Tag: 2024

Snatched

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★★½
“Everything comes to he who waits. Eventually.”

The title here seems quite deliberately a nod towards Taken, which similarly has an ex-government operative chewing up and spitting out bad guys, after they make the fatal mistake of abducting the operative’s child. In this case, it’s CIA operative Angela (Bozeman), who lost her husband Jason in murky circumstances, but subsequently put away Dmitri (Weber), the criminal mastermind responsible. Now, six years later, she can get on with living her life, bringing up son Jason Jr. (Cheatham), and hanging out with fellow agent Byron, who seems a possible husband replacement. Well, until Dmitri escapes from prison and starts killing off everyone he considers responsible for putting him behind bars.

Sooner or later – and as we’ll see, it’s not the former – that brings him into Angela’s circle, and ends up in him kidnapping Junior, with the aim of luring her into his (very well-appointed, it has to be said; I particularly liked the chandelier) lair. However, he doesn’t realize what he has done. Once this all gets going, it’s not bad. If hardly seeming an accurate portrayal of CIA practices, unless they’re utterly slipshot and incompetent, it’s kinda fun as long as you don’t ask awkward questions. Such as, where the heck does Angela get those groovy remote-controlled gun-toting little cars? Was Andy Sidaris having an estate sale? Dmitri also has a groovy bad-ass sidekick, Sophia (Camille Osborne), though her fight with Angela is disappointingly brief.

The problem is mostly the long, meandering, roundabout and largely uninteresting way in which the story gets to the amusing stuff. The first half or more is largely comprised of extremely conversational scenes of merely passing interest. In these, Angela talks to Byron about wanting to retire. Or talks to Junior about the realities of her career. Or talks to her mother, Carolyn (Hubert), about her not really a relationship with Byron. Dear lord, it’s far from the action-packed trailer, and you would certainly be forgiven if you gave up on all this soapy drama. Though I was eventually entertained by Carolyn’s ability to kick ass in a grandmotherly way, like Pam Grier on an AARP outing. At least until she encounters Sophia, anyway.

The score above is likely a composite, with two stars for the first half and three for the second, when things do reach an acceptable level of entertainment. Bozeman seems better known as a singer, but does a decent job of portraying the highly upset mother, and has a terse style of close-combat that is effective. On the plus side, it is quite gory, with a number of head-shots and other fairly graphic deaths. On the minus side, these are mostly CGI, as is apparent from the blood spray never landing on anything in the environment. You probably want to have something on hand for the sluggish early proceedings: either a good book, some snacks or an alcoholic beverage would all serve that purpose.

Dir: Chris Stokes
Star: Veronika Bozeman, Charlie Weber, Jered Cheatham, Janet Hubert

Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver

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★★
“The law of diminishing returns.”

And that rating is from someone who, unlike most critics, really didn’t mind the first part. I’m a fan of big, bombastic science-fiction, best exemplified by The Chronicles of Riddick. [Why nobody has ever thrown $150 million at Michael Bay for that kind of thing, I don’t know. And, no, the Transformers franchise does not count. And neither does Armageddon] I want to see square-jawed heroes or heroines, going toe-to-toe with irredeemably unpleasant villains, as burning spaceships fall from the sky behind them, onto the surface of an exotic planet. While Part One of this was heavy on the world-building and character development, at least we got all that out of the way, and could look forward to a second half of non-stop action.

Couldn’t we?

Um. Well. About that… All I can say is, combine the two, give them to a enthusiastic editor, who can merge them into a single, coherent movie of round about two hours, and you could well be onto something. Now, I like Snyder: or, rather, I used to. 300 is great, and I will honestly defend Sucker Punch as a genuinely good movie, especially in the director’s cut. But since then? Nothing has come up to the early work. You eventually reach this, the poster child for what happens when you give someone $166 million, and let them do whatever they want creatively, without apparent significant oversight. A visually impressive, but bloated and self-indulgent mess, lacking any significant heart. 

Things follow quickly on from its predecessor, Kota (Boutella) returning to Veldt with the warriors accumulated in Part One, who will protect her settlement from the evil Admiral Noble (Skrein) and his forces. For Noble is not as dead as Kota hoped at the end of the first half, which is a nasty surprise to her. Inevitably, we get the “training the locals for battle” sequence, but we also get an extended “bringing in the harvest” sequence, and a very extended “why don’t we all sit around and reveal secrets about our dark past and what the hell is Snyder doing, can’t he hurry up and get to the fighting” sequence. My attention and interest dwindled steadily throughout the first hour and more.

