Tag: comedy

5 Deadly Angels

  By

★★
“Feed the little girl to the reptiles!”

Difficult though it is to believe, a film containing the remarkable line of dialogue above still manages, largely, to be dull and uninteresting. Charlie’s Angels has a lot to answer for, spawning a slew of knock-offs and imitators as a result of its success, all over the world. In this case, the origin is Indonesia, where scientist Hardy has just discovered a new kind of super-explosive. He’s worried about it falling into the wrong hands, and rightfully so, as he and girlfriend Yanti (Octavia) are kidnapped by the evil Mr. Brutho. Yanti is able to escape, although Brutho – who goes through minions like the rest of us go through socks – plans to kidnap her mother and little sister. The aim is to use them as leverage (which is where we get the tag-line) and force Hardy to make his new explosive, for sale to a Middle Eastern potentate.

Fortunately, during her escape, Yanti has a roadside encounter with Anita (Dewi), and they bond after beating up one of the innumerable local sleaze-balls. Together, they assemble the titular team, who will raid Brutho’s complex and rescue Hardy. To this end, they also bring on board knife-thrower Dana (Christina), the crossbow wielding Lydia (Kandou – dare I say, she has a real Kandou attitude) and martial-arts mistress Lulu (Eva Arnaz). Dana also provides the film with a pair of musical numbers, because… Uh, because Indonesia, I guess? I can only presume some Bollywood influence, although I don’t recall many song and dance numbers in other films from there.

There are some moments of energy, such a relatively impressive car chase early on, which is more destructive than I expected. But like the whole feature, this is populated with weird comedy notes. For instance, one of the cars drives through a massage parlour, and emerges on the far side with a bed attached to the front, on which are still lying a masseuse and her client. This, however, pales into significance beside the brawl in a restaurant where someone has an egg stuffed into his mouth, and then coughs back up a live chick. It’s truly one of the more baffling moments in any movie, regardless of genre or source, and I cannot fathom the thought process behind it.

Otherwise, the pacing is utterly horrible. The team is not even assembled until after the half-way point in proceeding, and between the car chase mentioned above, and the final assault on Brutho’s complex, there’s painfully little of interest going on. On the far side of the final battle, it all finishes with the biggest group hug since the end of Return of the King, the love-fest being only slightly dampened by Lydia also clinging onto her crossbow at the same time. There was, apparently, a sequel, Cewek Jagoan Beraski Kembali (“Deadly Angels Strike Back” or thereabout), which co-starred eighties Indonesian action legend Barry Prima as an unwilling rapist. While that premise is certainly… different, it does not appear to have received any kind of English-language release, so we’ll just have to imagine what it might be like.

Dir: Danu Umbara
Star: Yatie Octavia, Debby Cynthia Dewi, Lydia Kandou, Dana Christina
a.k.a. 5 Cewek Jagoan

Part-Time Spy

  By

★★★
“Korea careers.”

An amiable piece of light fluff from Korea, while this probably doesn’t need to be 117 minutes long, the time passed comfortably enough. After many years of failing the civil service entrance exam, Jang Young-shil (Kang) finally succeeds and is rewarded with a contract job in the national security agency. However, she’s still mediocre, and is laid off. Fortunately, she overhears her boss (Jo) having been phone-phished out of $500,000 of departmental funds, and is the only agent available to go undercover in the ‘boiler room’ carrying out these scams. There, she recognizes another employee, Na Jung-an (Han) – having seen her take out a pickpocket on the subway, she knows Na is an undercover cop. The two women, of sharply disparate backgrounds and skill-sets, form an uneasy alliance, seeking to take down the charismatic boss of the con company, Min Seok (Namkoong).

