Tag: 2008

Veronica

  By

★★★
“Teaching moment”

Veronica (Beltrão) is a teacher in a Rio de Janeiro school. One day, nobody comes to pick up one of her pupils, Leandro (de Sá), so she accompanies him back to his house in the Rio slums known as favelas. Only, on arrival, she finds out his parents have been shot dead by gangsters. His father had been playing a dangerous game as an informant to the cops, and it had finally caught up with him. However, that morning, he had given his son a thumb drive containing a bombshell video, and his former employers are very keen to get it back. And, it turns out, so are the police, some of whom are in cahoots with the criminals. This leaves Veronica in a difficult position, with nobody she can be sure is trustworthy – including even her ex-husband, Paulo. a police officer himself.

In terms of action, the picture on the right is more the exception than the rule, if truth be told. Veronica spends more time avoiding those are seeking to harm her and/or Leandros; there’s considerably more running than shooting, shall we say. But she’s still an action heroine, brave enough to face enemies whom any normal person would think twice about going up against [or several more times, if they’ve seen the brutal reality of favela life and police corruption which is the awesome Elite Squad]. Even more impressive, it’s not for anyone related to her by blood, just a kid in her class. I dunno about your primary school teachers, I’m not sure many of mine would have put their lives on the line against a posse of well-armed gangsters for my sake. :)

Is it just me, or does this feel a bit like Gloria, with a woman having to protect a young boy from gangsters, over incriminating evidence? I did enjoy the setting though, with a side of Rio being a very long way from the more glossy aspects which the tourist board want you to see e.g. Mardi Gras and Christ the Redeemer. The city shown here seems considerably more alive, yet with that energy comes a perpetual undercurrent of menace, with violence present just below the surface. This begins with the opening scene, in which the gangsters hang out on a roof with an impressive (or disturbing, depending on your point of view!) amount of weaponry. It does a good job of establishing the threat here, and that then informs much of what follows.

The relationship between Veronica and Leandros is key to the movie, and it’s a bit of a mixed bag. At times, it seems very genuine, yet at others, Leandros has the usual issue with child actors, where their performance is obvious, instead of feeling natural. I will confess the climax also felt a little disappointing, with the heroine having to rely on the actions of others. The previous 90 minutes had shown her as being self-reliant and full of initiative, and I’d rather have seen this continue through the end. So, some way short of perfect, yet there are positives as well, and this still felt like a worthwhile experience.

Dir: Maurício Farias
Star: Andrea Beltrão, Matheus de Sá, Marco Ricca, Giulio Lopes

Sister Wrath

  By

★★★½
“Nun-conformist”

I think it’s safe to say you’ll probably be able to decide within a few minutes, whether or not this is your cup of tea. The opening scene is set in a strip-club where the next act on the main stage is dressed as a nun. After a couple of minutes, she pulls out an unfeasibly large weapon from under her clerical garb, and guns down the mobsters present, in gory fashion. Thereafter, you can expect more of the same, along with extremely savage jabs at organized religion. Catholicism is the main target, but Judaism and Hinduism get their share of jabs: for example, Gandhi is a martial arts teacher. Or there’s a Yiddish hitman, Viper Goldstein (Lavallee), who practices the art of “Jew Jitsu”. If you just roll your eyes at that, this is likely not for you. However, if you roll your eyes and also laugh, then you, like me, may be the intended target audience.

The heroine is Kelly (Nicklin) an aspiring nun with a bad temper, who ends up enrolled, not entirely willingly, in the Order of the Black Habit – though surely Order of the Bad Habit would have been an even better name? Whatever… They are a group of fighting nuns, each named after one of the seven deadly sins. Unsurprisingly, Kelly becomes Sister Wrath, and joins her colleagues, such as Sister Pride (Cipolla), in taking down the criminal empire of Momma Rizzo (Tretheway, shamelessly channeling Shelley Winters in Bloody Mama). Momma isn’t going to sit back and let that happen, however. After her own goons prove not up to the task of taking on the Black Habit, she brings in Goldstein and his Ninja Throwing Stars of David, to escalate the war. With the help of a mole inside the church, he kidnaps Sister Pride, in order to lure Wrath and the rest of the nuns into a trap.