Eventually – and I stress that, eventually – we get to the cool stuff, and it’s not bad. Snyder does undeniably retain an eye for spectacle, and this does deliver eye-candy for those fond of giant fireballs (hey, sue me). However, it’s all empty: sound and fury, signifying nothing, and you’re left to try and work around wonky plotting which has a few farmers taking down the galactic rulers after a couple of lessons, going little further than “Stick ’em with the pointy end.” It helps, I suppose that Noble’s craft have a tendency to explode so easily, I suspect a recall from the manufacturer’s is in order. I imagine this may end up taking Snyder’s plans for a Rebel Moon Universe with it.

Dir: Zack Snyder
Star: Sofia Boutella, Ed Skrein, Charlie Hunnam, Michiel Huisman

Calamity Jane

  By

★★★
“Calamity Plain.”

Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok are two of the most well-known names in the culture of the Wild West, though the reality of both individuals is almost impossible to separate from the myths which surround them. So it’s kinda pointless to complain about historical accuracy in films which focus on them. Better just accept them as effectively being fictional entities, which can be used for whatever purpose a filmmaker desires. Here, it’s the death of Wild Bill (Stephen Amell, best known as TV’s Arrow) in a poker game, which sets his girlfriend Jane (Rickards, also from the same series) off. She goes on the trail of Jack McCall (Allon), the scumbag responsible, who has understandably opted to depart Deadwood. 

Complicating matters is that Jane is in custody herself, having been brought to the frontier town by Sheriff Mason (Rozen), to stand trial for murder. She escapes his custody – as Chris pointed out, Mason is a bit crap at the whole law enforcement thing – and heads off after McCall and his equally scummy brother. Mason assembles a (again, rather feeble and unimpressive) posse to go after the two suspected killers. Most of the second half is an extended pursuit through some very scenic landscapes, it must be said. There are a fair number of moderate diversions before the inevitable and entirely expected confrontation between Jane and Jack, as she seeks to get vengeance, or perhaps justice, for her murdered lover.

I think I like the characters here most. Rickards gives a winning portrayal as Jane, despite an unnerving similarity to one of the members of Bananarama (perhaps that’s just me though), and the supporting cast also do a good job of inhabiting their roles. It is fairly straightforward: black hats and white hats, with not much grey in terms of morality. In this way, it feels like a throwback to an earlier time. Along similar lines, while the language is fairly ripe, with a good number of F-bombs, the violence is very restrained by comparison. I feel if a film is going to have an R-rating, the makers need to embrace that artistic freedom fully, yet outside of the cursing, this would likely merit only a PG. 

Among the supporting cast, the best is Abigail (Faia), who is entirely mad, and all the more entertaining for it. She boasts of the multiple people she’s killed, keeping a count with scars on her arms – I’d love to see a film of her back-story. She and Jane end up in a very nasty brawl, likely the action highlight of the film, with everything else being gunfights of the “Bang-bang, you’re dead” variety. While it’s all well enough assembled, there isn’t much indication of ambition or desire to tell a new story, or even an old one from an interesting direction. As a result, this only intermittently catches fire, preferring mostly to meander along safely, well within the speed limit and with its seat-belt securely fastened.

Dir: Terry Miles
Star: Emily Bett Rickards, Tim Rozon, Primo Allon, Priscilla Faia

Damsel

  By

★★★
“Dis dress in distress.”

Brown is definitely among Netflix’s golden girls. After breaking out with an ensemble role in Stranger Things, she has taken an action turn, starring in Enola Holmes plus its sequel, and now is in this unconventional fable. If I was feeling snarky, I’d say I liked this better the first time I saw it, when it was called The Princess. That’s a little harsh, though I did feel it was superior. For example, this feels like it takes longer to get going, with Princess Elodie (Brown), daughter of a poor kingdom, married off by her father, Lord Bayford (Winstone), to Prince Henry, the scion of the rich land of Aurea, in a fairy-tale wedding. 

If you’ve seen the trailer you’ll know this isn’t as nice as it seems. Turns out Elodie is (eventually) intended as the latest in a long line of human sacrifices, for the dragon living in a nearby mountain, to keep it from torching Aurea. But she has no interest in going down in flames, and will do whatever it takes to survive and escape. This mostly involves ripping off bits from her wedding dress, to the point I wondered if it’d end with a nude Elodie, storming the Aurea castle, with a dagger in her teeth [Pauses to check we’re on legal turf with that mental image… Yep, please proceed] But she also discovers things are more complex than they seem, with the dragon having her own motivation. 

