This shouldn’t be confused with the BBC series of the same name announced last year. This is very definitely American, another in the ongoing series of urban crime movies which seem to pop up, with some regularity on the likes of Tubi. I keep watching them, in the hope they’ll be good, but am usually disappointed, mostly due to cheap-jack production values and repetitive story-lines. This is at least watchable in the former department, though is definitely marked down for a startlingly abrupt “To be continued” ending. I hate cliff-hangers in books: they do not work any better on movies, and this isn’t exactly Dune Part One, shall we say. Not least because it runs only 75 minutes, including end-credits.
It’s the story of Dee (Pinckney), who comes out of jail with a grudge, and sets about trying to take over the drug trade in the city where she lives (I think it’s Philadelphia). The first obstacle standing in her way is CJ (Whitehurst); after she succeeds in facing him down, he hires an assassin to take her out. But the assassin is not a fan of CJ’s, so looks to switch sides and play for Dee. In her corner, she also has her cousin, Stephanie (Hicks), and a select group of other women with appropriate skills. The one of most note is Stasha Fields, also known as Star (Feindt), a dirty cop who is looking to make it on her own terms.
These make for an interesting set of characters. The film’s main problem is not doing nearly enough with them. Considering how short this runs, there is an awful lot of sitting around, talking about doing things, and not nearly enough actual doing of these things. Outside of the opening scene, in which Dee goes to confront CJ in his apartment, I’m hard-pushed to think of more than a couple of other significant moments of action. Although someone does get shot towards the end, it’s in a non-lethal manner, which is something of a surprise in this genre, since it usually can be depended on for a significant body-count. Here: not so much. There’s even preciously little dealing of the dope.
You’re therefore left largely to rely on the drama for interest, and that’s a bit of a mixed bag. As mentioned, there does seem to have been some thought put into the personnel. Pinckney and Feindt at least can reach convincing on some occasions, while director Deniro – and I’m wagering that is probably not his real name – knows the value of silence, rather than burying every scene in rap music, another staple of the field. In the end though, we reach the closing caption, without having moved an adequate distance from where we were after the first scene. We know a lot more people, to be sure. But to what extent do we know them? Maybe we’ll find out in Dope Girls 2. Maybe I can be bothered to watch it.
Dir: Black Deniro Star: Kenisha Pinckney, Eva Lin Feindt, Joaquin Whitehurst, Taria Hicks
This begins with the young Helena, living deep in the woods with her mother and father, Jacob (Mendelsohn). He’s teaching her the ways of the forest, including hunting and the need to be ruthless, with the top priority expressed in the tagline above. However, things aren’t quite what they seem: it feels like it could be a century ago, yet the tranquil illusion is shattered when a lost stranger on an ATV rides up. Mom makes a break for freedom with Helena, for it seems this is actually a kidnapping which has gone on for a long time. Fast forward twenty years: Jacob is in prison, mom killed herself and Helena (Ridley) is working a dead-end job, but married to Stephen (Hedlund), and with a daughter, Marigold.
Then Jacob escapes custody while being transferred, and all hell breaks loose. For Helena has changed her identity, in an effort to disconnect from her past. Stephen is entirely unaware of his wife’s history, until the authorities show up on their doorstep. Helena is naturally concerned that her father is going to make contact, or worse. Inevitably, that’s exactly what happens, and she is going to have to dredge up those long-abandoned skills in order to live up to the standards ingrained in her, when she was living in the woods. It will also require her to return to her childhood haunt, for a confrontation with Jacob which has been several decades in the making.
I suspect the main problem is that we know where it’s going to go, almost from the moment we are told Jacob has broken out of jail. The film, however, insists on dallying around, having Helena’s paranoia ramp up in a middle act that loses all momentum, creeping around at night and hearing the flute-like music which her father used to play. Does this indicate he is near, or simply that the stress is triggering some kind of psychotic episode? To be honest, we don’t particularly care. I kinda lost much sympathy for her, after realizing she had hidden everything from Stephen. You’d think the fact she has more tats than a Maori chieftain might clue you in to something of a checkered past, but that’s apparently just me.
Still, Jacob looms over the entire film even when he is not physically present, since he has, understandably, been living rent-free in his daughter’s head. There is a seasoning of Stockholm syndrome here, in the way the father has impressed his personality on his daughter. Yet none of it is particularly engaging. We’re left just waiting for the face-off which we know is inevitable, where Helena has to decide how far she is willing to go, in order to protect Marigold. Is that further than Jacob is prepared to go, for what he believes is the best interests of his daughter? I feel the answer to that question should be more interesting than this bland exercise in wilderness abuse ends up becoming.
Dir: Neil Burger
Star: Daisy Ridley, Ben Mendelsohn, Gil Birmingham, Garrett Hedlund
This certainly wastes no time. Malina (Martens) regains consciousness to find herself in the trunk of a car stopped at a petrol station. Things get worse, as she discovers her legs are paralyzed, and she has a nasty wound in her lower abdomen. How did she get there? And more importantly, what can she do to escape her predicament? It’s certainly one hell of a hook, and in the way it hits the ground running – as well as its Germanic origins, almost real-time approach and the plucky heroine with a sketchy boyfriend, forced to survive on her own – reminded me of Run Lola Run. Not as brilliantly executed, of course, but well enough done to keep my interest thereafter.
