Tag: 2020

Mulan (2020)

  By

★★★
“The most expensive straight-to-video release ever.”

Okay, that’s perhaps a little unfair. When this began filming, back in August 2018, who could have predicted that the summer this year would be all but wiped out [seriously: the second quarter in North America, the total box-office was $4.8 million. Last year, the same period brought in $3.3 billion] As films scrambled to re-establish themselves, finding new slots for hopeful release, post-pandemic, there were inevitable casualties, as some were left without seats when the music stopped. Probably the biggest loser was the latest of Disney’s live-action adaptations, based on the beloved animated feature of 1998.

Despite a budget estimated at $200 million, it had the misfortune to be originally scheduled just before everything went to hell. Indeed, it even had its world premiere on March 9th, but the broader release was bumped, first to July, then August, before it was cancelled as a theatrical release in the United States, instead being used as a pay-per-view title on Disney’s streaming service, Disney+. Matters were likely not helped by online comments made by the film’s star against the anti-Chinese protests in Hong Kong, which triggered calls for a boycott of the film. It was notable, even before the film was commercially available, that the Google ratings of the film were largely 1/5 or 5/5, as competing armies of review bombers sought to skew the results to their desired outcome.

As with most things which provoke extreme reactions, the reality sits somewhere in the middle. This isn’t the first live-action adaptation of the legend I’ve seen. There was previously a 2009 adaptation from Hong Kong, starring Wei Zhao as Hua Mulan. Our review of it concluded, “There’s a nice balance between the action and emotional aspects… Heavy is the head that wears the general’s helmet is the moral here, and it’s driven home effectively enough, thanks mostly to Zhao’s solid performance.” It merited 3½ stars, a little above this, though that may simply be due to the newest version being more directly compared to the animated version. That’s inevitable, especially when Disney have sampled songs from it into the new soundtrack.

And make no mistake: I love the animated version: to me, it’s the best of the “new wave” of Disney features which began with Beauty and the Beast. It has a huge emotional range, perhaps more than any other Disney film outside Pixar, and can switch on a dime, going from cheerful song to grim destruction without jarring. I will also say, this is the first I’ve seen in Disney’s live-action adaptations of their animated catalog. All the others seemed entirely redundant, but this one seemed to offer scope for a different take on the subject. It does deliver on this expectation, but I can’t help feeling that, overall, more was lost here than gained.

The live-action version certainly doesn’t manage the same breadth of emotion. For example, there are moments here which feel like they should be comic – except they’re just not funny. It’s a Very Serious tale [capitals used advisedly], almost to the point of solemn, with this Mulan at times feeling like a duty-driven automaton. It’s a thoroughly different portrayal, considering the story is almost identical. When the Chinese empire is threatened by Mongolians, under Böri Khan (Lee), the Emperor requires each family to provide one man to the army. Rather than succumb to an arranged marriage, Mulan (Liu) takes the place of her father in the draft. Though her ruse is eventually discovered, Mulan proves key to the defeat of the invaders.

This edition, however, has no musical numbers, no comic relief sidekick dragon and no romantic interest for Mulan in the shape of her commander [this was apparently excised for #MeToo reasons, but doing so ended up angering some in the GLBTQ community. Yes, apparently, Mulan/Li Shang gay ‘shipping is a thing. Who knew?] Instead, it adds Xianniang (Li), a sorceress who assists Khan, but who sees in Mulan a younger version of herself – someone forced to repress their abilities and true nature, in compliance with social norms. Their scenes have some potential in terms of dramatic conflict, but there just isn’t enough screen time for their relationship to have much impact.

It’s something the film needs, to overcome what it otherwise a distinct lack of emotion. Crouching Tiger showed a martial arts film can still connect to the viewer’s heart, and this never comes particularly close to doing so. The heroine here largely operates in a vacuum, as far as relationships go, even after her true identity is revealed. This may have been an issue recognized by the makers of the animated version. The presence of Eddie Murphy’s Mushu there now makes a great deal of sense, providing that necessary outlet, and acting as a foil for the heroine throughout her journey.

