Tag: a

Anne of the Indies

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★★★★
“Timbers well and truly shivered.”

anne of the indiesStrikingly ahead of its time, this 1951 film looks for a while like it will meander down a well-trod path – woman pirate falls for handsome hero – but ends up going in a completely different direction, and is all the better for it. Captain Providence is the scourge of the seas, the most notorious pirate out there, infamous for a ruthless approach to any British captives. While the latest batch of victims are being made to walk the plank, Frenchman Pierre François La Rochelle (Jourdan), found in chains below decks is spared: he’s startled to discover Providence is actually a woman, Anne (Peters), and accepts her offer to join the crew. He tells her of buried treasure, pointing to which he has half a map; the other half is owned by a resident in the British stronghold of Port Royal, and he’s set ashore to go negotiate for it, while Anne’s ship, Sheba Queen, waits off-shore. Except, it has all been a massive ruse, with La Rochelle actually working for the British, after they captured his vessel. Hell hath no fury like a woman pirate scorned: Anne kidnaps Pierre’s wife, with the intent of selling her into white slavery. Can he get her back?

What’s particularly effective here is the second part of the film, after Anne realizes she has been duped. Conventional plotting would have her abandoning her own career and continuing to chase after Pierre. Not here: her response is basically, “No, fuck you“, doubling down with the intent of extracting personal vengeance, by kidnapping his wife and selling her into slavery. Though as one review points out, “The fact that there were not many – indeed, probably not any – Arabs wandering around what is now Venezuela in the 1710s trading in fallen European women isn’t allowed to get in the way of this storyline.” This Anne, who lets her quest for revenge consume her over the latter half, is a fascinating character, even if, naturally, morality has to win out in the end. Her conscience, personified throughout by the ship’s doctor (Marshall), must awaken, allowing for a finale offering redemption through heroic sacrifice. But considering when this was made, it’s arguably even more transgressive for its time than the ending of Thelma & Louise.

The other outstanding feature is Peters, who handles herself particularly well, giving the impression of knowing what she’s doing. This is particularly the case in a (semi-)friendly bit of swordplay between Anne and her piratical mentor, Blackbeard (Gomez). You’re not expecting much, since the former is a heroine in a 1950’s movie and the latter looks to have the range and mobility of a sofa. But it’s really good: it might have been undercranked, but it still looks lightning-fast and genuinely skilled, doing a good job of establishing Anne’s credentials as someone to be feared and respected. Director Tourneur is best know for his classic RKO horrors, such as the original Cat People and I Walked With a Zombie, but shows that his talents were not limited to black and white chills, and work just as well on these wide open, Technicolor seascapes. The quality here is virtually across the board, with the exception of James Robertson Justice’s highly-dubious Scottish accent, and has certainly stood the test of time.

Dir: Jacques Tourneur
Star: Jean Peters, Louis Jourdan, Herbert Marshall, Thomas Gomez

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Le Avventure di Mary Read

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mary read

★★★
“Graded as a solid sea-plus.”

While best known for notorious horror film, Cannibal Ferox, director Lenzi’s career covered almost the entire gamut of genres, from spaghetti Westerns through Eurospy films and giallo, to war movies. He also did historical adventure films like this, starring Gastoni as Mary Read, a highwaywoman who takes a spot on a corsair ship run by the unfortunately-named Captain Poof (Barnes). After his demise in a sea-battle, Mary takes over the ship, leading daring raids on any and all who cross her path, on sea or land. Given Poof was working with the approval of the British crown, and supposed to be targeting only its enemies, this provokes a reaction, in the shape of Captain Peter Goodwin (Courtland), who is ordered to take care of Poof, unaware he has been replaced by Mary. However, complicating matters, he also knows her personally, having been locked up in prison with her back in England, and had a brief fling with Read at the time. Can he bring his former love to justice?

queen of the seasDespite its age – this was made in 1961 – it has stood the test of time fairly well, except for a romantic ending which is both predictable and unfortunate. This turns the heroine into exactly the subservient woman she spent the first 80 minutes not being. Up until then, it plays well ahead of its time, with Read taking no crap from anyone, and proving to be skilled both with a pistol and a sword, as well as her words. [And perhaps a needle, some of her costumes, particularly the red one, being quite spectacular] The production values are generally pretty impressive, especially in the naval sequences; they clearly had a couple of full-scale boats to work with, rather than miniatures. However, its recreation of what is supposedly “17th-century England” leaves a lot to be desired, unless the landscape and costumes of that era were a lot more, ah, Mediterranean than I was aware! I’m also rather hard pushed to swallow Read’s intermittent efforts to pass as a man: I guess eyesight was not as sharp back in the day.

