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Alita: Battle Angel

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★★★★
“Mechanical Pixie Dream Girl.”

Depending on your definition, this is perhaps the most expensive action-heroine film of all time, estimated at more than $200 million before tax incentives. Given the fate of live-action adaptations of manga in the West, most recently Ghost in the Shell, this was always going to be a risky investment, even with the name of James Cameron, the most successful movie-maker in history, attached as a producer. At one point, people were predicting a bomb of Mortal Engines size. While Alita seems to have escaped that fate, it’s going to have to do very well in both China and Japan, the two remaining territories, if it’s to turn any kind of profit, never mind start a franchise.

That’s a shame, because this is a solid, well-made piece of science-fiction, which does a particularly good job of creating a massive, epic world on the cinema screen. Rodriguez has been squeezing every penny out of his budgets since El Mariachi, and while there may not be much apparent overlap between Alita with Shark Boy and Lava Girl, the latter franchise was excellent training for RR in meshing computer graphics with actors. Sin City also laid similar groundwork, and helped set up the director with the chance to go big or go home. And there’s no doubt: Rodriguez went big. This was my first cinema trip of 2019, and was fully justified.

Having recently read the original manga, I was struck by how faithful the film was to most aspects. Right from the get-go, with Doc Ido (Waltz) finding the shattered remains of Alita (Salazar) on the scrap-heap below Zalem, there were shots which could have been story-boarded by the graphic novel. [Again, something Rodriguez also did in Sin City] Ido, in particular, looks exactly like I imagined him, and the same goes for Vector (Mahershala Ali), the shady power behind the scenes in Iron City, as well as Zapan and the rest of the bounty hunters.

The story is generally quite faithful, too. After her rescue, Alita tries to recover her past memories, becomes a bounty-hunter, falls in love with human boy Hugo (Johnson), takes up the brutal sport of Motorball, and experiences personal tragedy. However, the order of the events is shifted: in the manga, the tragedy is what spurs her entry into the Motorball arena. The film also adds Ido’s ex-wife, Chiren (Connolly), a character who was not in the comics, though does appear in the OVA. Here, they had a disabled daughter named Alita, who was killed by one of Ido’s Motorball goons. It’s a rather clunky subplot, which doesn’t add particularly much, beyond explaining from where Alita v2.0’s body came.

There has been much debate over Alita’s eyes, which have been CGI-increased in size to an extent rarely if ever seen in a live-action film. Of course, she’s a cyborg, so whatever. However, it is still something of a distraction, even though it appears they’ve been toned-down in size from early trailers, where it appeared her eyeballs would have occupied most of her brain’s frontal lobe. The eyes are one of the hardest things to get right with computer graphics, and when it isn’t, the results can be horrible, as with the resurrected Peter Cushing in Rogue One. This is better, and at some moments does enhance things, basically acting as a megaphone for Alita’s feelings. However, it also plays into the film’s main weakness: an apparent lack of genuine emotion. I’ll circle back to that a bit later.

As a spectacle, this is grand, offering sweeping vistas of a future world, densely populated with people, things and those in between. As an action movie, it works pretty well too. The two best set-pieces are the bar-brawl where newly-registered bounty hunter Alita proves her worth to her colleagues, and the Motorball game, where everyone else taking part cares only about killing Alita. There’s a palpable sense of progression in her skills over the course of the film. Initially, she’s clearly raw and unfocused, but after she is paired with her “berserker” body… [Inevitably, it has been the subject of PC whining, about it looking ‘too feminine’] Hoo-boy. By the end, she’s a weapon on mass destruction, regardless of the opponent’s size.

And speaking of the end, one frequently-heard bit of criticism is that the ending is too “open,” apparently fishing for a sequel. I can’t say I felt that way at all. There’s certainly scope for more movies, apparently involving Alita going after the mysterious Nova. Yet the main thread of the film, involving Alita and Hugo, is definitively wrapped up. In comparison, say, to Marvel films, which almost inevitably have an in- or post-credit sequence blatantly signposting the next film, this felt conclusive. While there is perhaps need for a greater sense of escalation, or a bigger climax (that Motorball battle is trivial in its consequences), I’m largely baffled by complaints about the “lack of a genuine ending.”

