Tag: assassin

The Deadly Females

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★★½
“Tea, polite conversation and cold-blooded murder, British ’70’s style.”

An intriguing premise is ground into the dirt, with execution which could hardly be more tedious. An agency of hit-women are run by an antiques dealer (Reed), taking on clients from all walks of life, who can use the skill-set of her assassinettes. Flaky business partner? No problem. Trapped in an unloving marriage? Will that be cash or charge? It’s imbued with a curious degree of social commentary, as the scenes are intercut with newspaper front-pages, intended to convey the impression that 1976 society is on the edge of collapsing into predatory carnage, anarchy and chaos. Which, in the post-9/11 world, really seems more quaintly ironic than remotely threatening.

The main problem is pacing which takes the simplest scene and stretches it far beyond the point of relevance, or even interest. The killers are clearly in absolutely no hurry to carry out their tasks: for example, one poses as a student carrying out a survey on housewives to gain entrance. Which would be fine, except that we then have to sit through a whole spiel on the survey, the target’s daily routine, a cup of tea and a tour of the house before the hit-lady appears suddenly to remember why she’s there, karate-chopping the victim and dropping her down the stairs. Similarly, the “nurse” who turns up to give a massage…actually does give the massage. And then a bath, all depicted in much more detail than remotely necessary.

It’s less a story, than a series of unconnected clients. The only real linking influence is an Italian assassin, whose weapon of choice is poisoned cigarettes. She shows up right at the start, and then vanished for almost the entire movie: it’d have been fun to have seen two “killer companies” fighting it out for business. That lady is played by Rula Lenska, a genuine Polish countess who achieved further 70’s fame in the UK TV show Rock Follies, and was the US spokeswoman for VO5 shampoo. I suspect most of the other people in this may be recognizable from British horror of the period, though perhaps more Amicus and Tyburn than Hammer. It would certainly have benefited from the presence of someone like Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee.

While the violence is mostly understated, on the exploitation front, there’s plenty of softcore flesh – and even some male full-frontal nudity, though it’s not what you’d call erotic. This is in part because people seem to spend an awful lot of time lounging around in bed, chatting with each other – or, more often, bitching at each other. This does not exactly present a flattering portrayal of British men; as Chris put it, “My god – how did you ever come out of such a place?” But it remains such a unique and cynical animal that I found myself unable to do anything but keep watching, even as this continued to plod on, in its mostly-tedious vein.

Dir: Donovan Winter
Star: Tracy Reed, Bernard Holley, Scott Fredericks, Heather Chasen

Wanted

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★★★★
“Girls just wanna have guns.”

This is probably a borderline Girls With Guns flick, but Angelina Jolie is the nearest thing we have to a legitimated action-heroine superstar: Lara Croft, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and now this, where her character, the uber-assassin Fox, is certainly the most interesting in the film. Office drone Wesley (McAvoy) discovers his true heritage is in The Fraternity, a group of killers who surgically remove bad elements from society, as their names come up encoded in a cloth woven by a mystical loom. However, one of their number has gone rogue, and Cross (Kretschmann) is now taking out his former colleagues, one by one. Recruiting, training and using Wesley, is the only hope they have to stop the renegade.

Based on a comic-book. That phrase covers a whole spectrum of results, good and bad. Here, this means hyperkinetic action scenes with only a tenuous connection to reality. If you’ve seen the director’s previous work – such as Night Watch and its sequel Day Watch – you’ll know what to expect, and he gets to crank it up here, with a significantly-bigger budget, and a better cast. There are some brilliant set-pieces, not least the sequence where Fox rescues Wesley, and also a fabulous sequence on a high-speed train. It plays like a high-octane remix of Office Space and The Matrix: not, perhaps, up to the brilliant levels of either, yet an interesting hybrid that is still a great deal of fun, in a highly-caffeinated way.

Less well known, this is not Tikmanbetov’s first piece of Girls With Guns cinema, as before coming to Hollywood’s attention with Night Watch, he also did The Arena, a remake of a Roger Corman movie. The original had Pam Grier – the remake, didn’t, and let’s leave it at that. Fox is rather different from the incarnation in the comic [closer there to Halle Berry than anything], yet still has more backstory than Wesley, on her tattooed arms alone; while a sequel seems likely, it looks unlikely to involve her, and that’s a shame. Still, when you see Jolie climbing out on the bonnet of her high-performance sports-car, and blazing away like a heavily-armed hood ornament, you’ll understand exactly why it qualifies here.