Bits of this work very well. The fire effects are often spectacular, and whoever cast Aghdashloo as the dragon deserves a raise. Her voice, which sounds like she has gargled battery acid for a decade, is just perfect. Fresnadillo has a decent visual style as well, although the CGI world is sometimes a little too obvious. However, the narrative doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. We have to believe the whole human sacrifice thing, or even the dragon, are a secret unknown to anyone outside the kingdom. Then there’s the way – spoiler alert – Elodie and the dragon end up on the same side, even after it kills her father. And a key plot point sees the dragon hurt by its own fire. Y’know, the stuff it has been repeatedly gargling?

The message here is fairly misanthropic too, none of the male characters being worth a shredded wedding dress. [Its release on International Women’s Day was particularly cringe] Should be no surprise that it ends in her basically going full Daenerys Targaryen, though much as in Enola, Brown’s character feels rather anachronistic. I’d like to have more of the supporting cast, in particular Queen Isabelle of Aurea (Robin Wright, evoking memories of her role in The Princess Bride), and Elodie’s stepmother, Lady Bayford (Angela Bassett). The former in particular is fun to watch. I’d rather have seen her play the heroine: “Hello, my name is Princess Buttercup. You tried to feed me to a dragon. Prepare to die.” Oh, well: guess this will have to do.

Dir: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Star: Millie Bobby Brown, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Ray Winstone, Brooke Carter

Fool Me Once

  By

★★★½
“An elegant exercise in plate-spinning.”

Maya Stern (Keegan) is having a rough patch. A former helicopter pilot in the military, she was sent home and discharged under murky circumstances. While she was away, her sister was killed in what looks like a botched burglary, and not long after her return, husband Joe is also shot and killed in front of Maya, when they are walking in the park. But is everything what it seems? Because when checking the nanny-cam monitoring her young daughter, Maya sees a shocking site: her supposedly dead husband visiting the house. This kicks Maya into an unrelenting search for the truth, which will send her down a rabbit-hole and uncover a lot of sordid secrets, dating back decades.

I have to admire the script here, which takes an entire loom-ful of plot threads, and manages adeptly to keep them functioning, instead of collapsing into a Gordian knot. As well as all of Maya’s difficulties, there’s [deep breath]: the ongoing health issues of investigating officer, DC Marty McGreggor (Fetscher), who might or might not be corrupt; her nephew and niece discovering they have a half-brother; the supposed suicide of Joe’s brother decades previously; mysterious phone-calls from a video arcade; a dead body in a freezer; and the business shenanigans of Joe’s family, who run a pharmaceutical company under the watchful gaze of matriarch Judith Burkett (Lumley). I was genuinely impressed it all tied together by the end of the eighth episode.

Admittedly, the twists might prove to be excessive for some tastes, and I did spot the big one at the end before it arrived (it’s something I’ve seen in various forms a number of times elsewhere). But I enjoy the almost melodramatic approach, even if the relocation of the story from the United States to Britain required some twistiness around the topic of firearms. Keegan delivers a committed performance as Maya, who is far from perfect, yet relentless in pursuit of “justice” – and quotes used very advisedly there. I also loved seeing Lumley, who was my first celeb crush – longer ago than I like to think, back in her New Avengers days. Now 77 and still awesome, someone needs to make her a Dame, alongside Judi and Helen.

I was uncertain about whether or not this qualified here, but I think the final episode delivered the necessary amount of bad-assery from Maya. It does suffer from an unnecessary coda, set eighteen years (!) after the plot basically finished, and therefore presumably at some point in the future. Still no flying cars, unfortunately. I’ve not read the book on which this is based, but this is certainly much more engaging than the turgid Hulu mystery, Murder at the End of the World. I’d definitely not be averse to watching other adaptations of Harlan Coben work. Turns out this is the eighth made by Netflix, though the others are presumably Maya free, because… well, let’s just say “reasons”, and leave it at that!