It does require a little suspension of disbelief to get things rolling, such as the way she has a mobile phone. What self-respecting abductor would not ensure their victim is kept well away from portable electronic devices? The fact Malina’s very first call is not to the police also seemed a bit iffy. But once the initial road bumps are overcome, I found myself increasingly drawn in to her predicament. Considering the film takes place almost entirely in a car boot, it works surprisingly well. Schießer uses all the tricks in his cinematic locker to keep the story moving forward, as find out about Malina, and her relationship with boyfriend Enno (Gilz), her father (Rettinghaus) and even the police operator (Helm) who is her best hope of survival.
Gradually, it becomes clear that this is not quite the simple abduction for ransom it initially appears. While her Daddy is certainly rich, why was the poverty stricken Enno apparently abducted too? Is there a connection to a bit of medical malpractice in which Malina, a trainee doctor, was involved? Then there’s the wound in her side, which is not just an accidental gash. Not all of these will end up relevant in the final analysis, and piecing them together is part of the fun. I figured out the key revelation only a couple of seconds before the film announced it, and this propels things forward in a very different direction, the rest of the way.
Obviously, given her circumstances – locked in a car trunk and with limited use of her legs – this is less “action” oriented in the traditional sense. But also given these limitations, I’ve no doubt that Malina qualifies here, having to use all the abilities at her disposal, from her medical knowledge to brute force, to try and survive, as her situation grows increasingly dire, e.g. she crosses the border out of Germany. I feel sure it’s the kind of plot where a less charitable reviewer could probably pick so many holes, it ends up resembling a lace garment. Martens isn’t Franke Potente either, though who is? However, I am prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt, and note that I wasn’t even tempted to pick up my cellphone once. These days, I’ll take that.
Dir: Marc Schießer Star: Sina Martens, Luise Helm, Artjom Gilz, Charles Rettinghaus
Great poster. Solid trailer. In the light of those, unfortunately, the film can only be described as a significant disappointment. While it’s good, and occasionally very good when in motion, damn, there is a LOT of flapping of lips going on here. It’s clear that writers Chad Law and Shane Dax Taylor, as well as director Woodward, are in love with their dialogue. This is unfortunate, since it’s nowhere near as amusing, informative or entertaining as they think. There’s probably a decent twenty minutes in this, mostly when the lead character – nameless, known only as “Bride”, a conceit shamelessly stolen from KillBill – is kicking butt. Since the film runs a hundred and eleven minutes, that is a problem.
Indeed, nobody here gets a “proper” name. The Bride (Burn) decides at the last minute she is not going to go through with marriage to her fiance (Blain), and runs off to her family cabin. Her husband-to-be doesn’t take that lightly, and sends seven groomsmen, under the best man (Gigandet), to bring her back. not with polite discussion to convince her to return. For it turns out everyone involved is part of a shadowy organization of assassins called “The University”. You don’t get to leave, so the Bride has to defend herself from the consequences of her decision, still in her wedding dress. Which as Chris pointed out, is odd, considering it’s her family’s property. No clothing better suited to combat?
Confusing matters considerably further is a flashback (I guess) to happier times on a beach somewhere, whose purpose escapes me, except for providing a nice vacation for Jason Patric. What these lengthy scenes certainly do, is sap the film of any momentum as survival horror. Then again, the film does plenty of that itself, with endless scenes of the characters talking and talking and talking and… you get the idea. It’s a pity, because the violence, when it shows up, is done with some energy. Burn seems to be doing quite a lot of her own stunts, to good effect, and there’s nice use of improvised weaponry. The chainsaw shown on the poster is not just there for show either, providing perhaps the film’s most memorable moment.
Not that there’s exactly a lot of competition, admittedly. I found myself frequently thinking of ways this could have been improved. “Being roughly thirty minutes shorter” would be a good start. Alternatively, could potentially have been fun if the seven bridesmaids had also been assassins, fighting for the Bride. Why is it just the groomsmen? There, it feels like a sure-fire case of diminishing returns, with most of them more annoying than anything else. This is especially true of Gigandet whose character is perpetually droning on about the speech he has to give. Pancho Moler as T-Bone is perhaps the only one to make an impression. It’s all a garbled mess, which seems poorly constructed, and only occasionally delivering on the wildness of its premise.
Dir: Timothy Woodward Jr. Star: Natalie Burn, Cam Gigandet, Ser’Darius Blain, Orlando Jones
★½
“Do you know what the definition of insanity is?”
This is a question posed by the bad guy (Fears) towards the end of this, and of course, he provides the usual explanation in response: “It’s doing the same thing, expecting different results.” After watching this, I would choose to adjust it slightly. A valid definition of insanity is making the same movie, and expecting different results. Because it is, more or less, what Rankins has done here: it’s a remake of his own movie from fourteen years ago, Jack Squad. Now, there’s something to be said for that. I mean, Cecil B. DeMille did The Ten Commandants twice, while directors from Hitchcock to Michael Haneke have remade their own films.
The difference is, they were kinda busy. For instance, Hitchcock directed twenty-five features between his two versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much. Since the original Jack Squad in 2009, Rankins has made just one feature: Angry Kelly in 2014. Did he not manage to come up with more than one original idea in a decade and a half? And that count is presuming Angry Kelly is not about a man who is annoyed because he was drugged and robbed by a trio of women. I’ve not seen it, I can’t say. Here, we get a little variation at the start, where the original Jack Squad get hunted down, and a bit at the end, where there’s dissension in the ranks over hidden money.