Dir: Timur Bekmambetov
Star: James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Thomas Kretschmann, Morgan Freeman

Pistol Opera

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★½
“Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?”

I don’t think I have ever been quite so flummoxed by a girls-with-guns film. To say it’s not quite what I expected is an understatement, but it’s also my first experience of Seijun Suzuki, who is one of the icons of Japanese cinema. The basic plot centers around Stray Cat (Esumi), the current #3-ranked assassin; there’s a guild who decide such things, but they are on the edge of anarchy and Cat gets the assignment from her manager (Yamaguchi) to target the #1, Hundred Eyes. However, there are a lot of people with their own agendas, not least Sayoko (Han), a young girl who wants Cat to teach her the ways of murder.

On the basis of this, I’d file Suzuki somewhere between David Lynch and Guy Maddin, for large chunks of this make no sense. Characters deliver long, rambling monologues of no real significance to the camera [one particularly vague one involves flags], in front of a surreal landscape that is as much self-consciously artificial as it is realistic. It is apparently a reworking of the director’s own Branded to Kill, except with a female protagonist. More than 30 years – plus, it would appear, a truckload of drugs and a severe case of Alzheimer’s – passed in the meantime, and it’s clear Suzuki did not spend it working on the plot.

Sure, it looks lovely, but the girls-with-guns experience is not founded upon Art with a capital A. It’s something that should head directly for the lizard-brain, to deliver a heady payload of taboo-breaking violence. I have no objection to the artistically surreal in cinema generally [Peter Greenaway is a personal favourite]. However, there still needs to be something coherent and interesting behind it, otherwise you might as well just eat a large pizza and go to sleep – the imagery will be just as good, and it’s a better use of your time. In 1968, Suzuki got fired by major studio Nikkatsu, who said that they “could not afford to cultivate a reputation for making films understood only by an exclusive audience,” and that his “incomprehensible and thus bad films would disgrace the company.” Frankly, I’m in full agreement with the studio.

Dir: Seijun Suzuki
Star: Makiko Esumi, Sayoko Yamaguchi, Mikijiro Hira, Yeong-he Han

Rosario Tijeras

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★★★
“The film that could only be made in South America – where life is…very, very grim.”

Antonio (Ugalde) and Emilio (Cardona) meet the gorgeous Rosario (Martinez) at a nightclub in Medellin, Columbia, and both form a relationship with her – Emilio, a physical one; Antonio, a platonic but perhaps more deeply felt attachment. While information on Rosario is limited, not least from herself, they soon discover that she has a dark past (Tijeras isn’t her surname, it’s Spanish for “scissors”. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?) and a dark present (among the many rumour swirling around is that she has killed 200 or more, in her role as a hitwoman for the local drug cartels). Nor is the forecast for her future sunshine and rainbows, since the first scene has Antonio carrying a badly shot-up Rosario into a local hospital, with the rest of the film told in a series of flashbacks.

Medellin used to be a credible contender as murder capital of the world. During 1991, this city of about two million people saw over seven thousand homicides – there were less than seven hundred in all of England and Wales the same year. That may go some way to explaining the casual approach towards live, love and death shown by most of the characters here; why think about tomorrow when it might not arrive? Rosario’s job is more hinted at than actually depicted: while we do see her kill a couple of people, it’s far more for personal reasons, and despite the cover, this is less an action film than heavily-armed drama.

It’s a good performance from Martinez, however, and the hidden aspects of her character pull you in, to see what’s going to be revealed. Make no mistake though; this is downbeat material, through and through, with an unexpected cameo by Alex Cox [director of Repo Man] one of the few lighter moments. Otherwise, if you can think of something bad that might happen, odds are it will. Rosario’s psychology is also a little too conveniently pat – it was absolutely no surprise to discover she was abused as a child, even if the gap between that and mob killer seems to require more explanation. On the whole, this is solid and worthy, though it’d be something of a stretch to describe it as entertaining.

