★★
“Just say no to drugs.”
What’s unusual here is that, allow this is an American production, the cast and crew are almost entirely of South Asian origin. Which is fine, except that writer/director Gil has an imperfect grasp of English. Witness the opening voice-over, which I present verbatim: “There are three wants which can never be satisfied. That of the mastermind who want more, that of the peddler who pray for more, and that of the whistle stopper who don’t know when to say enough.” Um, yes? Fortunately, it’s not too dialogue-heavy, and the plot is mercifully basic, albeit needlessly cluttered up with jumps around in time of weeks, months or days, which a more skilled creator would have avoided.
The heroine is Jayne (Sood), an agent for some law-enforcement group, I guess – the film is vague on detail – under Chief Collins (John). Having successfully solved a five-year old murder case, her next mission is to take down drug lord Alberto Trapani (Massey), whose product is threatening the youth of the city. Her investigation basically consists of Jayne wandering round and catching his minions, who for some reason tend to carry out drug deals in woodland glades, counting their money while sitting at the base of a tree like cartel pixies. Interrogating them eventually gets her the location of Trapani’s lair, so an army battalion is mobilized to take down public enemy #1. Oh, my mistake: the authorities just send in Jayne with a handgun for a spot of extra-judicial murder.
The budget for this was reportedly fifty thousand dollars, and that seems about right. There was clearly little to spend on most aspects of the production, with hardly any action to speak of, and a script in undeniable need of revision. For instance, at one point, Jayne says, “With every step forward, I risked exposure.” Which might make sense, if not for a earlier TV news headline, which boldly trumpets, “Agent Jayne’s next target: Alberto Trapani.” Good thing drug lords don’t watch television, I guess. These kind of embarrassing gaffes leave the whole production feeling like the work of enthusiastic amateurs, rather than professionals.
However, I didn’t hate it. There are occasional moments which work, such as Trapani’s associate Arthur (Bajpay) losing his daughter to a drug overdose and switching sides as a result. His heartfelt speech is genuinely affecting, while the clear and strong anti-drug message is laudable. The acting is generally okay, with Sood able to do her best with lines that, as mentioned, could use considerable additional polish. I also liked the synthwave soundtrack, cobbled together from various public domain sources, but on some occasions providing a sorely needed energy for the scene on which it sits. The end promises Jayne will return in “Misssion 2” [sic], taking on a militia involved in human trafficking. With more action and a better script, I’m down for this – though I wouldn’t bet on either flaw being fixed to any significant degree.
Dir: Waqar Peter Gill
Star: Shalini Sood, Uriel Massey, Ashutosh Bajpay, Julius John


Coincidentally, I watched this the night after Sinners, another period piece which looks at the place of a specific culture in society. There, it was music in predominantly black society of the thirties; here, it’s professional wrestling in the overwhelmingly white society of the fifties [the presence of in this WWE champion Naomi as Ethel Johnson, feels very much a token gesture]. Definitely fewer vampires in this, however. It’s the story of Mildred Burke (Rickards), who went from working as a waitress in a diner, though wrestling at carnivals, to become one of the biggest draws in the ring of her time. The end of the film calls her the first woman to become a millionaire through sports.
Interestingly, this is based on a somewhat true story, written by Raquel Santos de Oliveira. She comes from Rocinha, one of the most notorious slums in Rio, where she grew up on the streets. “By 11, I was already carrying a .38 revolver,” 
Under other circumstances, this six-episode TV series, would potentially be a marginal entry. But, just as I try to take the historical era into account, I think the location from which a film comes should also be a consideration. Some countries and cultures are simply more action heroine friendly than others. What would be groundbreaking in one region, might not even qualify from elsewhere. This is from Pakistan, and is almost the first such entry in our site’s history. [There’s just
I wanted to like this more than I did, because the makers are aware of the tropes of the mixed martial arts genre, and in the first half, make a concerted (and largely successful) effort to avoid them. However, the movie is much less successful in the second half, and ends up replacing those cliches with a different set. The result leaves the film just as formulaic – albeit not in the direction I expected. It begins in expected fashion, with a title bout in the EFC, between Alexa Star (Aboya) and Cassady Jones (Rose). The former prevails, but the champion is then attacked after the bell by her opponent.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was fairly notorious in Britain in the eighties and nineties, being famously banned on video. Naturally, this meant I had to see it, and… I was initially underwhelmed. However, I’ve gradually come to appreciate its raw intensity over the years. If I ever doubted its merits, watching this largely shameless knockoff should act as a reminder. Because it shows how flat and uninteresting the premise can be, when executed poorly. This relocate things from seventies Texas to Germany in the last days of World War II. A medevac team is trying to get injured and grumpy officer, Colonel Franklin (Christian) to a hospital before his leg falls off from sepsis.
Fair play to Woollard and his team for making a feature movie with no resources to speak of. The problem is, watching this, it’s painfully obvious that they had no resources to speak of. Two space-suits and a fog machine are not enough for a film, especially in a genre like science-fiction, which tends to rely on spectacle. Oh, smaller scale works can still be remarkably successful: the night before this, I watched glorious and highly recommended time-travel film Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes. But if you’re not going to offer epic scale, you need to have something else to repay the audience. An hour and three-quarters of watching characters stumbling about in the gloom is not it.
To be fair, for most of the time, this was likely hovering around the two-star range. Not brilliant: it was rather obvious why
I added an extra half-star here out of how much I was entertained by this. Although this was more a result of us yelling things at the screen than any intrinsic merits. The idea is kinda cool, but if you can’t think of ways this should have been improved you are simply not trying. Anya Voight (Dorn) is known as ‘Snow White’, because her father, Joseph (Eric Roberts), is a coke dealer. He’s killed by a mysterious assassin, and when his will is read, her jealous stepmom, Quinn (Vitori), is highly annoyed to discover Anya will be the one inheriting the business, and has plans to go legitimate.