In the middle though? It’s a blatant re-make. Three young women decide to make money by drugging and robbing men. This goes wrong, when one of the targets is a courier for a violent drug boss, carrying a large sum of cash. They make the ill-advised decision to hold onto the money, a choice which brings them into the crosshairs of its real owner. If anything, we have even less going on this time. It’s a good half-hour before the new trio, of Cassie (Green), Nikki (Alexander) and Cam (Lynn) put their scheme into action. I guess there is at least some altruism, the goal – at least initially, before the designer shopping kicks in – being to cover the medical bills run up by one of the trio’s mother.
The overwhelming sense of deja vu here is what knocks the overall rating here down below the original. I mean, the three characters feel almost like bad photocopies of their predecessors. There’s one who has qualms about the whole concept, while another refuses to give it up at any cost. It’s likely a little more technically competent, though at basically two hours long, is still painfully over-long. There’s a weird subplot where one of the women has a mentally challenged brother, who wants to be a baseball pitcher. This does eventually show relevance, though the way it does, might have you wishing they hadn’t bothered. If we don’t get Jack Squad 3 until 2037, I am completely fine with that.
One of the shows we enjoy watching here is Alone, in which ten contestants are dropped off in a hostile location – typically chilly – with limited resources. The last one left standing wins $500,000. It’s a simple concept, yet endlessly fascinating. We sit on our comfortable couch, eating Doritos and passing comment on the failing of the competitors. Especially so when they are hoist by their own stupidity, such as losing their means of starting a fire. This feels not dissimilar, except rather than a survival expert, it’s a woman who finds herself thrown into utterly inhospitable circumstances, and forced to make do by any means necessary – not just for her own survival, but that of her new-born child.
The woman is the heavily pregnant Mia (Castillo), who is fleeing an uncertain present in Spain, hoping to get to Ireland, with her husband Nico (Novas). The route is supposed to involve them being sent in shipping containers along with other refugees, but almost from the off, things go wrong. Mia is separated from Nico; the rest of the occupants are gunned down; and then, just when Mia is on her way, the container is washed off the ship in a storm, leaving her afloat in the middle of the ocean. It’s leaking badly – bullet holes will do this – and even after she has addressed that immediate problem, she has to figure out how to survive, with only the contents of the container. Oh, and then she gives birth.
It is, of course, a very contrived set of circumstances, with the container offering a variety of potentially useful items, rather than being, say, entirely full of agricultural machinery. Similarly, her cell-phone has remarkable battery life and service coverage, though I have read a suggestion the calls she received were actually hallucinations. That might be a shame, as one of them certainly represents the film’s dramatic peak, an utterly heart-rending conversation. It was the point where I suddenly realized I had become invested in Mia’s fate, and cared. It came as a bit of a surprise, and is testament to a good performance from Castillo. Not least because for much of the time, she has nobody to act against except a new-born baby.
The scripting is less effective. As well as the convenience mentioned, the whole opening half-hour proves almost irrelevant. It sets up a scenario where resources have become so short, the government is killing off unproductive members of its own society. Let’s just say: I have questions, yet it serves no purpose in the movie, except to get Mia into her crate. Things improve once it does, and the film becomes a straight survival story, rather than trying to make (I presume) some kind of social point about… something. Not that this stopped me from sitting on my comfortable couch, eating Doritos and passing comment on Mia’s attempts to fish. If only she’d watched Alone, she’d have managed much better…
Dir: Albert Pintó Star: Anna Castillo, Tamar Novas, Tony Corvillo, Mariam Torres
Oh, dear. I appreciate that actors have to work, like everyone else. Van Dien, in particular, has a reputation in our house as someone whose name is not typically a badge of quality. But it’s sad to see Suvari is now apparently in the same career boat. I can only presume the offers aren’t exactly flooding in, if this is the work she has to take on. It’s another variant on the old Most Dangerous Game story-line. Here, it sees redneck entrepreneur Carter (Van Dien) luring in women with the promise of $100,000, while remaining vague on the details. Turns out the victims then are pursued through the forest and have to survive for 24 hours. Spoiler: they don’t.
Their latest prey is Cassandra (Suvari), who joins up after having a fight with her girlfriend, Tessa (Stojan), in the cafe where Carter and his teenage son Jackson (Peltz) are eating. This is going to be Jackson’s first hunt, though he’s… not exactly as enthusiastic about it as his father. I should not need to describe any plot elements further. If you’ve seen as many as one (1) of this kind of thing before, you’ll be able to predict almost every story beat to perfection. There is a twist, in regard to Cassandra and the motivation for her actions, which does at least explain some of the idiocy present. Otherwise, this is painfully predictable, and executed in a manner which is equally tedious, almost as if intended to suck away any tension.
It doesn’t help that none of the characters here rise about the most basic and banal of cliches, with the hunters the worst. Obviously, this kind of plot has an inevitable gender political subtext. That’s fine, except when, as here, the makers decide that’s insufficient, eschewing all subtlety to rub the audience’s face in it. Hence we get an extended sequence of Carter and the other hunters sitting around, spouting fringe subReddit BS, which could only be written by a true believer in toxic masculinity. For instance, someone actually wrote this: “We are men. We are primal, strong, sexual beings. We used to be the stronger sex.” I can state, with 100% certainty, I’ve never heard anyone speaking like that. Ever.