The similarities to the Melissa McCarthy vehicle, Spy, extend to more than the title, being a similar combination of goofy comedy and action, with a lead who is far from conventionally pretty [the poster on the right is spectacularly misleading, as far as 50% of the actresses are concerned]. Though neither the comedy nor the action here prove quite as successful. For all Kang’s charms, she lacks the impeccable comedic timing of McCarthy, though her long list of former jobs e.g. dog whisperer provide some amusing moments – as well as coming in surprisingly handy, for example when the villains unleash their canines of war. Han isn’t exactly Jason Statham in the martial arts department either. That said, her anger management issues are a nice touch, making her far from the perfect choice to go undercover at a sketchy call-centre, and she can pull discontented faces with the best of them. Her efforts to seduce Min are delightfully OTT as well.

For an action-comedy, I found this surprisingly eye-opening too. The concept of having to pass an exam to get a job with the government, for instance. Or the entire voice-phishing thing, which seems to be an epidemic in Korea, if this movie is to be believed. In the film’s defense, it is possible that cultural differences such as these may partly explain why some of the humour occasionally falls painfully flat. However, even local reviewers seemed unimpressed with the more slapstick elements, so it probably isn’t just me who was highly underwhelmed by these aspects. It does build nicely, with the finale seeing our two heroines sent to scam an army officer out of $500,000 – money which Jang’s boss intends to “requisition” and replace the money he lost. Needless to say, things don’t quite unfold as expected, especially after another employee overhears Jang and Na talking, and realizes they are not who they claimed to be.

It’s the kind of film I can easily see being remade by Hollywood, perhaps with McCarthy and Sandra Bullock as the tw… Oh, hang on: they already did that, and it was called The Heat. But in most ways, this is its equal: slickly-made and unashamedly commercial, if also largely forgettable.

Dir: Kim Deok-su
Star: Kang Ye-won, Han Chae-ah, Namkoong Min, Jo Jae-yoon

Girls With Balls

  By

★★★★
“Guess a new domain name is needed…”

Lurking behind one of the most cringeworthy titles I’ve ever seen, and a trailer that’s not much better, is a very pleasant surprise. Well, at least if you’re a fan of the “splatstick” genre, mixing over-the-top gore and comedy: Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead is the pinnacle of that genre. I certainly am, and consequently found this a real hoot. Girls volleyball team, the Falcons, are on their way home after their latest victory, when they end up diverted into a small town, populated entirely by inbred rednecks (or the Gallic version thereof). After an encounter in the hotel, they find themselves getting a night-time visit, and are soon being hunted down by the village’s residents. However, the biggest psycho may not be among the locals…

Afonso does a great job in depicting the heroines with broad strokes. You quickly establish the egotistical star player Morgane (Azem), up and coming star Jeanne (Daviot), nerdy M.A. (Balchere), etc. They’re all overseen by their distinctly non-athletic coach (Solaro), who treats them as if they were one big, dysfunctional family. Yet these internal tensions often threaten their literal survival. It was clear to me (if not many reviewers!) that Afonso is parodying the slasher genre: he takes it to such extremes, with the girls bickering over boyfriends even as their pursuers are mere feet away. That’s where this differs from the other “women’s sports team in wilderness peril” movie – yes, it’s a genre… well, there are two – Blood Games, which took itself seriously. He does an equally nice job with the villains. For example, rather than having hunting dogs, there’s one local who pretends to be a dog, playing the sound of hounds baying over a bullhorn.

It’s just one of the many times where this film subverts the audience’s expectations, not least in having heroines with their own set of flaws. Also included there is the country-and-western singer who hitches a ride on the team’s camper van, interrupting proceedings to offer sardonic commentary on proceedings. “The players on this team were all kind of hot”, he sings at the start, going on, “Another thing they have in common, is that they die before the end.” [Is he telling the truth? I won’t say…] Inevitably, of course, there’s a rather dumb scene where the girls use volleyballs to attack their enemies, and the climax doesn’t actually stick in the mind as well as many of the scenes which preceded it. The attack chihuahua, or the headless corpse that Just. Won’t. Die.