As mentioned above, a more significant issue is that I hardly “felt” anything for any of the characters. Ido – stuck between paternal instincts of protection and a desire to allow Alita self-determination – perhaps came the closest. The relationship between Alita and Hugo is supposed to provide the film’s emotional engine. But between the former’s CGI make-up and the latter’s generic blandness, it doesn’t make much of a dent. There’s a scene where she literally tears out her heart and gives it to him: everyone, including the film itself, seems faintly embarrassed by the whole incident. Worse still – minor spoiler – the movie even goes so far as to kill a dog, without generating more than a blip of impact. Somewhere, John Wick shakes his head, sadly.

I was initially concerned about the PG-13 rating – not least because the first trailer before the film was for UglyDolls [an animated movie “about acceptance, diversity, joy and friendship” according to its site]. I needn’t have been: this is more From Dusk Till Dawn Robert Rodriguez than the Spy Kids version, with a gleeful approach to the semi-mechanized carnage. For I think it helps on the censorship front, that most of the carnage in inflicted on cyborgs, who are largely able to take a licking and keep on ticking. The manga was heavily into black market spine-ripping; here, it’s mostly limbs, which is slightly more kid-friendly, I guess.

In the end, this is just about everything for which I could have hoped. While I don’t necessarily agree with all of the artistic choices, the positives greatly outweigh the weaknesses. Although this is a low bar (hello, Speed Racer), it’s certainly the best manga/anime adaptation to come out of Hollywood. It’s a world I’d love to see explored further: whether Rodriguez and crew get the chance to do so or not, will remain in doubt until the final box-office figures arrive. Fingers crossed.

Dir: Robert Rodriguez
Star: Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Keean Johnson, Jennifer Connelly

The Apocalypse Door, by James D. McDonald

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Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

I recommended this novel mainly for fans of action-adventure/espionage fiction. It was also a bit of a head-scratcher for me –as well as for the main characters!– whether their adventure is actually in the realm of the supernatural or of science fiction. There are definitely elements that could be explained in terms of the latter. But we also have a scenario of supposed would-be supernatural intervention to usher in the end of the present world order, as described in the biblical book of Revelation (given the title, that’s hardly a spoiler), which is presumed to be a bad thing. (In books and films with that premise, it’s always presumed to be a bad thing).

A valid criticism that could be made of that whole sub-genre is that it’s theologically illiterate, regardless of whether you’re talking about Christian, Jewish, or Moslem theology. None of these faiths view God’s final action at the end of history, to deliver the righteous from evil and oppression and usher in an eternal order of true peace and justice, as a bad thing; and none of them imagine that it can be brought about or jump-started by demonic or human manipulation. A second valid criticism of this particular book, IMO, is that the integration of the supernatural and SF elements here is clunky and unconvincing.

Those criticisms aside, however, this is a very gripping, exciting read, that moves along at a rapid pace right out of the starting gate. We have two distinct narratives here, alternating: a main one set in the author’s present (2002), laid out in the numbered chapters, and an earlier one from 1980, interspersed between each chapter in short sections titled “In-Country.” How the one strand is related to the other isn’t clear until near the end, although one connection comes into focus sooner than that. This is a challenging structure for a novelist to pull off, and to my mind Macdonald does it very well; both strands held my interest, and the rapid cutting between the two made for a constant cliff-hanger effect. I was completely hooked for both of them early on.

“Peter Crossman” is our narrator for the main narrative (he indicates at the outset that this is an alias). He’s an ordained Roman Catholic priest –and also a high-ranking Knight Templar, for our premise here is that after they were slandered and suppressed in 1307, the Templars continued to exist underground, and still operate today as a secret agency for fighting evil. Much of their M.O. is similar to secular counterparts such as the CIA or MI6. (Macdonald’s Templars are thoroughly orthodox Roman Catholics –there’s no attempt here to make them into closeted heretics.) For the particular assignment he’s been given, he’s assisted by a younger colleague whose performance he’s to evaluate, and he also soon gets the unexpected assistance of Franciscan (Poor Clare) nun Sister Mary Magdalene.