The women fare little better: the apparently “feminist” intent severely undermined by a relentless focus on having the women humiliated while scantily-clad. Five minutes of role-reversal at the end, accompanied – and I wish I were joking here – by a lesson in Greek mythology, does not cut it. The action is equally implausible, both in concept and execution, such as knives being thrown incredible distances into people’s foreheads, and any impact is nullified by the fact you have been given no reason to care about anyone involved. For much of the movie, Cassandra’s entire persona is “woman threatened by men”. That’s it. Don’t know about you, I need a little more depth of character – and that turns out to be largely false. Even by the low standards of Van Dien’s filmography, give this one a wide berth.
Dir: Elizabeth Blake-Thomas Star: Mena Suvari, Casper Van Dien, Will Peltz, Maya Stojan
After the impressive surprise which was Jericho Ridge, I figured I should try out another BET Original movie and see how it fared. As the grade above should tell you, the answer is comparatively poorly. While technically adequate in most departments, it’s one of the more implausible Die Hard knockoffs I’ve seen. In a world where No Contest exists, that takes some doing. The high concept here is “Die Hard in a court-house” with Judge Jaeda King (Naughton) about to pronounce sentence in the trial of convicted murderer Sean Samuels (Mitchell). Barely has she said “death”, when the court is stormed by a force led by Sean’s brother Gabriel (Gross), a.k.a. “Black Caesar”.
King escapes the initial onslaught, along with Sean, his defense attorney, and Stryker (Messner), one of the courthouse guards. Gabriel, however, is not just interested in freeing his brother. He also puts the prosecuting attorney on trial in a kangaroo court, designed to prove the flaws and biases inherent in the system. Much of the film is therefore split between King and her group trying to figure out how to survive, as well as escape, and the courtroom side of things, where nasty little secrets are revealed, such as the prosecutor’s relationship to King having been more than professional. I will say, Miller does a good job of keeping both sides of the story moving forward. It would have been easy for the chattier portions to bring things to a halt: that doesn’t happen.
This aspect is certainly helped by a strong performance from Gross, who manages to avoid the obvious tropes of such a situation, and comes over as smart, well-spoken and committed. He’s no Alan Rickman of course; then again, who is? I found myself, if not quite on Gabriel’s side, at least seeing his point of view and his grounds for extreme action. The main problem is a failure to set King up as credible opposition. Before things kick off, there’s no reason to view her as an action heroine: all we see is her being easily beaten by her martial-arts teacher. Then, suddenly, she – or, rather obviously, Naughton’s stunt double – is kicking butt and spraying bullets around like a grizzled Army Ranger.
Okay, Naughton is far better than Anna Nicole Smith, though that’s a low bar for anyone to clear. She does okay with the dramatic side of things, though the script occasionally gives her little to work with. The broken relationship with her spouse feels like another element poorly lifted from Die Hard, and things like her overhearing another judge go full racist were so obvious as to trigger an eye-roll. Miller does have a nice visual eye, e.g. the shot of the attackers marching towards their target was a genuine stand-out, and there’s enough competence to stop it from being actively annoying. However, its script needed more work, and perhaps a better central concept, to succeed in an over-crowded field.
Dir: Wes Miller Star: Naturi Naughton, Lance Gross, Jason Mitchell, Johnny Messner
Plot. Mizu (Erskine) has a grudge. She’s a mixed-race young woman living in 17th-century Japan, a position which leaves her at the bottom of society. But she has dragged herself up to become an onna-musha, a warrior with ferocious sword skills, courtesy of Master Eiji (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), the blind swordsmith who raised her. Now, she’s on the hunt to take revenge on the man she believes is her father, Abijah Fowler (Branagh). He’s an Irish smuggler, who is upsetting the delicate balance of Japanese society, closed to foreigners, by importing firearms. He’s involved in planning a coup to overthrow the current shogun.
[Editor’s note: the original plan was for Dieter and I to review it independently, then combine the two pieces. But Dieter went into rather more detail! So most of what follows is his opinion, with my thoughts sprinkled as garnish, in italics]
I have to admit my opinion on this show has changed a couple of times while watching it. First, there was the enthusiasm of a Japan-based-action series with a female main character. After that I thought about the “wokeness” of the show (after all, it’s Netflix), something that hardly can be overlooked. And finally, I recognized the strong effort that went into the storytelling, the visual beauty, and small details of the show and realized that while definitely a “woke” story, these elements are neither too strong nor too dominant to destroy the genuine pleasure I had when watching it.
I liked this, but it’s probably fair to say I didn’t love it. I tend to have a blind-spot with regard to animated action. Personally, I find it’s a medium that dilutes the intensity of fight scenes, because it applies a distancing effect to it. I’m always aware that I’m watching drawings or pixels beating the heck out of each other, which is intrinsically going to be less impressive than people “really” doing so. If this had been live-action, and equally gory, it could have been awesome. There’s also a weird visual choice here in that Mizu’s nose is typically shadowed. This has the unfortunate effect of making her look to me either as if she has a bad head cold, or if she is a habitual alcoholic.