Yet, boy (or rather, girl), does it look nice. Outside of a couple of moments of slightly flaky CGI early on, such as the young Mulan jumping from a roof, this is a beautiful spectacle, clearly influenced by the likes of Hero in its use of colour. The action is well-choreographed; having Yen as leader of the Imperial army doesn’t exactly hurt, even if you wonder why he can’t defeat the invaders single-handed. After all, I’ve seen Ip Man… [Also in supporting roles, Jet Li plays the Emperor, and the matchmaker is Cheng Pei Pei, of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame, but more relevantly here, was one of the first Hong Kong action heroines, in 1966’s Come Drink with Me] I’m definitely sorry we were robbed of the chance to see this on a big screen, as that’s the scale it deserves.

Most of the above was written within 24 hours of watching it, but now, with less than 72 hours having passed, I am seriously struggling to recall many particularly memorable moments. Overall, I can’t say I felt like the two hours were wasted, and it’s perfectly adequate as a big-budget, epic bit of wire-fu. Although, “perfectly adequate” feels like a disappointment, considering what I was hoping for, and this is not going to replace the 1998 film among my favorites, songs or no songs. 

Dir: Niki Caro
Star: Yifei Liu, Li Gong, Jason Scott Lee, Donnie Yen

Enola Holmes

  By

★★
“Puts the ‘no’ in Enola.”

Complete ranking of Enolas

  1. Enola Gay
  2. Enola Holmes
  3. That’s it.

I’m probably not the only one who spent much of the film humming OMD’s classic Enola Gay to themselves – released 40 years ago this month, coincidentally. And, sadly, it remains my favourite Enola, by quite some distance. This was more annoying than anything else, though I’ve never been on the Millie Bobby Brown hype-train. I didn’t think much of Stranger Things, and her performance in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, interfered with what I want to see i.e. monsters fighting. Here, I found her more irritating than engaging, though in her defense, she wasn’t helped by some poor directorial choices.

This get off on the wrong foot at the very start, Enola (Brown), Sherlock Holmes’ sixteen-year-old sister, breaking the fourth wall and addressing the audience, something she does frequently. Director Bradbeer used this technique in TV series Fleabag, but I’m not a fan: it takes me out of proceedings, reminding me I’m watching a film. What follows is less a convincing evocation of 1900 England, than contemporary America playing girl power dress-up, with “nasty women” blowing things up as they seek to defeat the evil patriarchy. One of these is Enola’s mother (Bonham-Carter), whose vanishing without warning starts things off, causing Enola to begin searching for her, based on coded clues left behind. It escapes me quite why the missing parent couldn’t simply write, “Dear Enola, Gone off to be a suffragette. Love, Mum.”

Not that it matters, because Enola rapidly abandons this quest entirely, in favour of a case involving the young, attractive and entirely personality-free aristocrat, Viscount Tewkesbury (Partridge), whose vote is crucial to get a reform bull passed, expanding the ability to vote [in reality, no such change took place until almost twenty years later – but hey, why let facts stop you from twisting history for your political points?]. On his trail is a mysterious and ill-intentioned man (Gorman), with whom Enola crosses paths. She also has to fend off attempts by her other brother, Mycroft, to have her consigned to a very Handmaid’s Tale-looking boarding school. This is intended to have Enola brainwashed into being the quiet and submissive woman society expects.

The politics on view here are cringeworthy, particularly from Mrs. Holmes, who speaks almost entirely in feminist fortune-cookies, such as “Don’t be thrown off course by other people. Especially men.” It’s one of those cases where merely leading by example isn’t enough: you have to virtue-signal your morality by announcing it, explicitly and repeatedly, which I find immensely off-putting. Hence, we get gobbets of political sermonizing, such as Sherlock (Cavill) being told, by a black, female martial-arts teacher – something I’m fairly sure wasn’t common enough  in the Victorian era to pass without comment: “You don’t know what it is to be without power. Politics doesn’t interest you… because you have no interest in changing a world that suits you so well.” You go, sister!

Speaking of which, the portrayal of the great detective is no more accurate than the other element. “Sherlock Holmes always works alone!” proclaims Inspector Lestrade. Uh, I guess the creators never heard of Dr. Watson, an intrinsic character, from the very first Conan Doyle story? You just never get any sense of keen intellect from Cavill’s performance. Guess they didn’t want to overshadow Enola and her Big Brain. Yet, under all these flaws, is a decent movie, trying to get out. The look of things is lovely, and some of the action sequences are well-handled, even if a slip of a girl like Enola hardly seems equipped to trade blows with grown men.

Maybe they could have made more use of her archery skills (above), which are set-up, then entirely forgotten. Like so much else, that gets lost in the rush to cram an “uplifting” message into the movie, rather than letting one flow organically from it.