Clocking in at a brisk 85 minutes, there’s not much chance to pause for breath. This helps paper over holes in the plot, such as the Governor of Florida apparently not bothering to mention to anyone, that his party was raided by a woman pirate. But I like the way Read is portrayed as smart, for example, out-thinking Goodwin and getting him to fire on a supporting ship – she wants to destroy his reputation as much as anything else. However, this makes the final resolution all the more implausible, and I’d far rather have seen her sail off into the sunset, perhaps with Ivan (Longo), the crew-mate who seems to carry a torch for her. I guess this wasn’t quite far enough ahead in its thinking.

Dir: Umberto Lenzi
Star: Lisa Gastoni, Jerome Courtland, Walter Barnes, Germano Longo
a.k.a. Queen of the Seas

Agency of Vengeance: Dark Rising

  By

★★★
“Hello, film poster. You appear to have my full attention.”

darkrisingThis makes a great deal more sense when you realize it’s actually a sequel, not only to Cymek’s earlier Dark Rising, but also the TV series that followed. The US/Netflix title and blurb cunningly manage to avoid mentioning this, which certainly explains the sense that you have walked into the middle of a story. For instance, none of the characters are apparently fazed by the fact that interdimensional portals have opened, allowing all manner of icky creatures to enter this Earth’s realm from a “Dark Earth”. It’s up to the Rising Dark Agency, a Government department [apparently staffed by about six people] to keep the resulting mayhem in check. Chief among its operatives are Jason Parks (Cannon, a dead-ringer for Dolph Lundgren) and Summer Vale (Kingsley, also the director’s wife), whose combination of human and demon DNA you have probably noticed on the poster. And are perhaps still staring at.

Anyway, beginning with the munching of Summer’s fiance by a giant worm during their wedding ceremony, this installment sees the arrival of wannabe deity Mardock, who appears to be trying to target Summer, as the biggest threat to his/her/its rise to power. As the RDA investigate, they also come under attack, and it’s up to the small band of survivors, along with demonic nerd Bulo (Nahrgang), to try and prevent the resurrection of Mardock. But before they get there, they discover that somebody left for dead in a previous episode, might not be quite as deceased as thought, and has now switched sides, largely out of bitterness at being abandoned.

At the risk of blowing my own trumpet, I did a much better job of explaining the plot than the film does, and it’s less a story that you follow, than one where you cling on to the roof-rack, presuming that it will all make sense, or at least come to a halt eventually. Hard to know how much blame is the makers, and how much the marketers for not mentioning all that has gone before. However, if you’re prepared to cut that aspect some slack, there are aspects that are fun, not least Kingsley, who seems to spend half the film in her underwear for one thinly-generated reason or other. It’s all in good fun though, and the non-serious tone is generally very obvious, most particularly in Bulo, though his character occasionally veers close to the line where endearing becomes irritating. It’s nice to see a matching villainess as well, with a similar… ah, taste in costumes, and I’ll confess that despite a budget well short of the imagination, overall, I was entertained, and left with a non-zero interest in going back to check out the previous installments. Hopefully, they will make rather more sense than this one.

Dir: Andrew Cymek
Star: Brigitte Kingsley, Landy Cannon, Julia Schneider, Nug Nahrgang

The Athena Project, by Brad Thor

  By

★★
“More illing than thrilling.”

the_athena_projectI first became aware of this novel through an article back in February about MMA champion Ronda Rousey and her move into movies, which said

Ms. Rousey’s supporting parts are a run-up to a planned starring role in “The Athena Project,” a movie about a team of female counterterrorism agents. The film is in the early stages of development with Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros. Producers cast her after one sit-down meeting and are working on the script now. That film “is what I would really like to make into my franchise,” Ms. Rousey said. “Like Stallone has his ‘Rambo’ and Schwarzenegger has his ‘Terminator’ and Bruce Willis has his ‘Die Hard.'”