But first things first: despite its title and the location (Japan in 1657 in the Edo era) Blue Eye Samurai is – an American product, so certain allowances have to be made. While I do love a story of female persistence, this 8-part show pushes the limits of believability. We have to accept that, at a time when foreigners are forbidden to be in Japan, not only there is such a person living there, but also this man fathered a daughter. This means she is half-Caucasian, half-Japanese and therefore considered a “demon”, harassed by pure-blood Japanese who have never seen such a stranger in their country. She will then become a trained “samurai” – quotes used advisedly, as we’ll see – with the appropriate sword skills.
It’s a stretch, though still in the reign of possibility, since there have been, real swordswomen in Japan. That woman then going on a rampage, hell-bent on revenge for… well… her own creation? This does not make much sense to me. After all, should we not all be happy we exist? But then, my own life, like most, has been peaceful and harmonious. In contrast, the main character, Mizu, has led a life of misery, constantly been harassed, pursued with hatred, endangered and betrayed. It’s not difficult to imagine, if you grew up that way, you would sooner or later start to hate the man responsible for your very existence. Though strangely, she doesn’t seem to hold a similar grudge against the mother who gave birth to her,
Mizu’s path leads her to Ringo, the son of a innkeeper, who has no hands (remember, this is Netflix!). After being saved by her, he becomes her servant. There’s also Taigen, a samurai-in-training, who once lived in the same town as Mizu and almost succeeded in killing her as a child. After she beat him in battle, he feels his honour is insulted and follows Mizu to challenge her to a rematch. But his revenge has to wait. A further complication arises in Japanese noblewoman Akemi, who is in love with Taigen and would like to marry him. Though her father has other marriage plans and Taigen is not ready to marry her until he has regained his honor. None of them know (yet) that Mizu is a woman. And as Mizu mercilessly pursues her path of revenge, Ringo and Taigen become her allies, with some indication of a mutual attraction between Mizu and Taigen.
Blue Eye Samurai is a French-American animated show by Blue Spirit for Netflix, created by Michael Green (the screenwriter for Logan and Blade Runner 2049) and Amber Noizumi. They were inspired by their daughter, who was born 15 years ago with blue eyes. Noizumi spoke about how she, herself biracial, wondered what it would have been like to lived as a biracial person in 17th-century Japan, when Japan’s borders were closed to the outside world and strangers from abroad would have no chance to be accepted in society. Another, unconfirmed inspiration might be British navigator William Adams who travelled to Japan in 1600, and was called “the blue-eyed samurai”. He also inspired the ever-popular series Shogun, which Netflix just remade. What a coincidence.
Other influences, according to Noizumi, were movies such as Kill Bill, Lady Snowblood, and… Yentl, Barbara Streisand’s musical about a Jewish woman who wants to study and has to take on a male identity. It has been confirmed by Noizumi that Mizu was inspired by Clint Eastwood’s break-out Man with No Name role in the famous Dollars trilogy by Sergio Leone, This fits, because the show often reminded me less of a typical Japanese jidaigeki (historical drama) or chanbara (sword-fighting movie with a historical background), but more a Western in disguise. If the mix between East and West was intended, whether this makes it “the best of two worlds” or a travesty is up to you. But it’s not really the first of its kind, considering Tom Cruise’s The Last Samurai.
I personally don’t like it when words like “emancipation” or “discrimination” are thrown around in relation to a show mainly meant to entertain. But in this case, they are justified given the very basis of the show, in medieval Japan. This setting is different to current Western countries, being one with a mostly homogeneous population, traditional conservative values and what feminists nowadays like to call “patriarchal”, as a background for a story of female emancipation and racist discrimination. You may question what “woke propaganda” Netflix is tossing at an innocent viewer this time. But it’s a relief that any messaging comes, not in heavy-handed preaching, as is typical for many Netflix shows, but mostly carefully integrated into the show, rather than feeling like they were bolted on.
The show certainly ticks all the diversity check-boxes with its characters. We have a biracial female who taught herself everything, a repressed (though in the context of the era “spoiled” might be more accurate?) lord’s daughter, a helpful assistant born with no hands, a blind sword-maker, while an old white man is the perverse, cruel villain, and women have no say in society, serving as servants or prostitutes. Did I forget anything? Despite it all, this feels acceptable given the time and place in which the story occurs.
As noted, in choosing this kind of story, time and place, the creators often stretch the limits of believability. In particular, with Akemi, the daughter of a powerful lord who wants to marry her to the son of the shogun. She is in love with Taigen, so absolutely resists that idea. Akemi comes across the entire series as enormously stubborn, resisting advice and always wanting to get her way. I have to shake my head in disbelief, knowing that the idea of “marriage for love” was in those times rare both in Japan and Europe (Historians say the idea of what we call today “romantic love” was born around 1850). People married due to sharing social class, to keep property within a circle of families, or because their business-partnered parents decided so, sometimes even before they were born.
Even more unbelievable for the time, is the idea a Japanese woman would have been allowed to voice her wishes or opinion in the blunt manner depicted here. Quite honestly, I think if any woman would have behaved so disrespectfully to an older man, giving strong, vocal objections or even slapping the shogun’s son, she would have immediately been beheaded or drowned in the nearest pond. The wish of the creators to have another strong female character in the show backfires here. Akemi is what you would expect a modern, Western young woman to be, not a Japanese woman from the Edo era. This is fan-fiction at best, bad research at worst.
