Hunting Ava Bravo

★★★
“No business like snow business.”

I do admire a film which does not hang about, and this certainly qualifies. We begin with Ava Bravo (del Castillo) removing a hood to find herself in a very remote, snowbound mountain cabin. A cassette player nearby has a message. She has been abducted by Buddy King (Blucas), a millionaire with a fondness for kidnapping trauma survivors and hunting them through the wilderness. There’s a snowmobile parked five miles North, if she can make it across the winter terrain there. To make it fairer, Buddy has only three bullets for his gun. Oh, and he’s going to be coming up from the basement in ten seconds. Safe to say, this is the kind of start that grabbed my attention. 

It does have some trouble living up to it, with rather too much slack in what follows, even if the running time is under 80 minutes. Things do unfold largely as you’d expect, in what’s another variation on the ever popular Most Dangerous Game concept. Seriously, there have been so many now, I feel I should add a tag for that subgenre. So, we get Eva getting the drop on Buddy, only to find his cassette message was not entirely truthful, and she needs to keep him alive if she wants out. The rest of the film is a struggle between the two of them for dominance, and we learn a little of their histories and what makes them tick.

It probably needs some tighter plotting, e.g. a third party (Medina) turns up when needed by the plot. Though this does get explained, it wasn’t entirely convincing. I have… questions. Let’s leave it at that. This also applies to the ending, where Eva’s geographic knowledge suddenly seems considerably better than it was. However, this is made up for with a decent pair of lead performances, and some sequences which are effective and tense. Del Castillo should be known in these parts as the star of La Reina Del Sur and Ingobernable. This is a bilingual performance, with a chunk of unsubbed Spanish, though it’s mostly cursing.  [Sometimes having a wife of Cuban extraction has its benefits. I’m now fairly fluent in certain phrases you won’t learn on DuoLingo…]

This does come to play in what’s likely the tensest scene. Ava and Buddy stumble across two Hispanic hunters, leading to them both trying to convince the hunters that the other is the dangerous psycho. He has the bruises to support his case, and she is carrying the gun. However, she has the language advantage. It’s a well-written, performed and staged sequence, and shows where the film could perhaps have gone. Moments like this were enough to get me over the less interesting bits of chit-chat, though Ava’s matter-of-fact description of her previous abduction and escape is chilling in its understated nature. If it’s all too uneven to be wholeheartedly recommended, I felt there was enough here to justify its existence. 

Dir: Gary Auerbach
Star: Kate del Castillo, Marc Blucas, Halem Medina

Emily the Criminal

★★★★
“Parks and Illegal Recreation.”

For six months or so, our morning routine involved the consumption of an episode of Parks and Recreation with breakfast. Our favourite character on the show was Ron Swanson, but not far behind was April Ludgate, played by Aubrey Plaza. She was the mistress of deadpan misanthropy, delivering lines like “I’m just gonna live under a bridge and ask people riddles before they cross.” We’ve not seen her in much since the show ended, but the concept of April Ludgate, career criminal, was too delicious to pass up. So here we are, yet I must admit, Plaza is almost good enough to make us forget April. Well, except for one roll of the eyes, which was vintage Ludgate.

She plays Emily, a young woman saddled with an inescapable pit of student loans, for a basically useless qualification, and an unfortunate felony relegating her to food delivery work. A chance encounter brings her into contact with Youcef (Rossi). She earns $200 for making a fraudulent credit-card transaction on his behalf, and is offered the chance to earn ten times that, for a larger, riskier purchase. With regular employment clearly not the solution, Emily embraces her new, illegal career, working with Youcef, much to the disdain of his Lebanese brothers. As their infighting escalates, Youcef decides to cut and run, only to be beaten to the punch. Emily won’t stand for that: “You’re a bad influence,” says Youcef, as he and Emily prepare to rob his brother. He’s not wrong

On one level, Emily’s situation is a result of her poor choices. Running up eighty grand in debt for an art degree and committing felonious assault are both decisions she made, of her own free will. These have consequences. Yet I increasingly found myself rooting for Emily, and her refusal to be ground down by the unfairness of life, or those seeking to exploit her – both in the legal and illegal employment sectors. She possesses undeniable smarts, and a righteous anger at the undeserved success of those she sees around her. Her wants are not excessive, and her crimes are… if hardly victimless, non-violent. At least, if you don’t count those who try to take advantage of her. For Emily wields a mean stun-gun.