There’s a lot of glorious invention here, not least the remarkably catchy musical number in heaven, which rivals the one at the end of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. [In one of the film’s rare subtle moments, the same actor is here playing both Jesus Christ and the Devil] It’s gory and foul-mouthed, though for whatever reason, remains remarkably chaste: the stripper in the opening scene is wearing pasties. Likely only a lack of the necessary gratuitous nudity prevented this from getting a seal of approval, because the rest of it is right in my wheel-house of poor taste. Cameos from Debbie Rochon and Lloyd Kaufman – again, if you don’t know who they are… – only add to the sense of fun. The latter plays the Pope, who shows up late to absolve everyone of their sins. If not quite reaching the dizzy heights of post-grindhouse classics like Hobo With a Shotgun, it’s one of the rare cases where a B-movie genuinely lives up to the promise of its poster.

Dir: Richard Griffin
Star: Sarah Nicklin, Alexandra Cipolla, Rich Tretheway, David Lavallee Jr.
a.k.a. Nun of That

The Real Joan of Arc

  By

★★★
“Live to fight another day?”

Pun mot intended, but the reality is, we know very little for sure about Joan of Arc. Not even what she looked like in detail, for there are no surviving portraits of her, dating from when she was alive. The facts about her life are equally as uncertain, because everything about Joan was subject to spin, depending on who was talking, when they were saying it, and what agenda they sought to achieve. Because everybody involved had an agenda of one kind or another: either elevating Joan up to the level of literal sainthood (finally achieved in 1920, almost half a millennium after her death), or tearing her down, as a tool of the Devil. Even basic facts – was Joan a shepherd when she was young? – are uncertain, with contradictory testimony. 

It’s really in that light you need to view all this documentary shows. Indeed it largely opens by admitting to the above. This opens the door to questioning the standard narrative, in which Joan is a humble farm-girl, who heard divine voices and was inspired to lead France to fight back against the English invaders. However, I was also left with as much doubt about the alternative suggestions the film provides, because the evidence for them is little if any less sketchy. These theories are certainly interesting – and from a secular viewpoint, elements are perhaps no less plausible than the “voices of God” explanation. On other hand, it feels as if they raise as many questions as they answer. 

The first is the suggestion that Joan was actually of noble birth, perhaps an illegitimate child. This could explain things like her reported ability to ride and wield a lance, and speak “proper” French, rather than the coarse dialect of her village. She was, in effect, created for the specific purpose of becoming a figurehead. It’s an intriguing idea – though given events unfolded over a period of several years after she came to public attention, whoever was responsible clearly had to be playing a remarkably long game. It is, though, small beer beside the theory which occupies the second half: Joan was not burned at the stake, but survived, resurfacing a few years later as Jeanne des Armoises, getting married and living a whole second life.

Yeah, big if true. The evidence for this begins with alleged oddities around her death. Joan’s head being covered on her way to the stake; an unusually high pyre; hundreds of English soldiers keeping the locals at bay. Yet there were a lot of people who were present, and subsequently provided, albeit years later, sworn testimony as to her fate. It would have been a remarkable cover-up, to put it mildly. I’m more convinced by the second element: someone, representing herself as Joan, did resurface a few years later, even getting as far as the royal court and meeting Charles VII of France. However, most accounts agree that de Armoises ended up admitting to the fraud, being unable to tell the King information Joan would have known.

I still enjoyed watching this, and the intellectual exercise it provided. It’s always good to keep an open mind about history, and contemplate alternative scenarios, whether they pan out or not. Though some of the recreations leave a little to be desired, this is a decent, well-assembled piece, with good “talking heads”. It did give me pause for thought, and no documentary which does so can be considered a failure. 