Probably my least favourite aspect was this significant side-plot involving noble samurai Taigen (Barnet), and his true love, the Princess Akemi (Branda Song), who is about to be married off against her will. Neither of those characters seemed significant, and it felt like this sometimes became an excuse for male-bashing. Brothel madam Kaji (Ming-Na Wen) was the worst for that: look, nobody is keeping you a prostitute. Get out of the profession or quit complaining about your customers. Oh, and if men are bad, white men as embodied by Fowler are the absolute worst.
A word of warning to the uninitiated. The show does not hold back in the depiction of violence. The slicing-off of extremities sometimes made me wonder if the victims’ bodies were made out of styrofoam, and I also found a bit excessive, the arterial blood spray. How many litres does the human body contain? The same goes for sexuality, though less often. I personally have seen more extreme things, but this is Western animation, and the audience may not be quite prepared for the graphic content. But I guess anyone going to watch the show would probably know beforehand it is not a show for children. You wouldn’t expect kid-friendly content from an Akira Kurosawa samurai movie, wouldn’t you?
This was not a problem for me. Indeed, I would have been disappointed had it been any other way! The “garden hose” approach to blood has long been a mainstay of Japanese cinema, certainly back as far as the early seventies and the Lone Wolf & Cub films – a staple of Western VHS stores under the title of Shogun Assassin. Realism isn’t a factor, and this is an area where animation can really push the pedal to the metal, being unconstrained by the limits of latex and Karo syrup.
Ah, yes… samurai, that’s a key word: after all, it’s in the title and is mentioned several times. I should stress here, Mizu definitely is no samurai by the traditional definition. He would usually act in service of a daimo, a feudal landlord serving the shogun. This usually comes with certain obligations and behaviour that would be seen as a code of honor. Mizu quite definitely doesn’t fit the description. However, many of Kurosawa’s “samurai” don’t either, including The Seven Samurai or the character Toshiro Mifune plays in Yojimbo and Sanjuro (which, cycling back, served as inspiration for Eastwood’s Man with No Name). But the writers of the show were really smart, and address it within the story. When Ringo complains she doesn’t act like a samurai would, she turns and angrily shouts: “I never said I am one.” It’s a sign of well thought-out screenwriting, and I like it very much. Kudos to the storytellers: now, will they make the show eventually deliver what the title promises?
I was less impressed with the music. More than once the people responsible seemed to think, “As long as it’s cool, everything is fine” – an attitude I personally don’t agree with at all. For example, in a training montage of Mizu, the famous “Battle Without Honor Or Humanity” by Tomoyasu Hotei plays. Sure, a cool tune from a Japanese composer. But it’s modern music and – though first used somewhere else – so closely associated with Kill Bill, it really felt like a misstep. Other popular pieces, e.g. by the Black Cats or Metallica, have even less justification. You tell a story in 17th century Japan, please apply music that fits the time period. And partly the show feels like a check-list of everything you ever heard or saw in the West about classic Japanese culture, from bunraku (classical puppet theatre) through geishas, samurai, Zen-like philosophy, sword-making, kimonos, calligraphy and so on and on. You name it, they have it.
With regard to the cultural depictions, I wasn’t happy with the fact these obviously Japanese characters were speaking in English, to the point I even checked for a Japanese dub option (no luck). It felt like the creators sent out a casting call for any Hollywood voice talent with somewhat Asian origins, e.g. Song, born in California to Thai parents, and having Kenneth Branagh putting on a dodgy Irish accent doesn’t help. Were all genuinely Celtic actors unavailable?
Episode 6 really knocked my socks off. It played virtually like a computer game: think Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft going through different levels of the game, plus elements from Resident Evil for good measure. I’m not saying it was bad. so much as unexpected. It’s also a point when it became harder to suspend my disbelief concerning Mizu’s abilities. I mean, how many people can you still fight, after one of your feet gets perforated? Or fighting a dozen-plus armed men without a weapon? Or carrying a man on her back, hanging from her sword on a stone wall, then climbing with said sword in her mouth (!) to safety on higher ground? Are we really sure she is not the child of a supernatural monster? I’m willing to believe this woman is exceptional, but this was a bit much. Mizu gets dangerously close to the superheroes of popular comic-book movies who can do anything, and usually do.
Part 6 was my favourite of the entire show, because it removed all the extraneous elements (hello, Taigen, Ringo and Akemi!), leaving it a blow-dart episode – all it had was point, simply Mizu fighting her way inexorably towards her goal. Which was what I came here to see, frankly.
What saves the character’s depiction again and again, is the makers never make it easy for her. She bleeds a lot over the course of the story. Mizu is shown making mistakes, and is not a hero since, as much as you sympathize with her goal, it is in the end selfish. I attribute the fact she survives this season to her remarkable physical skills, absolute die-hard dedication to her self-set cause, the help of her (very often smarter) allies and an enormous portion of luck. Which… works for me, though I’d have wished for a bit more realism in a show that explicitly is not fantasy. What is impressive is the visual style. A lot of work went into the landscapes, the backgrounds, and probably researching how ancient Japanese houses, buildings and temples looked. There are a lot of little details that you may overlook when watching the show for the first time. Also, as expected, the voice performances by actors such as Erskine, Takei, Branagh, Tagawa and many others are excellent.