If the world won’t give Emily a chance, playing by their rules, she’ll simply make up her own rules. She’s not willing to conform just to become society’s victim, and in this, weirdly, it has elements in common with urban flicks like The Bag Girls. There’s also no sense of honour among thieves, though the authorities and police in this movie are notable by their complete absence. Certainly, the threat of arrest is never a consideration for Emily, or at least, doesn’t alter her trajectory. The ending is ambivalent, to put it mildly: crime appears to pay, though it seems Emily may be addicted to the adrenaline high as much as the ill-gotten gains. While the morality here may be questionable, Plaza’s performance still makes it more than worthwhile. 

Dir: John Patton Ford
Star: Aubrey Plaza, Theo Rossi, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Gina Gershon

Code Name Banshee

★★½
“Daddy issues.”

This seemed considerably better in the trailer, which makes it look like quite an action-packed extravaganza. The reality is much less interesting, with a murky and confusing plot, and what action there is, is often filmed in a murky and confusing way. It begins with an agent, code name Banshee (King), quitting the government agency for which she works. The handoff of an asset went wrong: one of the colleagues involved was her father, who vanished entirely. The other was Caleb (Banderas), who went off the grid thereafter. Five years later, Banshee is a private assassin, but her latest job is interrupted by Greene (Flanagan), who wants her to give up Caleb’s location. 

Naturally, she won’t, and tracks down Caleb herself to warn him and his teenage daughter, Hailey (Davis) – as well as, hopefully, find the truth out about what happened to her father. Before she can do so, Greene shows up, with an apparently infinite supply of minions, who appear remarkably oblivious to concepts such as “taking cover”. To get to this point, you will have to endure a script that doesn’t bother explaining almost any significant point. I’m not sure why Greene is suddenly and energetically going after Caleb, half a decade later. Or why Banshee also waited so long to visit the only man who knows what happened to her father. Then there’s the facile ease with which she is able to track down Caleb, based entirely on a fragmentary conversation from a long time previously. Mind you, running a bar is not exactly what I would call “going off-grid”…

It is a bit of a pity, since I liked most of the characters, and the actors do a fairly good job of bringing them to life. King and Davis have good chemistry, and  Banderas brings an effective world weariness to his role, as a veteran who now just wants to be left alone. The highlight though, is likely Flanagan, who hits the right balance, creating a larger than life villain, without going too far into the chewing of scenery. The lack of apparent motivation – we never know who he’s working for, or why – does limit his effectiveness. 

The first bit of action may be the best elevator lobby fight since The Matrix, and does a good job of establishing Banshee’s credentials, even if there isn’t much else of a similar standard the rest of the way. Indeed, as far as Banshee goes, there’s not much at all, until Greene’s curiously incompetent henchmen start to show up at Caleb’s house, attacking in small, conveniently handleable groups. For… reasons, it’s largely down to Banshee and Hailey to hold them off, the latter proving that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. So, two action heroines for the price of one. Yay. Just do not expect to learn the truth about what happened to dear old Dad, or you will be sadly disappointed. Actually, you may well be disappointed anyway…

Dir: Jon Keeyes
Star: Jaime King, Antonio Banderas, Tommy Flanagan, Catherine Davis

After the Pandemic

★★½
“As generic as its title.”

A disease sweeps the planet, killing billions. The only ones with any hope of surviving in the outside world are the young, a small number of whom appear to have a natural immunity. Five years on, and Ellie is one of the few to have endured, scraping for a life among the leftovers of civilization. But she and the other survivors are the targets for the Stalkers: roaming groups of biohazard-suit clad hunters in white vans. They seek to capture the immune, for use in a project to develop a vaccine that can allow the elite to come out of their safe havens. While trying to avoid them, she encounters Quinn (Smith), another survivor with a wealth of knowledge, and a hard-edged approach to life. Initially, Quinn wants nothing to do with Ellie, though eventually realizes two heads can sometimes be better than one, in the never ending struggle to stay alive and free.