Dir: Martin Meissonnier
Star: Marcel Gay, Francoise Michaud Frejaville, Colette Beaune, Philippe Contanime
a.k.a. Vraie Jeanne, fausse Jeanne 

While She Was Out

  By

★★★
“Christmas shopping can be hell”

Della (Basinger) is stuck in a marriage with her abusive husband (Sheffer). But she deals with it, for the sake of their two children, whom she adores. It’s Christmas Eve, and she escapes to the mall for a little retail therapy. The lot there is packed, and she leaves a passive-aggressive note on the windscreen of a particularly selfish parker. Big mistake. For it belongs to Chuckie (Haas) and his young group of multiracial thugs (one black, one Hispanic and one Asian, so that’s nice…). The subsequent altercation leads to the death of a mall cop, with Della as the only witness. So they pursue her, first to a construction site, then into the nearby woods, intent on making sure she can’t testify against them.

It’s kinda daft, and that’s putting it mildly. Takes a bit of time to get going too, with scenes of Della mall-ratting, and suffering microaggresions like a barista spelling her name wrong. Eventually, it gets to the violence, and things pick up, even if the silliness persists. Most obviously, Della lugging a big, red tool-box with her, shown in the poster, while she runs around the forest. It is, admittedly, a tool-box necessary to the plot, not least for its part in an energetic and impressive, “tyre-iron repeatedly to the face” sequence. This is just one of the ways in which Della dispatches the gang members, although the first is more the victim of an unfortunate accident than enemy action. 

The loopiness reaches its peak at the end, when the face-off between Della and the last gang member goes in a direction you probably would not have expected. Let’s leave it at that. But overall, this is an enjoyable enough slice of nonsense, with a story which is all the better for being extremely simple. Though it is easy enough to think of ways in which it could be improved though. For example, give Della some kind of back story to explain her ability to best young men in hand-to-hand combat. The story makes mention of her classes in Pilates, Spanish and mechanics; would it be so hard to have thrown in a karate class as well?

Probably the major potential area for improvement is on the villains’ side. Haas has a somewhat creepy vibe, however it’s one better suited to a lone psycho than a gang leader. Some of the dialogue between the members is also risible, as if writer/director Montford had no experience she could use to relate to her characters. They come off as largely unthreatening, more like kids playing dress-up than actual psychos, and the relative ease with which Della can counter them doesn’t help. But Basinger is good value in her role, and I will confess to nodding in appreciation at the final scene, even if it’s something we should probably have seen coming. I was entertained adequately by this, and that’s all I wanted.

Dir: Susan Montford
Star: Kim Basinger, Lukas Haas, Leonard Wu, Craig Sheffer

Trial By Fire

  By

★★
“Not so hot.”

When you hear this is a Lifetime TV movie about a female firefighter, that will probably set up all manner of expectations about what you’re going to get. I am here to tell you, this will deliver on every single one of them. While somewhat salvaged by decent production values – there were a few shots involving flames that genuinely looked impressive – you are not going to find a safer, more predictable ninety minutes of entertainment. It’s less a film than a parade of cliches, beginning with the heroine, rookie fire-fighter Kristin Scott (the appropriately-named Burns!) losing her father, the local station chief, in a blaze on his last day before retirement. Her sister Chelsea blames Kristin, as do her colleagues in the station, leading to her punching one of the latter out.

Seeking to obtain validation and self-respect, Kristin seeks to join the elite group known as “smoke jumpers”. They get dropped in to the most hazardous of situations, to try and stem the flames. To even get into the training, she’s going to have to overcome the prejudices of the existing jumpers, who harbour serious doubts about a woman’s ability to stand up to the physical rigours of the position. I’m not going to detail the plot any further, as you should be able to figure it out from there – right down to a finale where Kristin savwa Chelsea and her husband when their camping trip suddenly becomes a bit toasty. Will there be flirty banter with fellow smoke jumper Ray (Ravanello)? Or another colleague who seeks to sabotage her chances? Maybe. Oh, who am I trying to kid. Of course there is.

Burns is tall enough to be plausible as a fire-fighter, but height and a “can-do” attitude only goes so far. She just doesn’t have the necessary physical presence. A key part of the smoke jumper testing, about which the film makes frequent mention, is the ability to do a mile in 11 minutes while carrying 100 pounds, and you just never get the sense our heroine would be capable of it. Still, this is part and parcel for the territory, and you can’t blame the film for skewing photogenic e.g. cutely smudged, rather than realistic. I do wish they’d done a great deal more with the script, however, which is just staggeringly bland, girl power wish-fulfillment.

