Tag: assassin

Double Play, by Kelley Armstrong

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

Some years ago, my Goodreads friend Mary J.L. gave the original novel of the author’s Nadia Stafford trilogy a favorable review, and that put it on my radar. As a rule, I don’t read novels that are only published in electronic format (it does have a audio version, but I don’t listen to audio books either), but I do read short e-stories; electronic publishing provides a forum for those works which no longer exists in print, what with the demise of general-circulation magazines. This tale, as a novella, occupies a middle ground, but commercially novellas are in much the same boat as short stories –a single one wouldn’t sell very well in print format. So I felt it was fair to treat it the same way, and thought it would be a good way to check out the series for myself.

From reading the descriptions, and some reviews, of the novels in the original trilogy, I figured I would have enough knowledge of the characters and their situation so as not to have a problem understanding this one. That proved to be true. However, a significant caveat is that this continuation does contain spoilers in the romantic-triangle aspect of the novels and some of the denouement of the third novel, Wild Justice, so readers who would be very bothered by that should read the series in order. (And regarding the romantic triangle, probably shouldn’t read either this review or the novella description!)

Ex-cop turned guest lodge owner/manager Nadia (“Dee”) Stafford’s action qualifications aren’t in question; but some might challenge her heroine qualifications since, as the Goodreads description makes clear, her unadvertised side occupation is as a hit woman. But Nadia’s not your average amoral, anything-for-money hired killer; she’s actually a lady with a very lively conscience, a concern for justice and the protection of the innocent, and a strict code of professional ethics to govern her extra-legal line of work. Though I haven’t read much fiction with assassin protagonists, I think they can be interesting characters when they approach their work with a sense of right and wrong and ethical obligation; and Nadia qualifies in that respect. Of course, I don’t endorse her career choice (and she’d actually agree that it’s objectively wrong, even though she’s not planning to quit). But I can still like and respect her, and wish her well; and when she’s willingly putting her life on the line to help someone in trouble, as she is here, I’m not one to deny her a “heroine” accolade.

When our story opens, Nadia and her lover, fellow assassin Jack (who was introduced in the first novel) are in the process of building a house in the woods near her lodge. At the moment, though, Jack’s in his native Ireland on business, and phone communication between the two is precarious because of their security concerns. In the first chapter, she’s approached by an acquaintance from a shadowy vigilante organization she’s had contact with before, who’s looking for Quinn, one of the organization’s operatives –and Nadia’s ex-boyfriend (pre-Jack). He’s dropped out of sight, and it’s clearly not intentional; he’s been kidnapped, by parties and for purposes unknown. In their milieu, just placing a missing persons report and letting the police do their job isn’t a practical option; so Nadia’s soon off to Virginia to help with the search and (hopefully) rescue, and the action takes off. (And don’t forget Jack in Ireland….)

The 17 chapters alternate between Nadia’s first-person narration and third-person narration, but from Jack’s perspective and in his vocabulary. Some readers may find his predilection for the f-word as all-purpose adjective and adverb wince-worthy –he doesn’t say it much, being notoriously laconic, but he thinks it repeatedly. (No other character uses it to that extent, however, and Nadia, while she might occasionally let slip a cuss word or vulgarism, doesn’t use it at all.). A Byzantine plot lies behind the kidnapping, and I deducted a star for ultimately contradictory plotting: a number of details in the previous chapters, given the denouement, don’t really make sense, IMO. (And, recalling the old TV show America’s Dumbest Criminals, the villain here could qualify for star billing on a World’s Dumbest Criminals show, if there were one.)

For all that, though, the story is a page-turner, and the two lead characters are, for contract assassins, genuinely likable. Readers of the trilogy already are familiar with them; but I got to know them here in a way that’s not possible just from book descriptions. We also get glimpses of their psychological baggage –Jack’s going back to Northern Ireland’s bloody Troubles in his teens, and Nadia’s as a past rape victim. (While the two aren’t married, their love for each other is sincere and has a good effect on their lives, and the references to their lovemaking aren’t very explicit.) While I hope the novels in the trilogy are better plotted, I still liked this literary appetizer enough to plan to give the series opener a try!

Author: Kelley Armstrong
Publisher: Traverse Press; available through Amazon, currently only along with the next novella, Perfect Victim – both as e-books and in paperback.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Agent 5

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★★½
“Sleepless in Seattle”

Coincidentally, this one-man production was watched immediately after another, also put together toward the north-west corner, around the USA/Canadian border. But Carter Johnson is relatively restrained compared to Shadow of the Lotus‘s Jeff L’Heureux, Johnson’s name only appearing ten times in the end credits. While not dissimilar in low-budget approach, Agent 5 likely comes out just on top of the two, due to better pacing and sleeker look.

The titular heroine is Jada (Lemos), an assassin for a shadowy group which brought her up and trained her to kill, after the death of her parents. However, her programming is broken after she’s assigned the target of a whistleblowing doctor, whose elimination has been ordered by the pharmaceutical company which employed him. He convinces her to spare his life: although nearby colleagues still complete the job, before his death, he gives her the folder of incriminating data, information which could save thousands of lives. When Agent 5 goes public with it, her own employer decides she must be eliminated for her treachery, and the call goes out that she is to be located and killed. Easier said than done, though, especially when the target has decided to take the battle to her boss.

The action is competent. Nothing especially memorable, yet those involved are wise enough to know their limitations, and operate within them, rather than pushing the envelope and coming up short. Plotwise, there are some wobbly aspects: as with Lotus, the director being the writer probably hampers seeing such deficiencies. Jada exerts no effort to make things difficult for her ex-employer. If I was the subject of a brigade of assassins, I’d have moved to another country (or at least another state), drastically changed my appearance and gone as far off the grid as possible. Agent 5 does none of this, and keeps driving around town – likely for the prosaic reason that it would have posed production difficulties. Her “defection” also needed additional work: as it stands, she goes from apparently dedicated killer to rebel on the strength of a thirty-second conversation. Showing her as already disgruntled and with thoughts of quitting, would have made this much more plausible.

