Tag: 2020

Sisters Apart

  By

★★
“A phony kind of war.”

There seem to have been quite a few movies out of Europe over the past couple of years, about the female soldiers fighting in Kurdistan for independence with the PKK and related groups. French films Les Filles du Soleil and Soeurs D’Armes both covered similar territory. It seems fertile territory, offering an inbuilt contradiction between the general perception of how Islam treats women, and them taking part in front-line action, in a way well beyond what “liberal” Western democracies typically allow. Oddly, it feels as if most of the stories being told, involve a search for relatives, and I’m a bit ambivalent about this. It feels slightly lazy writing, as if there’s no other reason a woman could want to take up arms in order to defend her homeland.

This does at least somewhat sidestep that issue with its set-up. The heroine here is Rojda Xani (Bagriacik), a Kurd refugee now living in Germany, and a citizen of the country who has joined their army. Her mother comes to join her, but does not bring Rojda’s sister, Dilan (de Haas), as previously arranged. Indeed, Danil seems to have dropped off the grid almost entirely, a situation which causes Rojda increasing concern – as if trying to get her mother to adapt to life in Germany wasn’t stressful enough. Despite qualms of those around her, Rojda decides to apply for the post of interpreter with the Bundeswehr who are deployed to Kurdistan, training soldiers there. On arrival, she finds a possible source of information about her sister’s location, but getting her to talk won’t be easy. The harsh reality of the conflict also brings into focus Rojda’s (largely selfish) reasons for being there.

This is almost entirely low key – likely too much so for its own good. That’s particularly so at the ending, where things don’t so much end, as peter out in a largely unsatisfying way. It is perhaps “realistic”, in that life is rarely tidy or follows a three-act structure. However, if I wanted real life, I’d watch a documentary. Rojda does make for an interesting heroine, one trying to balance between her own family culture and the standards and practices of her new home. She’s certainly far from dumb, speaking at least three languages, but is also fairly impenetrable, emotionally. Much of the time, it’s hard to be sure what she’s feeling. I’m not sure if this was deliberate – it would be in line with the film’s understated approach – or a shortcoming, either in writing, direction or performance.

There are some points where this does come to life. For example, her new colleagues quizzing her about life in Germany – can girls there sit next to a boy in the cinema? Again, this demonstrates the weird double standard (to Western eyes) by which these women live. Or there’s the bafflement of her commanding officer (Letkowski) when he’s told the Kurdish women have nobody in a similar role: “Sometimes she gives orders, sometimes I do.” I wish there had been more of these moments, which render the near passivity of the rest, all the more infuriating.

Dir: Daphne Charizani
Star: Almila Bagriacik, Zübeyde Bulut, Christoph Letkowski, Gonca de Haas
a.k.a. Im Feuer

My Sisters

  By

★
“Sisters that’ll have you crying for mercy.”

This felt oddly familiar, like I had watched it before. One scene in particular – a maintenance man comes to replace a light-bulb, only to become an apparent threat – had me certain I had seen this. But no review of it existed, either here or Film Blitx, my non-GWG site. [For, make no mistake, its credentials here are fringey at best.] My working theory is that I probably fell asleep and missed so much, I deemed it impossible to review, then forgot about it entirely. Yet here we are. I managed to stay awake for an adequate amount of time this viewing, though full disclosure: I did have to pause it about 15 minutes in. I’m still reviewing it  – mostly so I don’t go round the loop a third time.

The hook here is that the whole thing was filmed in 24 hours, something touted by, it feels, every member of the cast and crew during the end credits. On the one hand, it is quite an impressive achievement, considering even the quickest of quota quickies would still need several days [Though 24 hours would be an eternity for Rendez-vous, shot using one take, the first, and thus filmed in under two hours] To the movie’s credit, technically it looks pretty good. The audio is a little ropey in places, however. My question would be: why film it in one day? What did this add to the film? For it seems no more than a pointless gimmick.

Not least because it feels as if the script was also tossed together in a day, easily representing the movie’s weakest element, and bouncing back and forth in time like a meth-crazed ping-pong ball. I’m unsure whether the tedium it induces is a result of its lack of coherence, or if it would have been just as dull with a more conventional narrative. The basic idea is a women’s support group, who decided to become vigilantes, helping their “sisters” who are trapped in abusive relationships by targetting their abusers. [It’s odd that I watched this the same day as the similarly themed Ride or Die. At least that admitted to the psychosis in its vigilante.]