Dir: Harry Bradbeer
Star: Millie Bobby Brown, Louis Partridge, Henry Cavill, Burn Gorman

 

Tribal: Get Out Alive

  By

★★★½
“You had me at homeless cannibals.”

The IMDb omits the colon from the title, making rather less sense. Though it’s not inappropriate, because sense is likely not this film’s strongest suit. Indeed, I’d be hard-pushed to call it a “good” film. It is, however, consistently entertaining, and a fine piece of B-movie making. Ex-soldiers Caitlin (Phythian) and Brad (O’Hennessy) are bailiffs… Wait, is that a thing outside the UK? Just in case it’s not, let me quickly explain: they are not quite cops, but are still legal officials who can, for example, impose evictions or collect debts.

In this case, they and their team are sent to clear a farm which was used as a camp by homeless people, with the permission of the former owner. He has now died, and his son, Richard Kenning (Dodd), wants them chucked off the land. Except, turns out dear old dead Dad was more than a bit of a mad scientist, and was using the tenants for his experiments to create a serum that would enhance human strength and speed – though reducing them to little more than animals. Caitlin, Brad and their colleagues are about to discover that, since his death, the subjects have escaped and have formed a brutal community in the tunnels below the farm. And they have no intention of leaving peaceably – or letting the bailiffs leave at all.

It’s great to see Phythian get the lead in a feature; we’ve been a fan ever since Kung Fu Darling, back in 2016. If the material here is a little basic, it does eventually give her the ability to show what she can do, albeit after a bit too much creeping around dimly-lit tunnels in the first half. Still, there’s a certain British sensibility on view here, which comes over in characters behaving more intelligently than is typical for the horror genre, and also in an unexpectedly pleasant volume of sarcasm. O’Hennessy, whom you may recognize from Game of Thrones, provides solid support, and overall, the film feels like a decent copy of Dog Soldiers. There’s the same plot core of a force finding themselves trapped and out of their depth, though Routledge isn’t able to manipulate the tension as expertly as Neil Marshall did there.

Britain also seems to be putting out some decent martial arts movies of late; perhaps the lack of guns there makes such things more plausible. Scott Adkins, probably the best screen fighter you’ve never heard of, is leading the way, but on the evidence here, Phythian and her trademark cheek-bones may become Britain’s answer to Zoe Bell. The tone is set early, after she and her partner stumble across a drug deal, and the second half has plenty of good action, building up to her confrontation with a serum-enhanced Kenning. There is a plot thread about her suffering from PTSD, though this can safely be ignored as irrelevant. Just crack open an alcoholic beverage or six, ready the popcorn, and sit back to watch Phythian kick arse.

Dir: Matt Routledge
Star: Zara Phythian, Ross O’Hennessy, Rachel Warren, Thomas Dodd

Ava

  By

★★★
“Haywire. With baggage”

It has been a rough year for action heroines at the cinema. Actually, it has been a rough year for everyone everywhere, thanks to COVID-19. But for the purposes of this site, we have been sadly lacking the kind of tentpole releases which we usually write about over the summer. Wonder Woman 1984, for example, was to have come out in June. But with all venues bar the few remaining drive-ins closed, that was moved first to August, then October [and I don’t know about you, but I’m still not comfortable with the concept of cinema going]. Disney’s live-action version of Mulan opted to bypass theatres all together, and will instead be released on their streaming service.

Poor Ava is suffering a similar fate, going straight to video-on-demand in most places – except, bizarrely, in Hungary, according to Wikipedia. Certainly, given its rather high-powered cast, you would have expected better for this, in a normal world. It still, however, probably ranks as the biggest-profile action heroine movie of the year – at least for a few days until Mulan shows up. To be honest, though, it doesn’t do enough to justify that position. While Chastain is very good in the central role, it’s burdened down by too much drama to be effective, and comes over mostly like a soap-opera adaptation of Haywire.

Ava (Chastain) has overcome a troubled past to become an assassin for a murky intelligence agency, working for Duke (Malkovich). But she is increasingly questioning her work – indeed, literally doing so, having an unnerving habit of asking her targets why someone wants them killed. After a supposedly stealth operation in Saudi Arabia becomes not-so-stealthy, Duke’s protege, Simon (Farrell), takes matters into his own hands, bypassing Duke to put out a kill order on Ava. She’s none too pleased by this, obviously, and seeks to turn the tables on him.