It does appear the flames were probably largely added in post-production, yet these don’t have the obvious digital look you often see in such things. We get some impressively scorched earth scenes, which do actually give a sense of how dangerous this job is. It ends by telling us that 27 of the 400 smoke jumpers in the US are women, and that’s got to be a thankless and incredibly demanding task. I sense any one of their stories would probably be more interesting and less hackneyed than the one we get here. I also suspect any real smoke jumpers who watch this, would likely be rolling their eyes furiously.

Dir: John Terlesky
Star: Brooke Burns, Rick Ravanello, Winston Rekert, Wanda Cannon
a.k.a. Smoke Jumper

Kung Fu Femmes

  By

★★½
“What happens in Vegas…”

It’s weird what you stumble across on Amazon Prime. This is the feature-length version of a web series, originally made in 10 episodes. Just based on the title and description – “Delinquent girls are trained to perform risque but dangerous kung fu fight shows in a Las Vegas now owned and operated by the Chinese Mafia.” – I thought it best to wait until Chris was not around. Mostly because I’m not sure I could have stood the dripping sarcasm. Turns out, I needn’t have worried. Everyone remains attached to their clothes, and it’s resolutely PG-13 rated. Indeed, we actually see very little of the “risque” shows mentioned, which is a bit of a shame: the fragments we see, along with the training clips, suggest it’s something I’d love to attend in Vegas.

The story is mostly about Tyler (Tomlinson), who runs the troupe mentioned for casino magnate Michael Shang (Wong). He has taken over almost all the top locations there, for example, Caesar’s Palace is now Shang’s Palace. However, you don’t get to do that without some very shady business practice. Tyler is funneling information back to the FBI, in particular Agent Cook (Lorien), with the aim eventually being to take Shang down. It’s a perilous game for Tyler to be playing, and she also has to keep up appearances, finding and training girls for the show, which Shang wants to expand to a second venue. Not helping matters is the high mortality rate among the performers, apparently.due to in-show accidents.

The good news is, the actual fight scenes are pretty good. Not necessarily Tomlinson so much, but there are plenty of other actresses who know their way around a punch. Rising star Amy Johnston (Lady Bloodfight) shows up, briefly, as one of two girls who have a brawl… over a bag of chips! There are plenty of other good examples of fight choreography to be seen, sometimes for more justifiable reasons… The bad news? The video quality flat-out sucks. I’m hard pushed to believe this was shot in the late 2000’s, because it is horribly grainy and atrociously badly colour-balanced. Skin tones are particularly notable: there are times when people look badly sun-burned and suffering from jaundice at the same time. That’s quite some feat.

It’s so blatantly nauseating that it manages to distract badly from the other aspects, which are generally okay. [There are some gaffes, such as a scene supposedly taking place in Vegas, where a building in the background sports a 213 area code phone number. Uh, that’s Los Angeles…] The pacing is a bit off, as you’d partly expect from its origins as a web series. In particular, it feels like it ends, then suddenly we get a tacked on coda that bounces to San Diego, before returning to Vegas for a finale. Still, aside from the video, it wasn’t so bad. Creator Laudati has a bunch more short little films on Prime, and I might check a few out. Let’s just hope someone bought him a new camera…

Dir: Tony Laudati
Star: Michelle Tomlinson, Phoenix Wong. Serena Lorien, Anna Yosin

Exile

  By

★★
“Planet rock”

Space freighter pilot Jason (Sheridan) has his craft hijacked, and is forced to crash-land it on a deserted planet. Blinded and alone, things look grim for him, until he’s fortunate enough to be found by android Reyna (Guzzetta). She’s the product of a maverick genius, who took refuge on the planet, but recently died: she needs Jason, as the systems which power her require a human presence in order to operate. And he needs her – in particular, her advanced combat skills – in order to protect him, both from the planet’s hostile fauna, and the hijacker’s pals, who have followed him down to its surface. Yet, is Reyna entirely trustworthy?