This leads them into conflict with a shadowy men’s support group, the Freemen Society, who don’t take kindly to the women’s actions. The film does a particularly poor job of defining its antagonists, who remain a nebulous threat for the bulk of the running time, and are bad because we are told they are. Yet we discover at the end that one of the women has been an unreliable narrator all along, lying even to the rest of the support group. We are given no particular reason to care about them: there is far too much talk, and the dialogue consists of little more than a series of buzzwords that, presumably, made more sense back in 2020, during the white heat of people giving a damn about #MeToo. That concept has aged like Amber Heard’s milk, and combined with mediocre execution and flat-out terrible writing, these are sisters who need to be doing it to themselves.

Dir: Adam Justice Hardy
Star: Sara Young Chandler, Shanera Richardson, Nadia Marina, Diana Sanchez

Asking for It (2020)

  By

★★
“A Net loss.”

Not to be confused with the 2022 rape-revenge film of the same name (which I’ll get round to reviewing down the pipe), this is somewhat lighter in tone, though there’s a case to be made that this clashes terribly with the subject matter. Jenny (Hsu) is a journalist, working under Cheryl (Garofalo),and her work has brought her to the attention of an online stalker, who sends her increasingly disturbed and disturbing emails. When the harassment begins to move from the cyberworld into the real one, and the authorities fail even to reach the level of disinterest, Jenny teams up with room-mate Lisa (Morales), to hunt down the perpetrator and bring him to justice themselves.

In case the above is not clear, this is a comedy.

Yeah, I’m a bit uncomfortable about this. Not necessarily about the subject matter, as I tend to think any topic can be seen through the lens of humour. However, the more problematic your target, the less room for error. If you want to joke about, say, the Holocaust, you’d better bring your A game. This isn’t anywhere in the same league as a subject; however, nor is the comedy here anything close to an A game. There are a few amusing moments involving veteran Garofalo, who has the timing to hit home, with her depiction of a jaded and cynical writer. Yet otherwise, it’s mostly a weirdly toothless kind of satire, possessing too many “Is that supposed to be a joke?” moments, e.g. the blanking out of all the F-bombs.

I did enjoy the performances, with Hsu an appealing lead, and Morales doing some heavy lifting as the weirdo housemate from hell, whose special skills are indispensable to the plot. Though her “hacking” scene is another of those “Is that supposed to be a joke?” moments. The best scene probably has the pair heading to utterly deadpan teenage gun dealer, Lisa’s step-daughter, Missy. She delights in speeches like, “You left your G-string, by the way… I wore it. And then I sold it. On a website for perverts. And then I donated that money. To an elephant. Charity,” or “I don’t know how any of them work… I’m not a school shooter. Jeez, I’m sorry I can’t tell you the science behind riflery.”

Outside of those five minutes, the rest does not consistently work, either as a comedy or a thriller. I think it’s mostly a scripting problem, not least because the identity of her stalker is painfully obvious from the moment he first appears. You have to wait about an hour for Jenny and Lisa to catch up, and the pickings in that time – save Missy, who deserves her own movie – are slim. I was left mostly wondering why anyone would want to a) live in New York, and b) work as an online writer – fortunately, this is not my day job. I suspect this was not exactly the intended take-away. 

Dir: Amanda Lundquist, Becky Scott
Star: Stephanie Hsu, Irene Morales, Colin Burgess, Janeane Garofalo

Useless

  By

★½
“[Obvious comment redacted]”

Giving your film a title like this is basically asking for trouble. It gives snarky critics an extremely easy weapon to wield against the movie. That’s especially so when it’s a low-budget effort, made with considerably more heart than skill. It’s not without merit, especially in the photography. It is crisp and does a good job of capturing some beautiful Montana scenery – there’s a reason the state is nicknamed Big Sky Country – and the rodeo action. The problems are in a script which never met a cliché it didn’t like, and performances that do little or nothing to elevate the material.

