Tag: assassin

Zero Woman: Final Mission

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★★★½

Probably the least accurate title of any film ever – at least Friday the 13th put out a few movies before using “final” – you definitely should begin here if you’re looking for much coherence. Rei (Iijima) is now partly employed as secretary to the head of Section Zero, but also takes out criminals for whom traditional channels of law enforcement aren’t enough, for one reason or another. She also pals around with Takako (Fukuoka), a detective from another section and a girl he helped bring out of delinquency, in what’s vaguely intimated as a love triangle. One night, they witness a hit and run, and discover the perpetrator (Suzuki) is the daughter of a powerful economic figure. Despite encountering official resistance, Rei and Takako persist with their investigation and, inevitably, this brings out more robust sanctions.

This does take some time to get going: it’s probably about 25 minutes before the car-micide in question, really kicks things off, and the film is more or less in a holding pattern until then. Still, Iijima certainly looks the part, and unlike some of the other occupants of the position, you don’t get the sense she got the role purely for her willingness to disrobe. Indeed, she manages even to take a shower and gun down an intruder without straying much beyond the boundaries of PG-13. Not that there’s exactly a shortage of nudity in this production, most of it coming from Suzuki, who is portrayed as being kinda depraved and heavily into S/M. Indeed, this seems the case for the director, as Rei spends a far too large chunk of the second half, tied up and being tormented by what can only be described as a cackling sex dwarf [literally half his lines must have been, “Bwahahahaha!”]. Quite what this says about Enokido’s predilections, is probably best glossed-over.

There’s a cool colour palette used here, mostly blues and grays, and a couple of scenes which will certainly stick in the mind. One is the previously mentioned shower-ambush, and the other is one where Rei is on the phone to Takako, when their conversation is rudely interrupted on his end: gradually, she realizes that something is very, very wrong. It’s expertly crafted, with good performances from both ends of the telephone line, and you can’t help wondering that more of this, rather than so much of the Laughing Gnome, would have elevated this to a classic. Instead, it’s merely hints at greatness, and settles for being solid and effective, starting the franchise in a way of which the original movie could only have dreamed.

Dir: Koji Enokido
Star: Naoko Iijima, Takako Fukuoka, Misayo Haruki, Miho Suzuki

Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs

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★★½

When the series started in 1974, it originally appeared to be trying to take on the Female Convict Scorpion series at its own game – both were inspired by Toru Shinohara manga series. However, going by the fact it took more than two decades for a second entry in the series, I can only presume the commercial returns weren’t anywhere near as strong. This starts off well, with policewoman Rei (Sugimoto) luring in, and then blowing away, the man responsible for torturing and killing another woman. Turns out the perpetrator was a diplomat and in the resulting scandal, Rie is sent to jail. Her chance at redemption comes when a gang of thugs stumble into the kidnapping of the daughter of a politician (Tamba): to avoid a scandal, Rie is offered a pardon if she infiltrates the kidnappers and kills them all. Initially, all goes to plan, with the first member taken out quickly, but it soon becomes clear the other members are rampaging psychos, and the situation rapidly spirals out of control, to the point where the politician yanks his support and orders the deaths of everyone, in the name of damage limitation – including both his daughter and Rie.

The promising beginning is a bit of a con, as the majority of the film has Rei not doing much more than sitting around, waiting for the gang to destroy itself. Occasionally, she will prod them in a certain direction, but generally, they don’t exactly need much encouragement and she’s mostly passive rather than the vengeful fury for which I hoped. Now, there’s certainly plenty of tbe “fury” bit, with some of the most enthusiastic arterial spray I’ve seen for its time, and some of the torture scenes are close to unwatchably brutal (the cops are every bit as bad as, and perhaps worse than, the criminals in this area). However, Rei just isn’t as interesting a character as Sasori, despite sharing the same terse approach; she does fit in pretty well, to a cast of characters who all seem to possess few human or sympathetic qualities.