After the opening narrative, there’s a spell of over 20 minutes which are entirely dialogue free. It’s a brave choice, yet doesn’t hurt the movie, instead reinforcing the loneliness of the situation in which Ellie finds herself. I do have questions about so much time supposedly having passed. There are some suspiciously well-preserved corpses, and the world itself seems barely different from now, save for the shortage of people, without signs of decay. I was expecting more to be made of the youth element too, perhaps along the lines of Roger Corman’s cult flick, Gas-s-s-s, with a replacement culture having arisen to replace the geriatric one. Never happens: save for the age of the main characters, it’s irrelevant. 

The biggest issue, I felt, was there just was not enough going on here to justify the movie’s existence. After Ellie meets Quinn, the next hour largely appears to consist of them avoiding or running from the Stalkers. The pair of heroines are in severe need of some kind of goal, an end-game to which they are working, rather than, as it appears, merely basic survival on a day-to-day basis. The script seems to concentrate on the relationship between them, yet never puts in the necessary work beyond the superficial level. Why are the girls so different, given their similar experiences? 

While the performances are decent enough, the same goes for them: they get the job done, and no more. The occasional brief flashback proves almost aggravating rather than enlightening in this regard. Things do escalate down the stretch, with matters between Ellie, Quinn and the Stalkers coming to a head. Though if I was in charge of the last-named, I would have a quiet word about their collection protocols. Sloppy, and they pay the price. It is not quite enough to save the scenario. While you can’t point at much here that writer-director Lowry specifically does wrong, nor does he bring anything novel to the post-apocalyptic party, and neither is this done well enough to stand out from the crowd. Forgettably competent. 

Dir: Richard Lowry
Star: Eve James, Kannon Smith

The Woman King

★★★
“Annalise Keating does not mess around.”

The above – though expressed rather more bluntly! – was Chris’s reaction to the opening scene, in which Nanisca (Davis) leads her female troops, the Agojie, in the ambush of slavers from the neighbouring Oyo tribe. The Oyo are rivals to the Kingdom of Dahomey, under King Ghezo (John Boyega), who relies on Nanisca and the Agojie to protect his territory, and it’s getting closer to all-out war. The Agojie get a new recruit, Nawi (Mbedu), whose father drops her off at the palace gate, because of her refusal to accept an arranged marriage. Nawi turns out to have a very close connection to Nanisca, but also ends up captured by the Oyo and needs to escape before being sold to Brazilian slavers.

I found myself disappointed by this split focus. Davis is great, commanding the screen in just about every scene, and looking every inch a credible army commander. Her physique is also impressive, considering she’s older than I am. The problem is, there isn’t enough of her, even in a 134-minute movie, and Nawi isn’t anywhere near as interesting. While Nanisca may be a fictional character (and I’ll circle back to this), she’s a unique creation. Nawi, on the other hand, feels like a lazy combination of tropes from other films. Never mind the training montage, I literally sighed when she goes back to help a struggling comrade in arms during her final test. The more I saw of her, the less interested I was.

The Agojie in general are an intriguing topic, and there has been some controversy over the film’s depiction of Dahomey. In reality, they were no less enthusiastic about slavery than their neighbours, and certainly didn’t limit themselves to captured enemy soldiers, as is kinda suggested here. However, I can’t say I was bothered. Heck, one of my all-time favourite films is Braveheart, which has only a tangential and tenuous link to historical fact. This deserves no less a pass. You have to accept that these days, you just couldn’t sell – to the audience or a studio – a film where slavers were the good guys. Or girls, in this case. Just do not attempt to pass this off as history.

While more accurate than Black Panther, which had its own female warriors, I’d say it is on a par with your typical Joan of Arc biopic, of which I have rather a lot of recent experience! Purely as entertainment though, it’s decent enough, with Prince-Bythewood possessing a good eye for spectacle. The various threads of Nanisca’s life are weaved together in a decent way, leading to a final confrontation that’s no less satisfying for being entirely expected [and reminiscent of another not-very-historical epic, Gladiator] However, at the macro level, it never quite meshed for me into more than a pleasant time-passer. Nanisca is a fascinating heroine, in need of a character arc. The problem is, Nawi is an interesting arc, in desperate need of a character. 

Dir: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Star: Viola Davis, Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim

Enola Holmes 2

★★★½
“The fair sex is your department.”