The very first scene has a mother professing her love to her daughter, Jessie (Wilson). Two minutes later, she dies in a car accident. That’s a good indicator of the level of plotting you can expect from this. Jessie goes to live with her uncle Mick (Bracich) and mopes around. A lot. She is eventually brought out of her shell after Mick buys her an equally broken equine called Lucky – I presume this is where the title comes from. Girl and horse bond, help each other to heal, and take part in the sport of barrel racing. This had apparently been her mother’s favourite pastime; not that we knew anything about this before she died, of course. I also hope you know all the intricacies of barrel racing, for the film assumes you do, rather than bothering to explain anything about it.

I get that Montana is a different world, with a slower pace of life. Yet the dramatic approach here is beyond low-key, to the point of soporific. Even when Mick has a stroke (damn, this family has some poor luck), Jessie’s reaction barely registers above the level of slight annoyance. It feels very much that Wilson was chosen, not for her dramatic abilities, rather her talent in the saddle.  To this non-horse person, she looked solid there: it turns out she was the 2017 Montana High School Rodeo Association Champion Barrel Racer, and has been in the sport since she was 4. So her action scenes are authentic and work. When she opens her mouth? Not so much. The subplot in which she has to chose between nice nerd Kyle (Christensen) and bad boy bull-rider Blaze (Olson), falls flatter than huckleberry pancakes as a result.

At the other end of the spectrum, is the musical score. This doesn’t so much enhance proceedings, as signal the intended emotions enthusiastically. It’s probably the first time a soundtrack could be accused of blatantly over-acting. Not that there is any particular sense of dramatic escalation. Instead of, say, building to a big barrel racing competition, things peak with an illicit party at which – gasp! ‐ alcohol is being drunk. While there is a contest at the end, with no build-up, it is also severely lacking in impact. It’s clear this was a project born out of and fuelled by passion. It’s also very apparent, that alone falls well short of being enough. 

Dir: Josiah Burdick
Star: Brooke Wilson, Mark Bracich, Michael Christensen, Brian Olson

The Flood

  By

★★★
“Destroy me? They made me…”

The first eighty or so minutes of this are really good: powerful, committed and extremely angry film-making. And justifiably so, I would say. Unfortunately, the film runs for a hundred and seventeen minutes, and definitely goes off the rails towards the end. The gritty realism which was perhaps the movie’s strongest suit is replaced by odd fantasy sequences, such as the fugitive couple suddenly dressed, in the middle of a forest, as if they were attending a Victorian embassy ball. I’m not certain what the point of these elements, or the anachronistic pop songs were. I am certain that they didn’t enhance my appreciation of the film in any way, and that’s a shame, considering how assured it had been in the early going.

There’s no doubt aboriginal Australians received a really bad deal from their government, up until very recent times. As this film documents, they were forced off their lands, and their children frequently taken away as wards of the state. Even those who served their country honourably in World War II, like Waru Banganha  (Cook), were denied basic civil on their return to civilian life. Hard to blame Waru for going berserk, and killing some of the Mackay family who had sexually abused his wife, Jarah (Lane), and their daughter, Maggie (Williams), while he was fighting in the jungle. Worse is then to follow, as Jarah is gang-raped while in custody, in an attempt to get her husband’s location. “Don’t let what they did you destroy you,” a friend tells her. Jarah responds with the chilling line at the top of the review. She’s not wrong, as she takes revenge on the Mackays and their cronies, first rescuing and then alongside Waru.

What’s interesting is that, despite his military training, it’s largely Jarah – no mean shot with a gun herself – who takes the lead, and shows little or no mercy. She has decided that they must pay, even those who were only tangentially involved in ripping her family apart, and does so with a clear-headed intensity and ferocity which is wonderful to behold. This kind of story can easily feel like pandering, playing on liberal white guilt, yet McIntyre avoids that. The closest cousin to the body of this picture might be the blaxploitation flicks of the seventies, where the hero or heroine was pushed too far, and eventually stuck it to “the man”. Abosploitation? Though if we’re making up words, it also feels like a “Vegemite Western”, despite the post-war time-frame.

Throughout this, there have been flashbacks and memories that could be dreams. However, these have generally been restrained, and if not maybe adding too much to the film, don’t feel like they hurt it. That changed in the final third, with the pace dropping close to zero, just when it should be ramping up to a climax with all guns blazing. I will admit in particular to rolling my eyes at the redemptive fate of the main antagonist, who deserved considerably worse than he received. The energy and momentum this possessed, just about carries the film over the finish line. Yet I can’t help feeling. it should have been a great deal more effective.

