Tag: crime

Knockout Blessing

  By

★★★
“Punches above its weight.”

Always a pleasure to cross another country off the map, and this is the first movie we have ever reviewed here from Nigeria. Indeed, entries from anywhere in Africa have been very limited, and in general, I found this a pleasant surprise. In some countries, film-makers appear to be trying simply to imitate Hollywood. That’s not the case here: this feels Nigerian, and is all the more entertaining as a result. What it may lack in hardcore action, was made up for me by the glimpse it provided into local culture. The differences are what gave this flavour – though as we’ll see, it appears we are united by a general disdain for politicians and their behaviour!

It begins in a small village where Blessing (Laoye) is the grand-daughter of a boxer, who has brought her up and certainly passed on his skills, leaving Blessing fully deserving of her titular nickname. However, after she punches out the son of a rich local, who was attempting to force himself on her, and he dies as a result, her father is killed by a mob, and she is forced to flee to the city. There, she falls in with a group of hookers, including Hannah (Meg Otanwa) and Oby (Ejiofor). They end up working for low-level gangster Dagogo (Franklin), honey-trapping men whom Blessing then knocks unconscious so they can be robbed. Her goal is to raise funds which Dagogo says he will use to get her a passport to America.

When this shows little signs of happening, Blessing grows reluctant, so Dagogo says he needs just one last job. It’s a high-risk, high-reward job, to steal some diamonds from the notorious Gowon (Adedoyin). Naturally, as “one last jobs” do, it goes wrong. While they get the case, it instead contains a hard drive, with a very incriminating video, depicting the President of Nigeria… Well, let’s just say, there’s a goat involved. [Told you there’s no love lost for politicians] Needless to say, both Gowon and the President are extremely keen to get the drive back, and will stop at nothing to do so. This leaves Blessing and her pals trying to get it to a friendly journalist and online, before the loose ends they represent are tidied up.

This was consistently entertaining. My (admittedly limited) experience of Nollywood left my expectations low, and this surpassed them on most levels: the script, performances and direction are all fine. Credit Adedoyin in particular, whose suit-wearing Gowon becomes a very convincing and menacing villain. It’s never dull, and no special knowledge of Nigerian life and culture is needed here. I did wish more use had been made of Blessing’s pugilistic talents. There’s a significant chunk in the middle, where it feels like the movie forgets about its heroine. Blessing did enough in the early going to win our affections, and she deserves better than to be sidelined. I was still left with an interest in seeing more Nigerian cinema, and that’s not what I expected on the way in.

Dir: Dare Olaitan
Star: Ade Laoye, Bucci Franklin, Ademola Adedoyin, Linda Ejiofor

The Final Heist

  By

★★
“Interesting premise, incredibly bland execution.”

I liked the idea of this. A gang of five thieves, four women and Liev, give up the game after a robbery goes wrong and Liev gets arrested. He doesn’t give up his accomplices, who include his pregnant girlfriend Willa (Banus), and goes to jail. Six years later their daughter falls ill, and desperately needs matching tissue to repair her heart valve. The bad news: it has to be her father, who’s still in prison. Worse news: he’s in a coma, having been beaten up on the orders of the governor. Willa decides to put the band back together, along with an unlicensed surgeon, to break into prison, and extract the necessary tissue to save her daughter. 

That’s not something I’ve seen in a film before. It’s certainly a twist on the usual “women in prison” subgenre, and the scope for a tense thriller, as the reverse heist unfolds, is obvious. Unfortunately, it’s the best part of an hour before we get to the execution, and there’s not enough to retain interest. It doesn’t help that the plot has so many holes through which you could drive an oil tanker. For example, Flynn (Ma) gets a job in the prison library, becoming the gang’s inside woman. She’s gaily snapping cellphone photos inside the jail, when two minutes of Googling confirms exactly what I suspected – that every prison I could find, has an almost zero tolerance policy for mobile devices.

Though in general, this correctional facility has security roughly comparable to your local electronics store, and you will be left with little confidence in just about anyone involved in the penal industry. Not that Willa and her team can really claim the moral high ground here, if you think about it. They are the “good girls” only because the film tells us they are. Given the first thing we see them do is robbing an armoured truck by threatening the driver with an explosive device, I’m not sure that’s truly the case in any court of morality. I’d rather have seen them embrace this ambiguity in some way, rather than dropping in a cliche straight from a Lifetime movie, a desperately ill child. Who can possibly root against Willa now?

Indeed, in tone, a lot of this feels like it could have straight in from a TV movie. Things do pick up somewhat down the stretch, not least with some unexpectedly graphic open-heart surgery, and when Willa is forced to make an unexpectedly difficult choice. However, it likely counts as a minimal spoiler to say that all ends well – at least, for the majority of the cast – with justice served on the bad people. [Robbery, it appears, does not count…] From a technical point of view, it’s reasonably well-assembled: “competent” would be the word, though it’s equally lacking in flair. The highest praise I can give this, is to say that I did not fall asleep. Might have been close in the first hour.

