Tag: 2011

Wonder Woman (Unaired TV Pilot)

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★★★
“Nowhere near as bad as you might think.”

Allowing for the fact this was more or less a rough-cut – you can still see the wires as the heroine throws villains around – this actually is far from the atrocity you expect, going from the pre-production fan loathing. The story avoid the whole “origins” thing, hitting the ground running by having Wonder Woman/Diana Prince (Palicki) already fully-active, and busting crime around Los Angeles. Her extra-legal activities, with the local cops’ complicity, bring her to the attention of the federal authorities. Meanwhile, she’s tussling with the board of her company over the merchandise that funds her crime-fighting, objecting to the size of the tits on her action-figure – and, yes, they actually say “tits”, to my surprise. Finally, the villainess (Hurley) is performing illegal medical experiments with steroids and such, to create super-soldiers, and it’s up to Wonder Woman, her plane (wisely, no longer invisible), bullet-deflecting bracelets and lasso which may or may not be of truth (it’s unclear from this episode) to stop her.

Yeah, there’s probably too much going on, as it establishes that Prince is not just an action heroine, but also a business mogul, being the CEO of Themyscira Industries, and a woman: y’know, with needs. They each have their separate identities: it’s a nice touch, though not all of this needed to be put across in the pilot I think. They might have been better off bringing the other angles in down the line. What does work, surprisingly well, is Palicki, who both looks the part – a particular surprise, given the heat the costume took – and manages to hit most of the dramatic points necessary. However, I can see how fans of the comic books would probably still hate it, since there’s barely any acknowledgment of her ancestry as the princess of an all-female tribe from a remote island.

I particularly liked the hard-edged “neo-vigilante” approach of Wonder Woman, who has no aversion to violence and at one point, flat out kills someone by driving a pipe through his neck. Don’t recall Lynda Carter doing that: The Dark Knight has a lot to answer for. On the down side, the script does have its fair share of cliches, from the grieving mother through to the romantic interest. But, really: you can turn on the television any night of the week and see far less interesting or well-considered excuses for series, which somehow managed to get themselves green-lit. It has potential to be, if not great, at least half-decent: given the lack of action heroines on TV these days, it’s a pity this one received the televisual equivalent of a wire coat-hanger.

Dir: Jeffrey Reiner
Star: Adrianne Palicki, Elizabeth Hurley, Carey Elwes, Tracie Thoms

The Hike

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★★
“The Descent without the caves. Or monsters.”

Five young women head out into the country for a camping trip, led by Kate (Phythian), a former soldier who is stil traumatized by seeing her boyfriend killed in front of her while on a mission in the Middle East. She’s about the only member of the party who seems genuinely keen on the trip, and it’s not long before the others start to whine, demanding rest stops, and the hike is curtailed before the intended destination. At least the country is not entirely deserted, though the creepy East European guy and his two women isn’t exactly sociable. But at least there are the three nice guys, out for a spot of rock-climbing, led by Ethan (Loyd Holmes), so there’s always that. And if things end up getting dicey – say, if one of the women vanishes mysteriously, while out gathering firewood, the others can turn to Ethan and his chums for help. Right? Right?

With a bit more thought on characterization and dialogue, this could have been an effective exercise. When I say, “a bit,” I probably mean “an awful lot,” as apart from Kate, the women are at best flat and two-dimensional, and at worst, actively and significantly irritating. Do women really act and sound like that? It may be relevant the script was written by two men, and there are few surprises to be found here (especially if you’ve seen Eden Lake, a similarly-themed “rural nightmare” flick from the UK). The progression is so obvious that it doesn’t even count as a spoiler to reveal that Kate ends up the ‘final girl’, and it’s likely significant that the more the film focuses on her struggles for survival, the more effective it becomes, to the point where the last reel eventually delivers the tension and energy I’d hoped to see from the beginning.

It definitely does owe some inspiration to The Descent: I don’t think it’s coincidence that Shauna McDonald has a small role as Ethan’s wife. However, I also note Nedeljacova’s role in the Hostel series, which perhaps has rather more in common with this, as the movie relishes the rape and degradation elements to a greater degree than I like. Phythian does what she can with the role and comes over as a decent heroine, who goes through hell and back again over the course of 24 hours. However, there are plenty of better entries in the genre, and little otherwise to recommend this one.