If you took this seriously, it would potentially be thoroughly offensive – though it’s entirely equal-opportunity in its approach there. Men, women, gay or straight: no-one here gets out alive. Just, for the love of all that is holy, skip the dubbed version on Netflix, and watch it subtitled. I caught a few seconds before lunging for the remote control, and my ears may still be bleeding.

Dir: Olivier Afonso
Star: Tiphaine Daviot, Manon Azem, Louise Blachère, Victor Artus Solaro

Bad Grandmas

  By

★★
“Near-dead.”

There is entertainment value to be found even in bad movies. Bad action, horror and SF are sometimes just as amusing as the good stuff. But bad comedy is almost irredeemable: that’s why Mystery Science Theater 3000 rarely go there. Bad comedy just… sits there, dull and unamusing, almost worthless. And that’s what we have here. It’s a somewhat interesting idea, with some potential. Unfortunately, the execution – mostly in the script and direction – are so woefully inept that even the brave efforts of Florence Henderson, in her final film, aren’t enough to salvage it. And wasting the talents of Pam Grier needs to be some kind of cinematic capital offense.

Mimi (Henderson) is trying to help out her friend Bobbi (Wall), who is being thrown out of her house by an evil son-in-law. She goes to confront the perp, only for him to end up dead. She and her senior citizenette pals dispose of the body, hiding it in a freezer. But this just brings them to the attention of Harry (Reinhold), the local loan-shark to who the son-in-law owed two hundred grand. He kidnaps Bobbi, demanding the house or the money; Mimi is having none of that, and when Harry sends over an associate to collect, the henchmen ends up similarly dismembered and in the deep-freeze. Meanwhile, the local sheriff (Batinkoff) is also sniffing around, initially having been investigating Harry’s financial dealings.

Henderson does her best with material which seems designed to destroy any audience sympathy. For example, her first victim isn’t killed initially, and Mimi immediately stabs him in the heart to finish the job. I remind you: this film is supposedly a comedy. If it wanted to go this “dark passenger” route [and it includes an explicit reference to Dexter], that might have worked better, and I’d have been fine with it. Make Mimi a retired serial killer, former CIA operative or something to explain her apparent psychopathic tendencies. For the ease with which she slides from genteel retirement into cold-blooded dispatch is jarring and at odds with the light-hearted tone for which the film is aiming (and, largely, falling short).

A far more egregious complaint would be putting one of the godmothers of action heroineism, Grier, in a timid, mouse-like role, beneath a poorly-considered blonde wig, and giving her next to nothing to do. I know she’s in her late sixties, but that never stopped the similarly-aged Helen Mirren from letting rip in Red. I just breathed a sigh of relief on checking Pam’s filmography to discover she had appeared in other films since. Bad enough this was Henderson’s swan-song, we didn’t need it also to be that of an unquestioned icon like Grier. I sense where this is trying to go – something similar to the Bad Ass franchise, with its similarly mature cast of Dannys Glover and Trejo. However, that knew what to do with its characters, and made much better use of them than this, a well-intentioned failure.

Dir: Srikant Chellappa
Star: Florence Henderson, Randall Batinkoff, Judge Reinhold, Susie Wall

Tomboy

  By

★★½
“Female empowerment! (And boobs)”

Crown International were an independent movie studio, who operated from the sixties through the eighties: we’ve covered some of their work before, such as Policewomen and Malibu High. While specializing mostly in drive-in fare, they did occasionally break out, and this was one of their bigger hits: it reached #5 in the box-office on its opening weekend [during Beverly Hills Cop‘s run of thirteen straight weeks at #1; it was a different theatrical universe then!]. Which is kinda odd: it’s a frothy concoction that’s both ahead of its time, in a no-nonsense heroine who takes crap from nobody, and remarkably retro in its gratuitous (and inevitably female) nudity.