I had forgotten how much I really did not like the original movie. It’s particularly hard to believe, because this sequel is a significant improvement in just about every way. Most of my criticisms from the review seem to have been addressed. For example, the most annoying character, Enola’s mother, played by Helena Bonham-Carter, is all but absent, and the second most useless role, aristocrat Lord Tewkesbury (Partridge), is considerably less irritating, serving an actual purpose. Sherlock Holmes (Cavill) is shown to be the great detective, familiar from Conan Doyle’s stories. Last but not least, Enola (Brown) is a more mature, less precocious character, and even her fourth-wall breaking seems more natural and less an affectation. 

The story is better too. It begins with Enola, now trying to make her own way as a detective, is engaged to look for a missing young woman, who has vanished from her match factory job, after purloining some documents from the owner’s office. Digging into this brings Enola into a web of corruption extending high up in the government, and eventually overlaps with Sherlock’s investigation into financial irregularities in the Treasury department. Enola finds herself framed for murder by the shadowy Superintendent Grail (Thewlis) of Scotland Yard, and has to avoid the authorities’ grasp, while working with her brother to untangle the web of intrigue. It doesn’t quite all work – the overlap with Sherlock’s case is never well explained – yet it is almost always interesting and entertaining. 

The biggest step up is likely Brown’s portrayal of the heroine. Two years is a long time for a teenager: we saw our own daughter go from a problematic 16-year-old to an 18-year-old human being, and much the same transformation has occurred here. Similarly, Enola now seems like an actual person, not the artificial character created for a book. Her relationships – especially with her brother, though also with Tewkesbury – reflect this, and seem like the kind real people would have. The near-absence of showboating feminist Eudoria Holmes helps, though there are still moments that may provoke slight to moderate eye-rolling. I’d say the finale at the match factory falls into this category, and is certainly unnecessary. 

The action feels at a slightly lower, or at least, less frenetic level. The main set-piece is Enola’s breakout from prison (this is also where her mum shows up, along with her martial arts teacher sidekick). It’s not bad, though does feel more like a duty, and an add-on instead of an organic part of the movie. The incorporation into the plot of an actual event, the matchgirl strike of 1888, is a nice idea, grounding the plot, though does become a vehicle for some obvious soap-boxing. “Radical” maybe isn’t quite the compliment the film thinks. In the main, however, this was a very pleasant and unexpected surprise, whose 130 minutes seemed considerably shorter. Bring on a third installment, and hopefully sooner rather than later. 

Dir: Harry Bradbeer
Star: Millie Bobby Brown, Henry Cavill, Louis Partridge, David Thewlis

Terror on the Prairie

★★★
“Prairie dog pest control.”

I keep hoping Carano will deliver an action film reaching the quality of her debut, Haywire. Results since then have been… well, let’s be charitable and call them uneven. The reasons for her departure from “traditional” Hollywood aren’t something I want to get into: but this, produced by conservative outlet The Daily Wire, does show the book isn’t closed on her yet. The Wire have put out a few films we’ve covered here, though again, the quality has been mixed: the last, Shut In, was not good. This is a similarly simple story, yet does a bit more with it. The pacing is too languid for my tastes, yet there were sufficient quirks to keep me adequately interested.

It takes place on the Montana plains, some years after the end of the Civil War, where Hattie McAllister (Carano) and her husband, Jeb (Cerrone), are trying to make a life for themselves and their two kids. Hattie has just about had enough, and wants to head back to her home-town of St. Louis. Before any decision can be made, life is interrupted by the arrival of a former Confederate officer, the Captain (Searcy), and his band of men. While he initially seems charming, the scalps tied to his saddle tell another story, and it’s quickly clear he has a specific agenda, rather than randomly passing through. With Jeb away in town, it’s up to Hattie to fend off the ensuing siege until her husband can return. Considering she is depicted as unable to kill a rattlesnake that entered their cabin, she’s going to need new-found resilience.

It’s a straightforward tale, brought down by too many unnecessary pauses: we really do not care what Jen is getting up to, for example. These derail the film’s reasonable efforts to build tension, bolstered by some surprisingly graphic gore (one throat-slitting in particular), and Searcy’s good performance as a thoroughly villainous antagonist, whose word can’t be trusted, despite his quoting of scripture. It might have made more sense to have Hattie depicted as competent and brave from the get-go. Instead, it leaves the Captain and his men seeming incompetent, although some of this is their initial reluctance to take her seriously, e.g. he addresses her 9-year-old son as the “man of the house.” 