The above paragraph is lean, mean and would have made for a perfectly decent movie. However, the script apparently decides it’s not enough – perhaps Chastain wanted something into which she could sink her dramatic teeth. For we get a whole slew of subplots and conflicts thrown on top. These include, but are not limited, to the following. Ava is a recovering alcoholic. Ava is estranged from her sister (Weixler). Ava had a previous relationship with her sister’s boyfriend, and there are still feelings there. He has a gambling problem. Ava caught her father having an affair, which led to her leaving home. It also caused Ava to break ties with her mother, played by Geena Davis.

It’s all too much, dragging down the plot. Say what you like about Haywire, you never cared that Mallory Kane didn’t have a compelling history, for the film was too busy moving forward to look back. This one spends too much time creating, and then having to tidy up, all these loose ends from Ava’s past. I just wasn’t interested. Though those scenes did give me time to imagine ways this could have worked better.  It would have been way cool if, at the end, Davis had thrown off her motherly trappings, revealed she also used to be a government assassin [perhaps actually being Samantha Caine, Geena’s character from The Long Kiss Goodnight], and teamed up with Ava to take down Simon.

This movie writing thing is a piece of cake.

Anyway, no such luck. The stuff between the drama is not bad, though I have some… questions about seeing the 66-year-old Malkovich going toe-to-toe with Farrell [ditto the 59-year-old Joan Chen and Chastain, actually] Or Farrell’s choice of facial hair and black turtleneck, which give him an unfortunate resemblance to 1930’s fascist, Sir Oswald Mosley. Or Simon’s decisions, including calling up Ava, apparently purely for taunting purposes, then going after her by himself, rather than first sending an escalating series of minions. If the movie hadn’t spent so much time dwelling on all of Ava’s drama, maybe we would have had time for such things.

Despite the relentless slagging delivered over the previous few paragraphs, this wasn’t actually too bad. The lead actress is the main reason why. If the film feels like a cinematic opposite of Anna, where the heroine was little more than a gun-carrying clothes-horse, Chastain is able to carry the weight of all those subplots, and deliver a complex character. She has played her share of action roles previously, perhaps most notably as far as we are concerned, in The Huntsman: Winter’s War, where we said she “kicks surprising amounts of butt.” Here, this aspect is front and centre, and she acquits herself well, even if her hand-to-hand combat against considerably larger opponents could have used a force equalizer or two more, for the sake of credibility.

Two scenes likely stand out. The first (and only!) attempt on her life by Simon’s minion, in a Paris park. And the final battle against him in her hotel bedroom [again, echoes of the similarly-located fight in Haywire between Gina Carano and Michael Fassbender]. Equal credit for those probably has to go to the ever-reliable Amy Johnston, star of Lady Bloodfight, who was Chastain’s stunt double for this. I should also mention Simon’s daughter, Camille, played by Diana Silvers. The ending, though somewhat conclusive, sets up a potential future Camille vs. Ava scenario, which I must confess, I would not mind seeing at all.

Overall, it is worth a look, though its insistence on trying to insert dramatic conflicts into a vehicle that doesn’t need them, becomes increasingly annoying as the movie progresses. When it’s not doing so, however, it is a slick, Bourne-like entity, providing a decent vehicle for Chastain to show off her action credentials. as well as her already-known acting skills. On that basis, it’s a shame I suspect it’s going to end up not being seen by too many people – thanks, Coronavirus! I hope that won’t put her off further exploration of our genre, as it can always use some more high-powered leads.

Dir: Tate Taylor
Star:  Jessica Chastain, John Malkovich, Colin Farrell, Jess Weixler 

Warrior Nun

  By

★★
“Nun-descript.”

There’s probably a decent movie in here. An interesting premise, occupying the nexus where religion and science cross, and some very effective hand-to-hand action sequences, would potentially have made for a decent 90 minutes of fun. The problem is, this actually runs for 10 x forty-minute episodes, and the result is stuffed so full of padding, that it could be used as a sofa. The nuns of the title are members of the Order of the Cruciform Sword, a group which has been fighting demonic entities for centuries. Chief among them is the bearer of the Halo, a divine relic which bestows its owner with great powers, including rapid healing and the ability to phase through solid objects.