Russell plays Tomasina “Tommy” Boyd, the daughter of an astronaut, who is great at sport, and works as a car mechanic. Nobody particularly takes her talents seriously, and if there’s a theme here, it’s of Tommy having repeatedly to prove herself in the facing of those who doubt her. One of the customers at the garage where she works is millionaire scion Ernie Leeds Jr. (Douglas, Kirk’s son), whose family sponsors racing driver Randy Starr (DiNome). Tommy has long had a crush on Randy, but discovers he can be a bit of a dick, and certainly won’t accept she’s every bit as good as him on the track – unless she can prove it by beating him

It takes quite some time for that plot to show up, and until it does, the scenes of Tommy getting one up on the local male chauvinist sleazeballs are lightly amusing, although possess all the weight of a soap-bubble. These angles are a bit at odds with the nudity, mostly courtesy of Tommy’s ditzy friend, Seville (Somers), who wants to be a movie star – though her career here appears to consist of not much more than a donut commercial. Russell’s most memorable contribution to the exploitation, is when she falls into a river on a date with Randy. She changes her top in front of him, with a complete lack of self-consciousness that’s as much laudable as erotic.

This has got to be one of the flimsiest theatrical vehicles I’ve ever seen, and criticizing it is like trying to punch a cloud of steam: “fluff” doesn’t even begin to do justice to its lack of weight. I’ve no clue who was the intended audience here. Tommy’s arc of self-confidence and personal discovery would be suitable for something on the Lifetime Channel – or even Disney. Yet the gratuitous flesh is aimed right for the wheel-house of a teenage male audience, who would presumably not exactly be captivated by the more empowering aspects. Maybe this makes it the ultimate date movie, with something for both halves to appreciate?

Somehow, though, it did find an audience, taking $14.1 million, over $36 million in 2018 prices – not bad for a film, which rather obviously didn’t cost a great deal to make (for comparison, Brazil, released the same year, took just under $10 million). This is certainly one of those cases where you can say, “They don’t make ’em like this any more.” Whether that’s a bad thing or not, I’m less sure.

Dir: Herb Freed
Star: Betsy Russell, Jerry DiNome, Kristi Somers, Eric Douglas

Slay Belles

  By

★★★
“Not-so silent night”

Not to be confused with RuPaul’s 2015 album (I kid you not), this starts off on shaky territory. I mean, a director who credits himself as “Spooky Dan Walker”, and three edgeladies as heroines, wannabe YouTube stars who think dropping F-bombs every second sentence is cool? I was thanking my lucky stars this had a running time of 76 minutes. This trio of urban explorers head off to an abandoned theme park in the middle of nowhere called Santa Land, only to find it not as abandoned as expected, with a giant horned monster, Grampus, roaming the area, operating as the devil’s Christmas ambassador to naughty children. Or adults, which is where Alexi (Klebe), Dahlia (Slaughter) and Sadie (Wagner) come on to its menu. Fortunately, Santa Land’s owner is there to help: who else but Mr. Claus (Bostwick) himself?

And that’s really where the film becomes considerably more fun. Because it plays fast and loose with the whole mythology of Christmas, depicting Santa as a hard-drinking, cursing biker who gave up the business because toys started being mass-produced. It’s a winning performance from Bostwick, who hand-waves away the girls’ questions about how he operated with increasingly irritated dismissals of “Magic!” This irascible charm seems to rub off on the heroines, who shift from irritating to endearing, and develop distinct personalities beyond their colour co-ordinated outfits and wigs, as they buckle down to fight Grampus and save… Well, less Christmas, and more the world in general.