Things escalate particularly nicely at the end, when the police discard the “softly, softly” approach [which in seventies Japan, appears to mean “not actually killing people yourself“] and go after the gang, who have moved on to take a bunch of other hostages. This leads to a chase and shootout at an abandoned US military base, which probably also meant something significant in 70’s Japan, going by the occasional hints of anti-American sentiment. Noda has a broad stylistic palette, throwing montages, hand-held camera and freeze-frames into the mix, the last-named perhaps trying to evoke the manga spirit. It doesn’t come off as particularly memorable however, and if the lack of its own artistic style is more than made up for in copious sleaze, you can certainly see why no-one dared (or bothered?) to follow in its footsteps for more than 20 years.

Dir: Yukio Noda
Star: Miki Sugimoto, Eiji Go, Tetsuro Tamba, Hideo Murota

Killer K

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★★★★
“Nikita meets Alias, while on vacation in South Korea”

Let’s be clear, right out of the gate. There is really not much original about this Korean mini-series, which takes huge chunks, almost wholesale from Nikita and Alias, to the extent, for example, that we perpetually referred to one character as “Amanda”, since she reminded us so much of Melinda Clarke’s character from Nikita, right down to her fashion choices. However, as long as you’re not looking for anything startling in the way of originality, this is slick yet gritty, with characters that are interesting to spend time with, and a handle on the action that’s easily the match for its equivalent in the West. Let’s start with some significant plot exposition, because there’s quite a lot of characters and story crammed into the three one-hour (or slightly more) episodes.

Spoilers Episode 1. Cha Yeon-Jim (Groo) is having a bad day – she just got expelled from school – and it’s about to get an awful lot worse. Hanging out by the docks, she and her friends get into a confrontation with some workers, only for things to be interrupted by a scripture-quoting hitman, Jang Se Wook, who shows up and starts shooting everyone, on both sides. Cha escapes, but when her friend is killed, as he tries to report what he saw to the police, she realizes she’s in deep trouble. Policeman Choi Tae Young (Baek), who was also at the scene, tries to track her down, but Jang is also after Cha. He wants her to return a flask of green liquid she took in the confusion, and kidnaps her mother to force Cha into compliance. At the handover, Mom is impaled by Jang’s sword and Cha is gunned down and left for dead.

Episode 2. Chief Min Ji Young (Park) comes on the scene, and saves Cha, faking her death. Min works for the same company as Jang, the Mirae Corp, a medical company run by Kwon Do Hwan. They are engaged in some shady experiments involving stem-cell research, and in particular the creation of artificial humans for organ harvesting, with the protection of high-up government ministers. To protect their company secrets, their division SS1 operates ruthlessly: Min recruits Cha as a new killer, not telling her Jang is simply another arm, but training her as an assassin, with the lure of eventually tracking down and taking revenge on the man who killed her mother. Cha’s initial targets are those who pose a threat to her employers, but Min has her own agenda, and when Jang has eventually proven to have outlived his usefulness, she has no compunction about turning her two killers on each other.

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Episode 3. Choi accidentally bumped into Cha in part two, under her new identity, and now teams up with Yoo Sung Ho (Kim), who used to be part of SS1, but bailed with his lover, Cha’s mother, and went into hiding – he was replaced by Chief Min. They are seeking evidence that will let them bring down Mirae and expose their human experiments. Cha wants to leave the organization, having fallen for Go Young Min, a boy at school. Min initially requests “one last hit” – so you know that’s going to work out just fine… In the process, Go sees Cha standing over the corpse of her target, holding the murder weapon, and as a result has to be terminated by Chief Min. That, and the discovery that her schoolmates have been used as guinea-pigs turns Cha against Mirae, and she links up with Choi, as Kwon prepares to reveal his latest plan. End spoilers

Phew. Plenty going on there, with enough for a full 13- or 22-episode order of most series, between all the twists, turns and revelations e.g. turns out Cha’s relationship to Chairman Kwon is rather more personal than she is aware. Given how much gets crammed in, the opening installment is a bit of a slow start. The entire first episode is more or given over to setting up the scenario, with Cha showing very little of the skills she has developed later on. She’s semi-competent in basic martial arts, which is perfectly fine when it comes to beating up fellow pupils. But we soon find out that this level of skill is far from enough, when she comes up against Jang and the other professional killers of SS1. Early on, it’s Choi who is most entertaining, portraying a dutiful and dogged cop whose superiors refuse to give him more than a gas pistol which is, similarly, pretty useless in the clutch.