Okay, that sounds intriguing enough, though whether it’ll come to pass is harder to say – the rights were bought back in November 2010, before the novel hit stores, so it clearly isn’t exactly rushing into production. I got a copy of the book and… was distinctly underwhelmed. I don’t generally “do” literature, so this review will probably consist of me flailing around, trying to explain why, but I do understand why this is easily the lowest-rated of all Thor’s books on Amazon. It gets an average of 3.2 stars, with the next lowest with any significant volume of reviews being a 3.9; frankly, the former figure seems generous.

The central plot isn’t bad. The Athena Project are a group of four Delta Force operatives, all women, who carry out missions requiring their special skills. In this case, they’re digging into an arms dealer responsible for provisioning a terrorist attack, but the further they dig, they murkier things get. Eventually, they uncover a scheme to leverage resurrected Nazi technology, and create a new generation of weapons, against which there can be no defense. There’s also an entirely separate side story, involving a cell of the villains honeypotting a guy into smuggling a component into the secret government facility buried under Denver Airport. That’s long been a belief among conspiracy theorists, so is kinda neat. But it’s woefully connected to the rest of the story, and there’s no payoff to this aspect. It feels almost like Thor had two half-novels written, and decided just to intersperse their chapters.

But the main problem are the female characters: Gretchen Casey, Julie Ericsson, Megan Rhodes, and Alex Cooper. I had to look those names up, because as heroines, they are completely forgettable and indistinguishable from each other. Maybe Thor would have been better off concentrating on a single character, as it seems he does in his other works [his main hero there, Scot Harvath, pops up briefly in this novel]. On the other hand, maybe that wouldn’t have helped, given literary gems such as “Considering what these women did for a living, they certainly wouldn’t have described themselves as being dressed to kill, but everyone else would have.” Or “I don’t know about Mr. Right, but he definitely looks like he could be Mr. Right Now.” Is there a world where women talk like that? Maybe, with the right actresses, lines like that might work on the screen; on the printed page, however, they come over as cheesier than a block of aged Cheddar.

What Thor does do well is action, and when he concentrates on that, the results are snappy and effective. Although the villains appear to come from the Imperial Stormtrooper school of accuracy, it’s easy to picture in your mind what’s going on, and it makes for exciting entertainment. That’s why I’m not immediately consigning the movie to the garbage can since, in the right hands, this could still be good. Thor seems convinced, stating after news of Rousey’s association with the picture broke: “We have never seen a chick kick ass like this. This is going to make Tomb Raider look like a Disney movie.” That’s tough talk – I’ll be hoping the film lives up to the concept’s potential, and isn’t such a disappointment, frankly, as large chunks of this poorly-written novel.

Author: Brad Thor
Publisher: Pocket Books, 432pp, $9.99

Asian School Girls

  By

★★
“This is at least better than Transmorphers.”

asianschoolI have a lot of time for The Asylum. I met head honcho David Michael Latt back in 2002, when Sharknado was not even a twinkle in his eye, and have been following the studio’s rise to pop-culture icon ever since. They’re best known for their “mockbusters”, designed to cash in on bigger-budget title – including the sublimely-titled Snakes on a Train, which didn’t really have much in common with Samuel L. Jackson’s opus – and also cheesy monster movies, typically involving over-sized or over-aggressive species. This doesn’t fall into either category, and to be honest, isn’t one of their more successful efforts. While obviously not intended to be taken entirely seriously, based simply on a title which had me looking over my shoulder before clicking it on Netflx, it isn’t self-aware enough to succeed as a knowing parody. Nor is it competent enough to stand on its own merits.