It becomes increasingly self-aware as it goes on, poking as much fun at the world of Internet “celebrities” as endorsing it, e.g. the trio insist on taking selfies with the temporarily captured monster. There’s good support from Richard Moll as a local cop, and in particular, Diane Salinger as a local barmaid, who ends up playing a pivotal role, despite (or, more likely, because of) her clear aversion to the festive season. It all ends in a quite unexpected fashion which, if a bit too abrupt, fits nicely in with the slaying of sacred cows – or sleighing of sacred reindeer, perhaps – which has gone before. It certainly seals the three heroines as the pro-active leaders of the film, despite a shaky section in the middle where it looked like a boyfriend was going to end up saving the day. Not so fast, white knight…

I have to say, the Grampus suit itself is incredibly well done, a latex marvel that must have been hell to apply and perform in. While there are some elements which feel under-developed, such as the Ghoulies-like fur-balls which attack in act three, Walker keeps things moving at a brisk enough pace to get away with it most of the time. If not quite the silliest festive film which I’ve seen this year (that would, of course, be Santa Jaws), this deserves to be filed alongside other anti-Christmas movies, such as Gremlins. It’s no Die Hard, of course; then again, who is?

Dir: Dan Walker
Star: Kristina Klebe, Susan Slaughter, Hannah Wagner, Barry Bostwick

The Spy Who Dumped Me

  By

★★★
“Competence. It’s VASTLY over-rated.”

A breezy yet slightly odd mix of comedy and ultra-violence, this drops Audrey (Kunis) and her gal pal Morgan (McKinnon) into the middle of a spy caper, after Audrey’s boyfriend Drew (Theroux) dumps her, only for Audrey to discover he was a CIA spy. He tells her she must deliver a statuette to a Viennese cafe, or the world will be in great peril. After the peril rapidly arrives, heavily-armed, she and Morgan head off to Europe, with no idea of who they can trust. In hot pursuit – whether for reasons good or bad – are MI6 agent Sebastian Henshaw (Heughan), and the agents of “Highland”, a criminal syndicate also very keen to get their hands on the statuette and what it contains. A whirlwind tour of European cities follows, including Budapest, Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin.

I’ve rather more time for Kunis than McKinnon; I have previously found a little of the latter’s shtick tends to go a long way e.g. the Ghostbusters reboot, and that’s the case again here. There’s not just much of a character arc for Morgan: she starts the film off being loud and obnoxious, and more or less maintains the same, honking note throughout. Audrey is more restrained, both as a character and in Kunis’s performance, and I found that worked considerably better, to the point the film might have been fine with just her as the lead on her own. Although that might have made the obvious comparisons to Spy all the more apparent. As is, it lacks quite the same level of supporting presence given there by Miranda Hart and Jason Statham.

Surprisingly, it maybe works better as an action film than a comedy, despite Fogel’s almost non-existent work in the area previously. [Some second-unit magic being worked?] Drew and Sebastian do much of the heavy lifting, yet not all of it. In this area, there’s a great car chase, and I enjoyed the supporting role of Ivanna Sakhno as Russian gymnast-assassin Nadejda, as well as Gillian Anderson as Henshaw’s deadpan boss. Nadejda also has one of the drollest comic moments: ordered to assassinate “two dumb American women,” she’s confounded by discovering just how many dumb American women are present in Europe. The hitwoman ends up battling Morgan on a trapeze. Because Morgan went to circus school. As you do. Yeah, the script here will occasionally make you roll your eyes like that.

The end hints at some kind of franchise, which has the potential to be more fun than this origin story, the pair becoming fully-fledged agents on their own, rather than operating in the shadows and under the protection of their male counterparts. There’d be something to be said for a film featuring a pair of spies who simply pretend to be those “dumb American women” for cover purposes, while actually being smart and entirely competent. Such a film likely would need to feature someone else other than McKinnon, however. I’d be perfectly fine with that.

Dir: Susanna Fogel
Star: Mila Kunis, Kate McKinnon, Sam Heughan. Justin Theroux

The Heat

  By

★★★
“Warm, rather than hot.”