When the current bearer of the Halo is killed in battle, it is embedded into another host. This is the corpse of Ava (Silva), a quadriplegic orphan who just happens to be in the wrong (or right, depending on your point of view) place at the wrong (or right, again) time. The Halo resurrects Ava and fixes her up, physically; but she’s certainly not mentally or spiritually prepared initially to become a nun and join the sisters of the OCS. However, her wants and needs are secondary to those of the Catholic Church, and there’s also high-tech company ARQ-Tech. Its CEO, Jillian Salvius. has built a trans-dimensional portal, using “divinium”, a mystical substance that can also be used to create weapons and armour for use by the OCS.

The above isn’t the problem. The issue is all the other stuff which gets added to it. For example, after her resurrection, Ava ends up becoming part of some kind of upper-class squatters’ movement, who jet-set around Europe, staying in unoccupied houses. I have no clue what the purpose of this was supposed to be. And, worse, neither does the show. The young, homeless hipsters basically vanish without trace in the second half, as if the writers realized it was a bad idea to begin with. Similarly, there’s an entire episode in which Ava and OCS colleague Shotgun Mary faff around the Spanish countryside for the duration. Really, after episode 1, you could skip the next five, while we go through the whole “reluctant heroine” thing we’ve seen all too often before.

We could have done with much less of all that, and more… Oh, I dunno: fighting demons, maybe? The action aspects generally seem underplayed, until a final mission where Ava and a small team break into the vaults beneath the Vatican, seeking a relic that… Well, let’s just say, doesn’t turn out to be quite what they expected. But until this gets under way, you might as well have it on in the background, and only pay attention when you hear the sound of fighting [here’s an example of the impressive quality I mean there]. And do not expect anything like a tidy ending either, the show instead delivering the most brutally abrupt of cliffhangers. But it probably says a lot that my reaction to it was mostly apathy.

Creator: Simon Barry
Star:  Alba Baptista, Toya Turner, Thekla Reuten, Lorena Andrea

The Rhythm Section

  By

★★★
“Not really worth the wait”

The action-heroine genre has seen its share of high-profile flops in the past. But this long-delayed entry, originally due out in February 2019, is among the worst, setting a record for the lowest ever opening at the North American box-office for a wide release. It took in only $2.8 million from 3,049 theaters when it opened in January, and ended with a worldwide gross below $6 million, against a budget of $50 million. While smaller in scale, that’s a Cutthroat Island level of failure. Did it deserve such a fate? Well, it’s not that bad. It ain’t great. But it seems almost defiantly unlikable, going against cinematic norms in a way that’s brave – and, I suspect, ultimately foolish. The result is something whose commercial demise is unsurprising, beginning with a title that makes only tangential sense, even after you’ve seen the film.

It’s the story of Stephanie Patrick (Lively), whose family died in a plane accident, causing her to go into a downward spiral. Three years later, she’s a crack whore, when contacted by journalist Keith Proctor (Jaffrey). He tells her the crash was actually a terrorist attack, basing this claim on information received from a source with intelligence connections known only as “B”. After Proctor is murdered, Stephanie finds B (Law) and convinces him to help her acquire the necessary skills to become an assassin. Stephanie then goes after all those involved in the attack, including the shadowy figure known only as U-17. To do so, she takes on the identity of Petra Reuter, an assassin killed by B, and uses the resources of ex-CIA officer Marc Serra (Brown), now working as an intelligence broker.

I think viewer expectations may have played a part here. Reading the above, and with the film coming from the producers of the 007 franchise, you are likely imagining a slick, Bond-esque slice of escapism. It’s not that. First off, Stephanie is… Well, let’s be honest, a bit shit as an assassin. When she asks B how long it’ll take for her to become good, he replies, “Your menopause will be a distant memory.” They don’t have that much time, and the results are consequently rough around the edges, not least because she almost completely lacks the necessary killer instinct. She has the motive, just not the method.

Frankly, she’s very, very lucky to survive the first couple of missions, and that’s only one of the aspects which strains credibility. The makers get a demerit for using Ireland to fake the North of Scotland, and it appears remarkably easy to track down international terrorists. Perhaps the book on which this was based did a better job? Given the gritty nature of proceedings, I was expecting a greater level of intrigue and deception. For example, despite being officially “unattached”, I was predicting B or Marc to still be working on behalf of their former employers, manipulating Stephanie towards their ends. Maybe I’ve just watched too many episodes of Homeland.