Originally developed as a short web series back in 2012, the main strength for the feature-length version is on the visual side. The technical quality of the footage here is so slick, it’s all but indistinguishable from a fully professional production (from what I can gather, it’s more of a high-end hobby effort for most involved). If only the same could be said about the performances, which are the biggest problem. Not so much Lemos – I’m not the only person to think she could perhaps be mistaken for Kate Beckinsale under certain lighting conditions. But the rest of the cast are all over the place, things likely reaching their nadir in the male “newscaster,” whose acting is so spectacularly awkward, I rewound it, purely for amusement purposes.

Dir: Carter Johnson
Star: Cindy Lemos, Ben Andrews, Andrew Tribolini, Roy Stanton

Anna

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★★★★
“Luc Besson’s Greatest Hits”

Before getting to the film, we probably have to address the elephant in the room: the rape accusations against Luc Besson. Though police investigations have finished, with the allegations unproven, they definitely have damaged Besson’s reputation. While in Europe, the basic rule remains “Innocent until proven guilty”, in Hollywood a mere accusation in a newspaper headline or online can potentially destroy a man’s career these days. And while some people are guilty of the crimes of which they were accused, I personally strongly doubt that the small, overweight, apparently introverted Frenchman is a serial rapist.

Honestly, if I go by what I heard about countless actors and directors working in Hollywood today, I probably wouldn’t be able to watch any movie. The logical thing for me is to separate a creator and what you know about them (or perhaps, think you know) from their work. Beethoven is said to have been a terrible, unsympathetic misogynist but his music is great. Klaus Kinski was one of the most controversial actors of the 20th century, with a reputation for unpleasantness at best; yet there is no doubt of his acting genius that shines through almost any movie he made in his life.

Right now though, a whiff of suspicion, and you are already dead to Hollywood. Besson might be slightly safer, as he is not part of the business there, and lives in Europe. But I wonder if the allegations may have led to some kind of semi-sabotage by his distributor in the US. For hardly any cinemagoer seemed to have known about his new movie, Anna. Even though I was told the film got some TV spots on cable channels and a trailer in cinemas, it seemed marketing was seriously toned down, and the movie rushed out of cinemas shortly after release.

[Note from Jim. I can confirm this. We were on holiday in Scotland when it came out. By the time we returned to Arizona and got over the jet-lag, it was basically gone. Anna opened in 2,114 screens. Three weeks later, it was on… 92. I still haven’t seen it, which is why I was glad Dieter stepped in with a review]

There seems almost to be some kind of unspoken agreement just to bury this movie quietly. Heck, even here in Germany the film wasn’t advertised apart, from the online trailer. I definitely didn’t see a trailer for it at the cinema, or big posters for it anywhere. If I had not consciously looked out for this movie, due to being a fan of Luc Bessons work over the last 36 years, I probably wouldn’t even have known about it.

But to put things in a more objective perspective: over his entire career Besson has had only two real successes in the US: One was Leon (1994), which made Jean Reno a big star and started the career of Nathalie Portman; the other was Lucy (2014), the break-through film for Scarlett Johannson, now the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. Heck, even now-loved cult movie The Fifth Element (1997) (originally supposed to be a two-parter!) was considered a flop in America at the time of release. What has always been Besson’s bread and butter is the rest of the world. Though in the beginning he had some detractors in his own country for a style which was seen as “Americanized” and “not really French enough”.

Nevertheless, it seems kind of strange when looking at the box-office numbers of Besson’s movies in the last few years. Lucy was an international success, that in the US alone made $126 million, while Anna closed with takings of under $8 million.  It’s easy to create conspiracy theories looking at these numbers. But in between came Valerian and the City of the 1000 Planets (2017). Despite being the most expensive European movie ever, with a budget of about $178 million, took a disappointing $41 million in the US (though made its costs back in the rest of the world). And yes, some of his movies never were commercial successes – regardless of their quality – such as Adele Blanc-Sec (2010), The Lady (2011) or the sequels to his Arthur and the Invisibles animated movie.

Why do I mention all of the above? I guess, because I think that Anna may be a turning point in Besson’s career – perhaps more than you may think. Valerian seemed to have cost his French Eurocorp studio money, despite pre-sales and – according to Besson – only a small financial investment by Eurocorp itself. It seems that about two-thirds of the company are now in the hands of foreign investors, and they don’t want Besson to continue in the chairman’s seat of his own company. With Valerian under-performing, and Anna a theatrical flop despite a modest budget (reportedly around $35 million), we could be looking at the last big movie of Luc Besson.

Sure, he has always shown that he can make effective and very good movies with small budgets such as his debut movie, The Last Battle (1983) or Angel-A (2005). Indeed, maybe the quality of his movies increases, as his budget decreases. But the big question is if the 60-year old director really wants to start again from the ground up, especially given his age. He’s not the youthful punk he started as. In Europe (or at least France) he is what Spielberg might have been in mid-90s Hollywood. But then Spielberg grew up and matured; can Besson do that? Does he even want to? I also think you can compare him with contemporary James Cameron, a famous director who now mostly has others direct his productions. Certainly, I don’t think Besson has to prove anything to anyone, anymore.

With all that said, how is Anna? Answer: surprisingly good. I went into this movie not expecting much at all (going from the quasi non-existent marketing). Yes, it’s true, it’s not one of the “greats” of Besson, and he also doesn’t re-invent the genre wheel with this. If you have seen his classic Nikita (1990) which has been exploited by Hollywood ad infinitum, and her spiritual successors Atomic Blonde (2017) and Red Sparrow (2018), you know the story. And knowing these kind of movies, you’ll be familiar with a story arc, you can figure out from the very beginning.