McCarthy appears to be Feig’s muse, having starred in his last four movies, from Bridesmaids through this, and then on to Spy and the Ghostbusters reboot. The results here, also fall somewhere in the middle: while decently amusing, this mis-matched cop comedy falls short of the unexpected glory which was Spy. Straight-laced FBI agent Sarah Ashburn (Bullock) is great at her job, but disliked by her peers for her officious attitude. In order to try and win a promotion, she accepts a case in Boston to locate an elusive and unknown drug lord, Simon Larkin. There, she immediately encounters and antagonizes a local cop, Shannon Mullins (McCarthy); Mullins is also a good law-enforcement agent, but the polar opposite of Ashburn, being loud- and foul-mouthed, and no respecter of authority. Inevitably, the two have to work together, and eventually develop respect and affection for each other, etc. as they solve the case. You know the drill.

The story here is incredibly hackneyed, and making the protagonists a pair of women is about the laziest twist imaginable by writer Katie Dippold. Mind you, she co-wrote the Ghostbusters reboot as well, so part of me wonders if her elevator pitches all consist of “(insert film name), but with women!” [Though for the record, she was not involved with the upcoming Ocean’s Eight] What salvages the film are the lead actresses, with both Bullock and McCarthy in equally fine form. The latter has that hyper-acidic persona down to a T, from the moment we first see Mullins, and she tells her boss, “I’ll be there sharply at go-fuck-yourself o’clock, if there’s no traffic.” Ashburn is at the other extreme, prissily tightly-wound, yet so inept personally, she has to kidnap a neighbour’s cat for affection since hers ran off. They’re a perfect match: Mullins doesn’t give a damn, because Ashburn gives them all.

It is at these two extremes when the movie is at its most entertaining, and that’s in the early going. As the film progresses, both of the characters drift towards the middle from the edges. They generally become less interesting as a result, though there’s still amusement to be had from Ashburn’s spectacularly incompetent attempts to be a bit sweary. There’s also a gloriously gory sequence, as she attempts to carry out a tracheotomy, having seen one on television. However, not all of the comedy works, and there’s absolutely no reason why this needs a running time of more than two hours. For example, the scene where they fight each other to go through a door first, goes on about three times as long as is either necessary or funny, and the scenes involving Mullins’s dysfunctional family left me entirely cold. They’d have been better off abandoning all efforts at the drug lord plot, and just given us 90 minutes of the central pair, at the Odd Couple counterpoints of their characters, and the resulting, delightful bickering.

Dir: Paul Feig
Star: Sandra Bullock, Melissa McCarthy, Demián Bichir, Marlon Wayans

Double Date

  By

★★★½
“They’re just girls, man. What’s there to be afraid of?”

Oh, be afraid… Be very afraid. For Lulu (Wenham) and Kitty (Groome) are not your average twenty-somethings. They are sisters, on a mission. A Satanic mission, to resurrect their dead father. All it needs is a series of human sacrifices, culminating in a ritual involving the death of a virgin. And wouldn’t you know it, they’ve found Jim (Morgan), who is about to turn 30 and has been looking for love in all the wrong places. That’s despite the best efforts of pal Alex (Socha) to help, until they encounter Lulu + Kitty, ladies who seem almost too good to be true. As should be clear, that’s exactly what they are. But a wrinkle occurs, when Kitty realizes Jim is a nice chap, and begins to have second thoughts.

If an unashamed B-movie, this has enough fun with the concepts to justify itself, not least gender-reversing the whole “sacrificial virgin” trope. That has been the territory of innocent damsels in distress for a century, so making it a gormless “bloke in distress” instead is a lovely idea. There’s a hint of Shaun of the Dead here as well, in that you have two friends who find themselves trapped in a lethal scenario, almost without noticing it. It helps that everyone here is likeable, in their own ways, not least in their loyalty to friends or relatives, and the women mirror the men, in there being a leader and a follower.

