Tag: 2017

Molly

  By

★★★★
“Dutch treat”

Up to a certain point (which I’ll get to in a bit), this low-budget post-apocalypse picture from the Netherlands has been solid if unspectacular. The limited resources have shown themselves in a world which almost entirely consists of running about sand dunes and light forest. The fight scenes have been grubbily realistic rather than impressive, with the kind of amateur flailing around with limited weaponry you’d probably actually see after armageddon has actually taken place. And the main focus of the plot has been the usual warlord type, Deacon (Bolt) who turns people into “supplicants” – drug-crazed pit-fighters for his personal amusement. Standard practice for a post-apocalyptic leader, really.

The main point of note is the titular heroine (Batelaan), who runs – entirely deliberately, I suspect – counter to expectations of what such a woman would be like. Molly is a scrawny teenage red-head, almost helpless without her glasses, and as noted above, hardly skilled in the martial arts – Imperator Furiosa, she is not, shall we say. She does have some assets: she’s not bad with a bow and arrow, and has a pet hawk. Most significantly, she has some kind of psychic abilities, that tend to come out when she’s upset. It’s these which bring her to the attention of Deacon, and to ensure she complies with his interests, the warlord kidnaps Bailey (de Paauw), the kid whom Molly has just befriended.

Which brings us to where this goes from “Not bad, works within its limits quite nicely, though not exactly original” to “This one’s a keeper”. Because Molly storms the off-shore stronghold where Deacon is keeping Bailey. In one 30-minute take. Okay, it’s clearly as much “one take” as Hitchcock’s Rope was – you can spot any number of moments where cuts have taken place. Yet, even attempting to put something like this together is extraordinarily ambitious for any low-budget film, and that the result works as well as it does, is simply amazing. The segments pitting Molly against Deacon’s lieutenant, Kimmy (Appelhof) and her mechanically-enhanced arm, are particularly well-done.

Some of the earlier scenes are shot similarly and work as appetizers; yet about eight minutes into the grand finale, I still suddenly went, “Hang on. When was the last cut?” If you’re like me, you’ll immediately be rewinding to watch it from the beginning. Elsewhere, the film is helped by crisp cinematography and an effective soundtrack, which sounds bigger budget than the movie. Perhaps wisely, the directors keep Batelaan’s performance largely driven by her actions rather than her dialogue. She fares considerably better than Bolt in this regard, and the ending is almost painfully abrupt.

All told though, and despite the over-familiarity of some aspects, the elements that are new and refreshing are really new and refreshing, from the non-fighting through to the awkwardness of the heroine. However, it’s the glorious mess of her final battle, which will stick in the mind of just about anyone who watches this. The trailer won’t prepare you for that level of awesomeness.

Dir: Colinda Bongers and Thijs Meuwese
Star: Julia Batelaan, Joos Bolt, Emma de Paauw, Annelies Appelhof

Vixen: The Movie

  By

★★★½
“For fox’s sake..”

Having dipped my toe into the animated DC World with their 2009 version of Wonder Woman, I thought I’d scope out this more recent entry. It collects together both seasons of the Vixen web series, as well as new footage. The series began in 2015, with six five-minute episodes under Tucker, and six more followed the following year, directed by Geda. It’s a cross-over from the “Arrowverse”, with appearances from the Flash, Green Arrow and Black Canary, among others – some of the voices here are done by the same actors as the live-action TV shows.

The focus, however, is on Mari McCabe (Echikunwoke), a orphan from Africa who was brought up in Detroit by a foster family. Virtually all she has linking Mari to her original roots is a necklace, and this is no ordinary trinket. The totem allows the wearer to tap into animal spirits and gives them their powers, e.g. strength of a gorilla, speed of a cheetah, etc. This comes as a bit of a shock, not only to Mari, but also to the rest of the Arrowverse, who were under the impression superpowers were only the result of exposure to intense radiation.