Creator: Danny Brocklehurst
Star:  Michelle Keegan, Dino Fetscher, Joanna Lumley. Dänya Griver

Griselda

  By

★★★★
“Calor blanco”

This is far from the first time we’ve covered films, series or documentaries about Griselda Blanco, the drug boss who ruled Miami with a lead fist in the eighties. There was Colombia narconovela La Viuda Negra. Lifetime TVM Cocaine Godmother, starring the not exactly Colombian, Catherine Zeta-Jones. And there was factual retelling, Queen of Cocaine. Now, we get the highest-profile version, made by Netflix and starring probably Colombia’s best-known actress. Albeit best-known for her role in long-running sitcom, Modern Family. We saw her here previously in the underwhelming Hot Pursuit, but this is a very different kettle of fish. Concern was understandable. Would she be up to the dramatic lifting required for such a heavy and complex role?

Yes. That’s the short answer. She does a fine job of depicting a character whose defining trait, in this rendition, is single-minded determination. It’s an aspect apparent from the start, where she flees her abusive husband in Medellin. Griselda arrives in Miami with her three kids, and little more than the clothes on her back. Oh, and the kilo of top-shelf cocaine, swiped from her spouse. Through sheer refusal to take no for an answer, she finds a buyer and convinces him to give her a shot [she meets him in Miami’s Mutiny club – Chris was actually a member there back in the day!]. When he stiffs her, she reels in a Colombian supplier, convinces him to front her 100 kilos, then creates her own market and network of dealers.

It’s kinda inspiring, weirdly. Early on, the series can be seen a twisted version of the American dream, where an immigrant can come to America, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and anyone can achieve success if they work hard. The reality is, Blanco didn’t arrive in Miami seeking asylum from domestic abuse, but fleeing increased law-enforcement heat for drug trafficking in New York. Not exactly what Vergara described the show as, depicting “How beyond all odds, a poor uneducated woman from Colombia managed to create a massive, multi-billion dollar empire in a male-dominated industry, in a country that was not her own.” You go, #girlboss! #slay!

Often literally. For her chosen profession here is thoroughly illegal, and the hard work involves ordering brutal violence against your rivals and enemies. This might be a cause for concern. But who are we to quibble? The makers have said they didn’t want to make a hero(ine) out of her. Neither did Brian de Palma, and yet, you can buy Scarface T-shirts. The market decides for you, and the way it depicts the violence for which Blanco is responsible seems more like an attempt at plausible deniability. It’s the usual double standard of Hollywood: making disapproving noises, while also depicting Griselda strutting glamourously out of the Mutiny, blood spattered on her cheek from a recent victim. 

Griselda has a strict zero-tolerance for anyone who thinks she is a soft mark because she’s a woman. Especially in the early part of her career, was quite willing to wield a baseball bat or gun to that end. Later on… well, she had people for that sort of thing. But as we head into the second half, things get progressively darker. Griselda starts to become paranoid, suspecting the people around her – an attitude not helped by her taste for smoking crack. She believes there’s an informant in her circle, and takes brutal action against those who she thinksit might be. Things peak at a birthday party for Dario (Guerra), her third husband. It ends in Griselda letting loose with her gold-plated MAC-10 (top).

The irony is, there’s no informant: just good police work. For on the other side of the law, the series gives us June Hawkins (Martinez, bottom), intelligence analyst and detective in the local police force. She was also a real person, one who played a significant role in the pursuit and capture of Griselda, being one of the first to realize a woman had taken over the drug trade in Miami. I suspect her role was likely inflated somewhat, in order to act as a counterpoint to her target: co-creator Doug Miro admitted about the character, “There’s a fair amount of artistic license.” That applies to the whole series, though I’m not inclined to complain.

It is a fairly straightforward rise-and-fall, charting first Griselda’s path up to the top, when she was earning $80 million per month. This is followed by the slow but likely inevitable collapse, as her business rivals and law enforcement catch up with her. We know how the story eventually ends – in a pool of blood outside a Medellin butcher’s shop. The series doesn’t bother going all the way to the end. It finishes with Blanco released from jail, sitting on the beach. But it’s not a happy ending, having just been told that she has lost almost everything for which she worked: three of her four sons have been murdered. Conventional morality wins out in the end.

In terms of production value, this is definitely several slices above the other efforts, even if Los Angeles stood in entirely for Miami (the latter no longer resembling what it was at the time). Of particular note is the make-up work on Vergara. It must have been a challenge, because events unfold over a significant number of years: your lead is, obviously, more or less fixed at a point in time. Initially, there’s little of note, but it gradually builds up, in a way that’s so subtle you might not notice. Until, by the end, you suddenly realize the character no longer looks like the actress. Though still rather prettier than the real Griselda.