Dir: Rupert Bryan
Star: Zara Phythian, Ben Loyd Holmes, Barbara Nedeljacova, Daniel Caren

Salvage Mice

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★★½
“Mice-ensed to thrill… Albeit, barely.”

Mai (Tanimura) and her partner (Sato) form a team – the titular rodents – who recover art and artifacts, and return them to their “rightful” owners – quotes used advisedly, it’s vague on the details. However, Mai is betrayed, and framed for the robberies actually being committed by the gang operating under the Evil Western Dude (Heselton, who was also the main villain in Karate Girl). Mai encounters Mio (Nagano), part of ‘Hiroshima Cleans’, a group of volunteers who help keep the city tidy. Initially, Mio thinks Mai is the villain, but is eventually convinced that the real bad guy is elsewhere, and the pair team up to take on the villains, including both Mai’s ex and Evil Western Dude.

The main problem is Tanimura, who is incredibly unconvincing in terms of martial-arts skills. Even though her character is supposedly more thief than fighter, there is much more of the latter than the former, and she simply isn’t up to it. Nagano fares rather better in this regard, and there are a few sequences which are decently put-together and well-executed. However, even here, you still find yourself yearning for a presence like Rina Takeda or Jeeja Yanin, who are capable of really upping the pace and delivering blows that look like they have real impact. Too often, that’s not the case, especially when the heroines team up to take on Evil Western Dude.

What works a little better than expected is the stuff around the edges, like Mai pretending to be a tourist to lure Mio into befriending her, or Mio’s relationship with her non-violent colleague in Hiroshima Cleans. This kind of stuff could be grating, but it’s handled with a light enough touch to pass for frothy entertainment, and fits with what could be a showreel for the Hiroshima Tourist Board. There’s more than a hint of anime series Saint Tail here, and it’s entirely PG-rated. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but here, its more blandly inoffensive than family-friendly, and passes the time acceptably, without being at all memorable.

Dir: Ryuta Tasaki
Star: Mitsuki Tanimura, Julia Nagano, Tomohito Sato, Richard Heselton

Ninja Girl (Kunoichi)

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★½
“Save your time, save your money, and go watch Karate Girl instead. Again, if necessary.”

From the director of Alien vs. Ninja, the story here centres on a pair of ninjas, Shimotsuki and Hyotsuki, who are carrying on what appears to be a family tradition, kidnapping women from other clans’ villages, and taking them back to their own for nefarious purposes – let’s just say, the phrase “tools of pleasure” crops up on more than one occasion. They ar returning with their latest batch of four, including Kisaragi (Takeda), who is a ninja in her own right. With the help of a mysterious man (Sato), Kisuragi and her colleagues in imprisonment are released from their bondage – but that is only the first obstacle between them and their freedom. Of course, it turns out the heroine is not quite as innocent as she appears, and has an agenda of her own, because her mother was kidnapped by the same sleazy ninjas, when Kisuragi was just a baby.

Barely an hour long, this still somehow manages to outstay its welcome, managing to spend far more time engaging in borderling misogyny, rather than anything remotely empowering, and a distinctly sleazy tone with plot elements involving castration, venereal disease and a great deal more molestation of helpless women that I generally like (particularly in my ninja flicks). There is really only a single battle of note, when Kisuragi gets to take on one of her captors in a battle that is fairly well-shot and does a good job od showcasing Takeda’s undeniable skills. However, you don’t get the sense that there was more than a couple of days work involved, and even given the short running time, it’s still a negligible amount of what’s on view, and there just isn’t anything like sufficient elsewhere to keep you interested or entertained.

I haven’t seen Chiba’s earlier work, but it seems to be basically the same “head off to a forest for some film-making” approach that we see here. That can work in the right hands – Versus is justly the most well-know example of that genre. However, here, it’s more like a cheap excuse to disguise the obviously limited production values than anything else. Hopefully, Takeda will soon move beyond this kind of Z-grade dreck: I did read rumours of her being in Chocolate 2, which would be nice if said rumours had the slightest grounding in fact, which seems questionable. Hey, we can dream, can’t we?

Dir: Seiji Chiba
Star: Rina Takeda, Yuichi Sato, Masanori Mimoto, Mitsuki Koga

Cherry Bomb

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★★
“More bomb than cherry.”