Regardless, several problems result for Mari from this. Firstly, she has to try and figure out how to control and harness the potential abilities. Secondly, her older sister, Kuasa (Rose), feels the totem belongs to her, and their struggle for control forms the focus of season one. In the second series, we discover it is just one of five elemental artifacts, and when the “fire” totem is discovered, former general Benatu Eshu arrives in Detroit, intent on acquiring it, for… the usual reasons power-hungry former generals want to get their hands on relics of great import, I guess.

While more or less your standard superhero origin story, there is an underlying awareness, occasionally bordering on self-mockery. This certainly helps, given I’m no real fan of the superhero genre in general, so seeing this poke fun at itself – albeit gently – basically beat me to the punch. Some of the background characters were occasionally an issue for a novice like me, who is almost entirely unaware of the Arrowverse. I imagine most viewers will not be in that boat, but I felt it worked better when concentrating directly on McCabe, and exploring her background and development.

The animation seems cut from the same cloth as Wonder Woman, which means it makes for nicely fluid action. Although in some of the more talky sequences, I was occasionally distracted by the absence of movement anywhere except the lips. They do a good job of crafting a feature out of something episodic, even if the join between the two seasons is fairly obvious. Fans of Arrow should stick around for the post-credits sequence which (I’m informed!) ties into Echikunwoke’s subsequently appearance in a guest role as Vixen in Arrow. Yet even for someone like me, outside that group, this was a character I liked, and wouldn’t mind seeing more of – whether in animation or live-action.

Dir: James Tucker + Curt Geda
Star: Megalyn Echikunwoke, Anika Noni Rose, Neil Flynn, Sean Patrick Thomas

Cold November

  By

★★★
“Deer Florence…”

If you think children are of one mind with regard to the gun debate, thanks to the zealots of Marjory Stoneman, the alternative view portrayed by this movie will feel amazingly transgressive and almost alien. The world it depicts is one where schools will actually teach kids how to use guns safely, handing out gun permits, and a teenage girl can receive a treasured family heirloom, in the shape of a .30-30 rifle, passed down the generations. Hunting is a way of life, and an important resource, with a particularly strong matriarchal tradition, in which three generations of women will be going into the woods together. For 12-year-old Florence (Abas), it’ll be her first excursion: in a not-too-subtle parallel, she also gets her first period.

This is a very sober film, which takes guns and the culture around them extremely seriously, and that includes hunting, which is depicted in unflinching fashion. This is likely not a film for the committed vegan, in particular when Florence has shot her first deer and, in the absence of any immediate adult help, has to dress it. This is foreshadowed earlier, Florence’s aunt Mia (Fellner) teasing her when the young girl gets a bit squeamish about menstrual blood (and in particular, its uses in hunting): “You think that’s gross? Wait until you get elbows deep inside a deer.” As someone who tends to encounter raw meat only on polystyrene trays in the supermarket, it’s quite a shock – albeit also refreshing – to be reminded from where it comes.

On the other hand, the naturalistic approach eventually hampers the film, simply because so little of note actually happens. Up until the end, when Florence finds herself alone in the woods for a bit, virtually the sole bit of excitement is a small fire breaking out in the tree stand. This is not exactly an adrenaline rush. In Jacob’s defense, it’s clearly not intended to be: according to the director on the film’s Kickstarter page, “I noticed how the power of taking a life, butchering an animal, and meditating through the act was empowering. It changes you. It seemed clear that those who had not lived through this change have a fundamentally different experience of life.” However, quite what that “change” might be for Florence is not clear. How is her life “fundamentally different” as a result? We don’t really know.

The main difference seems to be that Florence is no longer visited by the ghost of Sweeney, her late sibling. This is another time the film’s opacity is a bit irritating: it’s suggested that Sweeney’s death was tragic, and perhaps even firearm-related. But would it have been too much to ask, for the film-makers to be a little clearer, on what appears to be an important point? Despite these criticisms, while it’s probably not a film I’d watch again, I didn’t feel it was 90 minutes wasted. Very much understated, this provides a glimpse into an environment not often depicted by Hollywood, one where guns are a tool, and not a threat.