But pistol-packing Maggie’s not your typical nun; she works for the Clare’s Special Action Executive Branch –a distaff equivalent of the Templars– as an assassin. Another quibble here, even if you’re prepared to accept the idea that the forces of good can permissibly employ extra-legal lethal force against evil, is that the Clare’s leadership don’t vet their contracts very well; Peter and Maggie (who’ve met before) encounter each other here when she’s sent to kill him. (That’s not much of a spoiler; we learn it in Chapter 2.) Obviously, when she finds out that her mark is one of the good guys, she doesn’t carry out the hit; but in her shoes, that would make me seriously aware that something’s amiss back at headquarters! But that aspect isn’t explored. The ensuing mission, though, proves to be challenging, lethally dangerous, and twisty as a pretzel.

Peter’s narrative voice is streetwise and heavily leavened with wisecracking humor, with the perspective of a tough veteran of too many years of rough-and-tumble action that’s exposed him to the depths of what evil humans are capable of; he doesn’t have any illusions about his fellow men or himself. But his faith rescues him from cynicism, and the reality of the Divine and the spiritual is taken seriously here. (Macdonald was raised as a Roman Catholic, I don’t know if he practices now, but he knows the nuances of Catholic belief and practice.) Good use is also made here of Templar history, and the history of their disreputable offshoot, the Teutonic Knights.

This is a very quick read, with little bad language (a few vulgarisms, one f-word, and no profanity) and minimal violence; what there is isn’t graphic or dwelt on. Three stars is my best estimate for the kick-butt quotient; by her own admission, Maggie’s killed people in her line of work, and when the good guys have to throw lead here, she throws it right along with the rest -–though when the smoke clears and the bodies are counted, as in real life, it may not be easy or worthwhile to figure out who shot who. The one sex scene in the 1980 narrative isn’t very explicit, and occupies three short sentences. (Peter finds Maggie sexy, as most males would, in holy orders or not; but that’s just a morally neutral quality she happens to have, and both she and he take their celibacy vows seriously.) Our hero and heroine aren’t plaster saints, but unlike some reviewers, I didn’t find either of them “blasphemous” nor bad representatives of their faith.

This is a stand-alone novel, a fact that has pluses and minuses; I’m not looking to get sucked into another series, but I actually wouldn’t mind following Peter and Maggie as series characters! (The author has penned some Peter Crossman short stories, which I might look into.)

Author: James D. Macdonald
Publisher: Tor, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Avenge the Crows: The Legend of Loca

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★★★½
“Though I’m still not sure what the title means…”

This feels like a low-budget project in many ways, but manages to punch above its weight, in part due to an impressive supporting cast. While Lou Diamond Phillips, Danny Trejo and Steven Bauer are nowhere near as important as their names on the cover might suggest, their presence provide a solid foundation on which the less well-known members of the cast can build. In particular, Danay García as Loca; having bailed on Fear the Walking Dead after about two episodes, I wasn’t aware of her, but on the basis of this, she’s a name on whom we’ll be keeping an eye.

Gabaeff, as well, has some interesting shots in his directorial locker. At times, this almost reminded me of Memento in the structure: it’s only at the end that you are given the necessary knowledge to  understand all that has happened. Even on a smaller scale, the layout is often fractured. More than once, a character gets a phone-call, and the film then jumps back in time, and over to the person on the other end of the line, to show what led up to them making that call. As such, it takes a bit of getting your brain around – yet the payoff, in the “Aha!” moment where you realize how it connects, is gratifying.

An interesting twist is that Loca is not the executor of the revenge, as is usually the case – she’s the target for it. Casper (Phillips) is in prison, but a henchman there, Joker (the genuinely scary-looking Flores), is about to be released. Joker is told to “send a message” to Loca, through her niece, Cammy (Rivera). But he goes further than Casper intended, and rapes Cammy. That starts Loca on a search for protection, but the gun-dealer she visits to acquire weapons turns out to be targeted for some retribution of his own, and Loca is dragged into that as well. Handling all this will require her to navigate dangerous waters, and bring together enemies to face a common foe.

