★★★
“When the Blue Danube turned red…”
You wouldn’t know it to look at the sleepy Hungarian village of Nagyrév [population: 872], but there was a time between the world wars when this was the murder capital of the world. Between 1914 and 1929, an estimated three hundred people were poisoned to death, using arsenic obtained by boiling down flypaper. The great majority of the murders were committed by local women, who wanted rid of their husbands; the local midwife, Julia Fazekas, was the source of the lethal materials. This was in an era when divorce was all but impossible, and many marriages were arranged; Julia offered a quick and painless (for the wife!) escape from a life of abuse and a loveless relationship. Since she was the closest the village had to a doctor, and her cousin was in charge of filing the death certificates, she and her accomplices got away with their crimes.
All good things must come to an end, however. It’s unclear what triggered police action, but Fazekas knew the game was up, and by the time the police knocked on her door, she’d used her own poison to commit suicide. 26 of her associates, however, were taken to court; eight were sentenced to death, seven to life imprisonment and the remainder to various terms in jail. Eight decades later, Bussink returned to the village, and found some inhabitants still alive, who were around at the time, such as the 93-year old Rosika, in whose pantry one of the murderers hung herself from a nail. Her family then used the nail to hang bacon up.
It’s an not uncommon moment of gallows humour in the film (which puts the death-toll lower, at “only” 140). While Bussink initially met some resistance from the locals, they seem happy here to open up to her; the women, in particular, view past events with phlegmatic resignation. Maybe there’s something about Hungarian ladies; see also Vera Renczi, who murdered 35, including husbands, lovers, and a son early in the twentieth century, and of course, Countess Erzsebet Bathory. However, the film never really does more than scratch the surface, and the running-time is padded unnecessarily by shots of the local countryside, rather than providing more historical background. There’s a pointed, if very clumsy, allusion to modern times, with a local folk-dance club discussing the problems they have with their husbands.
The overall effect is to open the door on a largely-forgotten corner of murderous history, but Bussink doesn’t shine much light into the dark corner. There was word of a movie based on the topic, to star Helen Mirren, which shifted the location from Hungary to Yorkshire, with Anna Friel and John Hurt also involved, and Jon Sommersby Amiel as the director. [Curiously, Friel recently played Countess Bathory in another film] That was first announced in August 2006, but IMDB still shows it as “in development”, so who knows. I suspect the Hollywood fantasy will be nowhere near as bleakly murderous as the reality, somehow.
A number of the other reviews of this I read were somewhat sniffy and it’s often largely dismissed by DP fans, which surprised the heck out of me, as I though this was, in the main, highly-enjoyable entertainment. The pair are sent to locate a missing girl, who may be tied to a shuttle-crash where the pilot screamed the ground was shifting just before the accident. By the time they arrive, their client is dead, and the girl has holed up in a remote forest, filled with strange life-forms. They’re not the only ones after her either, and I think it’s giving little away to say that the results of the investigation include destruction on industrial levels.
Our once-favourite TV show walks off into the sunset – literally – and we are confirmed in our belief that it is very, very hard to keep interest in a series going past the third season. Especially if you’re creator JJ Abrams, who was missing, presumably making the very Alias-like Mission Impossible III; he didn’t even return to write or direct the season finale. It was, on the whole, a credible stab at trying up loose ends: Rambaldi, the question of whether Sloan was good or evil, Syd’s relationship with her mother, and the real identity of Vaughan, about to be revealed at the end of season four, when he and Sidney were in a car-wreck. This led into the main arc of the series, a hunt for ‘Prophet 5’, a shadowy organization intent on the usual things shadowy organizations want. As opposed to, say, the Alliance, the Covenant, K-Directorate, SD-6, etc…
I went into this with low expectations, based on some scathing reviews and the lack of Ryuhei Kitamura, whose directorial style made the first such a joy. I’m pleased to report then, that this surpassed expectations, with some nice imagination and a bevy of action heroines (including Kuriyama, whom you’ll know as Gogo Yubari from Kill Bill, Volume 1), as well as the expected high body-count. It follows on loosely from the original, but heads in a slightly different direction; our heroine is still intent on her mission, but is diverted by a wandering samurai, part of a rogue gang, who reminds her of Nachi, her childhood friend she had to kill at the opening of the original film.