Dir: Karl Jacob
Star: Bijou Abas, Anna Klemp, Heidi Fellner, Karl Jacob

Megan Leavey

  By

★★★
“A tale of dogged determination.”

The crossing of war and animal genres of film isn’t one with much precedent, and you can see why: it would be difficult to balance those disparate elements. While this does a laudable effort, and manages to avoid sliding too far into the slippery road of sentimentality, it offers few surprises, even if you don’t know the true story on which it’s based.

Megan Leavey (Mara) opts to join the Marines after the death of her best friend leaves her feeling rudderless. While she gets through boot-camp successfully, she’s teetering on the edge of a discharge when a punishment detail introduces her to the canine corps. There, she meets Rex (Varco), a bomb-sniffing dog with whom she makes a connection – despite the mutt having issues of his own. Eventually, Megan gets assigned to the corps. She and Rex are sent to Iraq, where they have the hazardous task of finding the roadside IEDs, (Improvised Explosive Devices), an ever-present threat to American forces.

It’s there that the film is probably at its best, capturing the real sense of danger, lurking around every corner and in every encounter. It’s the little things which are most chilling: she’s scolded for telling an Iraqi kid Rex’s name, because it could be used against them. Turns out, the insurgents offer a bounty on dog handlers – particularly female ones. You’ll spend a good chunk of this time on the edge of your seat, knowing that “something” is going to happen, in a way I’ve don’t think I’ve experienced since The Hurt Locker.

Eventually, something does, and the film enters the second stage. Megan leaves the armed forces, suffering from injuries both physical and mental, and wants to take Rex with her. The military, however, have other plans, and he is sent back for another tour of duty. Megan becomes a relentless pest on his behalf, and when Rex is eventually set for retirement, ramps up the campaign to be allowed to adopt her partner. Except, he has been officially tagged as “unadoptable”, and incapable of being re-introduced to civilian life – effectively, a death sentence.

It’s interesting that this was re-titled for the dog in the British market, perhaps reflecting a different audience. And to be honest, I’m a cat person, which perhaps limits the impact this tale (tail?) of canine-human devotion will have. It all seems a bit one-sided: what exactly did Rex do to justify all Megan’s efforts? I’ll happily accept our cat sitting on my head and purring loudly at 6am, even if I suspect it’s less an expression of affection, than closer to “Get up and feed me, you lazy bastard.”

But regardless of species, any pet owner knows what it’s like to care, and by the end, you will be rooting for Megan to triumph. Mara’s performance is a winning one, and director Cowperthwaite is no stranger to emotionally-driven animal stories, though the work for which she’s best-known is the killer whale documentary, Blackfish. Despite some pacing problems, especially after the heroine returns home, the heart present here is undeniable, and makes for a decent movie to curl up with, alongside your animal companion of choice.

Dir: Gabriela Cowperthwaite
Star: Kate Mara, Varco, Ramon Rodriguez, Common
a.k.a Rex

Breakdown Lane

  By

★★
“In need of some roadside assistance.”

An initial twist on the zombie apocalypse and an appealing heroine aren’t enough to save this. By the end, while said heroine has transformed into a mayhem-dealing machine, any fresh elements have been discarded, for a low-budget rehash of ones which we’ve seen far too often already. It starts intriguingly, with Kirby Lane (Moore) “ambushed” by a woman in a camper with a sick man at a gas station, while on the way to meet her boyfriend (Cushing). When her car breaks down in the middle of absolutely nowhere, the only connection to the outside world is Max (Howell), the agent for her on-board emergency help provider. But things in the outside world are deteriorating rapidly, and the tow-truck Max dispatches… well, let’s just say, it might be a while. Meanwhile, Kirby has to handle the perils which threaten her, including humans both infected and cannibalistic, as she tries to fulfill her promise to link up with Max.