 It’s the second part where things really take off, as events jump two years forward; the show takes Cha’s training largely as read, save for a quick montage. Instead, her new cold-bloodedness is amply demonstrated in the opening sequence, where we see her sniping out her target at a wedding, despite the presence of children which makes Chief Min call off the hit. It’s clear that this is a new, focused girl, with skills to match. Of course, as is standard for the genre, she still has to deal with everyday issues, since she has been sent back to school [which, conveniently, also offers a suitable tower from which to carry out missions, as can be seen above]. From there, through to her final confrontation with Cha and his minions, it’s an excellent bit of TV, one of the most intense action-heroine episodes I’ve seen in any genre, with the heroine taking obvious damage, both mentally and physically, as things proceed.

Let’s pause for breath before we hit the finale. One thing we noted was that Korean rules regarding what can be broadcast on TV are apparently a good deal laxer than in the US. This was, apparently, a late-night series, and it’s not clear if this was “over the air” or cable; there’s apparently advert breaks, but that could still make it something like FX or AMC. [Edit: CGV channel is “a movie cable channel”, so SHOtime or HBO would be closer parallels] The violence is generally crunchy and squibby, but it’s the female nudity that’s an unexpected pleas… er, particularly striking. :) There does also appear to be some confusion over the title of the show, which I’ve seen called several different variations of the letter K, as noted above. Here, I’ve gone with what appears on the intro screen in English for each episode.

We were kinda wondering where things might go in the last episode, with Cha having apparently sorted things out. Never mind: a whole new catalog of problems raise their heads, as the removal of her justification for assassination leaves her seeking a return to the normal life, one Chief Min is none too keen to offer. With its emphasis on discovering the truth about SS1 and the organization behind it, this episode reminded me of Alias after Sidney Bristow discovered. Meanwhile, dealing with boy issues was a throwback to early Buffy. However, the human experimentation thread was a fresh ingredient, and the episode didn’t pull from the darkness, with a subplot involving a Mirae whistleblower and SS1’s efforts to hush it up. Even if Cha and Min suddenly can’t hit the side of a barn in their final confrontation, the threads are satisfactorily tied up down the stretch, with an ending pilfered shamelessly from My Wife is Gangster 2, that hopefully hints at more to come down the line.

As noted, most of the content is material with which most genre aficionados will already be extremely familar, but there seems always to be room for another “faked death assassin” – Nikita alone has already led to three movies and a pair of television series. It’s the execution(s) that matter here, and this is easily the match of Western action heroine productions of late. I wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up heading over to the West in some form or other, most likely a remake, as has been the case for some many Korean, Japanese and HK movies in recent years. If so, they’ll have to do sterling work to match up with this original.

[Thanks to Hyomil for most of the pics. Killer K can be enjoyed in a subbed version online, through sites such as viki.com, albeit with a somewhat irritating sous-title commentary, which makes watching the show like sitting in the theater with a bunch of chatty teenagers. Still, better than nothing!]

Dir: Kim Jong Hyun
Star: Han Groo, Park Hyo Joo, Baek Do Bin, Kim Jung Tae
a.k.a. Girl K, Little Girl K, Killer Girl K

La Culata: Mexican Standoff

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★★
” Like a low-budget Andy Sidaris film. If he was Mexican and couldn’t talk his actresses into undressing.”

I vibrated between 2 and 2 1/2 stars for this, but opted for caution: it’s probably not as bad as it seems, despite an obvious lack of budget and ambition far in reach of its abilities. Or, at least, I maybe liked it a little more. As the alternate title suggests, it’s the third in a series, though information on the first two is scant: there’s no IMDB entry for them, and they appear to have different cast members. The central character is Maria Navajas (Ponce), an abused woman who turned to killing, discovered a talent for it, and took it up as a career. This entry finds her being sought by two different groups of gangsters who believe she ripped them off, as well as the feds. She has to fend them all off, with the aid of a friendly undercover cop (Sevilla) and her agent (played by, according to the IMDB, one of the producers of Napoleon Dynamite!).