Cherry (Julin – yep, that appears to be her surname) is a stripper, whose life takes a turn for the worse when she is assaulted by five customers in a private room at the club where she works. The cops aren’t able to do anything, so she takes the law into her own hands, with the help of her brother (Rodriguez), who accidentally kills one of the perpetrators when he goes to demand help with Cherry’s medical bills – no prizes for guessing how that request goes. As the others realize someone is out to get them, and who that someone ins, they hire Bull (Hackley), a gigantic hitman, to stop Cherry before she gets to them.

It’s clearly attempting to re-create the grindhouse era, but wimps out on most levels – for example, Cherry is a stripper who never shows any significant flesh. That’d perhaps be forgivable, if Julin’s performance hit the required notes elsewhere, but it wobbles uncertainly from giggly schoolgirl, incapable of forming any kind of plan to violated bitch, capable of ramming a vehicle into someone’s head (in probably the film’s most impressive moment). The other performances are similarly shaky, with the possible exception of Manning as the club owner, who captures the necessary tone for his role. Hackley is so shamelessly channeling Samuel L. Jackson from Pulp Fiction it goes beyond irritating into amusing – then past that, back into irritating again [Chris wondered if it was a white guy in blackface, it’s so clichéd!]. The action is equally as mixed a bag, swerving from well-staged to sloppy, occasionally even within

The overall impact is occasionally effective, with a couple of scenes that deliver the necessary wallop. But too often, it feels half-hearted, like they had a vague interest in resurrecting the grindhouse era, rather than a passion or drive, and it’s certainly all but lacking the “grind.” While I’m all in favour of emphasizing the “revenge” over the “rape” aspects of the story, the latter is so toned-down and muted – the assault itself is barely shown here – that the justification for the former is almost non-existent. That makes it difficult for the audience to get on board, when the ends don’t appear to justify the means.

The Holding

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★★★★
“Hell hath no fury like a mother defending her children.”

Cassie Naylor (Wareing) is struggling to keep her head above water on the farm she’s now running almost single-handed, eight months after her husband vanished. What the locals don’t know is that she buried him in a remote spot on the Derbyshire moors, with the help of part-time farmhand Cooper (Bradley), for reasons not initially clear. The arrival of a transient, Aden (Regan, looking not unlike a rougher version of Gerard Butler), seems like a godsend, and they agree he can work in exchange for food and lodgings. However, it’s not long before Aden’s less-desirable tendencies start to show through. While he’s fiercely loyal – dispatching anyone whom he perceives as a threat – he seems to regard Cassie and her two daughters as “his” family, and seems to know rather too much about them.

Clearly influenced by The Stepfather, this is still its own creature, with Cassie a strong, independent heroine of the first degree, who will do absolutely anything to protect her children, even if one is a Bible-thumper and the other an immensely-irritating teenage brat. Indeed, it’s probably important to note that [here be spoilers, highlight the text if you want to read it] all the women survive, and only men die. How much of this was the input of a woman director – itself, fairly unusual for the genre – is open to discussion. Another big plus is that the film doesn’t rely too much on the stupidity of the main characters, which is a common flaw; their behaviour here is relatively logical, though there were times when the victims did not take an avenue of escape that appeared to be open to them.

The look of the film is impressive, with a lush pastoral feel early on, that eventually turns into a dark, rain-drenched nightmare as things become bloody. However, the main strength are performances which are believable, on both sides of the fence, effectively ramping up the tension as the body-count increases. It builds to a satisfactorily invigorating battle, in which Cassie has exhausted all legitimate hope of rescue and is thrown entirely on to her own tenacity and survival skills. Ellen Ripley would certainly approve, even if here, the monster being opposed for maternal reasons has a human face.

Dir: Susan Jacobson
Star: Kierston Wareing, Vincent Regan, David Bradley, Skye Lourie

A Lonely Place to Die

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★★★½
“The Ascent rather than The Descent. With humans as the monsters. “

Five mountaineers are exploring the remote Scottish highlands, when they stumble across an underground box containing a terrified, near-dead young girl who speaks no English. Two of the party are sent, by the most direct but not child-friendly route, back to civilization to get help, but it’s not long before they discover the parties who buried the girl are not too happy with her removal. For they are two kidnappers, Mr. Kidd (Harris, who also plays a psychotic killer in The Borgias) and Mr. McRae who are negotiating with her father’s emissary, Darko (Roden) to pay the ransom, not aware that Darko has hired some ex-soldiers to resolve the matter. Having lost the child, the pair set out to recapture her, and don’t care how many bodies are left in their wake.