Dir: Ted Campbell
Star: Camila Banus, Jasmine Shanise, Virginia Ma, Shonte Akognon

El Jardinero

  By

★★½
“Better late than never”

Well, that only took… twenty-one years. Back in 2003, I watched and reviewed El Jardinero 2, with the help of Chris, because it came on a Mexican DVD with no English subtitles. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I booted up Tubi the other day, and found its predecessor streaming. No English subs – but there were Spanish ones. Nowadays, Google Translate offers a half-decent ability to convert into English, even if I ended up having to apply a lot of polish to the idiom. At least I didn’t have to bother Chris. Still, here we are, and… Well, it probably wasn’t worth all the effort, to be honest. It is another cheap slice of Mexploitation, with too much talk and not enough action, though like its successor is reasonably entertaining.

It turns out I misspoke in the sequel, when I described Pablo Moreno (L. Reynoso) as the husband of Lilia Gallardo (Herrera). It’s a bit more complex. Lilia returns from abroad to her home town in rural Mexico to discover her father has been murdered by drug dealers. Worse, her mother has taken up with the head of the clan, Adan Moreno. Lilia is unimpressed, and in the resulting fracas, shoots Moreno dead before fleeing. The family kinda blames their rivals, and Mom goes to her grave rather than implicate her daughter, despite brutal treatment at the hands of the gang’s enforcer, Mario Argumedo (Pineda). Dismissing the concern of her godfather, Lilia decides to infiltrate the family, do as much damage as possible and take her revenge.

Vengeance is a long time coming, shall we say. She has to befriend Pablo, posing as an out-of-towner (I guess she must have been abroad for a long time, since he doesn’t recognize her), and using her womanly charms to get an invite to stay on the ranch. She then uses this access to figure out where their poppy fields are located, and recruits her godfather to set them on fire one night. There’s also dissent in the ranks between Pablo and his brother Gabino (H. Reynoso – no clue if the actor is related to his on-screen brother), with the latter unhappy about the influence Lilia is having on his sibling. It doesn’t stop Pablo from inviting her to help out in the family business.

And this is how we eventually get back to where we came in for the sequel, with a gun-battle between the two sides, roughly eighty minutes after the first time we see Lilia shoot Adan. It feels more like a feature-length telenovela, with all that implies. I’d be hard-pushed to call this good, yet it did manage to keep my interest, with things like how the small country towns is basically run by the Moreno cartel, with the police chief utterly in their pocket. None of the locals seem bothered. It’s certainly a bit different, though much as with the sequel, I wish Lilia had been as much of a bad-ass as the cover again implies.

Dir: Enrique Murillo
Star: Lorena Herrera, Salvador Pineda, Luis Reynoso, Héctor Reynoso

The Solid-State Shuffle, by Jeffrey A. Ballard

  By

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

There’s an interesting setting here, and the concept isn’t bad. However, the author is flat-out terrible at explaining things, and that derails the book badly. There were entire pages which seemed to be an written almost in another language, such was the level of technological gobbledygook spouted – and I write as someone who works in the field. Too often, it felt as though the writer was using technology as an alternative to magic: whatever needed to be done, there seemed to be some gadget, gizmo or app which the heroine or her allies could whip out to perform the necessary task. 

This takes place in a future America where the coastal areas have fallen to the rising sea levels; for example, much of what was Seattle, is now under water. Into this largely submerged city comes Isa, the leader of a trio of thieves who had to high-tail it away from the East coast for reasons that are unexplained. They’ve now set up in Seattle, and we first encounter them robbing the vault of a bank that is now under water (literally, rather than in the financial sense!). They successfully heist an SSD drive, intending to loot the cryptocurrency they believe is on it. Except, it doesn’t contain money. Worse still, it belongs to Colvin, the local boss of criminal activity. Strike three? He then hires Isa and her team to recover his stolen property and find out who’s responsible.

The suddenly sticky situation results, obviously, in the trio having to execute a lot of fancy footwork, in order to find out who set them up, and play the reverse Uno card. Unfortunately, this is where the author loses the plot (again, literally). There are real drives, fake drives and copies of drives whizzing around between the various factions, like a game of three-card monte. And just like three-card monte, once you’ve lost track, you’re probably going to lose interest. I know I did, and the story limped towards the (largely predictable) finish line thereafter, with only the characters doing much to sustain interest, and that in a split decision.

For all of the three are problematic. Isa, who’s the main protagonist and the first person perspective, is a mouthy bitch to put it mildly. It’s a personality trait which gets her into trouble and renders her mostly unlikable, since the targets of her poison tongue are not always deserving. Then there’s Winn, her lover and newest member of the gang, who is too angsty for my tastes, suffering a perpetual crisis of conscience over their activities. Finally, we have Puo, who is the technical support. I just wish the tech support people I have to work with were one-tenth as supernaturally competent, managing to get the drop on even those supposedly more skilled. At least the author ended the story without a cliffhanger. Take your positives where you can.