I agree, the animation was great, especially in the action scenes, which were probably as good as anything I’ve seen this side of a Miyazaki movie. Fluid, and assembled in a way that certainly seemed cinematic. It was often easy to forget you were watching animation, and that’s close to the highest praise I can give the medium. Plot-wise, the main storyline was also excellent. I loved the fact that Mizu is single-mindedly focused on her revenge. That it might help avoid the Shogun being overthrown is utterly irrelevant to her.
It must be said that Mizu herself is a character ‘work in progress’. As mentioned, less a hero, than driven by years of abuse, mistreatment, non-acceptance, anxiety and sheer hatred. I guess any little boy with red hair and glasses who was harassed in class can understand her. The feeling of not being part of society or a group, of being rejected due to just being how you are, is something many people will identify with. Though again: does it justify a violent rampage on a merciless one-woman war against the person that fathered you? Hardly. The feeling is softened by the fact Abijah Fowler, who may be her biological father, is a real piece of abhorrent trash. He is a disgusting, almost inhuman, pervert, who deserves his just deserts.
Interestingly, the final fight between Mizu and Fowler is the catalyst for the fire of 1657 which devastated Edo (today’s Tokyo). Perhaps the message here is, if you follow only your own egotistic trail – Mizu’s wish for revenge and Fowler’s to take over Japan – you risk turning into a destructive force that causes more harm than good. I hope Mizu might realize her thirst for revenge is not the best motive, but rather acting to prevent the mayhem Fowler and his people would bring to the world if allowed to run it. This would make Mizu a real heroine and earn her my respect. Perhaps indicators for such a development can be spotted when Mizu decides to save her “frenemy” Taigen from death. If the show is willing to follow this developing character trait, it could evolve into something very beautiful and extra-ordinary. We will see.
It ends on something of a cliff-hanger, without much resolved. Yet where it’s going has me genuinely interested, and it’s quite possible the (already announced) second season may end up addressing most of the issues. In particular, some of the more annoying characters look likely to be left behind!
In a time where female protagonists get everything they need or want on a platter, without having to do the hard work, make difficult decisions or sacrifices, a character like Mizu feels different. She has character flaws, feels pain and has to become a better person, not just to achieve her own goals, but better the world around her. That is what popular fiction needs right now, and Hollywood screenwriters should take notice. That’s how you should write a character: flawed, not perfect. If your character can already do everything and is perfect you end up with boring, bland characters like Rey or Captain Marvel. So, while still a bit too superwoman and “Xena-ish” for me, Mizu is a big step in the right direction. Despite some complaints, the show as a whole exceeds the large majority of current female-centered TV and films. I hope it might inspire other producers to learn from its example. This is how you do female empowerment right, without hitting both sexes of your audience on the head with messages or propaganda.
Creators: Amber Noizumi and Michael Green Star (voice): Maya Erskine, Masi Oka, Kenneth Branagh, Darren Barnet
It’s kinda interesting to compare this to Mercy Falls. Both concern an ill-fated trip into a scenic wilderness – all trees and waterfalls – by a group of friends, which goes increasingly off the rails. The main difference is, in Mercy, the call was coming from inside the house, as it were. Here, the threat is definitely external. The target is four friends, just finished high school and about to enter the world at large. Jesse (Oulette) will work as a mechanic; his girlfriend Alex (Waisglass) wants to leave their small town and go to college, but hasn’t plucked up the courage to tell Jesse yet. Making matters more complex, her father is part of the Dark Saints, a biker gang and generally criminal enterprise.
This matters, because the Dark Saints just lost a shipment of drugs, the plane carrying it having crashed in a remote region of a nearby national park. Their minions are on the hunt for it, but – what are the odds? – Alex and her friends are first to stumble across it. A discussion ensues about what to do, but it’s all rendered moot after they cross paths with the minions. Before you can say, “implausible plot line,” Jesse has broken his leg and he, plus another of the quartet, pregnant pal Em (Laflamme-Snow) have been captured by the bad guys. It’s up to Alex to figure out what to do, as the only member of the group left able to operate freely.
Which is fortunate, since she’s also the smartest of the people wandering in the woods, and it’s not even close. Let’s just say, pond life would likely rate second or third place among these people, and I’m including both the hikers and the minions in those rankings. Seeing her mental wheels spinning as she out-thinks and outmanoeuvres her enemies is one of the few pleasures this offers. But it’s like watching a grand master playing chess against a pigeon. The only genuine and credible threat is her Dad and the Dark Saints, and they don’t show up until the very end of proceedings. With Alex’s witless friends, dumb and/or unlikable, the ones in peril, the stakes here aren’t enough to engage the viewer either.
I will say, the film does look half-decent, with Diego Guijarro’s cinematography popping nicely off the screen, and the Canadian backdrop is scenic. But too often, the film pulls its punches, whether it’s a character leaping off the waterfalls, depicted with them simply vanishing out of sight, or a pivotal car crash in which it appears no vehicles were actually harmed. This might as well be a TVM, with only the potty-mouths of some inhabitants meriting more than a PG rating. It’s all blandly innocuous, and despite Waisglass’s best efforts, it never gels. Things like Em’s pregnancy, for instance, feel like an afterthought, which goes nowhere and seems like nothing more than a cheap ploy to get audience sympathy. Memo to the film-makers: it didn’t work.
