after the character of Christopher Robin in the Winnie The Pooh books – suffered from polio as a young child. This left her with a badly damaged right leg; despite this, she pursued an acting career, and became a regular on soap The Young and the Restless for eight years. While I’ve seen a few disabled action heroes – Daredevil was blind – as far as disabled action heroines go, it’s basically her and Imperator Furiosa from Mad Max. And Charlize Theron wasn’t genuinely short an arm, so advantage Templeten. Though, sadly, she appears to have passed away in 2011.

She plays Samantha ‘Sam’ Martin, a former CIA agent who is confined to a wheelchair after a mission goes wrong. Back in civilian life, she goes for a job as the manager for at corporate security firm F.R.T.R.I.S. The owner, Lamont Vaughn (Steve DuMouchel), quickly terminates the interview without giving Sam a fair change. As revenge, she seeks to show how the company’s security sucks, by breaking into their HQ. Doing so, she finds evidence indicating that F.R.T.R.I.S are involved in shady business, involving chemical weapons. Attempts to alert the authorities go nowhere, so Sam puts together and leads a team of her old colleagues to find irrefutable evidence of Vaughn’s wrongdoing. However, the CEO quickly becomes aware of her efforts and takes countermeasures.

For the majority of the time, it plays considerably more like a TV movie than a genuine feature, to the point where you can almost see the commercial breaks. Just as I was certain of that, there is suddenly a gratuitous sequence where Sam meets one of her team in a bargain basement rock/strip-club. This, along with occasional spots of non-televisual language, suggest it was more likely straight-to-video. The most laudable thing is how Sam absolutely refuses to let her disability stop or even slow her down. She can take out a mugger or chase after an attacker – though I must admit, the sequence where she zip-lined off the roof of the F.R.T.R.I.S building, in her wheelchair, was probably a bit of a stretch.

The final third becomes more or less a single, extended set-piece, covering the team’s infiltration into the F.R.T.R.I.S lair, and subsequent battle with their operatives. Turns out, in a twist, someone with whom Sam is quite familiar is working for the other team, though I can’t say it’s a particularly stunning turn of events, dramatically speaking. It’s all handled competently enough, though again, is never able to achieve escape velocity from the gravity well of mediocrity. I’d probably rather have seen Sam going solo, and exercising more ingenuity and inventiveness rather than her having to rely on her colleagues as much as here. That said, it’s still something you won’t see every day.

Dir: Jenni Gold
Star: Christopher Templeton, Rus Blackwell, Steve DuMouchel, Mike Kalvoda

Vixen

  By

★★
“Die Hardly”

This is a painfully lazy knock-off of a certain, well-known action film, in which terrorists take hostages in a multi-storey building over the festive season. This action is as cover for their actual goal, which is the robbery of a well-secured vault. But one of the inhabitants evades the initial surge, and begins to run interference. They get help and moral support over the airwaves by someone on the outside, and use the air-ducts in the building to avoid detection. Yeah. It’s like that, and you’ll probably understand why my eyes were rolling when we get the line, “Ho-ho-ho, motherfucker.” Now, there’s no doubt the makers openly acknowledge their inspiration. But pleading guilty doesn’t get you out of the crime. At least other, similarly inspired movies, e.g. No Contest  – hell, even Skyscraper – took the idea and added some of their own thoughts. This? Make the central character a woman who knows martial arts. That’s it.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, of course. But if you’re going to get away with such glaringly obvious plagiarism, you need to be top-notch in other areas. Because this inevitably invites comparison with that certain, well-known action movie, and to put it mildly, Vixen comes out behind, in virtually every aspect. The paucity of the resources is the most obvious one. This supposedly takes place at a top-tier security conference, yet is apparently attended by a total of eight people, and takes place in a corner of a hotel ballroom, screened off by drapes. Do not expect giant fireballs, folks. Or destruction of any significant kind, since they needed their security deposit back. While Chen does her best, she is not Bruce Willis, as she goes from attendee to ass-kicker. And Bendza is certainly not Alan Rickman as the leader of the terrorists. It doesn’t help that there seems to be far too much acting in a second language going on here, particularly obvious when Chen has to use her English. Imagine Willis trying to speak Mandarin, and you’ll be in the right area.