Dir: Emilio Maillé
Star: Flora Martínez, Manolo Cardona, Unax Ugalde

Beautiful Beast

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★★★
“The Beast is yet to come…”

Debate raged over this one. Chris reckons lead actress Shimamura was, at some point, a man. I’m not quite so convinced, but the mere thought certainly gave the sex scenes here an added edge of creepiness. Given the lengthy such sequence which occurs about five minutes in, I feared this was going to be no more than an itty-bitty titty-fest. Fortunately, after getting that out of his system, director Ikeda (Evil Dead Trap) settles down and delivers a gritty bit of nastiness, occasionally teetering on the edge of sadistic.

Ran (Shimamura) comes to Japan, and makes an immediate impression by assassinating a Yakuza boss and his associates, while they dine in a restaurant. Escaping the scene, she hides out in the restaurant owned by Yoichi (Yamato), and thanks him for covering for her with her body. About three hours later – or maybe it just seems that way – she moves on with the rest of her mission, which is to extract revenge on those responsible for the death of her sister. To this end, she works at the same hostess club as her late sibling, and waits for opportunity to present itself. However, the remaining target (Hakruyu), aware of his peril, kidnaps Ran’s friend Chun Li, and uses her to lure Ran out of the darkness.

The results are clearly inspired by the Zero Woman series, also about an angst-ridden hitwoman, and certainly have their moments. The finale, unfortunately, is not one of them, where instead of the bullet-propelled shootout against an entire Yakuza gang, we get something a lot less entertaining. The movie also features one of the most extreme instances of a boom-mike appearance that I have ever seen [it’s when Chun Li returns to her apartment to pick up some cash. At least, I think it’s a mic, since we couldn’t come up with any other credible suggestions]. Otherwise, however, it was less soft-pornish than we feared, and is played straight up and down, with the gangsters appropriately boorish, yet not stupid. More action would have helped, yet not without its merits. But if anyone can confirm or deny Chris’s theory about Shimamura, we’d like to hear from you…

Dir: Toshiharu Ikeda
Stars: Kaori Shimamura, Hakuryu, Takeshi Yamato, Takanori Kikuchi

Backlash

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★★½
“Come to sunny Trinidad! Enjoy the beaches! And kill people!”

I think it may be more infuriating to see a film that could be great, but blows its chance, than one which falls short in every aspect. Such is Backlash, a film with enough potential to flirt with greatness, before settling for mediocrity. Let’s start with the good stuff. Danielle Burgio is a stuntwoman, who doubled for Carrie-Anne Moss in the Matrix sequels, and it’s a striking resemblance – especially when the producers here pull Burgio’s hair back, and deck her out in a black tank-top (below, left). She has presence, agile grace and undeniably looks like she can kick butt. I was also amused by the two assassins on her tail: one (Levrone) is tall and taciturn, the other (Kim) short and feisty, and they’re a fun combination to watch.

In the middle lies the action. While some fights work nicely, too often (particularly between Burgio and Kim) they are an obvious sequence of blocks, with blows having no impact – some parts of the car chases are clearly shot at an extremely sedate pace. The script is nothing special either; I hoped a woman, writer Caitlin McKenna, could bring fresh aspects, yet the story here is tired and old. CIA agent Skye Gold (Burgio) is compromised, targeted for death and forced on the run, leading to the usual “Who can she trust?” issues we’ve seen a million times before. There’s little new here of note; the film, indeed, largely abandons Gold for a lengthy chunk in the middle, deciding to focus on the assassins’ approach to the base where she’s hiding out.

It is, however, the lumpy, leaden direction that kills this, the sense of pacing wrecked by frequent cuts to what feels painfully like stock footage from the Trinidad & Tobago Tourist Board. The use of badly-fitting music jars too, and works against the film, distracting rather than enhancing atmosphere. It seems the aim is something Andy Sidaris-esque, putting an action heroine in an exotic location to get chased by bad guys, but the results here seem much more forced and artificial (and if anything, increases my respect for Sidaris – whatever his flaws, the style is very easy to watch). I’ll happily keep an eye on Burgio whose career, with the right project, could explode; this, however, is definitely not it.

The DVD is available from MTI Home Video on November 21st; it’s in widescreen and includes a behind-the-scenes featurette and a music video.
Dir: David Chameides
Stars: Danielle Burgio, Robert Merrill, Kevin Levrone, Lauren Kim

Kite

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★★★½
“Leon, if Matilda had been adopted by Stansfield, instead of Leon.”