There are elements of this that are quite laudable, with a host of strong female characters – not just Navajas, but her main adversary, the mob boss knows as “La Culata” (Cepinska), who has a fondness for female enforcers. Both the roles, and the performances behind them, are interesting enough to hold your attention, and some of the supporting pieces are also decently constructed. However, for every step forward, there’s at least one, and often two back. The storyline is over-stuffed, and at 113 minutes, this would benefit from a lot of editing. The action is largely poorly-shot, probably to conceal the limited combat talents, and with bizarre mis-steps such as one awful moment where the heroine throws her knife down the barrel of an enemy’s gun. Look, if you’re that good with the weapon, just embed it in their eye, alright? There are several moments where it looks like this is going to kick off, but doesn’t – most notably, we never get the expected confrontation between La Culata and Maria, which is a shame. Instead, the finale is the biggest let-down since the Hindenburg.

Certainly, don’t be fooled by cover art which appears to have strayed in from Single White Female, or something similar. This is a zero-budget action movie, but coming from a culture which doesn’t exactly regard women as equals, deserves some credit for putting them front and centre. However, the execution in this case leaves just too much to be desired.

Dir: Jorge Ramirez Rivers
Star: Cecilia Ponce, Anna Cepinska, Guillermo Iván, Manuel Sevilla
a.k.a. Maria Navajas 3

La Femme Nikita: season one

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★★★
“French kissing in the USA”

To say I approached this show in a roundabout way would be an understatement. 15 years after its original screening, after three separate movie versions and two seaseons of the largely unrelated version of the story starring Maggie Q, I finally got round to it. So, bearing tht in mind, it’s a different beast from what I expected – mostly because it’s a lot less action-oriented. Peta Wilson, as lost soul turned government operative Nikita, looks like she could potentially kick your arse, but (largely for budgetary reasons, I believe) there’s only token moments of hand-to-hand action: the focus is much more on spycraft, undercover work and deceit, rather than full-on assaults. There are still occasional sequences, but even these tend to involve relatively brief gun-battles, not the martial arts brawls which are one of the new version’s trademarks.

The other chance is that Section One, their version of Division, is not malicious – at least not in the same way. It’s certainly a heartless organization, which is utterly ruthless, and prepared to dispose of anyone who may interfere with their actions, but it’s more an awareness that when you’re dealing with terrorists, organized crime or other threats to the country and world, you can’t be unwilling to get your hands dirty. It leads to a significant bleaker overall tone, and is amazingly prophetic, given this was screened well before 9/11 led to this attitude become a necessary part of national security. Early on, it’s established that you can never trust Section heads Operation (Glazer) and Madeleine (Watson, who was also part of the remake, playing Senator Pierce – her given name there was also Madeleine), to the extent that their deceit becomes almost a cliché.

There are some direct nods to Besson’s movie: her first assignment is to murder a target in a crowded restaurant, and the bathroom assassination crops up in a later episode. On the other hand, there is one significant difference from the original film, in that Nikita here is genuinely innocent of the crime for which she is sentenced, simply happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her refusal to engage in the actions Section demands of her is a strong thread of the first season, with a reluctance to compromise her moral code being pitted against Section’s desire to control her for their own ends. Early on, she risks “cancellation” (termination with extreme prejudice) more than once, by disobeying orders, usually to protect others from Section action.

Another area in which this show differs from the current version, is a much more pronounced use of music. There are fairly lengthy sequences, several minutes on occasion, where scenes unfold over almost all of a song. A soundtrack CD was about the only piece of merchandise given any wide-scale release by Warner Bros, including the title track by X-Files composer Mark Snow, as well as songs by Depeche Mode and Morcheeba. Also popping up in the first season, are Morcheeba, P.J. Harvey, Sister Machine Gun and several tracks by neo-classical/industrial band In The Nursery, whom I coincidentally went to see in Hamburg, back around the time these episodes first aired. It’s certainly a trademark of the show, and is an aspect I consistently enjoyed.