But then, I don’t hear anyone complaining about the 1000th Marvel movie following the same paths of its superhero predecessors. In the end, the question is how the cook combines the ingredients to bake his cake. And this cake tastes good – but definitely not great. While the DNA of Nikita is everywhere, it never reaches the fine and poetic quality of that movie. It feels like a modernized remake, with Besson obviously having seen Sparrow and Blonde too, and saying to himself: “I can do better!”

And I think, subjectively, he mainly succeeds. Red Sparrow was a very heavy, slow-burning spy movie without what I would really call action scenes. Atomic Blonde had impressive action choreography, which Besson definitely tried to top here – up to the individual viewer, whether or not he succeeded. But Blonde also had, at least for me, a strange, difficult to figure-out ending, and characters which were all cool, to the point of emotionless. My feeling is that Besson took the best elements of all these movies – the intrigue of Sparrow; the action of Blonde – and combined it with his own style.

What I always notice when watching one of his movies, is that Besson can be an incredibly visual director if he wants. He knows how to do great mise-en-scéne, how to give his movies a lot of kinetic energy. The scenes are not too long, but also not so short you can’t invest yourself into them emotionally. He inserts moments of genuinely funny humor and sometimes almost kitschy emotional scenes, that are a component of his own unique style – and, unfortunately, usually not to be found in American action movies. And when he gets playful, the editing and the music of his “house composer”, Eric Serra (Nikita, Leon, The Fifth Element, and many others), join each other in a perfect marriage that’s just incredible fun to watch.

Do I sound too enthusiastic? I don’t think so. Besson is an excellent director. This doesn’t exclude him from creating flawed movies or average scripts; yet even his failures are – at least for me – still more satisfying and interesting than an average “successful” conveyor-belt Hollywood movie. He is an almost classic storyteller, telling his very own stories, depending on what he focuses his current interest on in the moment. One quality I think I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere, is his ability to lead actors. All of the performances here, including Evans, Murphy and Mirren are very good. But the one that really impressed me is supermodel-turned-actress Sasha Luss, who previously played a smaller role as an alien in Valerian.

She’s not perfect: Luss playing a poor Moscow-wife selling “matroshkas” on the market, can’t disguise what a beauty she is. Compare that to Anne Parillaud’s ugly punk-girl-duckling in Nikita who only turns into a beautiful swan later in the movie. Still, Luss comes across as very charismatic, believable as a model (not a stretch!) and seductress, as well as a murderous killer for the KGB. Honestly, I was really impressed: for me, she gives a better performance than the enigmatic but also somewhat bland Jennifer Lawrence in Red Sparrow.

But then a talent of Besson is being able to insert some “emotionality” into his characters. This adds just enough to make them appear more believable than many similar characters in Hollywood movies. Here, he even manages to make Helen Mirren’s role, playing a cold-hearted merciless KGB trainer and mentor of Anna, comparable to Lotte Lenya in From Russia with Love and Charlotte Rampling in Red Sparrow, into an oddly likable character.

What seemed a problem for some cinema-goers was the non-linear storytelling of the movie. The film jumps a couple of years ahead, a few months back, another year forward and so on, allowing it to surprise the audience with some unexpected revelations. I personally had no problems with that – but some people don’t like to use their brains at all when watching a movie. Their loss. :) Where I’d say Besson fails is in what I call the “model photo shooting scenes”. Here, he overdoes it so much, to the point you wonder if he intended to make a satire about haute couture. These scenes come across as exaggerated and almost cringe-worthy. Fortunately, they don’t occupy too much of the film’s running-time.

The basic story is of a trained secret agent who works for one side, becomes a double agent, then is essentially only working to get back their personal liberty, and isn’t a new one. This plot goes back at least as far as Triple Cross (1966), a WWII-spy movie from Bond director Terence Young, with Christopher Plummer, Romy Schneider, Gert Fröbe and many others. The comparisons to Nikita really write themselves. There are many similarities to the movie that, 29 years ago, more or less signified Besson’s breakthrough out of arthouse cineaste circles. Despite this, they are different, probably due to a different contemporary zeitgeist, which made the movie an interesting viewing experience for me.

Gone is the girl who never had a choice, as Anna originally applied to work for the KGB by herself – though ends in a situation where she can’t quit. This makes for a different dynamic to Parillaud in Nikita, although I also don’t really buy the emotional and psychological interest in being a killer for the state here. Nikita was a desperate girl, slowly breaking apart through having to follow the orders of her handler while wanting a normal life with her boyfriend. Anna comes across as a hard professional: she is not just Nikita but also “Victor, nettoyeur” in one person, andcomes off as remarkably cold-blooded.

In one scene, a not unsympathetic, shy Russian who is an illegal arms trader confesses his love for her; she kills him in the moment she has the relevant information. Then there is that scene in a restaurant, which makes the similar scene in Nikita look like a Disney movie in comparison. Anna leaves a room full of bloody corpses behind her; the word “overkill” sprang immediately into my mind! A normal “relationship” with her girlfriend seems possible; but Anna hardly seems to care for her, since said friend is mainly a cover. At the same time she has passionate sex with Evans and Murphy, and calls them her family. But is this just another deception? You never know if she cares for anyone at all, or if she is just manipulating everyone around her emotionally and sexually, for use later in her intricate plan.

That may be the weakest point in Anna’s character. She is just bigger than life, out-fighting, out-manipulating, out-smarting and out-sexing anyone. Somehow, Nikita seemed much more grounded in reality, and more believable because of that human character. Anna is purely professional, always ahead of the game, even when you think: “Well, now she is done!” You wonder why she needs all these complicated components of her plan, when she seems quite capable off killing off half an army of KGB-employees [And you definitely don’t want to play chess with her!]