The heroines are four – yes – Asian school girls, whose illicit evening out in a nightclub is derailed when they are drugged and raped. After the police are unable to take any action, one of them subsequently commits suicide, and the other three decide to locate and take revenge on the perpetrators, working their way up the chain of supply. Naturally, this requires them to go undercover at a strip-club. It’s not long before the dead bodies are piling up, and the police, led by a dogged detective (Johnson) with a personal interest in the case, are closing in on the perpetrators. Nor is the douche who runs the market in unconscious jailbait happy at their actions, and kidnaps the trio, locking them up in a basement cage where they will be perpetually on-call to service his customers.

There are a couple of directions this could have taken, but the unwillingness to commit to a specific mode of operation – parody or serious? – leaves it coming off as half-hearted and a pale imitation of genuine Japanese imports like Hard Revenge Milly. One moment it’s acknowledging its silliness e.g. the strip-club MC’s dead-pan announcement that as well as Asian School Girl night, it’s also Plushies and Furries, the next, it has a rape scene that is genuinely unpleasant. It’s clear they aren’t “real” school girls – Scarlet is more tattooed and pierced than your typical merchant seaman – but Aotaki, as the fiery Hannah, is the only one to deliver a performance that makes you believe, yes, they could be capable of slicing off dicks. The rest of the cast lack the necessary intensity to sell the concept, and while I can look past the obvious flaws in plot logic, this certainly falls into the category of a film which fails to live up to its poster.

Dir: Lawrence Silverstein
Star: Sam Aotaki, Catherine Kim, Minnie Scarlet, Andray Johnson

Angel of Destruction

  By

★★★½
“If you thought Showgirls really needed more kung-fu…”

angelofdestructionMake no mistake. By few objective standards could this be described as a “good” film. It is, however, one I found entertaining as all get-out, in a “WTF were they thinking?” kinda way. The main story has Hawaiian cop Jo Alwood (Ford) hunting sleazebag psycho mercenary Robert Kell (Broome), He killed Jo’s sister, among a slew of other women, just after she had accepted a position as bodyguard to bisexual S/M pop star Delilah (Mark), who is his final target. If this sounds a bit familiar, it’s a remake of 1992’s Blackbelt, by the same director, which starred Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson as the cop. Ford isn’t as good as martial arts, but makes up for this shortcoming by the frequency with which she takes her top off. Heck, she even combines the two, and does martial arts clad only in a thong, which reminded me of another Roger Corman Philippino production, Angel Fist, from the previous year. Rumour has it, the original star, Charlie Spradling, refused to do the scene, so was relegated to the role of the murdered sister.

If that weren’t enough, Kell kidnaps Delilah’s sidekick/lover, and as ransom, demands that Detective Ford take a starring part in Delilah’s show. Even more bizarrely, she agrees, though I doubt any red-blooded male [and, let’s face it, that’s 95% of your target audience] is going to care about logic, considering the pay-off. That’s an area in which it feels a lot like an Andy Sidaris flick, though he actually shot in Hawaii, rather than as here, trying to fake it with the less salubrious areas of Manilla. He also left the hand-to-hand stuff up to his male leads, but Ford (and her stunt double) does credibly enough there, and is made to look semi-competent. Oh, I almost forgot the largely irrelevant subplot where Delilah’s manager is trying to kill her for the insurance money. Though since this does lead to the thong-based martial arts mentioned above, I’m not complaining too much.

It’s perhaps telling that the male leads – not just Broome, but Bacci as Alwood’s partner – never seems to have appeared in anything else, before or since, and it seems fairly clear that instruction came down from Corman Towers to make this all about the ladies. I’ve seen much less fun films, that didn’t need to be rewritten half-way through: Ford deserves enormous credit for plunging into this with an appropriate level of devil-may-care, and going where Charlie Spradling feared to tread.

Dir: Charles Philip Moore
Star: Maria Ford, Jessica Mark, Jimmy Broome, Antonio Bacci


Sorry: not available in the US. Well done, New Horizon, for helping suppress something promoting your own movie!

American Horror Story: Coven

  By

★★★★
coven1“When witches don’t fight, we burn.”