Even Lulu’s slaughter is born out of a familial bond, and the lengths to which she will go are almost touching. Kitty, meanwhile, gets the biggest arc; it’s during an unexpected birthday party at Jim’s house (where he’s off his face on pharmaceuticals!) where you can see a change come over her character. Credit the script, written by Morgan as well, since it hits most of its targets, though the aforementioned drugging feels a bit of a rapey misstep, to be honest. Otherwise, it’s a good balance of the emotional and the comic. In the latter department, I particularly loved the scene where an incredibly nervous Jim is trying to chat up the two not-so-ugly sisters, from a script sent through text message by Alex, only to be betrayed by the vagaries of auto-correct.

Save for that humour, it reminds me somewhat of 1974’s Vampyres, which also had a pair of women abduct people and take them back to their country manor house. Except here, in Wenham, we may potentially have a new British action star, too: if they’re looking to reboot the Underworld franchise and replace Kate Beckinsale, she would seem a viable candidate. Her early “kills” are brutal to the max, but things reach their peak near the end. She has an amazing brawl against Alex, which is one of the best inter-gender battles I’ve seen of late. His raw strength is balanced by her technique, and the results are both impressive and highly destructive of property in the area. Like the film in general, it was a pleasant and unexpected surprise.

Dir: Benjamin Barfoot
Star: ‎Kelly Wenham, Danny Morgan, ‎Michael Socha, Georgia Groome

Strong Girl Bong-soon

  By

★★★
“A not unpleasant Korean stew.”

The 16-part series proved an unexpected sleeper hit in its native land, more than doubling the audience from debut to finale. This is all over the place in terms of genre, with comedy, thriller, romance and action threads. While they aren’t equally successful, it does a pretty decent job of managing most of them, and is surprisingly accessible for a Western audience. The heroine is Do Bong-soon (Park B-Y), the latest in a matriarchal line of very strong women. She has been brought up to keep her power suppressed, due to the potential issues it can cause; Bong-soon has also been warned that if she misuses them, and hurts an undeserving person, they will go away. [Let’s not worry too much about how this presents an easy solution: slap one innocent, and she would become just like everyone else…]

Additionally hampered by low self-esteem, she has so far largely flown under the radar, but that ends when she stops someone from being bullied by an organized crime gang. The incident is witnessed by Ahn Min-hyuk (Park H-S), head of a game company, who is dealing with a stalker and hires Bong-soon as his bodyguard. She starts to fall for her boss, but is conflicted due to having feelings for long-time friend, In Guk-doo (Ji). He’s now a local cop, investigating a series of kidnappings which have terrorised the local area.

All these threads and more, intermingle and develop over the course of the series. The crime gang, who are trying to redevelop the area, seek revenge on Bong-soon, only to become semi-permanent residents in hospital. A group of young local wannabe gangsters turn to Bong-soon as their leader. Her parents go through relationship difficulties. The psycho kidnapper’s attentions target a victim too close to our heroine for comfort. She tries to leverage her bodyguard position into achieving her ambition, which is to design video games. She has a gay supervisor, who has a crush on their boss. Yeah, there’s a lot going on here: everything from a soppy post-teenage love-triangle to something which borders on Silence of the Lambs.

Credit is due, therefore, that the end result is even watchable, given this scattergun approach, though obviously some elements are not very interesting from my perspective. It’s hard to see quite who might enjoy all the angles; on the other hand, perhaps this is a case of there being something for everyone? Park B-Y is admirably deadpan as Bong-soon, dealing with the bizarre hand life has dealt her, and the action scenes, although less frequent than I’d like, are decently handled: the highlight is probably her duel with the entire crime syndicate in a warehouse. It works better for me in the first half, when the various elements gel into a more coherent whole: later on, it becomes almost entirely about the kidnapper or the love triangle, and the switches in tone feel more jarring. I can’t say I’m eagerly anticipating a second series, yet didn’t mind what’s certainly a different take on the genre of super-powers.

Dir: Lee Hyung-min
Star: Park Bo-young, Park Hyung-sik, Ji Soo, Jang Mi-kwan