Other aspects: It’s nice to have actual Russians speaking real Russian in a movie. I had a hard time when watching Red Sparrow with all these Hollywood actors speaking English with Russian accents. It just sounded fake. The solution here is much better: You have Russian actors speaking Russian, maybe the main actors say a thing or two in Russian, then you change to the “normal” language. I didn’t feel that it broke the illusion, since it was well enough established that the characters were Russian. Kudos also to Alexander Petrov, who plays Anna’s original Russian criminal “boy-friend”, Piotr, an especially unsympathetic human being. It’s an important and effective role, letting the film establish a feeling of reality before it shifts into the more fantastic spy genre we know and love. John le Carré it ain’t!

Some production credits stood out for me. Shanna Besson, one of Luc’s daughters did the stills photography for the movie, and his wife Virginie Besson-Silla seems to have been involved in some capacity. Responsible for the car stunts is David Julienne, who has worked for some Besson productions already in the past. I suspect he is related to Remy Julienne, the famous driver responsible for all the great car chases in the Bond movies of the 80s and also some Jean-Paul Belmondo films. [There was a major issue between Remy and Europacorp, after a stunt went wrong during the filming of Taxi 2]  As mentioned, the music of Eric Serra, is as remarkable as ever, and I had a big smile on my face when in one specific scene he directly referenced a melody from his own Nikita soundtrack. I notice and appreciate little things like that.

Visually the film is – as can be expected from a Besson movie – stunning and top-notch. There are some beautiful shots of cities and once again Besson reminds us why people love Paris so much. Unlike so many modern secret agent and action movies, Anna leaves you with a real sense Besson and crew jetted around half the world to capture as many beautiful images as possible for this movie. The end titles included thank-yous to the cities of Moscow, Belgrade, Guadalupe, Milan and – of course – the studios of Paris. 

Unfortunately, Anna is a commercial flop right now. Sure, the film is less than subtle, and Nikita stays unchallenged as a genre icon. We might have seen this kind of story a bit too often recently – and probably will again next year when Marvel’s Black Widow comes out. But among the modern entries in the genre, it is easily one of the best. Besson doesn’t quite reach the quality of his formative years as a director, and I doubt he ever will. But as typical genre fare, even if exaggerated in the depiction of its female main character, this is solid entertainment, and should be enjoyed as such.

I just hope this isn’t Besson’s last movie, since he is still better than most of those trying to walk in his footsteps. We’ll see!

Dir: Luc Besson
Star: Sasha Luss, Luke Evans, Cillian Murphy, Helen Mirren

Maria

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★★★½
“Jean Wick.”

Proof that a lack of originality is not necessarily a bar to being an entertaining movie, this pulls together elements from all over the place, but probably most notably, The Long Kiss Goodnight and John Wick. You have the “former assassin now leading an idyllic family life, until her past catches up with her” of the former. And the “Oh, they’re surely not going to kill tha… Hoo-boy. The hero/ine is going to be VERY angry with them” of the latter, among other elements.

In this case, we have Maria (Reyes), formerly Black Rose assassin Lily, who is now married with a young daughter, until a chance encounter with ex-colleage Kaleb (Padilla). He is still highly miffed at her betrayal, and sets his minions on her – and, worse still, her family. Maria takes the fight to Kaleb with the assistance of her mentor, Greg (Lazaro, probably the best performance in the film); he helped her escape by faking her death, yet still has ties to her old employers. Meanwhile, the chaos resulting from their actions do not impress Kaleb’s boss, Ricardo de la Vega (Webb, looking like the Filipino version of Alan Ford, Bricktop in Snatch), who turns to Kaleb’s brother, the even more vicious – and, worse, considerably more competent – Victor.

Like John Wick, the generally straightforward nature of this works in its favour. There’s not much standing between Maria and kicking ass, with frequent bursts of solid action. Sonny Sison also choreographed the other recent Filipino action heroine film on Netflix, BuyBust, and it has a similarly gritty feel. The hotel run by Greg also is more than a little reminiscent of a similar establishment for assassins from John Wick 2. Though there’s an odd bit where Kaleb’s right-hand woman goes there, looking for Maria, beats up a few people and… just leaves? We’ll let them off with a warning, since they do later have a rather nice brawl, wearing high-heels, in a night-club bathroom.

Reyes is an actress who learned fighting, rather than the other way round. Yet, she looks the part, and Lopez throws in some stylistic flourishes, such as shooting from overhead, which keep things interesting. Overall, this teeters on the edge of achieving our seal of approval, but a couple of things leave it fractionally short. The first is the unconscionable failure of Kaleb, Victor or Ricardo de La Vega at any point to say, “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” I mean, the line positively writes itself. The other issue is an ending, which is way too open, pointing directly towards Maria 2 in a way I haven’t seen since the end of Kill Bill: Volume One. And that was, of course, originally intended as a single entity. There is a slight degree of closure, yet is largely unsatisfying: more like finishing a level of a game than defeating the final boss. If there ends up never being a sequel, I’m going to be annoyed…

Dir: Pedring Lopez
Star: Cristine Reyes, Ivan Padilla, Freddie Webb, Ronnie Lazaro

Killing Eve: Season Two

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★★★
“Sophomore slump.”

[Warning: this piece will contain significant spoilers for the show. READ ON AT YOUR OWN RISK!] It was always going to be difficult, if not impossible, for the second series of Killing Eve to match the brilliance of the first. That had ended with mousy MI-5 desk jockey Eve (Oh) stabbing ruthless assassin Villanelle (Connor), as they lay on a bed – platonically, but you could cut the sexual tension with a knife. Where would things go from there? The answer, unfortunately, is nowhere particularly much, except for some thoroughly unconvincing plot twists, such as Villanelle going to work for MI-5. Hello? Did everyone forget her cold-blooded murders of agents Bill Pargrave and Frank Haleton in season one? Let’s just pretend she’s one of us, and send her off on a mission without so much as a background check, m’kay?