There’s a strong scent of grim reality here: I don’t know if the tattoos everyone is sporting were “real” or not (likely a mix), but I don’t think I’ve seen a more inked-up feature. You get the feeling the people involved are largely familiar with the environment in question – not least, of course, Trejo, whose background as a felon-turned-star actor deserves to become a movie of its own. Here, he plays the owner of the bar where Loca hangs out, and is as gloriously gruff and down to earth as ever. The rest of the cast all fit their roles well. If the eventual resolution (where Bauer eventually turns up, after we had virtually abandoned hope!) feels a little unlikely and convenient, given the complexities of what had gone before, this doesn’t undo the generally solid work here. It’s better than I expected going in.

Dir: Nathan Gabaeff
Star: Danay García, Emilio Rivera, Michael Flores, Angelique Rivera

American Terrorist by Wesley Robert Lowe

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Literary rating: ★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

This was a disappointment, and a real chore to get through. If it had been a film, I’d have been reduced to surfing Facebook distractedly on my phone for the majority of its running time. Unfortunately, you don’t get to leave a book on in the background. It’s a stylistic and literary mess, throwing at the reader Canadian Special Forces heroine Rayna Tan, without providing any real background or character building beyond an incident in the Middle East. It then randomly switches around between her, a brother/sister pair of Islamic terrorists, Ahmed and Fatima, and their startlingly incompetent American recruits, who appeared to have strayed in from Four Lions. Throw in some unsubtle politicizing – even if I don’t necessarily disagree with the ideas expressed, it’s not what I want to read in my fiction – and it feels more like a half-finished collection of ideas than a coherent novel.

For example, after quitting the military, Tan goes to work for a group called Fidelitas Capital. Their cover is that they’re a money management company with no qualms – except, when they discover evidence of wrongdoing, they also target the customers with their in-house super-secret group of former soldiers. It would be putting it mildly to say this raises more questions than it answers. Another problem, is that the “American Muslim Militia” whom Rayna and her pals are hunting are, as noted above, pretty crap as terrorists go, and likely pose a danger to themselves, more than any innocent bystanders in the USA. For comparison, the book briefly describes an attack by another group, who blow the top third off the Washington Monument using a fleet of twenty explosive-laden drones. Now, that’s what I call a terror attack. Why wasn’t the book about them?

I get that the author is trying to spin his narrative out of several threads, depicting both the terrorists and those who’re hunting them. Yet it’s all remarkably bitty, and lacking in any flow at all, such as when Rayna and her colleagues are suddenly the targets for some Japanese assassins. This seems to have strayed in from another book entirely, coming out of nowhere and going nowhere either. It all builds to a climax at Seattle’s Safeco Field, which sounded interesting because it’s a baseball park I visited last summer. As depicted here, I completely failed to recognize it. Lowe is no more adept at creating a sense of place, than he is at creating credible or interesting characters. I can also assure him that those who rent suites at a ballpark are not immune from all security searches, as is claimed.

According to the author, Rayna is “Smart—IQ off the charts. Lethal—more kills than Chris Kyle. Black belt martial artist. She’s sexy, vulnerable and complicated.” There are worthy aims. Shame there’s precious thin evidence of these traits to be found in this novel.

Author: Wesley Robert Lowe
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available from Amazon only as an e-book.
Book 1 of 2 (plus a prequel) in The Rayna Tan Action Thrillers series

Avengers Grimm: Time Wars

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★½
“Fairy disappointing.”

I was one of the few who didn’t mind Avengers Grimm, appreciating its poverty-row energy, while acknowledging it had little or nothing to do with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With Avengers: Infinity War storming the global box-office, it’s not much of a surprise to find The Asylum going back to the same well. However, despite the same director, and much of the same cast, the script botches the timey-wimey aspects badly enough that the first half, in particular, becomes a slog that’ll test the audience’s endurance.