On the other hand, apart from the lack of action, the angle I liked least was the relationship between Nikita and her handler/fellow agent, Michael (Dupuis). I’ll come right out and say it: I hate ‘shippers, and storylines that pander to them are nothing more than an irritant to me, especially in shows which I watch for action, where they do little except interfere with the good stuff, in my humble opinion. [We’ve seen this in the new incarnation, where the show has disintegrated from one of the best shows on TV, into little more than Mr. and Mrs. Smith And Friends.] I’m definitely a “noromo”: If I wanted unresolved sexual tension and relationship nonsense, I’d watch daytime soap operas. Right from the first time Nikita and Michael meet, it’s doe-eyed heaven, even though there is obviously little or no honesty, trust and anything else on which a genuine relationship could ever be founded.

There are also a number of aspects of the show which now seem undeniably dated, which is always going to be an issue when a series is trying to be “cutting edge”. Most obvious is the technology – an early episode has tech wiz Birkoff explaining about IRC, something now so passé, an explanation would probably be needed again! – but the opening credits always get a chuckle, especially the final “morph” at the end, which looks incredibly cheap. Meanwhile, Wilson’s accent drifts in and out without rhyme or reason: at times, she seems straight off Bondi Beach, while at others it’s almost entirely subdued.

The episodic nature of this, with less concentration on an over-riding story arc, is both a strength and a weakness. It frees the creators up for some really good stories, but there’s not much incentive to plug in the next episode – I largely watched them in double-bills, but it took me more than seven months to get through the first season’s 22 shows. I enjoyed the bleakness and emotional chilliness depicted here, which as noted above, is probably more relevant now than then, but the obviously lower production values, and its replacement of high-energy action with dramatic angles that Wilson isn’t quite up to handling, brought its overall entertainment value down significantly. I’m probably just about interested enough to pick up the second season at some point: however, that is not likely to be for a while.

Star: Peta Anderson, Roy Dupuis, Eugene Robert Glazer, Alberta Watson

Nikita: season two

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★★½
“More characters! ADD MORE CHARACTERS!”

When we last saw Nikita (Q), she’d gained some help for her struggle against Division in the shape of fellow defectors from the organization, Michael (West) and tech guy Birkhoff. But she’d lost protege Alex (Fonseca), who had stayed with Division to further her lust for revenge on those who’d killed her parents, while reclaiming her family fortune. Meanwhile, Nikita’s nemesis and former boss Percy had been usurped by Amanda (Clarke), and was now in a plexiglass box in the basement. Throw in Oversight, the government committee supposedly in charge of Division under Senator Madeline Pierce; CIA agent Ryan Fletcher and Pierce’s son Sean, who join Team Nikita; Owen, a rogue guardian, keeper of one of Percy’s black boxes… And I haven’t even got to Michael’s love-child, a source of much angst for all concerned.

I think the main problem with this sophomore season is clear: too many characters, resulting in plotting that’d be thrown out by a telenovela as far-fetched and convoluted. It was also notable that Nikita did significantly less heavy lifting on the action front, with Michael taking up more. Because, of course, no woman can survive without a man. Unfortunately, the increased focus on relationships – of multiple kinds – is probably almost inescapable on a network like the CW, even when a show gets buried in the “death slot” of Friday night. But it defused what made the show stand out: a kick-ass independent heroine, who could handle herself without relying on a team of men, and as a result, I frequently drifted off, either to sleep or to do something else more interesting. Which would be just about anything.

By the time of the last few eps, I would genuinely not have been bothered if the show had been canceled. But then, it returned to form: Percy escaped, getting himself a nuke and a satellite – nothing good can come of this. Focus on a genuinely threatening villain and the heroine, not the soap-opera “Mikita” ‘shipper bullshit, and I was engaged again. The end came almost full-circle – in part, I suspect because the makers didn’t know when they were shooting the final episodes, whether or not they’d be renewed. And, in the end, I am glad it has been given a third season, because there’s no show quite like it on television – despite the flaws, it’s flying the flag for genuine action heroines, almost solo. Still, how long my interest lasts when it returns, remains to be seen.