This is, of course, an attempt to keep the relationship Eve and Villanelle going, bringing them into a close proximity to each other, where that sexual tension can continue to boil, albeit at the cost of plausibility, Not that it was ever the show’s strong suit to begin with. This is significantly less interesting than the cat-and-mouse game between the two of the first series, and frankly, too often borders on poorly-written fan fiction. A main thread seems to be how Eve is slowly becoming more like Villanelle, drifting from thoughts of murder into an actual killing – “With an axe!”, the hitwoman gleefully recounts. [Adding a second meaning to the show’s title, moving her from object to subject. Or is it the other way round? Whatever…] But we also seem to see Villanelle becoming more human. For someone who isn’t supposed to be able to experience human feelings, she certainly appears a pretty damn emotional psychopath.

You can all but ignore the silly plots, such as a convoluted effort to bring down a high-tech entrepreneur selling an uber-Google to the highest bidder, who – wouldn’t you know it? – turns out to be a serial killer himself. Or the marital relationship of Eve and husband Niko: now that both sides have been unfaithful, it should have been buried. Or the brief introduction of another, equally talented female assassin, which is disposed of so quickly, it’s possible I may have made up the entire thing. What keeps the show going, and allows this to remain surprisingly watchable given the weak writing, are the extraordinary performances of the two leads. A contrast in acting styles, between Comer’s flamboyance and Oh’s internal anguish, it proves that both can be equally effective. And there are sequences which still work brilliantly, such as Villanelle’s dalliance with private wet work, stringing up and butchering an unfaithful husband in a window in Amsterdam’s red-light district, like some kind of twisted performance art.

After becoming an under-the-radar hit the first time, the second set of episodes seems to have left a lot of people unsatisfied, for a variety of reason. And the ratings reflect this. Having managed the almost unprecedented feat of increasing almost every week the first time round, this season saw fewer viewers for every part after the debut, than the equivalent in series one. Maybe renewing it the day after that opening episode was a mistake? The final scene of this series ends in a mirror image of its predecessor, Villanelle shooting Eve in a fit of pique after she responds to Villanelle’s declaration of love with “You don’t know what that is,” and walks away. Of course, the renewal and critical acclaim basically make it certain Eve isn’t dead. So it’s less a case of “What will happen?”, than “What cheat will the writers use to get out of the corner into which they’ve painted themselves?” I’m going with a bullet-proof vest.

It’s a shame, since the second volume in the novels went in a very different direction, put the pieces together in far superior fashion and reached the end with a genuine cliff-hanger. Hopefully the third season separates its two leads and gets back to what the show did well, letting each performance shine on its own terms, rather than trying to force oil and water together, to the benefit only of fan ‘shippers. In the penultimate scene of the last episode, Eve  and Villanelle are stumbling through a maze of underground passages below Rome, trying to find their way out of the darkness. Unfortunately, that turned out to an entirely appropriate metaphor for the problems of the second season as a whole.

Showrunner: Emerald Fennell
Star: Sandra Oh, Jodie Comer, Fiona Shaw, Henry Lloyd-Hughes

Codename: Villanelle vs. Killing Eve

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Credit: Entertainment Weekly

“You are an evolutionary necessity.”

With the second series of Killing Eve starting this month, and one of our most eagerly anticipated TV shows of the year, it seems a good point to take a look back at Luke Jennings’s original source material, and its translation to the small screen. Codename: Villanelle was originally self-published by Jennings as four separate novellas, the first (with the same name) appearing in February 2014. It was followed by Villanelle: Hollowpoint in August, then Villanelle: Shanghai and Odessa in February and June of the following year.

It wasn’t Jennings’s first published work: far from it, with Atlantic appearing back in 1995. These were mostly what Jennings calls “politely received but unprofitable novels,” adding “Our income was, to say the least, patchy.” That probably explains why he was dance critic at The Observer newspaper for 14 years. Which in turn explains the entry in his bibliography which stands out as most un-Villanelle like: his co-authorship of The Faber Pocket Guide to Ballet…

Codename: Villanelle was optioned for the screen relatively quickly after the first novella, in spring 2014. Initially pitched to Sky Living, they turned the project down, but it was reworked by writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge, to put more emphasis on Eve, and these modifications also triggered the title change. It was a wise decision, I think. Codename: Villanelle seems very passive, a label given to a character (and half-meaningless unless you’re an expert on French perfume). Killing Eve is considerably more active, and also reflects the shift in focus from the hunter to the hunted. It helped get the show picked up by BBC America, and in autumn 2016, the show was given the go-ahead for an eight episode first series. But such was the advance buzz, that a second series was commissioned before even the first episode was broadcast.

This proved to be a wise decision. For it became a word-of-mouth hit, with ratings increasing by two-thirds from the first episode to the last. Critical reaction was no less enthusiastic: Killing Eve was included in more TV writers’ top tens for 2018, than any other show. Sandra Oh’s performance as Eve was particularly lauded, and she won the Golden Globe, Screen Actors’ Guild and Critics’ Choice Television Awards for her portrayal. The success of the series helped propel the first book onto the best-seller lists, and allowed Jennings to quit his day job at The Observer. The second volume, No Tomorrow, was published in October; we’ll have a review of that up later in the week.

But for now, we’re concentrating on the first book – and in particular, comparing and contrasting the show with its source material. What are the similarities? And, perhaps more interestingly, what are the differences? [Of necessity, what follows include significant spoilers for both TV and literary incarnations]

Villanelle

“They had recognized her talent, sought her out and taken her from the lowest place in the world to the highest, where she belonged. A predator, an instrument of evolution, one of that elite to whom no moral law applied. Inside her, this knowledge bloomed like a great dark rose, filling every cavity of her being.”