The villainess here is Magda (Maya), the queen of Atlantis, who storms out of the ocean with her army of soldiers – well, there’s at least four of them, with any more appearing entirely through not very good digital copy/paste. She’s looking for Prince Charming (Marcel), as if he can be convinced to marry her, Magda will become ruler of the land as well as the sea. In her way is Lookingglass, an organization created by Alice (Licciardi) to protect Earth from all these fairy-tale threats. She gets the band back together: Snow White (Parkinson), Red Riding Hood (Elizabeth Eileen) and Sleeping Beauty (Marah Fairclough), the last-named of whom has her own interest in the Prince. Magda isn’t going to let them interfere with her plans of world domination, so throws them through a portal in time and…

Well, not very much. There’s an enormous amount of wandering around thereafter, in what has to be rampant padding to feature length. As just one example, Sleepy gets captured and stuck in a glass case – a situation with which viewers will certainly be able to empathize. While Rumpelstiltskin returns from the first movie, he’s now played by a different actor. And that The Asylum could apparently no longer afford Casper Van Dien, replacing him with someone cheaper less well-known, should probably be considered as a red flag. Confusing matters further, Prince Charming is black and sports a fake British accent. I found one of these things deeply offensive. :)

The main appeal of the original was seeing all these D*sney princess types being bad-asses, to varying degrees, and kicking ass – that appears here in VERY intermittent spurts. For example, Red still uses her bow, yet only on a couple of occasions, to the point it’s more of a token gesture. I’m not sure who’s responsible for the fight choreography here: it seems barely passable at best, and is often feeble. I don’t recall the predecessor being quite as bad in this department, though the mists of time may be working to its benefit. While Avengers Grimm was cheap and an obvious rip-off, it had enough gonzo energy to slide past. Time Wars is merely cheap and an obvious rip-off; as such, it probably has more in common with our other recent Asylum review, Tomb Invader. Not least, in that both sent me off to sleep during the duller moments.

Dir: Jeremy M. Inman
Star: Lauren Parkinson, Christina Licciardi, Michael Marcel, Katherine Maya

Annihilation

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★★★½
“Some-thing in the way she moves…”

12 months after apparently vanishing while on a covert mission, the husband of former soldier Lena (Portman) suddenly shows up, unable to remember what happened, and suffering massive organ failure. The couple are quarantined by the government, and Lena learns of “Area X” in Florida. An apparent meteor strike has led to a “shimmer” which is gradually expanding in size: all expeditions into the area have vanished without trace, until Lena’s husband showed up. Lena joins another such expedition, led by Dr. Ventress (Leigh), hoping to reach the lighthouse which marks the apparent focus of the event, and discover something which can help her husband.

It’s probably best if I say not much more about the plot, though this will make the movie a bit difficult to review. Let’s just say, it soon becomes clear that the world inside the shimmer is radically different, and any creatures present there are also… changed. The overall feel is a bit like a female-led version of John Carpenter’s The Thing, where you were never sure what nightmarish creature lay around the next corner. Here, it begins with a mutated giant crocodile, which has developed multiple rows of teeth more in common with a shark… and only gets worse from there. One in particular is the stuff of nightmares, and is so dreadfully creepy, I wish we’d seen more of it or its associates.

The characters who make up the all-woman crew of the mission are a little generic. They are each given somewhat trite motivations for their agreement to join what is, to all intents and purposes, a suicide mission. But the actresses concerned take what they’re given and flesh out their roles well: it’s particularly great to see Leigh, who was one of my favourite actresses in the late eighties, before largely vanishing from features until The Hateful Eight. Meanwhile, Lena’s background in the military helps her take charge, and deal with situations which, to be honest, would likely have me running and screaming. It’s another in Portman’s portfolio of strong women, going all the way back to Leon.

If there’s a real flaw, it’s likely the ending, which appears to dip towards trippy psychedelic territory, closer to 2001. While The Thing was intended to do nothing more complex than scare the crap out of the viewer, and was all the better for a relentless focus on this goal, Garland appears to be trying to say something Very Deep about… something. I’m still not quite sure what. One interesting angle to consider though, is that it’s all being told by Lena in flashback – and she has shown herself quite capable of being economical with the truth. So, is what she recounts, actually what happened?

Based on the first book in a trilogy, by all accounts this diverges fairly radically from the novel. It does appear the studio were unsure of how to handle the rather unusual work which resulted, and the film went straight to Netflix almost everywhere bar America. This is perhaps an indication of its chilly, somewhat spiky nature, and what you have here a film more to admire than like.

