★★½
“Easier to forget.”
This bills itself as “Australia’s first female-led independent action movie”. Seems a bit of a stretch, considering how many films we’ve reviewed from Down Under previously, such as Avarice. Heck, Agent Provocateur had a similar plot in 2012. However, this has had a lengthy trip to the screen, shooting having started prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. Four years later, it’s finally available, and is clearly a labour of love for those involved, not least Tran who wore multiple heads on the production. Between that and the limited resources, I’m reluctant to pan it savagely, but the truth is, even with a rating which is cutting it slack for these reasons, the end product is still not very good. It’s more “shows some potential” than “would recommend.”
The main problem is a script, which is basically a mix of movie cliches #27, the assassin who defies orders, and #32, cinematic amnesia, which naturally releases information at the exact pace needed by the plot. Echo 8 (Tran) has been brought up since she was a young child to be a trained killer, and now works alongside her partner, Delta 1 (Vuong), under the oversight of boss Agent 5 (Hara). But she’s also experiencing flashbacks of her early life, which are causing her to question what she’s doing. When Echo 8 is ordered to kill local activist Hanh (Chan), who is digging into areas potentially troublesome for the organization, the assassin decides not to carry out her task.
Needless to say, Agent 5 is less than happy at the situation, and Echo 8 finds herself going from the hunter to the hunted. If this sounds familiar, it’s all very much what we’ve seen before: Naked Weapon uses basically the same story, or more recently, so does Thailand’s The Kill List. A well-worn plot isn’t necessarily a problem, if you do well in other areas, be it performances or action. Its something the films mentioned manage, to considerably greater success than Echo 8, which succeeds only intermittently. You have also to get past the idea of killers who walk around dressed like ninjas on Halloween night – hardly inconspicuous – and get into random fights in night-clubs, because that won’t draw attention to themselves either.
The viewer must then deal with a slew of supporting actors who don’t need to give up their day jobs. Tran is okay, and Vuong actually good, with a dry sense of humour that’s welcome. Some others, though, may be delivering their lines phonetically, and the action is similarly mixed. The small scale of the production sometimes comes through, and even within the same fight, you’ll get one punch that seems to have impact, followed by two that clearly miss the mark. There are odd distractions, like the fight where someone is wielding a child’s plastic chair: what is that doing in an underground car-park? The ending is left open and a trilogy is planned. While I’m not averse to giving it a look, I hope those involved learn from this experience and do better next time.
Dir: Maria Tran, Takashi Hara
Star: Maria Tran, David Vuong, Takeshi Hara, Gabrielle Chan