Star: Maggie Q, Shane West, Lyndsy Fonseca, Melinda Clarke

The Assassin Next Door

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★★★½
“The Professionaless.”

Galia is a sex-slave, kept in captivity in an Israeli brothel. After a failed escape-bid, she is told she has one chance to get back to Russia and be reunited with her daughter: kill an enemy of the man holding her hostage. This she does, but one murder becomes another, with the lure of getting her passport returned and freedom being used to keep her working, just as when she was a prostitute. But at least she has some freedom, and moves into an apartment opposite Elinor (Tayeb), who has problems of her own, in the shape of an abusive husband. The two women bond, both sharing dreams of escaping their violence-plagued lives. However, acting on those dreams is unlikely to be easy, with the men in their lives unlikely just to let them walk.

Kurylenko is likely familiar from her role as a Bond girl in Quantum of Solace, but this is a good deal darker. Indeed, if you’re expecting an action-packed treat, this will probably disappoint: except for the final 20 minutes or so, it’s far more of a character piece, depicting a pair of damaged souls and the comfort they find in each other’s company (which teeters on the edge of Sapphic at one point before, probably wisely, stepping back – not soon enough to avoid Chris’s sarcasm entirely, however!). Not all of this works, including a lengthy trip to some kind of religious bath-house which, frankly, seems purely an excuse to see Kurylenko undress. The good news is that the performances are solid enough to make this kitchen-sink drama hold up, and when there is action, Lerner delivers it well, in particular an assassination attempt in a night-club which features some impressively Palma-esque camerawork (and is our video of the month for this update).

The film does leave some troubling questions: how, exactly, did Galia go from being a mother in the Ukraine, albeit one with issues but who does love her daughter, to being locked up in Israel? I know this isn’t the focus of the film, yet it would seem to be a crucial issue that needs addressing. However, the flaws are largely overcome by the strength of the acting, and when things kick into high-gear for the final confrontations, it delivers, with a shoot-out on a bus that is an impressive bit of close quarters film-making. Manage your genre expectations with this one, and you won’t be disappointed.

Dir: Danny Lerner
Star: Olga Kurylenko, Ninet Tayeb, Zohar Shtrauss, Liron Levo
a.k.a. Kirot

Colombiana

  By

★★★
“The revenge and hit-woman genres could cross-pollinate each other. Just not here.”

There are moments where this seems to have the potential to break out beyond its story, but once you get past the strong central core, the script has very little to offer. Cataleya (Saldana) narrowly escapes death when her parents are killed on the orders of their gangster employer, Don Luis. She flees from Colombia to Chicago and is raised by a family friend, but never forgets where she came from, and has revenge on her mind. Grown-up, she becomes a hit-woman, but has a side-project of payback. She has an occasional boyfriend (Vartan) who knows little about her, and a dogged FBI agent (James), intent on tracking down the mysterious, elusive killer. Y’know: all the usual baggage that goes along with being an assassin.

The action, however, is what rescues this, and when the heroine is in motion, it’s generally fluid and effective. There are two sequences in particular that stand out: Cataleya’s hit of a gangster in prison, and the final showdown where she goes to Don Luis’s headquarters, and takes on… Well, to borrow a famous line from another Besson script, “Everyone!” They are well-staged, with Saldana showing flexibility and athleticism of an impressive degree (Besson’s fondness for parkour also shows up). However, between these two, there isn’t much to speak of; a third sequence, involving a swimming-pool filled with sharks(!) fails, mostly because you’re wondering why the hell Cataleya opted to swim across said pool rather than – oh, I dunno – walking around it?

The background stuff doesn’t work either, particularly the efforts to give her a normal life, which seem both perfunctory and contrived, and Vartan’s role is entirely pointless in emotional terms. I suspect, going by past history, Besson would have been better off directing this himself, not giving it to the man who handled the eminently forgettable Red Siren and Transporter 3. This might be as close to a Leon sequel as we’ll ever get. However, a while back, probably nearly 15 years ago now, I came up with an idea for a film about a woman who witnessed her family being killed, and a decade later, came back for her revenge. I even got as far as starting on a script. While I’m probably biased, I’m pretty sure it was better than Colombiana.