Dir: Alex Garland
Star: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson

The Adventures of Kathlyn by Harold MacGrath

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆☆

“Have you not learned by this time that I am not a weak woman, but a strong one? You have harried me and injured me and wronged me and set tortures for me, but here I stand, unharmed. This day I will have my revenge.”

As we discussed earlier this week, the novel is an adaptation of the 13-part serial by the same name starring Kathlyn Williams. The first episode was originally released between Christmas and New Year 1913, and the book was published a few days later, as a tie-in. With both the serial and the feature-length version of the story, released in 1916, both almost entirely lost (one episode and print fragments remaining), the book is virtually all we have to go on in terms of documenting the proto-action heroine who is its titular character.

Kathlyn Hare is the daughter of Colonel Hare, a noted “bring ’em back alive” hunter, who provides animals to circuses and zoos. He had spent many years searching for big game on the Indian sub-continent, in particular the country of Allaha, where he saved the king from a leopard attack. Years later, the senile king makes the Colonel his successor, much to the chagrin of Prince Umballah. The Colonel returns to Allaha, intending to abdicate, leaving a sealed letter behind, for Kathlyn and her sister Winnie to open if he doesn’t come back.

When that comes to pass, the letter triggers Kathlyn’s departure across the world to Allaha, on a courageous mission to rescue her father. Before it’s over, and Umballah is finally defeated, there will be encounters with wild creatures, wilder locals, and an almost endless stream of perils, both natural and man-made. Fortunately, there’s the brave explorer Bruce to help out, as well as some friendly natives, and not least, Kathlyn’s very particular set of skills, involving a particular affinity for animals.

With its action-wilderness setting and breathless pace, Kathlyn feels almost like the ancestor of Lara Croft, though she defers significantly to the men when it comes to the heavy lifting and most of the fighting. But there’s a lengthy period where she has to fend entirely for herself in the jungle. Considering this comes from a time before women were even allowed to vote, she still makes for a striking character. Of course, this dates from a different era, and the unfortunate attitudes of the time, more than a century ago, are frequently reflected in the content. When Kathlyn is informed she is to marry Umballah, there are a million valid reasons to be horrified: he has basically abducted her, after all. But the one the author chooses to have Kathlyn express? “Marry you? Oh, no! Mate with you, a black?”

But, wait! There’s more:

  • Sexism! “Not a sign of that natural hysteria of woman, though [Kathlyn] had been through enough to drive insane a dozen ordinary women.”
  • Racism! “The Hindus are a suicidal race.”
  • Sexism and racism! “The women of [Umballa’s] race were chattels, lazy and inert, without fire, merely drudges or playthings.”

Painful though such sentiments obviously are, I feel you can’t validly judge a vintage book by modern standards, any more than you can complain that Shakespeare’s play do not depict parliamentary democracies. If you feel such things are important, however, this novel is likely not for you.

The writing style, while enthusiastic, is occasionally odd in that it chooses to skip over what should be thrilling moments. I wonder if perhaps this was the book’s way of not stealing the serial’s thunder? For example, as Kaitlyn sets off, accompanying a big cat her father was shipping to its end buyer, a major incident is all but entirely skipped over thus: “How the lion escaped, how the fearless young woman captured it alone, unaided, may be found in the files of all metropolitan newspapers.” Uh, what? But there are times when MacGrath does hit it out of the park, descriptively: “In the blue of night the temple looked as though it had been sculptured out of mist. Here and there the heavy dews, touched by the moon lances, flung back flames of sapphire, cold and sharp.”

Or there’s this stirring description of Kathlyn, in her role as a “Joan of Allaha”: “With the sun breaking in lances of light against the ancient chain armor, her golden hair flying behind her like a cloud, on, on, Kathlyn ran, never stumbling, never faltering, till she came out into the square before the palace. Like an Amazon of old, she called to the scattering revolutionists, called, harangued, smothered them under her scorn and contempt, and finally roused them to frenzy.” It’s sections like this which make me feel it’s a real shame we’ll never be able to experience the theatrical version of this story. On the other hand, the book does have the advantage of being able to include dialogue, something not available in the silent era, so it might still be more accessible to the modern audience.