This is especially shaky at the beginning. Maybe the CGI might have passed muster when this came out in 2008 (key word: “might”). The decade which has passed has not been kind to them, and you’d expect better from a remaindered PS4 game nowadays. Initially, the story is no great shakes either, especially with Jason’s blindness apparently little more than a slight inconvenience. He navigates his way round the unfamiliar landscape with the alacrity of a well-equipped bat, and seems to have little trouble breathing an atmosphere every other human requires a respirator to handle. Apparently, “you get used to it”, according to a throwaway line late in proceedings.

Then there’s the monster roaming the planet. It’s a good thing its only prey is blind, because… let’s just say, speed is not a strength. By “roaming”, I likely mean “shuffling slowly around.” On one level, it’s more than a bit crap, a bargain-basement knock of the Alien. On the other… it’s kinda endearing, simply by nature of being so inept: something Conway seems to realize, showing it only in quick cuts, close-ups and partial angles. We never get a decent medium-shot, probably for good reason. Throw in the proliferation of other people sharing the director’s surname in the credits, and it’s clear this is a professional production in little more than intent.

Yet, it has some interesting ideas, even if the interplanetary warfare described in the opening voice-over is notable by its almost complete absence. Guzzetta is actually decent in her role, with a physical presence which reminded me of Pollyanna McIntosh. It’s a role where her artificial, stilted and slightly forced performance (whether deliberate or not!) works for the character. The second half feels like a considerable improvement, when a rescue mission lands in search of Jason, and Reyna realizes her power source might be about to be taken away from her. If Conway had not over-reached himself and his available resources so aggressively in the first half, this could potentially (again, key word: “potentially”) have been a small cult classic.

Instead, while I’d like to applaud ambition in any film-maker, this feels like someone biting off an entire buffet more than they are capable of chewing. The results turn out to be similarly indigestible for the viewer.

Dir: Mike Conway
Star: Brian Sheridan, Heather Lei Guzzetta, Tiffany Sinclair, Jake Bass

Sólo quiero caminar

  By

★★
“Oceano’s quatro”

We watched this Spanish film, by coincidence, on the same night as Ocean’s 8, and the Hispanic entry came off as a poor imitation, even though it was made a decade earlier. A four-woman gang’s attempt to steal from Russian mobsters in Spain falls short, though only a single member of the crew is arrested. One of those who escape, Ana, marries Mexican drug-lord Felix (Yazpik), only to discover over the ensuing months, he’s an utterly abusive bastard. After she is pushed out of a car at high-speed, ending up in hospital, the other three, including her sister Aurora (Gil), the one who was caught, decided to take revenge on Felix. The plan is to start by stealing first his data then move on to his money, the loss of which will cause his new Korean partners to kill him. However, his right-hand man, Gabriel (Luna), begins to suspect the women – yet his qualms about Felix’s increasingly brutal ways help lead to increasingly split loyalties.

This isn’t as good as the above synopsis – or the German DVD sleeve on the right! – might make it sound. Instead, it’s a two hour-plus mess, with far too many scenes serving purposes that are either poorly explained or entirely non-existent. Aurora’s time in prison, for example, is virtually irrelevant, except for another scene showing what bastards men are [she is eventually released thanks to the provision of sexual favours to a corrupt judge; one of the themes here seems to be that men are degenerate sleazeballs]. And when the heist goes into motion, there’s absolutely no sense of structure, which would allow the audience to follow along. Why is that tunnel being dug? Does anyone know what’s going on? And then there are the “Koreans”, who are very clearly speaking Chinese. Not sure if this was casual racism, or just extremely sloppy film-making.

Despite the above critical evisceration, it’s not entirely without merit. There’s something of a Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorsese feel to this, not least in the conspicuous use of music to punctuate proceedings. That includes both usual Hispanic entries like Los Lobos, to entirely unexpected content, such as Patti Smith’s cover of the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter. Those inspirations are also reflected in Yanes’s unstinting eye for violence. The scene where Felix takes a hammer to the hands of a victim is nasty – yet necessary, bringing home beyond any shadow of doubt how evil he is. When things are in motion, Yanes seems to have a decent handle on how to shoot and edit things, and I liked most of the performances here as well, from a fairly well-known cast. It’s just a shame the script seems to consist of pages torn from a better movie, thrown up into the air and placed in random order. The struggle simply to follow what was happening, entirely sucked the life out of my initial enthusiasm for this.