While few shows on television are more twisted, perhaps the most bizarre thing about American Horror Story is that the creators of the franchise, Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, are best known for that paragon of liberal smugness, Glee. It’s hard to think of two series more diametrically opposed, with AHS being deliciously mean-spirited, in a way much closer to Murphy/Falchiuk’s previous show, Nip/Tuck, but adding a far greater degree of viciousness. To steal a line once aimed at Margaret Thatcher by Denis Healey, AHS could fairly be accused of “glorying in slaughter,” as it romped through its first two seasons, set in a Los Angeles haunted house and New England lunatic asylum respectively. The stories it told were independent, albeit with a number of actors who appeared in both, playing different characters. Most notable among these was Jessica Lange, who showed exactly why she had won two Best Actress Oscars.

The third season ramped things up to a whole new level, and also became one of the most gyno-centric shows on television. The setting moved to New Orleans, and a school called Miss Robichaux’s Academy, which is actually a front for the education of young witches. The headmistress is Cordelia Foxx (Paulson), living in the shadow or her mother, Fiona Goode (Lange), who is the “Supreme”, a position which she will do anything to retain. However, Goode increasingly feels threatened, not only by the current batch of pupils, but also her own mortality, since she has recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Another problem is the opposition of a coven of black witches, led by Marie Leveau, a bubbling animosity which escalates after Goode digs up the infamous Delphine LaLaurie, a brutal and unreconstructed racist, and another immortal, buried alive by Leveau in the 19th century.

Goode’s struggles to retain control are just one half of the story: there are also the pupils themselves, who are gradually discovering their own powers and what that entails. There are five of particular note, ranging from teenage brat movie star Madison Montgomery (Roberts), to wild child of the woods, Misty Day (Rabe). The latter is obsessed with, in looks and behaviour, Stevie Nicks from Fleetwood Mac – who has been rumoured for decades in urban lore to be a practicing witch. While that was amusing on its own, in one of the most amusing bits of stunt casting I’ve ever seen, the real Nicks turned up in a couple of episodes, playing herself. As mentioned above, Goode fears she’s on the fast track to being replaced as the Supreme, so for the girls, simply surviving to reach the “Seven Wonders” – the test to determine who has what it takes to replace the incumbent – will be tricky.

coven2“In this whole, wide, wicked world, the only thing you have to be afraid of, is me.”

I suppose you could read any number of metaphors here, more or less obvious, for other groups who have been oppressed due purely to their nature. But any such thoughts are far from a factor in our enjoyment of the show, which succeeds largely as the result of some brilliant performances. Beyond Lange, you’ve got fellow Oscar-winner Kathy Bates as LaLaurie, in a role which licks Misery into a cocked-hat for sheer unpleasantness. There are two further Academy Award nominees: Angela Bassett plays Leveau, while Gabourey Sidibe is Queenie, one of the new girls, whose main talent is that she can project whatever damage she does to herself, on to another person. She stabs herself, you get cut. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out she’s going to be capable of defending herself against whatever life – or Fiona – can throw at her.

But it’s probably the scenes between Lange and Bassett which sealed this show as one of our favourites of the year. They have an electric intensity which is completely compelling, with a seething undercurrent of distaste, mixed with grudging respect, because each knows the other is equally as powerful. Circumstances eventually lead to them having to join forces, as a company of witch-hunters seek to take them both down. That it’s not a comfortable partnership, just adds to the fascinating dynamics of power, and it’s another aspect where the show shines. Beyond the performances, which are generally excellent, it’s the intrigue which helps make the show so watchable: it delivers a perpetually-shifting dynamic of alliances and enmity, like Dangerous Liaisons on meth. Oh, and anyone can die at any time – usually, nastily and bloodily. However, in many cases, that’s more a temporary inconvenience than anything, and it’s not so much death which is to be feared, as what might happen to your immortal soul thereafter.

I would have to admit, a possible weakness in the show is an excess of plot threads, which tend to whizz in and out, without truly adequate resolution, as proceedings gallop on to the next. As well as the witch-hunters, there’s Leveau’s minotaur-esque lover, the religious neighbours,  and a story involving the resurrection of a boyfriend, that doesn’t quite go as planned. There’s enough raw material here for far more than the 13 episodes screened, but on the whole I’d far rather have over much crammed in to a show, than feel it’s spread too thinly. I’d probably also confess to some disappointment in the way the show ended, which wasn’t near the memorable bleakness of the preceding versions. Okay, if it wasn’t quite everyone joining hands to sign Kumbaya, I certainly expected a higher body-count, and less sense of dawn bringing a brighter future.