I highly doubt this will end up being the final or even the definitive version of the Griselda Blanco story. The last surviving son, Michael Corleone, filed suit against Netflix, and reports indicate he has his own version of the family story he would like to tell. For now, however, this is the best adaptation of her life. If obviously skewed towards a questionable message of feminist “empowerment” which the makers wanted to send, Vargas’s strong performance holds the strands together and makes for a captivating experience. 

Dir: Andrés Baiz
Star: Sofía Vergara, Alberto Guerra, Martin Rodriguez, Juliana Aidén Martinez

Madame Web

  By

★★★
“Adventures in Babysitting.”

Having read quite a number of articles on (p)reviews for this movie and now having seen it myself, I’m beginning to think you can buy negative reviews to torpedo product that might compete with yours. I’ve seen this before, e. g. when the press tore down John Carter so that The Hunger Games could become the defining blockbuster franchise of the decade. Or when it became very obvious Disney had ties to RottenTomatoes.com: the Internet may recall this as the “Great Captain Marvel online war” :) It seems this takes place in particular with comic-book or superhero movies not from Disney/Marvel. It happened regularly with the X-Men movies, when 20th Century Fox still existed as an independent studio. It happened when the – admittedly, very often not so good – DC movies came out: neither Black Adam nor Aquaman 2 were as bad as the reviews made them.

And now, it seems to happen with “Sony’s Spider-Man Universe” (SSU). That the quality of these vary greatly is not in question. Of course they do. While the Spider-Man films with Tom Holland are beloved by fans, and seem to be well-regarded by critics, things don’t look so bright for the extended universe Sony is building. The first Venom movie with Tom Hardy was torn down by the media, but cheered by the cinema-going masses; the second was similarly split. Then Morbius with Jared Leto got almost entirely negative reviews and that trend continues with Madame Web. Things don’t look good for Kraven the Hunter, another entry in the universe due out later this year.

I’ll be honest and admit it: Madame Web is not a great cinematic revelation, it’s definitely not the “must-see” superhero film of the year and probably won’t blow your socks off. But – and this is where I feel I get justifiably angry – “not great” is not the same as “bad”. I’m coming to the conclusion you can’t trust sites like Rotten Tomatoes, and you shouldn’t read reviews before you watch. A movie review (and this counts for mine too) can’t tell if you will like a movie or not. Follow your instinct and make up your own mind, that’s my friendly advice to the dedicated film-goer. This is not to say Madame Web is perfect entertainment. But I will defend it against anyone saying it is a “bad” movie. You may call it bland, boring or mediocre if you like, but that’s not the same. I’ve seen enough bad movies in my lifetime to know, bad looks very different.

So, what’s up with Madame Web? The film starts in the South American jungle, where pregnant scientist Constance (Kerry Bishé) seeks a specific spider for its medical uses, but is killed by assistant Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), who wants the spider for himself. Apparently – though it is never explained how – he uses it to become a wealthy and still astonishingly young looking man (this prologue happens in 1973, than jumps to 2003, so he should be around 60?). The so-called “spider people” can’t save Constance, who was bitten by a spider before giving birth, but give her daughter up for adoption.

Jump forward to 2003. Cassandra “Cassy” Webb (Johnson), Constance’s daughter, is a paramedic who saves lives everyday, but is strongly averse to emotional attachment. I wondered what she does in her leisure time – but then, the same could be said about me! After being drowned, dead for three minutes, and revived, she has visions which turn out to be clairvoyant; she can glimpse the future moments before it happens. After experiencing the death of a colleague, she realizes she can act to stop her visions taking place. [What a revelation!] While on a train she foresees the death of three girls, killed by a masked man with superpowers. She tries her best to save them; no easy job as she has to improvise and out-think her pursuer constantly, while taking care of young girls who don’t necessarily follow her orders. That’s the moment you realize this movie might be made with 30-year-old moms as its target audience, which is something I have not seen before on the big screen.. Kudos for originality, I think.

Some changes from the comics were obvious. I’m no expert on all things and characters around Spider-Man but last time I saw Madame Web, was a 90’s animated series where she was an old, blind woman in a wheel-chair, She controlled the web of time and sent ol’ Spidey on a mission. This film goes full circle, having Cassie at the end in a wheel-chair and wearing dark glasses – enough time to age, when she needs to appear in a Spidey movie playing 20-something years in the future. Also, the three girls who will be Spider-Women and -Girls of the future (played by Sweeney, O’Connor and Merced) are not really characters I know. Having had a thing for the Spider-Woman comic an eternity ago, I remember that Mattie Franklin was white and the niece of J. Jonah Jameson. Here she is black and her background has totally changed. I guess the aim is to be as diverse as possible.