Concerns about some content here means Kite has had a tortuous release in the West. First time out, in 1998, it was shorn basically of all explicit sexual content: given the potentially underage nature of the animated heroine, Media Blasters didn’t want to be hit with a kiddie porn charge – laughable though that may seem for a “cartoon”! – and played it very safe. Subsequent releases over the next six years restored first much, in the “Director’s Cut”, then all (“Special Edition”) the footage, but the OAV* might just work better without the sex. It’s hardly as if I finished it and thought, “Y’know, what this really needs is some sequences of the heroine getting molested.”

Because the story is interesting enough on its own. Sawa is a teenage assassin, basically mind-controlled by her foster father, Akai: he’s a cop who uses her to mete out vigilante justice to paedophiles, etc. [This is ironic given their relationship, the nature of which even the edited version makes fairly clear.] She meets a young man, Oburi, in much the same situation, and their growing relationship threatens to disrupt the status quo of everyday slaughter. And, “slaughter” is the word, since Sawa’s weapon of choice is bullets that first penetrate the victim, then explode. Cue more irony: in America, even animated teenage sexuality is entirely verboten, but teenage, paint-the-walls-blood-red carnage? Bring it on.

The action is certainly intense, well-animated and directed, though perhaps excessive. Even after falling from a building, through the road, down to the subway – then being blown up, flying back into the air and blasted through an apartment window, some BandAids are apparently all the medical attention Sawa requires. This conflicted badly with the gritty realism of the story, and I also hated the doodling sax soundtrack, which sounded like something rejected by Abel Ferrara for Driller Killer. Otherwise, though, it’s generally impressive and stylish, with a downbeat approach that is refreshing, as well as some spectacularly messy violence.

* = Original Animation Video, a common “straight to video” anime format. It’s only 50 minutes, about standard length for such things. A live-action version, directed by Jorge + Javier Aguilera, produced by Rob Cohen & Anant Singh, was announced earlier this year, but no release date has been scheduled. And No Doubt’s video for Ex-Girlfriend borrowed heavily from Kite – the bathroom assassination is re-staged, almost shot-for-shot, as this video shows.

Dir: Yasoumi Umetsu
Star (voice): Kotomi Naruse, Shingo Oyamada, Goro Shibusawa, Tatsuo Matoba

Lady Jayne Killer

  By

★★★
“Unquestionably flawed but cheesily energetic fluff.”

Memo to self: don’t tell your wife the star of a film was in Playboy. Chris’s interest, already somewhat on thin ice, evaporated entirely, pretty much the moment I made that mistake, and I almost had to handcuff her to the bed to prevent a sudden trip to the supermarket. The concept here is kinda cool: Mom Emily (Eleniak) vs. anti-Mom Jayne (du Page). The latter is a hitwoman for the Mob, with 20 kills to her credit when she decides to abscond with a million in cash. She ends up hitching a ride beside Emily and her 16-year old son Kerry (Lelliot) on their way to San Antonio, with the former owners of the money in hot pursuit. And the cops. And the FBI. Then Kerry – when not fantasizing about Eleniak in the shower [cue Chris’s neo-departure!] – decides to solves Mom’s financial problems with thievery of his own.

I certainly don’t blame them for changing the title from the amazingly bland original – though suspect a colon got lost somewhere on route… And this is contrived: with a cellphone, and more than enough ready cash, Jayne could easily hire a limo – or even take a cab to San Antonio. So why use Emily – then hang around, even after their car breaks down? That sound you hear is the film whistling loudly and putting its fingers in its ears. And despite a strict and straight-laced parent, underage Kerry still sports a Superman tattoo on his arm. This kind of sloppy attention to production detail damages a film which is sometimes smarter than it may appear.

For instance, Emily’s line that her son is knows about every woman who has appeared in Playboy is nicely self-aware, given Eleniak’s familiarity with the staples therein. :-) But she stays dressed here, leaving the lingerie to Du Page, and Kerry’s interaction with the babe dropped into his life are amusing – hey, in his shoes and at his age, I’d be a gibbering fool too. The plot twists its way, albeit predictably, towards the final battle between Mom and anti-Mom. As a time-passer, I found it by no means awful: while it’d have been nice if Emily had snarled “Get away from him, you bitch,” when she found Jayne holding a gun to Kerry’s head, I guess you can’t have everything.