It’d probably be best to watch the original film, Poly Matrix, immediately before this, as otherwise, you’ll be kinda hitting the ground running. After those events, Ross Syllabus and “Third” [a model of android which can reproduce] Armitage have set up home with their daughter, who doesn’t know her mother is anything by human; meanwhile Ross operates under an assumed name as a security guard. However, an incident turns him into an unwilling spokesman for robot rights once again, and when he is sent to Earth as a Martian delegate, his daughter Yoko is kidnapped by a faction seeking to reverse his vote. It’s time for Armitage to put aside her chores and kick butt.
This TV series was Gene Autry’s idea; he wanted to give little girls a western star of their own, and created a show based on the character of Oakley, the most famous sharpshooter of all time. In his version, she lives in Diablo with her brother Tagg (Hawkins) and keeps the town safe along with deputy Lofty Craig (Johnson) – the sheriff, Annie’s uncle Luke, was somehow very rarely around… It ran for 81 episodes from January 1954 to February 1957; two DVDs, with five first season stories on each, have been released by Platinum – you can get the box set of both for $5.99, which is a steal.
Where is Sydney, and what have you done with her? We might have been forgiven for uttering this cry at the end of season three, which exited not with a bang, but a whimper. “We need to talk.” That’s pretty much what Jack said to Sydney after she discovered, apparently, that her entire life had been a CIA operation. This was hardly a surprise, if you remembered Project Christmas from earlier on, Jack’s plan which tested first-graders – including his own daughter – for spyworthy attributes. The news that the show wouldn’t restart until January 2005 thus provoked little more than mild disappointment.
I’m still trying to work out what the title actually means; it certainly bears no relevance to the film. More generaly, the biggest point of interest is its similarity to Blade 2, which took the basic concept (hunt for the carrier of a virus that turns its victim into bald, psychotic bloodsuckers) and did a lot more with its Eastern European setting. Henstridge is Delon, a policewoman who has her partner dismembered while they search a house, and Lambert leads the backup team – they follow their target into some vents which connect to an old prison, and where they rapidly become the prey. All this is set just outside a post-apocalyptic (plague, specifically) Boston – though the cop cars have ‘POLICIA’ on them. There’s also a subplot about Delon’s son, and a black-market passport she bought for him, which is of no significance whatsoever, and is probably there only to get the running time up to feature length (and at 76 minutes, only barely!).
Shot in what looks like four rooms, it’s up to director Pyun to make the most of a higher-profile cast than he usually manages – unfortunately, he fails, though I liked the snap-zoom technique applied to bullet hits. This is straightforward ‘spam in a tunnel’ cinema, with little tension, character, or anything else that might elevate this above the mundane. Henstridge, bless her, does what she can, and comes over like a grubby version of Lara Croft; her undeniable action heroine potential has so far been wasted in stuff like this or the lame She Spies. Partly shot in the capital of Herzegovina, Mostar, the “just-bombed” look is likely genuine, from a conflict that only ended the previous year; it may be exploitative, but at least Pyun brought employment to the locals. I imagine he’s now scouting locations in Kabul and Baghdad.
Cutting to the chase; the action is excellent, with several sequences which would be fitting climaxes to any other movie. When you see this one’s finale, you’ll realise why they’re not: Azumi’s master is captured, and an entire town of sword-wielding rogues and assorted scum is in her way, plus villain #1, a rose-wielding psychopath who dresses in white (Odagiri). Settle back, and pass the popcorn. While the swordplay itself is mostly nothing special (save one Very Special decapitation), Kitamura captures it beautifully, the visual highlight being a full circle around two characters – vertically. The sound is also fabulous; you could close your eyes and just listen to the battles.