I found it an interesting snapshot of a bygone era, and if you’re happy to take this for what it is, and forgive the crude stereotyping, it’s an entertaining and fast-paced read (if occasionally repetitive, in terms of story – how many times is Kathlyn and her family going to escape the clutches of Umballah and not GTFO?). Time for a remake starring Saoirse Ronan, I’d say!

Author: Harold MacGrath
Publisher: Originally in 1914 by the Bobbs-Merrill company, it is now available free from Project Gutenberg, in a variety of formats.

Abducted by T.R. Ragan

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Literary rating: ★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½

A largely uninteresting and occasionally tedious read, this begins when the 17-year-old Lizzy Gardner is abducted by a serial killer known as “Spiderman”, for his habit of using insects to terrorize his victims. Lizzy manages to escape, but Spiderman isn’t captured, until almost a decade and a half later, when someone confesses to the crimes. By then, Lizzy has become a private eye, and also giving lectures to young girls, on how to avoid falling victim as she did. She’s not convinced the right person has been caught, and she’s right: the real Spiderman is by no means happy that someone else has taken “credit” for his crimes. So he starts up again, with the eventual aim of recapturing Lizzy, the one who got away…

It’s really extremely contrived, with Lizzy fortuitously unable to recall any significant elements of her ordeal – even the place where she was held – which could have allowed the police to capture the perpetrator. Then there’s the convenient coincidence that her boyfriend of the time has grown up to become (what are the odds?) an FBI agent. Of course, when they reconnect, the old sparks still fly, and he’s also the only one who thinks she’s not a demented PTSD victim. Somewhat more engaging, to be honest, are the supporting female characters, including Jessica, Lizzie’s intern, who has her own reasons for interest in the case. Leading them is likely Hayley, an abused teenager and attendee at Lizzy’s lecture, who takes it upon herself to become bait for Spiderman, so that she can deal with him. If the whole story had been told from her point of view, it could have been a fresh perspective.

Instead, you could make the case Spiderman is given better motivation and characterization than the heroine. Although even here, it’s the usual mix of childhood trauma and hatred of women; the only unusual aspect is he seems himself as what could be described as a “social justice warrior,” punishing those he perceives as “bad girls.” Yet the prose devoted to him is one of the problems here: Ragan’s desire to show both sides of the story, almost inevitably, leaves both of them under-cooked. Despite its clear desire to be Silence of the Lambs, this most certainly falls short, on both sides of the scales of justice.

Part of the problem is that it feels like the characters are universally weighed down with the burden of a tragic past, from which they can’t escape. While I know tragedy is one of the driving forces of drama, this appears to be Ragan’s literary version of “If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” The plot offers virtually nothing in the way of surprises or twists, meandering on to the confrontation between Lizzie and Spiderman, which you’ve been expecting since about chapter three. There’s precious little here to explain the series’s apparent success, and even less that would get me interested in reading any further entries.

Author: T.R. Ragan
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer, available through Amazon in both printed and e-book versions.

Altitude

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★★★
“Fly the unfriendly skies.”

If you ever wanted to see Denise Richards brawl with MMA star Chuck Liddell, or even the daughter of Frasier, this film delivers. For Richards plays FBI hostage negotiator, Gretchen Blair, who is being ignominiously sent back to Washington after willfully disobeying orders during a siege. She ends up sitting next to the increasingly-nervous Terry (Barker), who offers her $50 million if she helps him get off the plane alive. For he knows it’s about to be hijacked by Matthew Sharpe (Lundgren) and his cronies, who will stop at nothing to retrieve the item which Terry took from them. It’s up to Gretchen, with the dubious help of an air marshal on his third solo flight, to stop their plan.

Far from the first film of its kind – Passenger 57, with Wesley Snipes, most obviously comes to mind – this starts off almost as a self-aware version of the genre, and is all the better for it. Witness, for example, Jonathan Lipnicki’s brief cameo as one of those super-perky flight attendants everyone hates, the cold, dead eyes of Sharpe’s lead henchwoman, Sadie (Grammer), while she has to pretend to be a stewardess, or Blair’s rant at the passenger who occupies her prized window-seat. It’s clear the writer has flown a lot. More of this, as well as further examples of Arnie-esque one-liners such as “You need to adjust your altitude, bitch!” and we could have had a cult classic.