It’s only slowly that Alison (George, whom GWG fans may remember as Lauren Reed, Vaughn’s wife in Alias – the role here was originally intended to go to Franke Potente) comes to be the focus, but it’s clear that her maternal instincts have been aroused, and she’s prepared to do anything to protect the child, and she’s got the skills for the environment. That’s when the film is at its strongest, pitting Alison and her steadily-dwindling band of friends against Kidd and McRae. Once they reach civilization, it becomes notably less credible, not least because the “festival” conveniently going on in town (whose fireworks are needed to mask the gunshots), is so wildly inappropriate for small-town life. I grew up not far from where this was shot, and we certainly never had festivals involving topless women in body-paint. It’s a shame, as I liked how the protagonists were not your usual college students in peril, the staple of survival horror, but a little more mature and sensible. Not that this helps their longevity.

It’s always a difficult call whether the “final girl” genre should be included here. To me, the decisive factor is less how she takes on the monster, villain or nemesis in the last reel, it’s how she has behaved before that point. The Friday the 13th heroines, for instance, do little or nothing to justify the term “action heroine”. Here, however, Alison proves herself worthy of the title, almost from the first scene, which finds her half-way up a mountain-face. By the time she becomes the kidnappee’s sole hope, she has already covered miles both horizontal and vertical, fallen off a cliff, gone through rapids and survived her fair share of bullets aimed in her direction. Yeah, she qualifies, and only a clichéd last 20 minutes stops this from being thoroughly satisfactory.

Dir: Julian Gilbey
Star: Melissa George, Ed Speleers, Sean Harris, Karel Roden

Nikita: season two

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★★½
“More characters! ADD MORE CHARACTERS!”

When we last saw Nikita (Q), she’d gained some help for her struggle against Division in the shape of fellow defectors from the organization, Michael (West) and tech guy Birkhoff. But she’d lost protege Alex (Fonseca), who had stayed with Division to further her lust for revenge on those who’d killed her parents, while reclaiming her family fortune. Meanwhile, Nikita’s nemesis and former boss Percy had been usurped by Amanda (Clarke), and was now in a plexiglass box in the basement. Throw in Oversight, the government committee supposedly in charge of Division under Senator Madeline Pierce; CIA agent Ryan Fletcher and Pierce’s son Sean, who join Team Nikita; Owen, a rogue guardian, keeper of one of Percy’s black boxes… And I haven’t even got to Michael’s love-child, a source of much angst for all concerned.

I think the main problem with this sophomore season is clear: too many characters, resulting in plotting that’d be thrown out by a telenovela as far-fetched and convoluted. It was also notable that Nikita did significantly less heavy lifting on the action front, with Michael taking up more. Because, of course, no woman can survive without a man. Unfortunately, the increased focus on relationships – of multiple kinds – is probably almost inescapable on a network like the CW, even when a show gets buried in the “death slot” of Friday night. But it defused what made the show stand out: a kick-ass independent heroine, who could handle herself without relying on a team of men, and as a result, I frequently drifted off, either to sleep or to do something else more interesting. Which would be just about anything.

By the time of the last few eps, I would genuinely not have been bothered if the show had been canceled. But then, it returned to form: Percy escaped, getting himself a nuke and a satellite – nothing good can come of this. Focus on a genuinely threatening villain and the heroine, not the soap-opera “Mikita” ‘shipper bullshit, and I was engaged again. The end came almost full-circle – in part, I suspect because the makers didn’t know when they were shooting the final episodes, whether or not they’d be renewed. And, in the end, I am glad it has been given a third season, because there’s no show quite like it on television – despite the flaws, it’s flying the flag for genuine action heroines, almost solo. Still, how long my interest lasts when it returns, remains to be seen.

Star: Maggie Q, Shane West, Lyndsy Fonseca, Melinda Clarke

Karate Girl (2011)

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★★★½
“On the plus-side, this does have a plot. On the other hand, you kinda wish they hadn’t bothered.”