Dir: Olivier Megaton
Star: Zoe Saldana, Lennie James, Michael Vartan, Jordi Molla

Requiem pour une Tueuse

  By

★★★
“Emotionally chilly, and not as clever as it thinks, but well-acted and shot.”

The French have a decent pedigree of action heroines, going back to Joan of Arc. Cinematically, the likes of Bloody Mallory, Adele Blanc-Sec, and one of the most influential of them all, Nikita, have kept the tricouleur flying. This is closest to the last-named, with Lucrece (Laurent) fed up of the assassin game, but talked into that old standby of the genre, one final mission, by her agent (Karyo, who of course was also in Nikita). This involves posing as a classical singer and taking part in a performance of Handel’s Messiah. For the target is the bass singer (Stills), whose Scottish distillery occupies land an oil company wants for their pipeline. Lucrece is pretty disenchanted with the whole thing, and this may explain why her early attempts mis-fire. Fortunately, the special agent (Cornillac) sent to track her down, is equally as unenthusiastic. But is Lucrece the only killer in play?

The picture is pretty misleading, since Lucrece never touches a gun the entire movie – she’s a poisons specialist. It’s pretty chilly, emotionally, but both Laurent and Cornillac do bring some humanity to their roles, and are both very watchable [there’s one scene between them that is particularly good]. It seems to be aiming for a Hitchcockian twistiness rather than an action-packed thrill-ride; it doesn’t quite pull this off, and you’re left to appreciate the Swiss scenery and the classical music more than the plot. It’s too heavy on the cliches of the genre, and feels more like a lazy effort to tidy up loose ends on a long-running TV series, than a solid standalone work – Lucrece’s relationship with her daughter seems particularly thrown in. A character like Lucrece would certainly have plenty of interesting stories to tell; this doesn’t seem to be one of the more memorable.

Dir: Jèrôme Le Gris
Star: Mèlanie Laurent, Clovis Cornillac, Tchéky Karyo, Christopher Stills

The Gene Generation

  By

★★★
“Well, I guess it’ll do until Neuromancer shows up.”

In a dark, grim future, Michelle (Ling) is an assassin, taking out DNA hackers for pay. However, her income is drained as fast as she earns it by her Jackie (Shen), her brother, who has a gambling addiction. To try and pay off his mob debts, he breaks into the apartment of their next-door neighbour, Christian (Newman), a renegade DNA hacker himself, and steals a device on which he was working. The “transcoder” can take a subject’s DNA and, more or less, rewrite it, thereby having the potential to end disease – yet it could also be turned into an enormously destructive weapon. Needless to say, when word gets out that Jackie has this device, everyone wants to get their hands on it.

I liked the visual style, even if it’s so Blade Runner, that Ridley Scott should be cut a fat cheque for its use. And Bai Ling may be in her forties, but is still capable of kicking ass in an impressively competent (and occasionally hyper-bloody) manner: witness the way she disposes of a bunch of evil minions, surrounding her, guns pointed, in about two seconds flat. Let’s just say, Cleric Preston would be impressed. Throw in some impressive industrial beats – VNV Nation leader Ronan Harris provided additional music – and you’ve got something that, at its best, is a very nice slab of cyberpunk.

However, the weaknesses are both severe and obvious. The plotting is clunky and muddied: it’s based on a comic-book (The DNA Hacker Chronicles), but some apparently important points are not explained, while others that appear important are never mentioned again. Jackie is also incredibly annoying; it wasn’t long before Chris and I were wishing a rapid death on this entirely unlikeable jackass. If the film-makers had been wise enough to find another, entirely separate way of bringing Michelle and the transcoder together, we’d have been a great deal happier.

The negatives and positives operate in sharp contrast to each other: the good stuff is really very good, but the bad moments are on the “root canal” level. The unevenness left us with a sense of wasted opportunity; the elements were there for something with definite cult-classic potential. However, they simply succeed in making the failings all the more obvious.

Dir: Pearry Teo
Star: Bai Ling, Parry Shen, Alec Newman, Michael Shamus Wiles