Unfortunately, as things proceed, it loses a bit of its quirky charm and becomes just an increasingly implausible actioner. I mean, a plane taking off with the escape slides deployed is one thing; passengers escaping from the aircraft while it does so? I also wonder who, exactly, cleared and prepared the wilderness runway on which Sharpe lands the plane, surely the work of hundreds of people over a significant period. Richards is surprisingly credible here, especially if you remember her utterly unconvincing turn as Ph.D Dr Christmas Jones in The World is Not Enough. However, it’s former Miss Teen Malibu Grammer who is outstanding here among the villains for her lack of scruples, not least because Lundgren – presumably now too old for this shit – spends almost the entire time in the cockpit. Though him flying the plane through a thunderstorm, while the score plays Ride of the Valkyries, was a nice touch.

The plane on which 90% of this takes place, already lends itself to a claustrophobic setting, but Merkin seems to prefer to push the camera in too close to the action, and in half-darkness. I suspect the stand-ins may have been involved, since looking at the IMDb, even Liddell, who plays another of Sharpe’s minions, had two stunt doubles. By the time this finishes – likely no spoiler to say there’s a giant fireball involved – its welcome has just about been exhausted. Yet there has been enough wit and energy to make this qualify as a pleasant surprise, one which surpassed my (admittedly low) expectations.

Dir: Alex Merkin
Star: Denise Richards, Kirk Barker, Greer Grammer, Dolph Lundgren

Ataúd Blanco: El Juego Diabólico

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★★★½
“Who takes the child by the hand takes the mother by the heart.”

This crisp little Argentinian film clocks in at 70 minutes – not even enough to be considered a feature by the Screen Actors Guild. You’ll understand, therefore, there isn’t much fat on its bones. Virginia (Cardinali) has left her husband, taking daughter, Rebecca (Duranda), with her. But a moment’s inattention at a gas-station proves fatal, as Rebecca is abducted, and Virginia’s car driven off the road during the subsequent pursuit. Brought back (from the dead?) by a mysterious stranger (Ferro), she is told Rebecca has been chosen by a religious cult as a sacrifice. It’s up to Virginia to stop them, and she can let no-one get in her way. Which becomes an issue, for we quickly find out, she is not the only mother looking to recover a child from the cult – and, it appears, only one can succeed.

It’s a blowdart of a movie, picking nastily away at the scab of “How far would a mother go to save her own child?” – and keeping at it. “No, really. How far?” It does require a certain suspension of disbelief, not least in Virginia’s inexplicable failure even to attempt contacting the authorities regarding her missing child, surely the first thing most people would do. If you are able to get past that – and it is likely the plot’s biggest weakness – then you’ve got a steady descent into hell. The unspoken question which informs everything is whether the stranger actually has her best interests at heart, or is simply pulling her strings. Weird sacrificial cults in rural places tend to do that, as anyone who has seen The Wicker Man knows. And if to you, that means only the Nicolas Cage version: my sympathies on your loss.

However, there are elements of another Cage movie here: Drive Angry, in which he played a criminal who came out of the grave, to track down the cult who are preparing to sacrifice his grand-daughter. This is nowhere near as lurid: save for perhaps one sequence involving a chainsaw, this is more about psychological torment than the physical. For example, Virginia’s quest involves tracking down and burning the white coffin referred to in the title (the subtitle translates as “A diabolical game”). Yet as the film goes on, it becomes clear that any success in this is going to come at a hellish cost to her own humanity – and, arguably, that of her daughter as well.

The quote at the top is a German proverb (or maybe Danish, depending which Internet site you believe), and it’s an appropriate summary, though doesn’t capture the thoroughly mean-spirited nature of this, especially in the final reel. That’s no criticism in the genre of horror, which should go the extra mile to push the viewer’s buttons, yet especially in more mainstream works, tends to bail out at the last minute. It’s something of which this isn’t guilty; when it ends, it’s going further into the same bleak darkness, where the movie has been heading all along.

Dir: Daniel de la Vega
Star: Julieta Cardinali, Rafael Ferro, Eleonora Wexler, Fiorela Duranda
a.k.a. White Coffin