The combination of zombies and deserts reminded me of It Stains the Sands Red, which I’d recently seen. And, like there, the makers apparently realized half-way through that the remote setting they’d chosen couldn’t actually sustain a feature, and opted to revert back to over-familiar tropes. While ending with the same overall grade as Stains, it gets there in a rather different way. This clearly has a far smaller budget, and is significantly less technically-accomplished [if the faux comic-book interludes don’t annoy the hell out of you after ten minutes… Wait longer…] But unlike Stains, it has a heroine who comes over as genuine and likable. Courtesy of Moore’s performance, you want to see Kirby survive, and that goes some distance to help paper over the obvious cracks.

Some distance, however, remains short of enough. The contrivance of having Kirby push her car across the terrain, as shelter and so she can keep hanging out with Max, is flat-out ridiculous. And once she gets back to civilization, the film can do nothing except bang out the low-budget zombie notes with which any genre fan is already familiar. Kirby’s transition into a tooled-up bad-ass momentarily piqued interest here, except it comes out of nowhere – and serves no particular purpose either, since there isn’t enough time left for it to become a significant factor. By the end, it has largely dissolved into another cheap horror film, indistinguishable from the rest, and neither particularly good nor bad as such things are concerned.

Although, here’s something odd. The film makes much of its Canadian-ness in the end credits, but unless they’ve started growing saguaros up North, looks to me like it was largely filmed in an utterly uncredited Arizona. That applies both to the desert scenes and the later urban ones. In particular, there’s a garage which is located about three miles from GWG Towers here, and one of the post-apocalypse vehicles seems to belong to a cosplay group we’re familiar with, the Department of Zombie Defense. Sheesh, how’s a state supposed to grow its film industry?

Dir: Robert Conway, Bob Schultz
Star: Whitney Moore, Stephen Tyler Howell, Aric Cushing

Double Date

  By

★★★½
“They’re just girls, man. What’s there to be afraid of?”

Oh, be afraid… Be very afraid. For Lulu (Wenham) and Kitty (Groome) are not your average twenty-somethings. They are sisters, on a mission. A Satanic mission, to resurrect their dead father. All it needs is a series of human sacrifices, culminating in a ritual involving the death of a virgin. And wouldn’t you know it, they’ve found Jim (Morgan), who is about to turn 30 and has been looking for love in all the wrong places. That’s despite the best efforts of pal Alex (Socha) to help, until they encounter Lulu + Kitty, ladies who seem almost too good to be true. As should be clear, that’s exactly what they are. But a wrinkle occurs, when Kitty realizes Jim is a nice chap, and begins to have second thoughts.

If an unashamed B-movie, this has enough fun with the concepts to justify itself, not least gender-reversing the whole “sacrificial virgin” trope. That has been the territory of innocent damsels in distress for a century, so making it a gormless “bloke in distress” instead is a lovely idea. There’s a hint of Shaun of the Dead here as well, in that you have two friends who find themselves trapped in a lethal scenario, almost without noticing it. It helps that everyone here is likeable, in their own ways, not least in their loyalty to friends or relatives, and the women mirror the men, in there being a leader and a follower.

Even Lulu’s slaughter is born out of a familial bond, and the lengths to which she will go are almost touching. Kitty, meanwhile, gets the biggest arc; it’s during an unexpected birthday party at Jim’s house (where he’s off his face on pharmaceuticals!) where you can see a change come over her character. Credit the script, written by Morgan as well, since it hits most of its targets, though the aforementioned drugging feels a bit of a rapey misstep, to be honest. Otherwise, it’s a good balance of the emotional and the comic. In the latter department, I particularly loved the scene where an incredibly nervous Jim is trying to chat up the two not-so-ugly sisters, from a script sent through text message by Alex, only to be betrayed by the vagaries of auto-correct.