She’s on stronger dramatic ground when speaking on the phone to her ex-boyfriend (Yang), who is her liaison on the outside, and tries unsuccessfully to convince the cops there’s a problem, and he’s not pranking them [As depicted here, Chinese police are, apparently really lazy: the investigation consists of calling up the location and asking if there’s a hostage situation. “No,” says the terrorist manning the switchboard, unsurprisingly] I also quite enjoyed Larkin as the acerbic Scottish organizer of the conference: he comes over as a low-rent version of Gerard Butler. He’s about the only person here who seems to be having fun with his role, embracing the necessary larger-than-life spirit. Otherwise, with fights that are merely okay, and take too long to show up, this feels like a poor imitation of little or no point – something even The Asylum might be a bit embarrassed to have their name on.

Dir: Ross W. Clarkson
Star: Lie-ri Chen, Luc Bendza, Byran Larkin, Yang Yang

Nemesis 5: The New Model

  By

★½
“Left longing for the subtlety of Albert Pyun.”

It has been twenty years since Nemesis 4 apparently signalled the end of Pyun’s cyborg saga. I was therefore rather surprised when a fifth installment cropped up on my radar. Not directed by Pyun, admittedly, but he had given his blessing to it continuing under the guidance of Ferguson. It’s one of those things which probably seemed a good idea at the time, and there are elements that occasionally teeter on the edge of working. However, there’s far from enough content here, and the execution turns into into a fan film for the Nebraskan rivet-head community, with the severely limited appeal that implies. 

In the future, the Red Army Hammerheads are waging a war against the Los Angeles Police Department and their allies. Among the latter is Ari Frost (Craig), a part-human, part cyborg, who was trained in the ways of a warrior by Alex Sinclair (Price). That’s one of those nice elements, having the star of Part 4 show up to pass the torch on; seeing her was a bit like seeing Linda Hamilton pop up in the trailers for the new Terminator movie. Ari and her pals are being hunted by various elements of the R.A.H., dispatched by their leader (Novak), before she can stop them by… Well, you’ll have to watch it to find out. Which is code for “I completely lost interest and stopped paying attention.”

The director seems to think that slapping a random filter on the lens equates to art, and the complete lack of consistency between consecutive shots is enough to give you a migraine. The special effects are mostly bargain basement post work, though the Terminator-like android was decent enough, at least in comparison to most of the rest. The fight sequences leave a great deal to be desired, and the entire film grinds to a halt in the middle, for what amounts to a 20-minute promo film for local venue, the Zero Bar, including the least sexy go-go dancing in cinematic history. That’s a lot, considering the whole thing runs barely an hour between the lengthy opening text crawl of set-up, and equally extended closing credits. And apparently, after the apocalypse, the world will look like downtown Lincoln, Nebraska. Who knew?

Positives are hard to find here. The electronic soundtrack works quite well, including a surprising theme by Velvet Acid Christ, of whom I was well aware previously. Craig isn’t bad either, though when she’s acting alongside her predecessor, you realize that she’s desperately in need of the  sheer physical presence Price brings. Though again, apparently when people get cybernetic implants, they turn into refugees from Hot Topic. Even by the limited standards of what was already a bargain-bin science fiction franchise, this is scraping the bottom of the barrel. To be honest, it would probably have been better for all concerned if they’d left the franchise on the strange yet relatively high note which was the fourth installment.

Dir: Dustin Ferguson
Star: Schuylar Craig, Crystal Milani, Mel Novak, Sue Price

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

  By

★★★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

  By

★★★
“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

  By

★★★
“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

  By

★★★
“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