As noted above, the book leans considerably more towards Villanelle than the TV series in balancing the characters. In the show, she is initially a blank slate, and only slowly is her background revealed, as Eve peels back the layers behind her fake persona. The novel, however, fills in the basic details by page 13, while Eve doesn’t even appear until almost a quarter of the way in. Villanelle is a convicted triple-murderer, having taken revenge on the criminals responsible for killing her father – just one of a number of incidents that illustrate her socio/psychopathic nature [let’s not get bogged down in labels]. In the TV series, it’s a less family-oriented crime which gets her put away: castrating and murdering the husband of a teacher/lover.

She is then spirited out of prison by a shadowy group, known as “The Twelve” and trained in a range of lethal arts, becoming an assassin employed by them. “Shadowy” is putting it mildly for the TV version. Entirely opaque is probably closer to the truth, since we know almost nothing about them. The novel, in contrast, opens with a depiction of their meeting, and The Twelve deciding to unleash Villanelle on a target. We still don’t know who they are or their goals, however. They clearly don’t mess around though. While Konstantin, Villanelle’s handler, is in an “is he dead or not?” limbo at the end of season one, there’s no such doubt in the book. He’s 100% dead, killed by Villanelle after he has been rescued by her from kidnapping – just in case he divulged any incriminating information. Guess you never know. That’s considerably more brutal than in the show, where Konstantin does indeed “go rogue”.

The Vilannelle we see is considerably more anti-social than in the book, where she is entirely capable of hanging out with people as and when necessary. The version on the page is considerably more sexual too – likely impacted  by the TV show being on basic cable – with a habit, after completing an assassination, of finding some random stranger – male or female, she’s not bothered – for a meaningless fling. For her, it’s all about making them want her, and the resulting power she has over them. [There’s also a rather gratuitous scene, describing in unnecessary detail the unpleasant sexual fetish of one victim]

Eve Polastri

“Eve Polastri is looking down at Lambeth Bridge and the wind-blurred surface of the river. It’s 4 p.m. and she has just learned, with mixed feelings, that she is not pregnant.”

Even on the most superficial level, the small-screen version of Eve is radically different. In the book, she’s British and aged 29. The change in nationality was something BBC America required. Given their audience, it’s somewhat understandable, despite the resulting, somewhat clumsy need to explain why a Yankee is working for the British security services. That Sandra Oh is two decades older than the original Eve diminishes the suggestion in the novel that Eve and Villanelle are two sides of the same coin. Both are professional, childless women who have turned to their work, to the exclusion of almost everything else. Instead, the generation gap creates other echoes, almost a mother/delinquent daughter relationship.

Despite her youth, book Polastri has risen to become the head of her department at MI-5, which arranges special protection for visitors to the UK who are deemed at risk. She’s already intrigued by the whispers of Villanelle she has found, but this becomes a full obsession after the assassin takes out a Russian fringe politician on Eve’s turf, causing the civil servant to lose her position. Both versions then have Eve being recruited for an off-book operation to hunt Villanelle down, cutting ties with her previous colleagues.

This brings tension to Eve’s marriage with Niko, though much more so on television. In the book, while they still have their disagreements when Eve puts work before previously-arranged social engagements, there is a reconciliation (of sorts) towards the end. Niko and his academic pals help Eve crack a USB password, the device containing information that leads to an operative associated with The Twelve inside MI-5. Their marriage is certainly in a far better place at the end of volume one, than series one.

Eve vs. Villanelle

“She knows who I am. Killing Simon was a message, addressed to me. She was saying I can take you, and the people you care about, any fucking time I want…”

It’s at the nexus of the two main characters, in their relationship, that the TV series and book diverge most drastically. Because, in the novel, there pretty much isn’t one. Eve and Villanelle have virtually no conscious interaction at all. Emphasis on conscious, since the most time they spend together is when the killer slips into the spy’s Shanghai hotel room while Eve is sleeping and “inhales her warm smell.” What there is, is strictly adversarial: Eve regards Villanelle solely as a threat who must be stopped. “It’s just beginning,” are the three words from Eve with which the first book ends, as she puts a Glock 19 pistol in her bag. There’s little doubting her intentions.

What Phoebe Waller-Smith did in the show, was broaden and deepen that relationship, in a myriad of ways, both little and big. It feels more like Clarice Sterling and Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, with a charming psychopath playing games against a dogged, somewhat dour bloodhound. By deepening the discord between Eve + Niko, and her overall discontent with life, and playing up Villanelle’s bisexuality, the TV show has added a slab of unresolved sexual tension between the pair, which simply wasn’t present in the first book. It has certainly helped make the show become a firm favourite in the gay community, though thanks to the wonderful performances of Oh and Jodie Comer, it’s far more than ghetto TV.

I do have concerns, however. In a Reddit AMA, Jennings said, “The fandom drives the success of the books and the show, and also influences it. Killing Eve: No Tomorrow would be a different book if I hadn’t spent time listening to fans.” It seems a perilous route for any creative person, to let the consumers dictate where your story goes. I’ve already seen Xena: Warrior Princess destroyed when its makers started pandering to the demands of gay fan ‘shippers. Will Killing Eve go the same way? We can only hope it doesn’t.

Split Lip

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★★★
“Split decision”

Definitely a mixed bag in this independent work about an assassin on the run from her employers after she botches a contract. Seay is thoroughly compelling as Set, proving that less can sometimes be more when it comes to dialogue. She’s a woman of few words, yet the strength of her emotions still comes through in her performance. I think it’s the eyes. Unfortunately, the makers appear not to have had enough confidence to let her silence stand on its own. Instead, they fill the gap with the inane burblings of Samuel (Laballe), a young man who sees Seay, and decides she’s a battered woman in need of rescue.  He quickly discovers that isn’t the case, as she ends up rescuing him from one of the killers sent on her trail. However, his sister Dana (Cné) is unimpressed with her brother’s new friend, and turns Set in to her boss, Karlton (Brown).