Dir: Agustín Díaz Yanes
Star: Victoria Abril, Ariadna Gil, José María Yazpik, Diego Luna
a.k.a. Just Walking or Walking Vengeance

Forever the Moment

  By

★★★
“Women with balls.”

Every four years, when the Olympics arrive, we fall in love with handball. What is handball, you might be asking. Basically, think seven-a-side soccer, except (obviously), played with the hands rather than feet. It’s an amazing sport, all but unknown in the UK and US, and deserving a far wider audience – a YouTube search for “Olympics handball” will get you sorted. Which is why we were fascinated by the idea of a film focusing on it, specially, the story of the 2004 South Korean women’s team. What they did was roughly that country’s equivalent of the 1980 ‘Miracle on Ice’. The once-dominant Korean team had fallen far from grace, and barely qualified for the Athens Olympics. But they reached the final, against the Danish side, which went into double overtime, and then a penalty shootout.

Yeah, much of this is a compendium of sports cliches, right down to the requisite training montage. The fact it’s largely based on true events does not exonerate the movie from criticism here, though I was impressed how closely the depiction of the final match did mirror the real thing, still regarded as an all-time classic contest. Thus, you get tropes such as the veterans, brought back for one last crack at glory, such as Han Mi-sook (Moon), who is now working in a grocery store to try and make ends meet, after her husband is defrauded by his business partner. They inevitably butt heads, both with the younger players, and new coach Ahn Seung-pil (Uhm), who is not only the replacement for interim coach Kim Hye-gyung (Kim J-e), but also her ex. There may eventually be bonding. I won’t spoil that.

It would be very easy for this to topple over into sentimental cliche, yet the strength of the performances generally help it stay just in bounds. Director Im seems particularly interested in developing her characters, and they come across as especially real, as they progress from a sparsely-attended opening game to the cauldron of the Olympic gold medal match. Especially memorable is the feisty Song Jung-nan (Kim J-y), who won’t back down from any confrontation, most notably when some of the other athletes at the Korean training complex try to bully some of her team-mates. Weightlifters or judokas, all learn quickly not to get in her way.

I should mention, you don’t need to know much about handball, since it’s largely self-explanatory. Though even our relatively untrained eye could detect the difference between the actresses playing the game, and their opponents who are the real thing, being actual professionals from a Danish handball club. For the Korean audience, there won’t be any surprises in the eventual outcome; that’s an area where the movie perhaps had a greater impact on us. Im handles the final moments particularly deftly, not even showing the final shot, just the reactions to it, and finishing with archive post-game interviews from the real participants. These do an excellent job of bringing home the reality of what happened.

At a length of over two hours, we could likely have done with more handball and less personal drama (not to mention the unfounded suggestion of biased officiating). Yet I’d be hard-pushed to consider the time wasted, and it was nice not to have to wait until 2020 to have our love of the game rekindled once more.

Dir: Im Soon-rye
Star: Moon So-ri, Kim Jung-eun, Kim Ji-young, Uhm Tae-woong

The Resident Evil animated films

  By

residentevilanimeThe Milla Jovovich series are not the only films set in the Resident Evil universe. There have also been two feature-length computer animated movies: Degeneration was released in 2008, and Damnation four years later. A third, Vendetta, is scheduled to be released in Japan this spring. While made in Japan, with a Japanese director and crew, the voice cast are English-speaking. As with the novels, the stories and characters are in line with the universe of the computer games, rather than the live-action features, and tend to occupy spots in the timeline between the entries in the game series. Therefore, there’s no Alice, but the animated films contain their fair share of strong heroines and, of course, action.

★★★
Resident Evil: Degeneration

degenerationThere’s a new EvilCorp in town, and its name is WilPharma, as we learn during the montage of news stories which opens this. In game terms, the film takes place after the events of “Resident Evil 4”, which saw the dismantling of the Umbrella Corporation. Its assets and research naturally proved too valuable to destroy, and WilPharma has taken over, with the announced goal of developing a vaccine for the troublesome T-virus. However, some dubious medical research in India leads to the company being targeted by protestors from TerraSave. It’s one such demo, at the Harvardville Airport, that kicks things off, as a plane of infected subjects crashes into the terminal, where Senator Davis is trying to avoid the protestors. TerraSave’s Claire Redfield (Court) finds herself trapped with the Senator, before they’re rescued by a team of soldiers including Angela Miller (Bailey) and Leon S. Kennedy (Mercier).