Save for that humour, it reminds me somewhat of 1974’s Vampyres, which also had a pair of women abduct people and take them back to their country manor house. Except here, in Wenham, we may potentially have a new British action star, too: if they’re looking to reboot the Underworld franchise and replace Kate Beckinsale, she would seem a viable candidate. Her early “kills” are brutal to the max, but things reach their peak near the end. She has an amazing brawl against Alex, which is one of the best inter-gender battles I’ve seen of late. His raw strength is balanced by her technique, and the results are both impressive and highly destructive of property in the area. Like the film in general, it was a pleasant and unexpected surprise.

Dir: Benjamin Barfoot
Star: ‎Kelly Wenham, Danny Morgan, ‎Michael Socha, Georgia Groome

Strong Girl Bong-soon

  By

★★★
“A not unpleasant Korean stew.”

The 16-part series proved an unexpected sleeper hit in its native land, more than doubling the audience from debut to finale. This is all over the place in terms of genre, with comedy, thriller, romance and action threads. While they aren’t equally successful, it does a pretty decent job of managing most of them, and is surprisingly accessible for a Western audience. The heroine is Do Bong-soon (Park B-Y), the latest in a matriarchal line of very strong women. She has been brought up to keep her power suppressed, due to the potential issues it can cause; Bong-soon has also been warned that if she misuses them, and hurts an undeserving person, they will go away. [Let’s not worry too much about how this presents an easy solution: slap one innocent, and she would become just like everyone else…]

Additionally hampered by low self-esteem, she has so far largely flown under the radar, but that ends when she stops someone from being bullied by an organized crime gang. The incident is witnessed by Ahn Min-hyuk (Park H-S), head of a game company, who is dealing with a stalker and hires Bong-soon as his bodyguard. She starts to fall for her boss, but is conflicted due to having feelings for long-time friend, In Guk-doo (Ji). He’s now a local cop, investigating a series of kidnappings which have terrorised the local area.

All these threads and more, intermingle and develop over the course of the series. The crime gang, who are trying to redevelop the area, seek revenge on Bong-soon, only to become semi-permanent residents in hospital. A group of young local wannabe gangsters turn to Bong-soon as their leader. Her parents go through relationship difficulties. The psycho kidnapper’s attentions target a victim too close to our heroine for comfort. She tries to leverage her bodyguard position into achieving her ambition, which is to design video games. She has a gay supervisor, who has a crush on their boss. Yeah, there’s a lot going on here: everything from a soppy post-teenage love-triangle to something which borders on Silence of the Lambs.

Credit is due, therefore, that the end result is even watchable, given this scattergun approach, though obviously some elements are not very interesting from my perspective. It’s hard to see quite who might enjoy all the angles; on the other hand, perhaps this is a case of there being something for everyone? Park B-Y is admirably deadpan as Bong-soon, dealing with the bizarre hand life has dealt her, and the action scenes, although less frequent than I’d like, are decently handled: the highlight is probably her duel with the entire crime syndicate in a warehouse. It works better for me in the first half, when the various elements gel into a more coherent whole: later on, it becomes almost entirely about the kidnapper or the love triangle, and the switches in tone feel more jarring. I can’t say I’m eagerly anticipating a second series, yet didn’t mind what’s certainly a different take on the genre of super-powers.

Dir: Lee Hyung-min
Star: Park Bo-young, Park Hyung-sik, Ji Soo, Jang Mi-kwan

Hunting Emma

  By

★★★½
“The Revenge knock-offs start here…”

Actually, that’s unfair. For this was released in its home country of South Africa in March 2017, six months before Revenge had its world premiere. But the timing of its US release, less than two weeks after Revenge, is… let’s say, “interesting”, given the strong similarities between the two films. While there are significant differences, which we’ll get to shortly, both depict the pursuit of a lone woman across a desert landscape, by a pack of men intent on making sure she doesn’t get out alive. She has to turn the tables on them, pushing past societal norms in the name of self-preservation.