There’s some nice stuff floating around the fringes as well. In most action films, the hero or heroine takes little more than cosmetic damage over the course of proceedings. That isn’t the case here: every encounter leaves Set more banged up, with the titular injury being just the start. The make-up department has a field day, shall we say. I also liked the occasionally chivalrous conduct and hierarchical structure of the assassins’ “guild”, with its different factions and approaches. In his opening monologue, for instance, Karlton makes clear that the services in which he specializes. are all about getting up close, personal and messy – “What we have to offer, is a message.” And, of course, being shot partly here in Phoenix is always a plus for me, though there’s not much in the way of local atmosphere to speak of.

Yet there are just as many problems, not limited to my strong desire to strangle Samuel every time he opened his mouth. In particular, Set’s actions largely seem illogical, and occur only because they are necessary to the plot e.g. staying in the same hotel room after her location has been discovered. Right from the start, it’s clear the only possible resolution involves either her death or tidying up the mess she created. Running off to Phoenix makes no sense in either direction – especially when her destination is at the suggestion of her boss, who makes no attempt at concealing his intention to have her hunted down. Only after an hour and twenty minutes and several entirely unnecessary tanks of fuel, does our heroine finally do, what made obvious sense from the very beginning.

The action is plentiful and quite well-staged, with the general absence of guns (save for an Indiana Jones-like moment near the end) making sense, given Carlton’s apparent distaste for them. Credit to Seay for doing her own stunts, and everyone else for making it look like she knows what’s she’s doing with her fists, despite a lack of size that becomes something of a running-joke. All told, this is a decent and worthy indie effort, which held our interest – though one undeniably in need of a better script.

Dir: Christopher Sheffield
Star: Dorée Seay, Chris Labadie, Maryam Cné, Dejean Brown

Contract: Snatch by Ty Hutchinson

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

Sei is a former assassin, who quit the industry after getting pregnant, then having her daughter stillborn. She has taken up a quiet life in the Belgian countryside, when she’s brought out of retirement by a shocking offer she received over the deep web. Her prospective employer says Sei’s daughter is not dead, and offers information in exchange for carrying out a job: breaking another assassin, the notorious Black Wolf, out of the Turkish prison where he is being held. After confirming with the doctor who was present that the claim of her daughter’s survival is true, Sei accepts the mission. However, it turns out she was set up as a patsy, and finds herself also incarcerated in conditions which seem not have improved much since Midnight Express.

It’s a little odd that Sei is described as an assassin, yet doesn’t actually do any actual… assassinating here. Sure, she certainly kills a lot of people, mostly members of Turkish law-enforcement (as well as a wild boar) – just not for money. Might have made more sense to begin by establishing Sei’s credentials in this profession; as is, the reader has to accept her skills on faith. Perhaps the vague hints of back-story should have been fleshed out more. There’s also a large debt to Kill Bill in the driving force of the story here: specifically, the end of Volume 1, when Bill says, “One more thing, Sofie. Is she aware her daughter is still alive?” To my great surprise – sorry, can’t find the sarcasm font – this element is left entirely unresolved at the end of the volume. Indeed, she’s little if any closer to finding the truth than when she leaves the doctor.

While I’ve qualms about the overall structure here, I did actually enjoy the meat of the sandwich more than the bread. That would be the mission to Turkey, including her initial attempt to free the Black Wolf, then Sei’s subsequent escape from incarceration and flight across the country, with evil prison governor, General Rakin Demir, leading an extremely hot pursuit. It’s a crisply paced saga of action sequences, that have an interesting variety to them, from her compromised attempt to free the Black Wolf, through to a climactic race from Cesme across the Chios Strait to Greece. While she’s mostly a solo operator, who prefers to rely on stealth, she ends up teaming with Kostas, a Greek who… well, let’s just say, his connections come in handy, and I predict, likely will do so again in future volumes.

As the review to this point should make clear, I’m in two minds about whether I’ll be going further, because certain elements I liked and others I didn’t. Sei’s a good character, and I appreciated the almost complete lack of romance to get in the way of the “good stuff.” But I get the feeling the saga of her daughter is going to be stretched out beyond the point of tolerance, to deceased equine level. Probably one of those cases where I’ll wait for volume two to be available at a discounted price.

Author: Ty Hutchinson
Publisher: Gangkruptcy Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 5 in the Sei Assassin Thriller series.

Terminal

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★★★½
“Style wars.”

Oozing with a unique visual style that’s like a brutalist cross between Blade Runner and Alice in Wonderland, this focuses on a battle for business between assassins. Annie (Robbie) – or, maybe, she’s called Bonnie – wants to take over the murderous commissions of the mysterious Mr. Franklin. He agrees, only if she takes out the current incumbents, Vince (Fletcher) and his apprentice, Alfred (Irons). Simultaneously, while working as a waitress in an all-night diner at a railway station, she meets Bill (Pegg), a terminally-ill English teacher, who enters her establishment while waiting for a train in front of which to throw himself.

This was ferociously slagged off by many critics, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone calling it, “one of the worst movies ever made.” [Mind you, as the man after whom eFilmCritic named their Quote Whore of the Year award, all his opinions should be taken accordingly…] It’s certainly not that bad, though having stumbled across it on Hulu, our investment in it was strictly limited to 96 minutes. I do admit, the two strands which run through much of the film, never truly mesh. Each works well enough individually – they are just so different in tone and content, you wonder if the script would have been better off sticking to one or the other, and figured out a way to avoid the rather large lump of expository backstory delivered at the end.

However, Annie/Bonnie acts as a binding element to the storylines, manipulating the other three participants with the practiced ease of the expert sociopath. Robbie, who was also a producer, is a hell of a lot of fun to watch, channeling the spirit of Billie Piper, all blonde hair and perkiness; Pegg is also good value, going significantly against his usual type. Fletcher, best known for his roles under director Guy Ritchie, still seems to think he’s in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, yet it’s not ineffective. The only performance with which I had a problem was the stunt casting of Mike Myers, in a fairly pivotal role as the station-master. I’ve never exactly been a fan of his approach to (over-)acting, and this film reminded me why.

