★★
“Tolerable only in small doses.”
There’s an interesting tweak to the situation here. While it is the usual “hitwoman agrees to go on one last mission” plotline, Rosa (Gala) is an assassin who has adopted poison as her weapon of choice. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen this, and it’s interesting because women are, in reality, considerably more likely to kill in that way [Per the Washington Post, “Women are seven times as likely as men to choose poison as their murder weapon”] Her choice dates back to Rosa’s childhood, when she killed her abusive father and complicit mother with belladonna berries from their own garden, and has gone on to choose this as a career, working for… Well, it’s a bit vague. Some kind of British intelligence group, I think, with her boss being Henry Crowford (Giblin).
Rosa’s latest mission takes her to Barcelona, where someone recently hijacked all the TV channels, to broadcast a message of peace and love. Needless to say, the authorities aren’t having that, so send Rosa – who is keen to retire – to track down and eliminate this threat to the established order. Helping her is Will Gray (Vinnicombe), a former army intelligence officer turned fixer. But as Rosa tries to get closer to the pirate of the high frequencies, things get considerably murkier, as it appears that he is another spook, supposedly killed in action. Meanwhile, Crowford’s boss (Charles) is getting increasingly antsy about her lack of progress, and sends another operative after her, to tie up the loose end she increasingly appears to represent.
Retitled from The Vibe, for entirely understandable commercial reasons, this is also known as – and you’ll be forgiven a derisive snort at this – Impossible Mission. But I’m going by the title under which I saw the movie on Amazon Prime. It starts promisingly enough, and does a good job of capturing the complex and paranoid worlds of both intelligence activities and conspiracy theorists, in which no-one can be trusted. However, it has no clue what to do with its concepts, and gets increasingly bogged down in far too much chit-chat. Not helping matters here, is the number of people, led by Gala, who are clearly not speaking their mother tongue, e.g. pronouncing “arsenic” as “ar-SEN-ic”.
Rosa does very little in the way of spycraft, and doesn’t put her toxic talents to any use in pursuit of her target. Certainly, the cover is entirely inaccurate, since I don’t recall her even picking up a gun. By the end, writer-director Gambino has painted himself into such a corner, there’s apparently no way to escape, and the film simply ends, without any of the major topics, least of all Rosa’s status, achieving resolution. I did keep watching, though must confess this was partly due to the over-enthusiastic closed captioning (which I turned on, since I was treadmilling at the time, and hence wheezing loudly). It describes the soundtrack in terms including “vexed music”, “maleficent music” and, my personal favourite, “dreadful music”. That this was the most consistent source of entertainment throughout, tells you everything you need to know.
Dir: Gilles Gambino
Star: Jimena Gala, Ben Vinnicombe, James Giblin, Leslie Charles
a.k.a. The Vibe
Matti Baker has always been… unusual. She was adopted as a child, and subsequently discovered her mother was an FBI special agent who died while giving birth to Matti on a mission. She breezed through high school, and after graduation, began training to become a contractor for a private agency, carrying out “special” tasks, under the (rather vague, and entirely deniable) auspices of the US government. On successful completion of the four-year course, Matti begins missions, such as neutralizing terrorists. She also meets Tom, who becomes her husband and they have three kids – triplets born on September 11, 2001. But, in 2015, the tables are turned, and Matti becomes the target for some highly-motivated and thoroughly unpleasant enemies, who are seeking vials in her possession, and won’t take “No” for an answer.
While not exactly an accurate retelling of the life of noted sure-shot Annie Oakley, this is breezily entertaining. Indeed, you can make a case for this being one of the earliest “girls with guns” films to come out in the talking pictures era. There’s no denying Oakley (Stanwyck) qualifies here. The first time we see her, she’d delivering a load of game birds – all shot through the head to avoid damaging the flesh – to her wholesaler. When barnstorming sharpshooter Toby Walker (Foster) blows into town, Annie ends up in a match with him, which she ends up throwing, due in part to her crush on him. She still gets a job alongside Walker, in the Wild West show run by the renowned ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody (Olsen) and his partner, Jeff Hogarth (Douglas). But Annie and Toby’s relationship fractures after he accidentally shoots her in the hand, while concealing an injury affecting his sight.
I previously reviewed the ninth volume in the Wardstone Chronicles series,