I personally don’t mind a movie centered on female characters in the Spider-Man universe. Heck, for decades I’ve been waiting for a Black Cat or Silver Sable movie, though right now that prospect seems quite dim considering the reaction here. But having this movie precede the Tom Holland Spider-Man does give me the feeling this is another attempt to give a hero’s tale a backstory based on an earlier woman (as done terribly by British TV classic Doctor Who). That said, this movie is not “woke”. Yes, the villain is a man but there is no male-bashing or ridiculing, as has become so common nowadays e. g. by Disney. It just puts female characters at the focus of the story and that’s absolutely okay by me.

What did surprise me is the main protagonist. Madame Web is neither one of many charismatic villains the Spidey-universe offers, nor what I’d call a “hero”. Making her the center of the story is a gamble, with the need for a scenario where she becomes the main character. Which the screenplay does quite well, I’d say. It would have been easier to make a movie about the Spider-Women or Spider-Girl, but here we are. Also, the title character has no super-powers which are interesting to watch. She can’t crawl up walls, jump from roof to roof, or has super-strength. She can just see a bit into the future. That’s it, until the end when she develops the ability to be in several places at once to help her girls (yeah, it’s definitely a movie for moms!). It means the screenwriters really had to think hard to provide the necessary action. and have their protagonist use her wits to counter her opponent, who unfairly uses early face-identifying computer programs to find the three girls.

A word on the actors. Dakota Johnson (daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, granddaughter of Tippi Hedren) has long left the memories of her early Fifty Shades of Grey success behind her. She is a good, professional actress and I’ve never seen a bad performance from her. This movie is no exception. The “girl” actresses don’t register strongly here; their characters are hardly given much to do here, which can be considered a weakness of the script, except being kind of a pain in Cassie’s neck. Tahar Rahim as the villain, comes across a bit bland which might not be the actor’s fault – the character is just not very interesting. His main goal is to stop these girls, who may become dangerous for him later. Ironically, as Cassie realizes, it’s exactly this fear of the future which leads to his downfall here and now, at her hands.

Once again, I stress Madame Web is not a bad movie. It may be too long – though less than some of the bloated blockbusters Hollywood produces nowadays. It could have a more interesting villain, with better motivation. They could have chosen a more interesting main character. But if there is one real problem with all the new SSU movies, it is the lack of humor. A bit of it, integrated into the heroine’s or villain’s character, would go a long way in making a superhero movie a more entertaining product. But maybe that’s not the route Sony wants to go, perhaps to distance themselves from the style of Marvel. It would be regrettable: a surprise hit like Venom showed how that element is appreciated by audiences. If you give them drama, action and suspense, they must also have the chance to let go of the tension with laughter. An approach classic James Bond movies employed, to good effect, at the beginning of the action movie genre.

All in all, the movie, its direction, script, acting performances, etc., are solid. Not great. Also not terrible. It is an acceptable solid superhero comic-book movie, though the superhero thing comes across here as toned down. Just don’t expect the big typical blockbuster epic that too many people may nowadays associate with the genre. Who knows? If Sony continues in this manner maybe they can actually get their SSU to work for the large audience? If not, I imagine they can still put all of these newly released characters in the next Spider-Man movie with Tom Holland!

Dir: S. J. Clarkson
Star: Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor

Air Force One Down

  By

★★★
“Presidential immunity.”

As we head towards the 2024 election, I’m forced to conclude that the most implausible element here is not terrorists hijacking Air Force One, or a lone Secret Service agent taking out scores of bad guys. No, it’s having a President under fifty: someone who can string coherent sentences together, parachute out of a plane without breaking his hips, and personally gun down an enemy or two as well. Yeah, that’s not happening anytime soon. Otherwise, this teeters on the edge of being as generic as its title. But it passes muster due to decent performances, especially from McNamara as agent Allison Miles, and well-managed action from Bamford, who has 30+ years experience in stunt work.

