Tag: 2023

Bang Bang Betty

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★★½
“Why not Kill-shot Kiara?”

If I was feeling mean, I’d have tagged this as “Pretty shitty Bang Bang”. But while undoubtedly amusing, that wouldn’t be 100% fair. For in the field of low-budget urban action heroines, this is actually better than most. Now, by broader standards, that’s still not exactly great. However, I’ve seen enough of the genre to appreciate and welcome mere technical proficiency. Simply by having decent audio, I was already impressed. It’s the story of Kiara Sommers (Nunno-Brown), a former soldier who is now a prosecuting attorney. During a meet with one of her informants, she is shot and left for dead, but rescued by another veteran, Ray Smith (Parrish) and nursed back to health. [I’ve vague memories of a Chow Yun-Fat film with this plot]

She’s then able to take revenge on the man responsible, local crime-lord Darnell (Walzer). Which is a bit awkward, because he is her boyfriend. There’s also Valerie Mendez (Hernandez), who used to be a colleague of Kiara in the army, and is now walking a dangerous line, playing for both sides, as a cop and an inside woman for Darnell. It feels as if considerably more thought has gone into this than many in this field, whose plot could typically be written on the back of a beer-mat, and leave room for your pint. Some other elements also deserve praise, such as a soundtrack which isn’t just the director’s rapper mates on shuffle (though there is still a fair bit of that).

While Nunoo-Brown and Hernandez are decent enough in their roles, there are several elements that manage to stop this reaching three stars, which would be close to an all-time high for the genre. There’s a serious question over Kiara’s complete ignorance of her boyfriend being a organized crime boss. I mean, really? Some of the supporting cast are not very good: Walzer in particular struggles with his delivery. There’s also a point where a significant character is killed in front of another. It should have a devastating impact, yet their lack of reaction is notable. A few minutes later in the film, they’re cracking wise with Kiara and Valerie. The bruising on Valerie’s face is a continuity disaster. 

My biggest issue, however, was the bad CGI. The muzzle flashes were marginally acceptable, but the explosions are poor, and the CGI blood close to the worst I’ve ever seen. Having no blood at all would have been a vast improvement. It’s a particular shame, as some of the hand-to-hand action is decent enough (again, compared to what I’ve seen previously), with both lead actresses occasionally impressing. I did laugh when Valerie attempted a lucha libre throw on Darnell’s henchman, only to be tossed aside, and told “That superhero shit doesn’t work in real life, does it?” More of this degree of self-awareness might have been welcome, yet it’s probably wise not to ask for too much. I’ll settle for competence, and there’s just enough here to leave me mildly interested in the sequel, already in post-production: Bang Bang Betty – Valerie’s Revenge.

Dir: Alexander T. Hwang
Star: Kakra Nunoo-Brown, Gerald Parrish, Emily Rose Hernandez, Marc Anthony Walzer

Dangerous Waters

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★★
“Dangerously stupid.”

This was Ray Liotta’s last movie: he died during shooting. Cruel though it may be, I can’t help wondering if he died of embarrassment. Certainly, I note that his character never gets a proper send-off: while I must remain vague for spoiler purposes, you don’t see his face. Not that he’s in this much. A rambling conversation with the heroine is the bulk of it. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. We begin with single mom Alma (Burrows) dragging unwilling teen daughter Rose (Rush) on a sailing trip from Florida to Barbados. The boat belongs to her new boyfriend, ex-cop Derek (Dane), and at first, things are pleasant, despite Rose’s obvious desire to be anywhere else but on the high seas.

She’s right to be concerned. A mysterious encounter in the middle of the night leaves one of the passengers dead, and the other two having to fend for themselves, on a badly crippled craft. Turns out, Derek wasn’t quite the above board law enforcement officer Alma thought. He was in cahoots with some very nasty people, in particular one individual known only as The Captain (Liotta). Surviving will require Rose to get on a liferaft, go to a desert island, get back on the liferaft, and finally get picked up by the boat belonging to The Captain. Fortunately, she is both the daughter of a deceased soldier, and has taken shooting lessons. Who better to take out a ship full of hardened criminals?

Yeah, that whirring sound are my eyes rolling. It’s all pretty dumb and largely implausible. I’m not sure what’s less credible: Rush as a teenager, or Burrows as a woman in her late thirties [Put it this way: I’d like to wish a happy 25th birthday in July to Saffron’s performance in Deep Blue Sea] Then there’s the plot, which wanders round in circles aimlessly, between sporadic bouts of action. I guess it gives the viewer plenty of time to try and figure out what Derek’s plan was supposed to be. Similarly, Rose swings between being an unbeatable bad-ass, and whimpering in the corner or unable to hold an oar. But since the movie opens with Rose telling her story to law enforcement, there’s no tension or threat to her. We know she’s going to survive. 

I will say, it looks slick, and the action is fairly well-staged, especially once we get to the boat. This is certainly watchable, though I almost dozed off during one of the longer liferaft sequences. It’s the story that’s the problem here, not least because the big surprises are little or no surprise at all. Maybe the unscheduled loss of Liotta, and the obvious rewrite required was a factor. However, that tragedy can only go so far in explaining the welter of problems with the story. It’s the kind of thing which might pass muster as a TV movie on a lower-tier cable channel. I was expecting more, and certainly, Liotta deserves better as a memorial. 

Dir: John Barr
Star: Odeya Rush, Eric Dane, Saffron Burrows, Ray Liotta

Dope Girls

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★★
“Welcome to the dope show.”

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

The Marsh King’s Daughter

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★★½
“Always protect your family.”

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

Trunk: Locked In

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★★★½
“Difficulty booting up”

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 

Til Death Do Us Part

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★★
“Bored til death, more like…”

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 Kill Bill – 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

Jack Squad 2: The Next Generation

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★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. 

Dir: Simuel Denell Rankins 
Star: DeShon Green, Samiah Alexander, Tinesha Lynn, Gregory J. Fears

Nowhere

  By

★★★
“Survival of the fittest.”

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

Hunt Club

  By

★½
“Stupid hunts.”

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

Call Her King

  By

★★½
“Tries hard to be Trial Hard“

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