“This town ain’t big enough for the both of us. War is coming.. and you’re gonna lose.”

Still, these are minor quibbles, and it was a joy to watch something which played, at times, like a very, very pissed-off version of Charmed, but could also transcend just about anything you could predict or expect. It weaved fable and fact together beautifully – both Leveau and LaLaurie were real characters from New Orleans’ past – and provided some of the best and most interesting roles for women on television this year. Maybe it appeals to the submissive in us all, but it seems there’s nothing quite like an evil bitch, who has both the power to back it up, as well as the intelligence to know how to use it, and in Fiona Goode, we got to enjoy one of the best villainesses in the recent history of the medium. Lange is flat-out awesome, and can only be enjoyed as such.

There was certainly no doubt about the show’s mass popularity. Although some hardcore fans grumbled over the dark humour occasionally injected into proceedings, e.g. LaLaurie’s horror at the notion of a “negro” President, it can’t be argued that this version proved a significant improvement, ratings-wise, over its predecessors. They averaged 2.8 and 2.5 million viewers, but season three upped season two by more than 50%, with four million on average, and reaching a peak of over 5.5 million. A fourth edition was already commissioned, well before the third even reached the half-way point. It will no doubt move on to a new location and era once more [the details are vague – Lange is apparently working on her German accent!], yet it’ll be hard-pushed to match this season for either intensity, or its abundance of strong female characters.

Dir: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and others
Star : Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, Emma Roberts, Lily Rabe

American Horror Story cast

Ang Huling Henya

  By

★★
“Pushing the Manilla envelope too far.”

huling-henyaI’ve seen quite a few Phillippine GWG movies – mostly thanks to Cirio Santiago and/or New World Pictures. But this is likely the first made for local consumption, rather than the West, which may explain why I found large chunks of it almost impenetrable. Is this the kind of thing that has them cheering in the aisles there?

The heroine is Miri (Quinto), an agent for an international organization devoted to protecting scientists, and keeping their inventions out of the wrong hands. After a mission goes bad, resulting in the death of her partner, Miri is sent back home for some time off. However, she’s called back in to help investigate the odd case of a professor who vanished for two weeks, only to return a cannibal and rip his wife’s throat out – and her corpse isn’t apparently entirely dead either. There’s also a mad scientist (Chan) who is experimenting with sucking memories out of people’s heads; her brother (Guzman), who is wasting his potential away in a dead-end job as a barman; and flashbacks revealing the tragic circumstances under which their parents, also scientists, apparently were killed for their invention.

Is it a horror film? It does have zombies. Is is a SF film? The memory transference and some nifty guns, which seem to shoot energy, suggest that. Comedy? The main villainess (Weigmann) shoots anyone who tells her she could be a model, and her sidekick perpetually needs to go to the bathroom. Action? Why not? There’s running around and pointing of guns. Family drama? Sure! The problem is – and some of the local reviews echo this – it just doesn’t commit to any of them, resulting in a movie which pays lip service to being scary, thrilling, funny, or intriguing. A few moments do work. I liked Miri having to go to the supermarket, prosaic stuff international agents aren’t usually seen doing. The finale, pitting heroes against the bad guys, very quietly, in a room full of sleeping zombies, also has potential. I even liked the cool way characters slid from English into the local tongue and back, in the middle of sentences.

However, at over two hours, it’s a good thirty minutes too long, and you could just about slice any half-hour out, and the result would be an improvement. Quinto also makes for a thoroughly unconvincing action star: from what I’ve read, a credible comparison would be a Pinoy version of Amy Poehler, and I’m not sure I would want to see Poehler try her hand in this genre. It’s certainly different, and it’s not bad enough to put me off other example of cinema from the Philippines. However, it’s certainly not good enough to make me actively seek them out.