There are some impressive elements. Probably the most outstanding is a car chase, filmed to look like one take, shot entirely from inside Stephanie’s vehicle as she flees the scene. It’s almost as good as the one from Children of Men, the gold standard for such things. I also did like Lively’s performance: she has rather more to do here than she had in The Shallows, and acquits herself well, both dramatically and in the action scenes (she smashed her hand up badly while filming a fight scene with Law). However, on reaching the end, I found myself unmoved, and given the general lack of spectacle present, this isn’t one I’ve much interest in revisiting.

Dir: Reed Morano
Star:  Blake Lively, Jude Law, Sterling K. Brown, Raza Jaffrey 

The Old Guard

  By

★★★
“Who wants to live forever?”

While a serviceable entry in the beloved genre of “Charlize Theron kicks ass”, this does have to be classed as disappointing in comparison to the epic awesomeness which were Atomic Blonde or Mad Max: Fury Road. This is considerably more obviously a comic-book adaptation than Blonde, and more restrained than Fury Road, resulting in a film which plays more like X-Men: The Highlander Years. Andromache of Scythia (Theron), for obvious reasons known to her mates as Andy, is a neo-immortal bad-ass who has been roaming the Earth since pre-Christian times. But she’s beginning to wonder what the point of it all is, endlessly doing jobs somewhere between mercenary and humanitarian.

Two things disrupt the playing field. The first is the “birth” of a new neo-immortal, Nile Freeman (Layne), a US marine who survives having her throat slit, and is brought on board the team, despite her severe initial doubts. The other is less pleasant: the Merrick pharmaceutical company is out to find what makes them tick, and will happily trample Andy and her friends’ rights, in the name of “the greater good.” This involves them kidnapping two members of the group for scientific experimentation, and they are intent on completing the set. Needless to say, Andy isn’t having any of that, along with some help from Nile, as well as a Merrick employee and former CIA agent who is now having second thoughts (an underused Chiwetel Ejiofor). However, it turns out Andy is approaching the “neo-” phase of her neo-immortality…

That is a bit of a cheat: they’re basically immortal, except when necessary for the plot or dramatic reasons. It’s a double-standard which also seems to permeate the film more generally, The film wants to deliver the mayhem audiences want to see, while having characters who loudly express being tired of exactly that, borne down by world-weary ennui. It’s a mindless action movie which doesn’t like being a mindless action movie, and I suspect would rather be something else. That may be the only way to explain the contrived shoehorning in of two characters’ sexuality, in a scene of no relevance that couldn’t be more clunkily woke if it tried.

It is better when letting go of the angst, and instead embracing its inner John Wick. Theron proves why she is still the top action heroine working in Hollywood, getting valuable support from Layne. There’s a lovely hand-to-hand battle between the two of them on a transport plane, for example, and Andy busting out of the church which is under attack by Merrick thugs is also a pleasure to watch. As seems almost required, there’s a scene at the end, setting up The Old Guard 2 with the apparent promise of an insane neo-immortal for the big bad there. It’s perhaps telling that it’s a prospect which may be more exciting than the humdrum stock genre plot rolled out here. Not even the best Netflix original action movie of the year (that’d be Extraction), yet entertaining enough, if your copy of Fury Road isn’t to hand.

Dir: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Star: Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari

Killing Eve: Season Three

  By

★★
“How the mighty are fallen.”

I remember how the first series of Killing Eve blew my socks off, and was completely unlike anything else on television. The second series fell short, but that was unsurprising – how could it be otherwise? – and there was still the chance for it to mount a course correction and recover. This third installment, however, has if anything accelerated the downward trend. What was once must-see television has become something which sits on in the background, typically as I surf the Internet on my phone. I can’t think of another series which has collapsed in such a remarkably brief time-frame.

The problem is, the writers have completely forgotten what made the show work was the dynamic between Russian assassin Villanelle (Comer) and the MI5 agent, Eve (Oh), who is on her tail. I was wary of the frantic, moist fan ‘shipping which went on over this – at a level I haven’t experienced in anything I’ve been part of, since the more rabid elements of Xena fandom in the nineties. Yet I couldn’t deny it was the chemistry between the two characters which defined the show and made it work. Yet, the focus of the second season seemed to drift from this, and in the third, it felt more like I was flicking between two different shows. It felt as if Villanelle and Eve operated in the same universe only barely, and hardly crossed paths at all.