Dir: Mark L. Lester
Star: Erika Eleniak, Julie du Page, Jeremy Lelliot, James Remar
a.k.a. Betrayal

Killing Time

  By

★★★½
“Probably the second-best thing to come out of Newcastle that isn’t in a bottle.”

We Brits don’t do girls-with-guns movies: too busy drinking tea and arranging matchsticks, I imagine. This is a rare exception, and works not badly, combining a striking ‘Italian’ hitwoman in Maria (Torgan), with the bone-dry sarcasm of Guy Ritchie – at least, before he started making movies starring his missus, Madonna. Maria is brought in by Newcastle cop Bryant (Fairbrass) after the local crime lord (Leach) leaves a fellow policeman nailed to Bryant’s front door. Only, Bryant can’t afford to pay her, so blackmails some local thugs, led by Charlie (Thirkeld) to kill her after she’s done the job. Needless to say, things don’t quite go as planned, and the dead bodies start to accumulate, in a most non-British way.

The least convincing aspects of this are actually the action – it seems that everyone in Newcastle has a gun, but no-one could hit a barn if they were standing inside it, and a lengthy gunfight in the main railway station attracts no attention from police or bystanders (actually, the film has no bystanders. Everyone in the movie, is in the movie…). That aside, and the tinny, synthesized soundtrack, the dialogue alone is worth your attention; it’s almost Tarantino-esque, though comes off with far less pretension But I note, with interest, the presence on the video cover of the same Trek quote used to open Kill Bill, Volume 1…and, also, the credits containing the classic Godard quote about a movies, a girl and a gun.

Fairbrass has been in some real cinematic stinkers, such as Beyond Bedlam, but this is much better, with memorable characters and situations, not to mention the same setting as the best British gangster film of all time, Get Carter. Obviously, this isn’t in the same league, but if you’re in need of…well, Killing Time, there are many worse ways to go about it. Co-writer Neil Marshall would go on to write and direct other pics reviewed here, including The Descent and Doomsday, and if you enjoyed those, track this one down too.

Dir: Bharat Nalluri
Star: Kendra Torgan, Craig Fairbrass, Nigel Leach, Stephen D. Thirkeld

The Job

  By

★★½
“What Elle Driver did before joining DIVAS? Might explain why she hates The Bride…”

If I ever become an assassin, I will never utter the words “last” and “job” to anyone – it’s just begging for trouble. Hannah plays cold-hearted assassin CJ, who is supposed to recover 20 kilos of drugs stolen by Troy (Renfro), before he can sell them on. Only to do so, she must kill Emily (Swain), Troy’s heavily-pregnant girlfriend, and CJ’s qualms take over there, because she’s just discovered she too is expecting (a likely inevitable result of her fondness for casual sex with strangers). Angst, rebellion and an excruciating scene involving a hot bath and a coat-hanger follow, before a final showdown which had Chris snorting derisively about male scriptwriters and their wildly inaccurate concepts of childbirth. I’m not arguing: partly because Chris has been through pregnancy twice and I haven’t, and partly because even to me, the finale seemed pretty implausible.

I was expecting an action film, but CJ spends more time agonising over her state than shooting people. Meanwhile, Emily and Troy appear to be rehearsing for an appearance on Jerry Springer, and there’s an entirely unnecessary subplot where CJ and a former priest(!), played by Eric Mabius, have a unconvincing relationship. If the scripting leaves a lot to be desired – particularly at the end – both Hannah and Swain are convincing, and Alex Rocco is excellent as CJ’s boss Vernon, bringing a creepy power to his role; the other male cast members are largely left in the dust. Despite some shallow psychology (her mother was a prostitute, ergo CJ is all screwed up), there are interesting parallels between CJ and Emily, which could have been explored further. While the overall execution leaves a good bit to be desired, it’s not entirely without merit as a take on the usual ‘final mission’ cliches – especially if you think of it as a minor planetoid in the Kill Bill universe.

Dir: Kenny Golde
Star: Daryl Hannah, Brad Renfro, Dominique Swain, Eric Mabius