A novel wrinkle is the director’s decision not to accompany the action with a musical score of any kind. It certainly keeps you in the moment, yet there is also reason why Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack is so key to Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns being undisputed classics. The action, if generally restrained, is competent, and it’s probably for the best the film did not try to turn Hattie into some kind of Western MMA goddess. I did worry the return of Jeb was going to push his spouse off to the sidelines in the final reel; while it teetered on the edge for a while, the film pulled back. If not breaking any boundaries, this is worth a look, especially if you’re a fan of the genre.

Dir: Michael Polish
Star: Gina Carano, Nick Searcy, Donald Cerrone. Tyler Fischer

In the Forest

★★
“Once more: why we don’t camp.”

Three generations of a family take a trip into the woods in their mobile home. There’s grandfather Stan (Ward), his somewhat neurotic daughter Helen (Ayer), whose life has been falling apart around her, and Helen’s teenage daughter, Emily (Spruell), for whom a weekend in a forest with old people is just how she wants to spend her time. After finding a spot, they’re ordered off by a surly local with a shotgun. Except, mechanical and medical misadventures get them stuck. Helen heads off to find help, only to stumble across the home of the surly local, who is apparently involved in keeping teenage boy Andrew (Odette) locked up in a room. Andrew begs Helen for help, saying his sister is in the basement. Then his Mom shows up.

It’s not a terrible idea, pitting an urban family against a rural one, with the former being forced out of their comfort zone for the sake of raw survival. The problems here are all in the execution. Part of it is the split focus, with the film’s attention divided between the various plights of Helen and Emily. The former, in particular, seems to spend half the film chained to a crate, and the other half running frantically around the forest. The latter, meanwhile, is mostly in and around the motor-home, where she is paid visits by more or less threatening members of the local clan, and has to fend them off.

This could also have been fun had there been a little more ambivalence over who, exactly, are the psychos. That’s especially the case since Andrew definitely seems to have fallen not far from his tree, yet both mother and daughter seem remarkably willing to take everything he says at face value. Instead, there’s precious little subtlety here: for just about everyone, what you see in the first couple of moments defines their character the rest of the way. Some of the plotting could definitely have been improved, such as when the captive Helen breaks a pole out of closet and starts attacking the wall to the next room. While this does eventually lead to her escape, it seems more by chance than a plan.

Matters do improve somewhat when the family (or the surviving members, anyway) are re-united, and have to take on the matriarch, who is none too pleased at the chaos and dysfunction they have brought to her home. Things get distinctly down and dirty, the three women going at each other with weapons both conventional (gun), improvised (shovel) and downright unconventional (the stake from a garden fence). Yet, if this is when the movie is at its most fun and is also the level of no-holds barred insanity I was hoping it would deliver, it’s a climax which feels wildly out of character compared to what had gone before. This film spent time with the family as they baited hooks and went fishing. The jump to them shanking people, prison-style, is too far a gap to bridge.

Dir: Hector Barron
Star: Debbon Ayer, Cristina Spruell, Lyman Ward, Matthew Thomas Odette

9 Bullets

★½
“Copy of a copy of a copy.”

While this is not an “official” remake of Gloria, it’s so damn close that I have no problem considering it as one. Writer/director Gaston seems to have… um, a bit of a track record in this area, shall we say. She previously appeared here by directing Beyond the City Limits, a film with such a strong resemblance to Set It Off, that it was released on DVD as Rip It Off. Some might call that a particularly appropriate title, and here, she once again seems to be sailing quite close to a lawsuit. It was purely by coincidence we watched this, the weekend after seeing the two versions of Gloria, and Chris took only a few minutes to call it out.