The film manages to cram just about every cliché of martial-arts films into its 92 minutes, with a plot driven by four major threads:
a) You killed my father, and must pay.
b) You run a rival school, and must pay.
c) You are generally not a nice person, and must pay.
d) You kidnapped my sibling, raising them as one of your own and training them in your evil techniques, before sending them out to kill me. Oh, and you must pay for this too, naturally.

Ayaka Kurenai (Takeda) can only watch as her father, a master of karate, is killed in front of her very young eyes, and her sister Sakura (Tobimatsu) is dragged away by the perpetrators. A decade or so later, Ayaka goes viral after using her skills to stop purse-snatchers in the cinema where she works, an event that brings her to the attention of Tagawa Shu (Keisuke), the man behind it all. He still covets the family belt, having apparently missed it when killing the man and kidnapping his daughter. He sends out some minions to verify if she is who she seems – then when that’s done, plays his trump card, revealing he has Sakura, in his evil grasp. Little does he reckon that Sakura’s family loyalties run deeper than all the training the Evil Dojo can drive into her…

Yeah, the plot is a load of pants, and the acting is nothing to write home about – it’s serviceable enough, in line with what you’d expect from a movie with this title. I did enjoy most of the action, and the relaxed style of editing which lets you see the performers and their skill. It doesn’t always work, but enough of it does to make for a generally-entertaining time. British-born Heselton. who looks like a pissed-off Simon Pegg on steroids, comes across well, but the highlight is probably the scene where a pair of Tagawa’s minions go to Ayaka’s karate school, and take on, first her classmates, then her, in an effort to flush her true talent and ancestry out.

Both Takeda and Tobimatsu show potential here. The latter is another young discovery – the next next generation of action heroines? – and it’s startling to realize she is just 14. One suspects child-labour laws must be a good deal laxer in Japan than the West. Let’s just hope their next film isn’t plotted out on the back of a beer-mat.

Dir: Kimura Yoshikatsu
Star: Rina Takeda, Hina Tobimatsu, Horibe Keisuke, Richard William Heselton

The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake

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★★★
“She was a saint, a saint, I tell you.”

I find the line between “terrorist” and “freedom fighter” an interesting one, drawn not so much by any objective measure, but by the viewer’s perspective and historical hindsight. Qiu Jin is a good example: she fought against the perceived oppression – particularly of women – by the Qing dynasty in the early 20th century, and ended up getting publicly beheaded for her support of revolutionary factions, by the government of the time. Now? A heroine and a martyr, who has an official museum ‘n’ stuff. Funny how things work out.

The main problem here is a film that’s almost too respectful of its subject matter: this is less a historical drama than a hagiography, with Qiu made out to be a flawless figure: devoted mother, heroic revolutionary, marvellous orator, great martial-artist, etc. Personally, it came over more as a propaganda movie than providing much credible insight into a historical figure. The structure is mostly in flashback, Qiu’s life unfolding during her arrest and trial in 1907, going all the way back to childhood and her first ‘rebellion’, when she refused to have her feet bound and quizzed her father on why only boys went to school. She was still entered into an arranged marriage with Wang Tingjun (Chang), but that doesn’t stop her from fomenting proto-feminism, poetry, and, when Wang rejects the value of her work, upping and heading off to Japan for a bit.

I did like Huang’s performance a lot – she cuts a commanding figure and it’s certainly easy to see why people followed her. There’s also one really good fight sequence early on – during her arrest, she battles the arresting officer, trying to destroy incriminating documents. Unfortunately, I was left wanting more like that, with the remaining battles more “rebels vs. army” brawls that don’t really give anyone the chance to shine. Instead, it heads more into the poetic side of her life, with Qiu taking more of a back seat, action-wise, rather than being the focus. However, Anthony Wong is as fun to watch as ever, playing a local magistrate (even if this falls far short of the exploitation insanity in his earlier work with Yau, such as The Ebola Syndrome and The Untold Story: not necessarily a bad thing, for a mainstream audience!).

Interestingly, this isn’t the only film about Qiu of late, with the documentary Autumn Gem also available. I’m curious to see it – obviously, being a doc, its approach will likely vary, but as the makers noted, some stills certainly look similar… Perhaps it might take a slightly less-reverent approach to the subject, depicting a human being rather than a flawless heroine.

Dir: Herman Yau
Star: Huang Yi, Kevin Cheng, Dennis To, Anthony Wong