Indeed, if I was the makers of Jagveld, I might be a bit miffed that they’re now faced to play catch-up in the US market. Revenge has swept in and grabbed all the plaudits, leaving their film feeling (even if it isn’t) like a mockbuster. It inevitably suffers from being second. If I hadn’t seen Revenge, this might well have got our seal of approval. Instead, it no longer feels as fresh, even if it’s by no means bad. It doesn’t have quite the same feminist subtext, bypassing the sexual assault angle. Instead, the trigger for the hunt is a car breaking down in the veldt, and while Emma (du Randt) is looking for help, she stumbles across Bosman (van Jaarsveld) and his gang, just as they’re shooting a policeman. This not being something to which they want a witness, the chase is on.

This is rather more restrained than Revenge: something of a double-edged sword, as its sibling’s excess was part of the gonzo charm. Most obviously, it’s far less gory, and also has a more prosaic explanation for the heroine’s savagery. Rather than peyote triggering a pharmacological resurrection, Emma’s dad (Meintjes) was a special forces soldier. His cynical view about the savagery of the world led him to train her in survival skills, an upbringing she rejects in favour of a career as a teacher and fervent pacifism – there’s a rather clunky subplot about her breaking up with a boyfriend because he defended himself in a fight. The lessons still stuck, and just as there are no atheists in fox-holes, there are no pacifists in desert warfare.

There’s something of the young Uma Thurman about du Randt, and the gang members offer an interesting range of characters, from the hardcore Bosman through to some of his minions, who would clearly rather be somewhere else. While they’re all meat for Emma’s grinder, some of the wounds are rather self-inflicted [even I know better than to drink untreated wilderness water, and I do not camp well…] The main flaw is its lack of a sense of escalation, something Revenge had by the crimson-coloured bucket. When I saw Bosman picking up his F-sized rifle, I was eagerly anticipating the moment it would be turned against him. At close range. By a thoroughly pissed Emma. No such luck, but I did appreciate what might be a nod to Ms. 45 in the use of an iron as a deadly weapon. Instead, it plateaus some time before the end, finishing on an “All right, I suppose” note rather than the necessary crescendo. Worth a look though. Especially if you haven’t seen Revenge yet.

Dir: Byron Davis
Star: Leandie du Randt, Neels van Jaarsveld, Tim Theron, Tertius Meintjes
a.k.a. Jagveld

ExPatriot

  By

★★★
“National insecurity”

Riley Connors (Kane) is a CIA analyst, who quits her job and blows the whistle on secret government surveillance programs. Having pulled an Edward Snowden, she hides out in Colombia, helped by the reporter who broke her story. Her peace is short-lived: a knock on the door proves to be a local cop, working in conjunction with Bill Donovan (Weber), her former CIA colleague and lover. He comes with a proposition. Help them take down a pair of shady Cuban banking brothers (Espitia and Browner) who are suspected of funding domestic terrorism, and she’ll be able to return to the United States, with the slate wiped clean. It’s a very risky proposition, even if her reputation as an enemy of the state might be the perfect “in” to the targets’ organization. But can Bill be trusted either?

Probably wisely, it avoids too much in the way of potentially lethal (and largely irrelevant) political commentary. Though the main twist, to be honest, is so obvious, I have to wonder what kind of vetting the CIA does for its employees, and also about the overall accuracy of the term “intelligence community”. Yet, in something of a contradiction, once this clown-sized narrative shoe finally drops, it makes for a more straightforward and effective narrative the rest of the way. Everyone’s true motives have been exposed, rather than the murky world of spy vs. counterspy which the first half of the film has largely inhabited. That section feels a little like an episode from Alias with Sydney Bristow going undercover, climaxing in Riley trying to transfer all the brothers’ ill-gotten funds out of their accounts, before one of them arrives in their office.