Indeed, it also seemed to forget what Villanelle was: an assassin. We’ve gone far from the glorious spectacle kills we saw previously, Here, she has become so sloppy, she can’t even dispatch Eve’s husband with a pitchfork to the neck properly. Our anti-heroine seemed instead to spend more of this season faffing around Europe, from Spain to Russia. This involved Villanelle either bitching at co-workers with the shadowy organization known as The Twelve, trying to reconnect to her family (an endeavour so clearly doomed from the start, you wonder why they bothered), or grooming the daughter of former handler Konstantin, for reasons which never pay off adequately.

At least Villanelle is getting some stuff to do, even if it’s far from enthralling. Eve, on the other hand, spent much of the season stuck in a holding pattern, when seen in any form – at least one episode went by without her appearing at all. Eve appears little if any closer to tracking down her nemesis than she was at the beginning of the first season, and her investigation into The Twelve has born equally little fruit. It has cost Eve her husband, so there has been an emotional price. However, he was always painted by the show as being a bit of a dick, whose fidelity was questionable, so the impact of this loss feels limited.

Put bluntly, while the two lead actresses are doing their best, I don’t care any longer about the characters or their fates. And probably never will, for as long as the showrunner appears more concerned with shoehorning in Taylor Swift covers than developing the story. Sorry. Just not interested.

Showrunner: Suzanne Heathcote
Star: Jodie Comer, Sandra Oh, Fiona Shaw, Darren Boyd

Birds of Prey (film)

  By

★★½
“For flock’s sake…”

Or, to give this its full, rather misguided name: Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn). I am not convinced that films are improved by giving them gimmick titles including made-up words. It smacks rather of desperation on the part of the makers. Though this is… alright. It did not actively annoy me in quite the same way Captain Marvel did, but it is still disappointing. Robbie’s Harley Quinn was easily the best thing about Suicide Squad. She’s also the best thing about this, but it feels at a considerably lower level. All the edges seem to have been filed off, with Robbie (who produced this and came up with the idea) apparently intent on making her much more of a heroic figure than the barely-restrained psychopath I was hoping to see.

The main problem, however, is over-stuffing of storylines, with so many threads being weaved in, that they all inevitably suffer as a result. Let’s enumerate them. There’s Harley, who breaks up with the Joker, only to discover his protection was the only thing which had been keeping her safe. Detective Renee Montoya (Perez), whose case-load includes investigating crossbow vigilante killings, mob boss Roman Sionis (McGregor) and Harley herself. Sionis’s singer-turned-driver Dinah Lance, a.k.a. Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), who… Well, I’m really not sure what purpose she serves here. The crossbow killer is Helena Bertinelli, a.k.a. Huntress (Winstead), seeking vengeance for the death of her family. And Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), a young pickpocket who steals and eats a diamond containing coded information sought by Sionis.

None of these are adequately developed, even Harley’s. Her story is adequately and brightly sketched out in an animated opening sequence, and then gets scant service as the script tries to keep all its balls, sorry, ovaries in the air. For the feminist leanings are probably the most painful aspect. As depicted here, the “emancipation” of the title seems less about building women up, than tearing men down. Virtually without exception, every male character is more or less a bastard, from the obvious ones like Sionis’s sidekick with a fondness for face-peeling through to Montoya’s former partner who stole credit for her work. Even the kindly store-owner turns out to be happy to sell Harley out. Is this emancipation? To steal from The Princess Bride: “You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.” 

Along those lines I was initially prepared to criticize Margot for pre-release statements, like it being “hugely important to find a female director for this.” However, that snippet is a bit misleading, since the full quote in context goes on, “…if possible. But at the end of the day — male, female — the best director gets the job and Cathy was the best director.” I’m fine with that. Though it has to be said, I’m not sure what made Yan the best, given her only feature before this was Dead Pigs, a comedy-drama about an incident where 16,000 deceased porcines were found in a Chinese river. But the direction here is serviceable enough: it doesn’t get in the way of Margot Robbie, which may be what the star  wanted all along.

The action is a bit of a mixed bag. There are a couple of very good brawls for Harley, most notably one in a police evidence warehouse (even if the cops seem curiously unwilling to draw and use their firearms. What is this, the United Kingdom?) where Robbie and her stunt doubles get to showcase some stellar moves. But the final fight has much the same problem as the plot in general. In trying to make sure each of the four fighting leads get their chance to shine (Cassandra basically cowers in a corner for the duration of it), the climax basically succeeds in selling all of them short. There is quite a nice “funhouse” atmosphere there, since it takes place in an abandoned amusement park, though it feels like some of the potential wasn’t fully developed.