When it comes to cinematic style, I’ve also been a believer in “go big or go home,” and you won’t be surprised for which direction Stein opts. As a result, this feels not dissimilar to Sucker Punch in its approach, both in terms of the hyper-stylized picture it paints, and also in treading the line between exploiting the male gaze and undermining it [there’s no doubt who the sharpest tool in the box is here, and it’s not even close]. I’d like to have seen the film go a bit more full-bore with the Wonderland theme; the potential there is ignored, and largely limited to a few quotes and nods. Still, we were certainly never bored, the visuals proving capable of tiding us over both the weaker moments in the script, and Mike Myers.

Dir: Vaughn Stein
Star: Margot Robbie, Dexter Fletcher, Simon Pegg, Max Irons

Killing Eve: Season One

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★★★★
“You should never call a psychopath a psychopath. It upsets them.”

A genuinely organic hit on BBC America, this generated so much word of mouth that the ratings for this show behaved in an unexpected fashion. Including those who DVR’d the show, viewership increased for each episode over its 8-week run. That’s a rare feat these days, and is testament to the show’s unique qualities. So confident were the station in the show, that is was renewed for a second season before it had even premiered – another unusual achievement. But then, this show is arguably unlike anything else on television.

The heroine is Eve Polastri (Oh), an officer in the British intelligence service, MI-5, who believes there’s a connection between a string of assassinations across Europe. She’s right: they were all carried out be Oksana Astankova (Comer), codename “Villanelle”. Oksana is a pure, undiluted psychopath, working for a shadowy Russian organization known as “The Twelve”, under handler Konstantin Vasiliev (Bodnia). Polastri’s career is apparently ended when a witness to one of Oksana’s hits is killed in her care, and she’s fired from MI-5. However, this allows her to be recruited by Carolyn Martens (Shaw) for a off-book investigation into Villanelle.

Eve is therefore able to continue digging into Oksana’s history and activities, but the target becomes aware of the interest – signalling that knowledge by using “Eve Polastri” for her identity during a job. From here, it’s a spiral of increasingly intense cat-and-mouse, with Eve and her team tracking the assassin, while also being hunted by her. It all grows deeply personal for both Eve and Oksana, the two women developing a perverse long-distance relationship that’s more of a fixation, on both sides. Note: I’m not using “perverse” in relation to the homoerotic elements. It’s just… really bizarre. As in, “Villanelle breaking into Eve’s house, in order to have dinner with her” strange.

The show is defiantly messy in terms of its characters, who manage both to embody the stereotypes of the dogged law-enforcement official and the slick, femme fatale, while also subverting them. From the viewpoint of this site, Oksana is likely the more interesting. As a high concept, imagine a female version of Dexter: charming and affable on the surface, yet extraordinary lethal – and capable of flicking that switch in a moment. The difference is, Villanelle has chosen not to control and direct her “dark passenger” so much as embrace them fully, and is given the chance to do so by the profession into which she is recruited. It also allows her to indulge her fondness for haute couture.

She enjoys her work, to an almost scary degree, disdaining the simplest and most directly effective methods, too. That’d be boring, especially for such a free spirit. Why shoot, when you can kill your target by stabbing them in the eye with a hatpin instead? On the other hand, she is also incredibly manipulative. Oksana may not be able to feel any genuine emotions of her own, yet she’s supremely good at faking them, and will happily say what you want to hear, if she thinks it’ll let her use you for her own advantage. Her handler doesn’t so much control the incredibly self-confident Villanelle as unleash her in the direction of the intended target. Who inevitably ends up dead… just not necessarily quite as he would prefer.

The contrast to Eve could hardly be greater, and that perhaps goes some way to explaining the agent’s obsession: Oksana is everything Eve wants to be. Okay, except for the “psychopathic killer” bit. But that’s just a detail, right? For Eve is stuck in a rather tedious relationship, and works a job where her talents are under-used and even less appreciated. The more she learns about her target, the greater the appeal seems to be, and it works both ways: Villanelle wants “someone to watch movies with”. Or says she does anyway: this could just be another manipulative ploy, it’s impossible to be sure. Espionage, counter-espionage and assassination is a murky world at the best of times. Here? You can’t see the murk for the deceit, and at times the lies become a bit overwhelming.

After a long career expressing earnest concern on medical soap Grey’s Anatomy, Oh’s career has undergone a spectacular sea-change of late. First, there was the awesome Catfight, and now this, little if any less successful, which allows Oh to show her remarkable range of expressive… er, expressions [Seriously: you could spend an entire episode just watching her face, to the exclusion of everything else, and still be entranced]. Comer is nowhere near as well-known, but I doubt we’ll see a more memorable female character on television this year than Oksana, combining childish innocence, girlish glee and savage psychopathy. When it comes to Emmy time, it will be a travesty if at least one of them is not nominated – and ideally both. The supporting cast are no slouches either.

I will confess to being less than whelmed by the final episode which, rather than ramping up, petered out into something approaching a slumber party. Admittedly, it’s a very weird one, befitting the show, and sees Eve violate Oksana’s personal bubble of living space, partly in retaliation for the same thing happening to her earlier. But it offers no sense at all of closure: this may be a side-effect of the show having been pre-renewed. I guess there’s no point making any effort to wrap things up, when you know you’re going to be back.

Still, for 7½ episodes, this was far and away the best thing on American TV at the moment. To get one of these amazing characters in a show would have been more than acceptable. Having both in the same series provides a one-two punch of heroine and anti-heroine that’s almost unsurpassed in television history. Buffy and Faith, or Xena and Callisto, perhaps come close – although they were only story arcs. Here, Eve and Oksana are a pure, undiluted focus, and it’s glorious. The second season can’t get here soon enough.

Creator: Phoebe Waller-Bridge
Star: Sandra Oh, Jodie Comer, Fiona Shaw, Kim Bodnia