As such, it does take a fair amount of disbelief suspension. Would any group of shady bankers employ an ex-spook as a security consultant – particularly one who was too morally high-minded for the CIA? Inevitably, one of the brothers falls for her, causing some friction between her and Bill, who still blames her for walking out on him, yet simultaneously still carries a flame for Riley. I think the latter half works better, showcasing some above-average location work, in and around Bogota, ending up on top of Mount Monserrate with its giant status of Christ [when I first saw this, I though we were in Rio!]. Oddly, this is the second film I’ve recently seen which was filmed there, for no particular reason, after The Belko Experiment.

Kane was also familiar to me, having played the ex-girlfriend of serial killer Paul Stagg in The Fall, though is rather different here, to the point I didn’t recognize her. It makes for solid, if unspectacular, entertainment which site a couple of F-bombs away from being a decent TV movie. While predictable, it’s well-enough constructed, and Riley makes for an interesting character, one whose scruples could end up being the (literal) death of her. There is a certain amount of bait and switch here, in that the Snowdon-esque escapade of the opening, ends up not being particularly relevant to the main plot: I can see how it could have been eliminated without much tweaking of the plot. However, what the film gains from this, likely balances out any losses, although it probably helps I had no fore-knowledge of the specifics. I see a sleeve with a girl and a gun, it goes on the list…

Dir: Conor Allyn
Star: Valene Kane, Charlie Weber, Mario Espitia, Andres Ogilvie Browne

Fighting Belle

  By

★½
“Hell is belles.”

Oh, dear. A misbegotten concept – Sweet Home Alabama crossed with Rocky – doubles down with shaky execution, and a non-stop parade of painfully obvious cliches in both characters and plot, to startlingly poor effect. As evidence of the first, imagine a film about a man, dumped by his girlfriend, who decides that beating her up is appropriate revenge. This would not exactly be anyone’s idea of comedy gold. But the makers here think that, simply by reversing the genders, it becomes so. They are very much mistaken. I believe I laughed once.

The heroine is southern belle Delilah (Harthcock), veteran of many a beauty pageant: we can tell, because virtually every scene sees her wearing a “Miss Mint Julep” sash or similar. Yeah, guess I’ll quote the master of sarcasm, Edmund Blackadder: “I thank God I wore my corset, because I think my sides have split.” Anyway, she is jilted at the altar by asshole fiancé Kelvin (Czerwonko), and decides to get back at him by challenging her ex, a former pugilist, to a boxing match. She goes to the local gym, convinces the sceptical Tandy (Cook) to train her, and…

Well, you can guess the rest. Trust me: the previous statement isn’t critical hyperbole. You could literally write down ten plot points that have been done to death in this kind of film, and I’d wager at least seven of them would be delivered here. Family opposition? Check. Delilah falls for Tandy? Check. Befriends the gym’s tough girl, Slice (Pierre)? Check. Heart-warming finale? Double-check. That this manages to take an hour and fifty-one minutes to get there, however, is testament to some impressively meandering story-telling. It likely doesn’t help that you can see the eventual destination coming, from a very long way off.

The budget here was reportedly $15,000, and it shows. This is especially true in the department which is the bête noire of low-budget film-making, audio. It’s echoey in one scene, muffled in the next, and the incidental music score often cuts abruptly at the join, making the transitions more abrupt instead of smooth.  It’s some credit that Harthcock’s performance manages to overcome these problems, at least to some degree, and the perky Delilah is generally the best thing the film has to offer [the sole time I laughed, as mentioned above, was when she spat out a taunt, along the lines of “Why aren’t you married yet? Wasn’t your brother available?”]

However, it’s a performance which sticks out like a sore thumb when put beside the rest of the cast, with Tandy in particular so understated, he should be checked for a pulse. The vast bulk of the attempts at comedy fall painfully flat, the romance between the two leads is sadly lacking in chemistry, and the efforts at portraying the boxing and Delilah’s training are 95% unsuccessful. There are any number of potentially interesting directions this could have gone: instead, the script sticks to a painfully well-travelled path, and ends up going down for the count.

Dir: Sean Riley
Star: Jessica Harthcock, Noah Cook, Ryan Czerwonko, Donnie Pierre