It does seem to draw some inspiration from Leon, in the relationship between Harley and Cassandra, which is not dissimilar to the one between Leon and Matilda. In both, the adult is forced to tap into a previously unknown nurturing side after a  young girl is dropped into their care, though they are hardly the ideal parent. But probably the most obvious nod is at the end, where Cassandra pulls a very similar “ring trick” to the one which takes care of Stansfield at the end of Leon. As soon as she said it, I figured out what Cassandra meant, before Harley did. However, this maternal element does play into the softening of Harley, one of the disappointing aspects. Given the freedom of an R-rating. I’d have expected a bit more in the way of mature content than a potty mouth and some intermittently brutal violence. At times, it feels more like Robbie is cosplaying Harley, rather than playing her.

Robbie’s avowed aim was to make a “girl gang” pic, perhaps inspired by things like Switchblade Sisters, Faster Pussycat or the pinky violence genre. But what she didn’t bring from them, is that those all had strong leadership. There was no doubt that Tura Satana or Meiko Kaji were the stars: the films accordingly orbited around them and their fabulous screen presence. Her previous movies have shown us, Robbie can deliver that, which makes it all the more of a shame that she abdicated the throne here. Sadly, this ends up closer to an episode from the last series of Doctor Who, with its “very flat team structure.” Or to borrow from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, an anarcho-syndicalist commune where Harley and her pals take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week. Maybe the title, with its supposed heroine relegated to the tenth and eleventh words, was accurate after all.

Dir: Cathy Yan
Star: Margot Robbie, Ewan McGregor, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rosie Perez

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The Hunt

  By

★★★★
“Don’t believe the political hype.”

This was a genuine and pleasant surprise. The original release was pushed back due to some severe controversy: not many films get Tweeted about by the President of the United States, who stated this was “made in order to inflame and cause chaos.” Needless to say, the studio ended up riding that publicity when the movie eventually came out. The current pandemic ended up trumping that (pun intended), so the film hit the home markets, just a week after its theatrical release. To my surprise, it’s considerably more nuanced than the “Red State vs. Blue State” concept I expected. And Gilpin has clearly put her GLOW training to good use, becoming quite the thirty-something bad-ass here.

It is, at its heart, another variant on The Most Dangerous Game, with a dozen people being kidnapped from their everyday lives, and taken somewhere that looks much like Arkansas, to be hunted by the rich for sport. The film is very good in the earlier stages at disconcerting the viewer by shifting their focus: you’ll settle in with one character, only for them to be wiped out in brutal fashion. Gilpin’s character, Crystal Creasey, isn’t even seen until more than 25 minutes in. But she makes up for her late arrival in no uncertain style, quickly establishing that the people behind the hunt, led by Athena (Swank), might have made a mistake by selecting Crystal as their entertainment.

What I found interesting is how even-handed this is. Yes, it’s about the elite hunting common people, and on its surface, i.e. the trailer, could be seen as Democrats hunting Republicans. But they’re hardly depicted as heroic, and indeed, it turns out, there’s considerably more to this. The whole thing started as an off-colour joke by Athena that got out, causing the wrath of #CancelCulture, as propagated through social media and conspiracy circles. She then decided, if we’re going to be blamed for something we didn’t do – why not do it anyway, and targets those who were her harshest critics on social media? Neither side gets out unscathed: not the liberals with their virtue signalling and hypocrisy, nor the conservatives with their paranoia and self-deceit. Yes, it is certainly guilty of picking at the raw scab which is the divided state of the nation (something for which the media, in general, must take much of the blame).

But the horror movie as social commentary is something that has been around for at least fifty years, since Night of the Living Dead.  As I’ve previously made clear, I’m fine with that, providing the film works regardless. And you could safely ignore all the satirical aspects, and you’d still have something among the upper tier of movies inspired by The Most Dangerous Game. It all builds to a kitchen battle between Crystal and Athena, that for sheer savagery, is one of the best woman-on-woman brawls I’ve seen since Kill Bill, Volume 2. Providing you are not too blinkered in your political views, the payoff here should be worth putting them to one side for ninety minutes.

Dir: Craig Zobel
Star: Betty Gilpin, Ike Barinholtz, Amy Madigan, Emma Roberts