It’s definitely the worst of the three, and I write that as a fan of Lena Headey. She has done sterling work in things such as Game of Thrones and Gunpowder Milkshake, among others, so to see her in this mess is almost tragic. I almost can’t be bothered to provide a recap – a link to my Gloria review would suffice – yet here we go. A man is caught stealing money from organized crime, so he and his whole family are liquidated, except for young son, Sam (Vazquez). He escapes with an iPad that’s crucial to the mob’s operation, and is rescued by neighbour Gypsy (Headey). They go on the run from the henchmen seeking to recover the iPad, and Sam gradually breaks down Gypsy’s chilly facade, despite her ties to the criminals, being an old flame of its boss, Jack (Worthington).

Ouch. But… but… Sam has a dog! And Gypsy is a retiring burlesque dancer, now writing an autobiography! It’s totes different! No. No, it isn’t. Especially since neither of these are significant. The only relevance of the latter seems to be to allow Headey to show that she still looks pretty good in her late forties (pasties, please: this isn’t some cheap exploitation vehicle). Meanwhile, Sam manages the genuinely impressive feat of managing, somehow, to be more annoying than the kid in the original, burbling on in a child genius way about his booming cryptocurrency portfolio. Yeah, that aged like milk.

Despite Headey’s best efforts, there’s no aspect here which wasn’t done better in both the original, and the remake starring Sharon Stone. Even the new stuff falls flat, such as a weird and almost irrelevant subplot where they steal an already stolen car with a hooker (Anthony) in the back seat. None of the relationships are convincing, and the only moment that has any intensity does not involve any of the main characters. It occurs after Gypsy drops off the dog at the cabin belong to friend Lacy, played by veteran actress Barbara Hershey, who demonstrates an admirably no-nonsense approach to their pursuers. Please, do not even get me started on the finale, where Gypsy literally turns out to be bulletproof. When a film leaves you thinking, “Who came up with this shit?”, it’s never a good sign.

Dir: Gigi Gaston
Star: Lena Headey, Dean Scott Vazquez, Sam Worthington, La La Anthony

Borrego

★½
“Borrego? BORE-rego, more like…”

Sorry, couldn’t resist it. For the recent string of suboptimal Netflix movies continues with this tedious bit of work, which feels like the first journey across the South Californian desert filmed in real time. It begins with Ellie (Hale), a botanist carrying out a survey near the Mexican border. She meets a teenage girl, Alex (Trujillo), who is skipping school and the two have an awkward conversation. I initially thought its stilted nature was intended to tell us something about the two characters, but nope. All the conversations here are awkward. Writer-director Harris just has no ear for dialogue, which may explain why so much of this is people wandering about instead.

Anyway, the plot proper kicks off when Ellie witnesses a plane crash nearby. Rushing to the scene, without any attempt to call for help, she finds the pilot, Tomas (Gomez) crawling from the wreckage with his cargo of drugs. At gunpoint, she is coerced into helping him carry what remains of the merchandise to its delivery point, where the intended recipient is growing increasingly antsy. Meanwhile, the only local cop (Gonzalez) is on the hunt, both for the missing botanist, and Alex, who is his daughter. All these plot threads lead to the copious trudging across the terrain mentioned above. Though people also bump into each other with the frequency required by the plot, so that the desert appears to be the size of your local convenience store.

Things unfold with the predictability of the sun in this arid corner of the country. Tomas and Ellie bond over their campfire, Tomas’s grasp of English waxing and waning as necessary. Turns out he was only involved in this sordid business to help his family, a casual excuse used by criminals since time immemorial, which cuts no ice with me. Hell, even antsy intended recipient says the same thing. We can clearly end the War On Drugs, by killing every drug dealer’s family, to remove their motivation! The movie opens and closes with po-faced captions about the societal problem of drug abuse, both prescribed and otherwise. I think if you need a Netflix original movie to tell you, “Drugs are bad, m’kay?”, there are bigger problems.

You will get an hour and a half of the various parties, showcasing some rather pretty locations, in lieu of anything approaching genuine tension or action: a car hitting a cactus is as close as we get. The photography is easily the best thing about this, with some excellent aerial footage that brings home the scope of where the participants roam. However, I did not sign up to watch “Drones Above the South-West”, and any goodwill generated falls into a canyon, as a result of the poor excuse for a climax. I’d not blame you for tuning out well before that point, however. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s all almost enough to make me wish for the ludicrous stupidity of Interceptor

Almost

Dir: Jesse Harris
Star: Lucy Hale, Nicholas Gonzalez, Leynar Gomez, Olivia Trujillo