Dir: Marlon N. Rivera
Star: Rufa Mae Quinto, Edgar Allan Guzman, Ricci Chan, Valerie Weigmann

Alley Cat

  By

★★
“Never quite sinking to tedium, yet never rising to reach interesting.”

alleycatAnother review compared this to Savage Streets and Vigilante, from the same era, and I can certainly see the similarities. Black belt Billie Clark (Mani) finds herself hamstrung by the ineffectual legal system, after she stops a rape – and, indeed, ends up going to jail, which is more than can be said for the attackers. With the help of a sympathetic cop (Torti), who’s also her boyfriend, she works her way up the chain to the sleazeball at the top, Krug (Wayne), presumably named after the villain of another grindhouse classic, The Last House on the Left. But it’s a climb not without its personal cost.

It seemed an almost cursed work, going through a lengthy hiatus mid-shoot, with one director for each chunk, and a third who then fiddled with the movie post-production. The results are about as uneven as you’d expect, but are hampered mostly by the characters involved being bland and forgettable. For someone who has gone through quite a lot, Billie is pretty damn phlegmatic about it all, rarely even bothering to get angry, though does believe cleanliness is next to vengefulness, going by her multiple shower scenes. Mind you, this lack of colour is line with Krug, who is not particularly scary himself, and is hardly a criminal mastermind in charge of an evil empire, his gang consisting of about three guys, with the combined IQ of a Pomeranian.

The supposed martial-arts expertise of the heroine leaves a little to be desired, too. If you’re going to make a point out of someone being a black belt, you need to be able to deliver at least convincing fakery in this department, but there are few moments when Mani (or even her obvious stunt-double) reach the necessary level of semi-competence. The fact that she’s still capable of beating up the bad guys, simply makes them look even more woeful. They’d have been better off letting her hang on to the gun, instead of using that instead to trigger the whole “women in prison” subthread, which feels like it comes from an entirely different movie, rather than just a different director. I couldn’t quite muster the loathing to turn it off: it’s the kind of film that just sits there, occupying 90 minutes of your life.

Dir: Victor Ordoñez, Edward Victor, Al Valletta
Star: Karin Mani, Robert Torti, Michael Wayne, Jon Greene

Ambitious Kung Fu Girl

  By

★★½
“More ambitious than kung fu”

Tian Si Si (Yim) is a spoiled rich girl, whose doting daddy pays kung fu fighters to give the illusion that she can beat them up. Despite his desire to wed her off in an arranged marriage to Yang Fan (Tak), Si Si runs off to meet her idol, Qing Ge (Chen), a true master of the martial arts, whom she knows only through the fictional tales of derring-do, told by her maid. Susequently, Si Si becomes the target first of con-men, then is sold to a brother, and when they realize who she is, becomes the centre of a scheme to force her into marriage, so her husband can inherit her father’s fortune. Throughout it all, Yang is about the only loyal friend, though when she meets her idol, she discovers that, while if he isn’t as depicted, he still has a courageous streak of his own.

This is clearly intended as a light and frothy confection, not to be taken seriously – witness the gambling contest between Qing Ge and his rival, which has much more in common with a modern game-show than anything from the period. However, the plot is actually smartly written, with enough angles and schemes to keep your head spinning, as you try to figure out who actually wants to help our heroine, and who is against her. I’m not normally a fan of this era of martial arts, often finding the action too obviously-staged. However, this is quite well put together, and I do appreciate camerawork which lets you appreciate the performers’ skills.

Indeed, as a film in general, this would probably rate a star or so higher, and is a fun 90 minutes: my main disappointment is that the heroine is really not the kung fu girl of the title. Apart from the initial encounter with the paid opponents, her “Sloppy Blind Man’s Sword” technique is hardly used. Though there are some other strong female characters – most notably brothel owner Madame Mei (Wong Mei-Mei), who clearly has physical skills beyond what you’d expect from her job – they are largely secondary and/or subservient to the male ones, with the possible exception of courtesan Zhang Hao Er (Choh Seung-Wan), who is certainly her own woman. But overall, entertaining fluff though this is, it only barely qualifies for inclusion here, rather than in our Hall of Misleading Advertising.