Dir: Victoria Wharfe McIntyre
Star: Alexis Lane, Shaka Cook, Dean Kyrwood, Dalara Williams

Date a Bullet

  By

★★★½
“Sympathy for the devil.”

Alright, this needs some background first, so I’ll try my best to give the necessary information. Date a Bullet is a two-part spin-off movie from Date a Live. This was originally a light novel series, that became a manga and then an anime series. The last-named started in 2013 and is currently in its fourth season: it also previously got a pair of OVAs and one movie. This is the second film, though is essentially two episodes that were put together, and released in cinemas as a movie, despite a very short length of 50 minutes.

Date a Live was (and still is) as bonkers a basic premise as anime shows can be. A catastrophe 30 years ago causes spirits to appear in our world – until now, always in the form of beautiful girls. What are the odds? If the spirit is stressed or aggravated, she causes earthquakes and natural disasters. A little advice from me: how about the defense services NOT attack at the very first sight of such a spirit? Just an idea… A secret organisation protecting mankind from them has figured out a new way of dealing with these girls. The young, naive student Shido has to approach them, built up confidence and go on a date with them. When he kisses them he “seals in” their powers by doing so. This usually results in the spirit stopping being dangerous and moving into Shido’s home (where are his parents?). For the remainder of the episodes he is busy, trying to cope with school, the emotional needs of the girls and cooking for them all.

I guess there’s something that show wants to teach young Japanese men how to deal with girls. The whole secret organisation’s spaceship team (lead by Shido’s younger sister?) is trying to figure out the best of three responses for Shido when talking to the girls, and usually chooses the worst possible. Hilarity ensues. But somehow I couldn’t feel anything for Shido except for pity, dealing with all these girls wanting so many different things from him. It can’t be easy to be one of those beloved students in what we call nowadays a “harem anime”. There are plenty more of these where this comes from! The show is based on the idea of a so-called dating-app or game that helps train your dating skills before going into the wild, where untamed femininity can overwhelm an innocent, anxious Japanese boy. The idea is not the worst: I could have used such a tool when I was younger!

But this is a different beast, because it deals with the extraordinary character of Kurumi Tokisaki (Sanada), who is really different to all the other girls Shido met in the main show. Usually, meeting a girl spirit meant that, to cut a long story short, Shido would kiss the girl, or she, enchanted by Shido’s friendliness would kiss him – it has to be voluntarily. She’d join his harem, while they all crave his attention, everyone wanting a piece of him, his time, physical contact and so on. Not Kurumi. When she first appeared in the show, she seemed the girl spirit of this half-season, so to speak, but then quickly turned the tables.

While the other girls might be complicated and have problems, like feeling unloved, being shy and, in one case, not even being into men, there always was a solution. Kurumi is… different: Shido soon found out she was there to sexually arouse him, so she could “eat him”. We can argue about the not-so subtle subtext: male Japanese anxiety about a sexually demanding and active woman. In the very same episode, some boys make sexually charged comments about her, she lures them into the shadows… next the blood is dripping from the walls.

Yeah, cute-looking Kurumi in sexy red-black lingerie is a killer, a femme fatale and if I’m not mistaken (correct me if I’m wrong), falls into the popular category of the “yangires”, female psychotic anime characters that can go on a bloody rampage at the slightest provocation. She is the killer shark among Shido’s girl. But then, she never becomes part of his actual haremm because they never kissed. Innocent Shido would have been dead meat. There may be a hint of Kurumi being abused in her former life; it could just be me, trying to read between the lines.

In a show that follows the usual rules of harem anime, a character like this is almost a provocation, riding roughshod over those unwritten rules. Kurumi is a force to be reckoned with. Her left eye features the yellow dial of a clock: with her magical calling of “Zaphkiel”, an angel that can manipulate time and appears as a giant dial, she can actually turn time around. By shooting her gun into her own head she can replicate herself and create as many clones of herself as she wants. Magically she appears to be independent, she can appear wherever and whenever she wants.