The plot unfolds after Miles is assigned to the plane on which President Edwards (Bohen) is flying to Astovia to sign an oil treaty. There are people, both here and in Astovia, who are very much opposed to the deal. In particular, General Rodinov (Serbedzija, whom I recognized as Boris the Blade from Snatch) has a plan to hijack Air Force One, and make the President change his mind. He reckons without Miles, and after a spell of “Die Hard on a plane”, she and Edwards parachute out. That isn’t the end of it, Rodinov capturing them, with the intention of using her as leverage against the President. Once again: he reckons without Miles. You would think the General would have learned by now.

Indeed, the whole “leverage” thing is dubious; if I was an evil overlord, I’d put a bullet in Allison’s head the moment I captured her. Maybe that’s just me. The plot hits all the obvious notes e.g. the scene where the President and his agent bond, with a little light sexual tension [an apparently unmarried President?] But Bohen and McNamara make their characters entertaining to be around. I’d vote for him, put it that way, while she has a laudably no-nonsense approach to her work, and life in general. She may have picked it up from her uncle (Hall), also a Secret Service agent, and a long way from The Breakfast Club.

The action certainly elevates things above the humdrum. Sometimes the camerawork is a little frenetic, yet the shots are surprisingly long, and tend to make it clear McNamara is doing much of her own work. The highlight is an extended “one take” (it’s not, but done well enough to pass muster) in which she breaks out of captivity, and makes her way through the complex, eliminating enemies in a variety of interesting ways. It will stick in your mind considerably longer than most of the plot-based shenanigans, albeit slightly diminished by Miles then having to be saved by the President. I’d love to have seen more of that style, because it’s genuinely innovative stuff. If nothing else reaches this level, the movie remains a decent piece of entertainment overall, where the positive elements counterbalance an uninspired storyline. 

Dir: James Bamford
Star: Katherine McNamara, Ian Bohen, Rade Serbedzija, Anthony Michael Hall
The film is released in cinemas today, and on digital from February 13.

La Madre

  By

★★½
“Is there such a thing as whiteface?”

I ask, because this film, made in Mexico City and starring mostly Mexicans, seems to be trying to take place in America. It’s not doing a good job of it. The heroine is Martha (Mazarrasa), a single mother running a shop in a border American city with the help of her two daughters, Eva (Reynaud) and Raquel. Then Eva is kidnapped by evil Mexican cartel boss, El Chacal (Guerrerio), and held by him, even after Martha pays the requested ransom. However, it turns out Mom has a hidden past, which gave her a set of special skills. With the help of sympathetic cop, Juan Cinderos (Dulzaides), she sets out to bring down his organization and retrieve her daughter.

It might have worked better if everyone has spoken Spanish, and they’d actually set this in Mexico. Not that Mazarrasa’s English is bad. It’s far better than my Spanish. But early on, she tells her daughters, “Our family has been in this [American] city for generations.” Yet she sounds like she’s still dripping wet out of the Rio Grande: “Ey neeeed tu dooo zees!” It feels particularly fake to me, since I’m married to a first-generation Hispanic immigrant, so know Chris and her siblings sounds completely indistinguishable from native citizens. Literally nobody in the film speaks without a notable accent: the closest is El Chacal, the character you’d least expect to know English. It’s all tremendously off-putting.

The rest of the plotting is similarly shoddy, in particular the way Martha is able to infiltrate El Chacal’s operations and get them taken down from the inside, in a way Paul and his pals have been utterly unable to do. I get that she’s operating outside of the usual legal encumbrances, but building her history and doing more than slapping a wig on her as a disguise, would have gone a long way to avoid my eyebrow entering “Oh, really?” mode. The way a random cop like Paul gets to take part in police actions South of the “border” – quotes used advisedly – didn’t help. All told, too many elements here seem to have wandered into this Tubi Original, from a script discarded by the Hallmark channel.

Yet it’s not entirely worthless, with Mazarrasa just about able to hold things together through a decent central performance. She had a long-running role in Camelia La Texana, so has a handle on the more soapy elements here, and is capable of putting over the raw emotion appropriate to the circumstances. The individual pieces could have been re-arranged into an effective combination. Perhaps if Martha had gone full Liam Neeson from the moment Eva was kidnapped, telling El Chacal, “You just messed with the wrong madre…”, instead of wasting time faffing around, naively trying to negotiate and pay the ransom. That is quite at odds with the street-smart, take no prisoners approach she later shows. Maybe her brains were in the wig as well.

Dir: Mitchell Altieri
Star: Tamara Mazarrasa, Giovanna Reynaud, Javier Dulzaides, Alex Guerrero