Claire goes to the WiiPharma research facility, at the invitation of researcher Frederic Downing, and discovers they have the even more lethal G-virus being studied. There is… oh, dammit, let’s just call it “quite a lot more plot”, involving WiiPharma’s efforts to sell the virus as a bioweapon to General Grande; Angela’s brother, Curtis (Smith) an ecoterrorist who deliberately injects himself with the G-virus; and the true identity of the mastermind behind it all. It’s probably too much to be crammed into 98 minutes, especially when you also have to fit in copious amounts of action. The second half, in particular, is more or less one long action sequence, with Angela and Leon trying to survive in the facility. It’s a change of focus, since Redfield was the main protagonist during the first half, becoming the guardian of a friend’s child during the attack at the airport, maybe reflecting her switch to pacifism (albeit pacifism of an oddly bad-ass kind!).

Being CG, and of a 2008 vintage, the animation is good at doing what 2008-era CG was good at, which is movement rather than emotion – as you’d probably also expect from a film produced by a video-game studio. The sequences and shots where the camera is swooping in and around the battle participants, are sometimes spectacularly good, and in general, while in motion, this is effective and exciting. Beyond the technical, its problems are more a plot which lurches from frantic action set pieces to expository lumps, and seems to rely too much on viewers being familiar with the characters and creatures from the games. But it has to be said, WiiPharma certainly seem to have a better handle on the proper use of containment mechanisms than Umbrella ever managed…

Dir: Makoto Kamiya
Star: Alyson Court, Paul Mercier, Laura Bailey, Roger Craig Smith

★★★½
Resident Evil: Damnation

adawong-jpgIncluded here largely for completeness, since the action heroine content likely would fall a little short of qualification on its own. Not that it’s entirely lacking, as the video at the bottom shows. But it’s definitely more a vehicle for Leon S. Kennedy (Mercer/Dorman). Which brings me to one of the odd things here: that is not a typo, it’s a double-credit for the character, because two different actors played the role, one providing the voice, the other the source for the motion-captured animation. Not sure I’ve seen that before.

Anyway, Kennedy finds himself dumped into the middle of a former Warsaw Pact satellite nation, the Eastern Slav Republic, which is being torn apart by a struggle between Government forces, under President Svetlana Belikova (Lee/Lee), and rebel groups. Both sides are making use of B.O.W’s, Bio-Organic Weapons, which have now been developed to such an extent that humans can now mind-control some of the creatures, using a parasitic organism called Plaga – albeit not without some unpleasant effects. Meanwhile Ada Wong (Taylor/Andersen) – hang on, last time I saw her, she was dying in one of the novels? – is trying to insert herself into Belikova’s circle, with her own agenda in mind. It all builds to an extended battle, pitting Leon and rebel commander, Alexander Kozachenko (Wittenberg/Earnest), along with the Lickers the latter controls, against the monstrous Tyrants fighting on behalf of Belikova.

This is particularly well done, a lengthy, escalating sequence of animated carnage, even if it does require something of a deus ex machina to show up at the end. It’s clear that animation has progressed markedly since the first movie, and this film takes full advantage of those improvements in its action scenes. For the purposes of this site, I’d really like to have seen more of Wong, whose moral ambivalence is intriguing; I reached the end, and still didn’t know on whose side she was supposed to be. [She does show up in RE: Retribution, played by Li BingBing, albeit dubbed there too]. The scene below, where she goes hand-to-hand with President Belikova, is a lot of fun – Belikova certainly counts as one of the more hard-core politicians I’ve seen! Bet she could kick Hillary Clinton’s ass…

And that is as close to politics as I’m ever going to get o

Dir: Makoto Kamiya
Star (voice): Matthew Mercer, Dave Wittenberg, Courtenay Taylor, Wendee Lee
Star (motion-capture): Kevin Dorman, David Earnest, Jolene Andersen, Melinda Lee