For most of the show she has been the “punch clock villain”, someone you could expect to appear sooner or later in the show. Though she seems to soften her attitude to Shido, after her first encounters with Shido, where he unsuccessfully tried to reason with and find an emotional angle on her – that worked with the other spirits. In one episode, she goes on a date with him, only to be shot by a superior version of herself at the end, This clone was obviously trying to fulfill her supressed romantic desires. In a late season 3 episode, she even helped him travel back in time to prevent a catastrophe that would send one of his girlfriends on a later revenge trip against the other girl spirits.

Okay. On to Date a Bullet , which is exceptional in the Date a Live universe as it tells a story with Kurumi as the main character. There’s no Shido to be found here, none of the harem girls or supporting characters appear, It’s as if you took a bad Bond girl and gave her a solo movie. So, quite unusual! So, what’s the story? Kurumi finds herself in an alternate world where she is told she is in a battle royale. The winner gets a wish, and might even be able to return to her own world. As she is being told by a small girl who functions as comic relief, that the combatants are all “half-spirits”, Kurumi in her no non-sense manner declares her in quite clear terms that she considers herself a full spirit, not a half one. Then there is the character of the White Queen, an especially dangerous ghost she will sooner or later have to face.

The movie is well-made, though the DVD is definitely too expensive for just ran 50 minutes. It’s entertaining enough, though as expected, too short to build up much tension. But it also serves mainly to show that Kurumi has a heart, too. Flashbacks show a younger Kurumi when she was alive and in school with the one friend she had, Sawa Yamauchi, dreaming of how it will be when she will have a boyfriend. While you can easily guess who the White Queen is, Kurumi shows during the story how tough and no-nonsense she is. She is thankful for help, but this doesn’t mean she’s so naive as to trust you immediately. She has a softer side, too, saving a little cat that plays a special role in the story, and at the end seems to have found a pet that might accompany her in future. Though why she killed her best friend in the past, remains unanswered.

The film helped understand the character a bit better and gave her the limelight she deserves. I wouldn’t say we know everything about Kurumi Tokisaki now though. The character stays interesting and as Date a Live with its funny situations and cute/sexy girls is something of a guilty pleasure for me, I look forward for a dubbed version of season four, and discovering what kind of role Kurumi will play in it.

Dir: Jun Nakagawa
Star (voice): Asami Sanada. Asami Seto, Kaede Hondo, Mariya Ise

Agent Kelly

  By

★★★
“Not your typical assassin.”

Seeing this described as “an experimental thriller,” set my alarm bells ringing. I’ve seen enough “experimental” film in my time, to realize it’s typically a code-word meaning “incoherent rubbish.” The above rating is thus partially a reflection of my relief that this did not fall into that category. You still, very definitely, have to manage your expectations here. If you go in expecting a slick, Jason Bourne style adventure, you will be sorely disappointed. For this is a no-budget entity, largely guerilla filmed by a one-man crew, and with a lead actress who has no real experience. It has already significantly surpassed all my expectations, simply through not being a total disaster.

It’s the story of Kelly (Spence), a 50-year-old assassin, with a particular fondness for the use of poison, who has gone rogue after her protege, Mia (Mills) is tortured and killed by… Rivals? Associates? Like a fair bit here, the details are vague. It seems safe to say, others in the same line of work. Driven by an unprofessional urge for revenge, Kelly has already killed one of those responsible, and is now on the run from the remaining three, with her only ally a voice on the other end of the phone, Ed (Bergtold), who is… Her boss? Partner? Again: vagueness. She high-tails it to hide out in the South of Spain, where she has to fend off the remaining hunters, making them become the hunted.

Initially, I confused this with Assassin’s Target, the other “Hitwoman in Spain with a fondness for poison” movie. Really: what are the odds? This is sparser, yet perhaps more effective. It certainly puts over the utter loneliness of Kelly’s life: there’s not a single face-to-face conversation in the film, everything being told in phone-calls and voice-over. [This may be to help avoid audio issues, the frequent bane of low-budget movies, as much as a stylistic choice!] In lieu of human interaction, there is a lot of footage of her riding buses, walking the streets, sipping drinks, etc. The action is definitely at the lower level; a few foot chases in those same streets or on the beach, and one brief hand-to-hand fight. That’s yer lot.