Dir: Egidio Coccimiglio Star: Sara Waisglass, Joel Oulette, Sadie Laflamme-Snow
This shouldn’t be confused with the BBC series of the same name announced last year. This is very definitely American, another in the ongoing series of urban crime movies which seem to pop up, with some regularity on the likes of Tubi. I keep watching them, in the hope they’ll be good, but am usually disappointed, mostly due to cheap-jack production values and repetitive story-lines. This is at least watchable in the former department, though is definitely marked down for a startlingly abrupt “To be continued” ending. I hate cliff-hangers in books: they do not work any better on movies, and this isn’t exactly Dune Part One, shall we say. Not least because it runs only 75 minutes, including end-credits.
This begins with the young Helena, living deep in the woods with her mother and father, Jacob (Mendelsohn). He’s teaching her the ways of the forest, including hunting and the need to be ruthless, with the top priority expressed in the tagline above. However, things aren’t quite what they seem: it feels like it could be a century ago, yet the tranquil illusion is shattered when a lost stranger on an ATV rides up. Mom makes a break for freedom with Helena, for it seems this is actually a kidnapping which has gone on for a long time. Fast forward twenty years: Jacob is in prison, mom killed herself and Helena (Ridley) is working a dead-end job, but married to Stephen (Hedlund), and with a daughter, Marigold.
This certainly wastes no time. Malina (Martens) regains consciousness to find herself in the trunk of a car stopped at a petrol station. Things get worse, as she discovers her legs are paralyzed, and she has a nasty wound in her lower abdomen. How did she get there? And more importantly, what can she do to escape her predicament? It’s certainly one hell of a hook, and in the way it hits the ground running – as well as its Germanic origins, almost real-time approach and the plucky heroine with a sketchy boyfriend, forced to survive on her own – reminded me of 
Great poster. Solid trailer. In the light of those, unfortunately, the film can only be described as a significant disappointment. While it’s good, and occasionally 
This is a question posed by the bad guy (Fears) towards the end of this, and of course, he provides the usual explanation in response: “It’s doing the same thing, expecting different results.” After watching this, I would choose to adjust it slightly. A valid definition of insanity is making the same movie, and expecting different results. Because it is, more or less, what Rankins has done here: it’s a remake of his own movie from fourteen years ago, 
One of the shows we enjoy watching here is Alone, in which ten contestants are dropped off in a hostile location – typically chilly – with limited resources. The last one left standing wins $500,000. It’s a simple concept, yet endlessly fascinating. We sit on our comfortable couch, eating Doritos and passing comment on the failing of the competitors. Especially so when they are hoist by their own stupidity, such as losing their means of starting a fire. This feels not dissimilar, except rather than a survival expert, it’s a woman who finds herself thrown into utterly inhospitable circumstances, and forced to make do by any means necessary – not just for her own survival, but that of her new-born child.
Oh, dear. I appreciate that actors have to work, like everyone else. Van Dien, in particular, has a reputation in our house as someone whose name is not typically a badge of quality. But it’s sad to see Suvari is now apparently in the same career boat. I can only presume the offers aren’t exactly flooding in, if this is the work she has to take on. It’s another variant on the old Most Dangerous Game story-line. Here, it sees redneck entrepreneur Carter (Van Dien) luring in women with the promise of $100,000, while remaining vague on the details. Turns out the victims then are pursued through the forest and have to survive for 24 hours. Spoiler: they don’t.
After the impressive surprise which was 
Jim: ★★★
But first things first: despite its title and the location (Japan in 1657 in the Edo era) Blue Eye Samurai is – an American product, so certain allowances have to be made. While I do love a story of female persistence, this 8-part show pushes the limits of believability. We have to accept that, at a time when foreigners are forbidden to be in Japan, not only there is such a person living there, but also this man fathered a daughter. This means she is half-Caucasian, half-Japanese and therefore considered a “demon”, harassed by pure-blood Japanese who have never seen such a stranger in their country. She will then become a trained “samurai” – quotes used advisedly, as we’ll see – with the appropriate sword skills.
The show certainly ticks all the diversity check-boxes with its characters. We have a biracial female who taught herself everything, a repressed (though in the context of the era “spoiled” might be more accurate?) lord’s daughter, a helpful assistant born with no hands, a blind sword-maker, while an old white man is the perverse, cruel villain, and women have no say in society, serving as servants or prostitutes. Did I forget anything? Despite it all, this feels acceptable given the time and place in which the story occurs.
This was not a problem for me. Indeed, I would have been disappointed had it been any other way! The “garden hose” approach to blood has long been a mainstay of Japanese cinema, certainly back as far as the early seventies and the Lone Wolf & Cub films – a staple of Western VHS stores under the title of Shogun Assassin. Realism isn’t a factor, and this is an area where animation can really push the pedal to the metal, being unconstrained by the limits of latex and Karo syrup. 
It must be said that Mizu herself is a character ‘work in progress’. As mentioned, less a hero, than driven by years of abuse, mistreatment, non-acceptance, anxiety and sheer hatred. I guess any little boy with red hair and glasses who was harassed in class can understand her. The feeling of not being part of society or a group, of being rejected due to just being how you are, is something many people will identify with. Though again: does it justify a violent rampage on a merciless one-woman war against the person that fathered you? Hardly. The feeling is softened by the fact Abijah Fowler, who may be her biological father, is a real piece of abhorrent trash. He is a disgusting, almost inhuman, pervert, who deserves his just deserts.
It’s kinda interesting to compare this to