As noted, there’s a lot which is never explained, such as how Kelly suddenly finds herself in the middle of an apparent plot to blow up a Spanish bank, how the hunters track her down, or she tracks them [she calls one up, and is even explicitly asked, “How did you get this number?”] Normally, I’d find this kind of thing an irritating indication of lazy writing, yet for some reason it did not annoy me here, fitting the murky world for which the makers seem to be aiming, largely successfully. Spence, who also wrote the script, is not a glamorous female assassin either, being on the edge of menopause and with a drinking problem: credit due there. Even an ending definitely falling into the noncommittal camp seemed appropriate to what had gone before. While clearly rough around the edges, there was enough novel here to keep me watching – much to my surprise, I will admit.

Dir: James Smith
Star: Caroline Spence, Ed Bergtold, Chris Sanders, Mia Mills

Dune Drifter

  By

★★
“Any similarities are purely coincidental. “

This is likely an admirable effort in terms of its budget. The IMDb estimates it costs $100,000 and it looks like Price squeezed every cent – or, since it’s British, penny – out of that. To give you some idea, also per the IMDb, “Sections of the film were shot during the Covid-19 United Kingdom lockdown with just the occupants of the director’s flat. The director’s girlfriend doubled for any actors and WhatsApp voice notes from cast members were used for any extra lines of dialogue.” This is the kind of thing that can only be respected. Which is why I feel a little bad about having to give this an underwhelming review, because… truth be told, it’s kinda boring. 

It takes place in a future where Earth is at war with an alien race, the Drekk. A platoon of two-man fighter craft are on their way to the planet of Erebus. However, they emerge from hyperspace into the middle of a battle. The ship, crewed by Yaren (Aitkens) and Adler (Sparrow), is damaged and forced to crash land on the planet’s surface. Yaren is badly hurt in the process, and to make matters worse, they are not the only craft which had to make an impromptu descent. There are a number of Drekk present in the area as well, posing an additional problem as Adler tries to attract help and, when that fails, locate the necessary parts to repair her ship and let it take off for home.

This sounds rather more interesting than the reality, which involves a lot of Adler wandering around, talking to herself. She occasionally encounters Drekk – though never more than one, and I’ve a strong suspicion they were all the same actor (Dwyer-Thomas). They’re not particularly alien either, that notion hardly enhanced by the Drekk sporting what look uncannily like army surplus gas-masks. The most effectively unearthly element may be Erebus, whose part is played very impressively by the black rock landscapes of Iceland, where the film spent a week shooting. But I think things take too long to land on the surface. There’s an excessive amount of chit-chat between the ships on the way to their destination, none of which is relevant to the meat of the story. 

Despite its setting on an alien planet, the title isn’t an attempt at a Dune knockoff, unlike the previously reviewed Planet Dune. Indeed, Price regrets using the name, precisely for that reason. Other moments provoke some eye-rolling: the Drekk exhibit stormtrooper like accuracy, while it’s nice to know that future spaceships appear to run on Linux circa 2012, and can use spare parts from craft belonging to alien races. Lacking any sense of escalation, the story doesn’t so much reach a climax as just end. While Sparrow portrays the heroine with a no-nonsense approach, prepared to do whatever is necessary to survive, a good attitude can only take a movie so far. The budget here is less an issue than the script.

Dir: Marc Price
Star: Phoebe Sparrow, Daisy Aitkens, Simon Dwyer-Thomas, Alistair Kirton

Justice High

  By

★★★
“Be cruel to your school.”

This is as much about the philosophical underpinnings of karate, and how it can be used for personal growth. The instigator in this case is Chae-yeong (Jung), a teenage girl who has just transferred to a new school after issues at her previous educational establishment. Her long-suffering father, a karate master has barely registered her there, when trouble finds Chae-yeong. She uses her skills to rescue a student, Jong-goo (Oh), who is refusing to help some bullies cheat in an upcoming exam. This turns out to get her an unwanted high profile, as the school is basically a gangsters’ paradise.

Protection rackets and other schemes are being run under the control of student president Jin-hyeok (Kim), who is eyeing a postgraduate career in the local mob, and needs to fund the necessary initiation fee. But his pal, Hae-seong (Son) has had enough of the bully lifestyle and is seeking a new direction for his life. He and Jong-goo convince Chae-yeong to let them sign on at her father’s dojo. There, they learn both the physical and mental skills that are part of karate, the latter embodied in pithy aphorisms such as “Justice without power is hollow. But power without justice is merely violence.” Hae-seong’s quest for independence, Jong-goo’s growing ability to fight back, and Chae-yeong’s refusal to bow down, put them all on an increasingly direct collision course with Jin-hyeok and his minions. 

If stretched a little beyond the material at 112 mins, I was generally kept occupied. There’s less action than I would have wanted, but what there is, isn’t bad. Chae-yeong has a particularly terse and efficient approach, which fits her character’s lone-wolf attitude. The narrative is largely driven by the friendship between the three young leads. There were points I felt things were about to topple over into a romantic love triangle; fortunately, it largely avoided this. Instead, about the peak level of emotion is reached in a rather touching scene where Hae-seong explains how he ended up as the second in command to a gangster schoolmate. That criminal angle is a bit startling. I’ve seen many films and shows set in Japanese schools where education appears… a lower priority, shall we say, e.g. Sukeban Deka. This is the first Korean entry with such rampant lawlessness in a contemporary setting, and where adult guardians are notable by their absence, save for Chae-yeong’s father. 

A tighter hand on the script would have been helpful, with a few threads that could have used more detail. There’s also an odd subplot where Chae-yeong’s Dad has stomach troubles. We never get any payoff for this, though I was kinda glad, dreading what the punchline could have ended up being. To be honest, I did have some difficulty telling certain male characters apart, largely due to them sporting Korean Haircut #3. However, the main story is an acceptably entertaining work, helped by decent performances from the trio of leads.

Dir: Johnny Chae
Star: Jung Da-Eun, Oh Seung-Hoon, Son Woo-Hyun, Kim Tae-yoon

Goodbye Honey

  By

★½
“Trucking terribly written.”

There is a good concept here. Unfortunately, rarely have I seen an idea so conspicuously derailed by dreadful execution. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though, and begin by focusing on the positives here. Dawn (Morgan) is a truck driver who is on a cross-country route, and pulls off the road into a remote, wooded location for an obligatory rest stop. Barely has she come to a halt, when a terrified young woman, Phoebe (Gobin), shows up outside her cab, demanding help. She claims to have been abducted, and been held nearby. But she managed to escape from her kidnapper, who is now hot on her heels, with evil intentions. However, is the new arrival speaking the truth or is she dangerously deranged?

It’s safe to say, you have my attention with this set-up, and Morgan is nicely unarchetypal as an action heroine, both in her middle-age, and a world-worn appearance which is about as unglamourous as you could imagine. She’s likely the best thing about this, and her performance was good enough to stop the whole thing from imploding entirely. This matters, because the script appears almost intentionally crafted to wreck any suspense or interest, resulting from both the premise or the lead performance. Within a few minutes of Phoebe’s arrival, Dawn has lost the keys to the truck and had her phone broken. Given the character is intended to be a highly competent, no-nonsense sort, this just doesn’t work. 

There are then two major mis-steps in terms of story-telling. A pair of stoner dudes show up, and the film grinds to a halt as Dawn has to deal with them. It’s painfully obvious they have nothing at all to do with Phoebe’s situation, and it’s embarrassing how shallow the writing for them is. Then, after they have mercifully departed the film, we get a lengthy, entirely superfluous flashback, telling us in detail how Phoebe was abducted, and what life was like in the cellar where she was kept for months. Guess what? We don’t care. It doesn’t matter, and adds nothing at all to the situation at hand. The final straw is the revelation of a connection between Dawn and the kidnapper, Cass (Kelly), which completely defies belief. I may have snorted derisively.

Inevitably it leads to him showing up and a confrontation between him and Dawn, where we learn the truth about Phoebe’s claims. Guess what v2.0? By this point, I didn’t care about then either. The film was on the screen, and I was looking in its general direction. But it would be a stretch to say I was paying any kind of attention, There is something to be said for a low-budget film cautiously writing its story within the limitation of what can be afforded: here, that’s a truck and a forest. However, the failure to convert that into anything meaningful or interesting thereafter, must also be laid at the door of the writers. 

Dir: Max Strand
Star: Pamela Jayne Morgan, Juliette Alice Gobin, Paul C. Kelly, Peyton Michelle Edwards