Author: Jeffrey A. Ballard
Publisher: New Rochester Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 5 in the Sunken City Capers series.

Duchess

  By

★★
“Largely ignoble.”

Marshall has been involved in our genre back to 1998, when he wrote Killing Time. Since then, there have been some classics (The Descent), but the trend has been gently downhill. Of late, he seems to be doing a lot of work with wife Charlotte Kirk (a mere 22 years his younger). The last here was The Lair, which Kirk co-wrote with her husband and starred in. The same is true for this, just to slightly lesser effect, and with even more derivative results. This feels in particular like an early Guy Ritchie film, with larger than life underworld figures, hyper violence and snappy dialogue. Well, those are the goals, anyway. Execution is a different thing, to varying degrees.

The heroine is Scarlett Monaghan (Kirk), rescued from her low-rent pickpocket career by international man of mystery, Robert McNaughton (Winchester), and whisked off to a life of luxury in the Canary Islands. Turns out her new boyfriend is a diamond trafficker, and that’s a very risky business to be in, given the huge profits to be made. While he has a loyal cadre of associates, such as Danny Oswald (Pertwee), not everyone in his circle is trustworthy. After an associate tries to rape Scarlett, and is killed by her, the violence and treachery escalate to the point where she and Robert are left for dead. She isn’t prepared to let it lie, and comes back from the grave to take revenge on those responsible.

Bits of this work reasonably well, with Kirk making a good impression. [Also: you’ll understand why the director married her… I now move rapidly on!] Monaghan is a character with a rough-hewn charm, and a fierce loyalty to those for whom she cares, be that friends, family (with the exception of her father, played by Colm Meaney) or Robert. The big problem here is pacing. The movie is almost two hours long, and barely the last twenty minutes are involved in the interesting stuff: Scarlett’s vengeance. Even when this shows up, it’s hardly The Bride taking on the Crazy 88’s. Indeed, you could argue the most fun action is the opening scene of the movie, which then rolls into a flashback of how we got to that point.

Some of the violence is striking. Scarlett goes to extremes to extract information, and veteran actress Stephanie Beacham, playing Robert’s business partner, goes full Colombian necktie on a minion who tries to steal from her. This does feel at odds with the overall tone. It’s quite light in its atmosphere, populated by larger than life characters – Beacham’s sweary boss is the most obvious example – rather than aiming for gritty realism. This did a barely passable job of holding my attention. It probably should have joined proceedings considerably later, with all Scarlett’s London life largely irrelevant. Did appreciate the Peckham mentions though, having caught the train to work daily from there, back in the nineties. That I was more excited by this than 95% of the film, is likely a warning. 

Dir: Neil Marshall
Star: Charlotte Kirk, Philip Winchester, Sean Pertwee, Colin Egglesfield

The Bag Girls 2

  By

★★½
“Not so bag.”

Back when I reviewed The Bag Girls, I was not particularly impressed and spent a fair bit of time riffing off the lead actresses’s names, which says a lot about how forgettable the film was. I expected more of the same here, but especially toward the end, there was some indication of genuine progress. While we’re still not talking great, there were positives, which deserve to be acknowledged. You likely do need to have seen the original, as this assumes you know who the characters are: Dee (The Doll) , Nola (The Boss) and the rest of the quartet are still robbing for a living, sporting bejewelled masks, and referring to each other by high-end handbag names. However, trouble hits when a strong-box they loot turns out to belong to Colombian cartel queen, Solera Castillo (Garcia), who is not happy with this apparent disrespect. Meanwhile, the authorities, particularly in the form of Detective Lewis (Wilson), are also on the trail of the Bag Girls.

It’s a reasonable enough plot, and when the film sticks to this, it’s quite watchable. Women take the lead on the three corners of the story-line’s triangle, anchored by decent performances from those involved. It all ends up in the Bag Girls taking the fight to Castillo’s mansion, after she has begun extracting her own vengeance, while Lewis awaits the arrival of backup. I can’t complain about the imagery of Solera, rising out of her hot-tub to spray automatic gunfire at her attackers, wearing an expression Harley Quinn would likely deem excessively enthusiastic. Though she and the Bag Girls really need to focus on their accuracy, possessing skills that would get them kicked out of Imperial Stormtrooper school. However, the film’s reliance on digital muzzle flashes and CGI blood (if at all), resulting in no property damage is disappointing, though likely inevitable given the budget here still is on the low end.

The problem is the film takes way too long to get to the good stuff, diverting en route to far less interesting subplots and side-stories. There’s an entire separate robbery of some rapper’s party, that is neither necessary to the plot, nor staged in ways that are even slightly interesting. I must also say, the music in large part feels remarkably bland; while I’ve criticized this kind of film before for an excessive reliance on obvious music, this does need something with a harder edge to fit the tone. I do also suspect that, if the events at the end unfolded in real life, a Latin drug cartel would be unlikely to allow the perpetrators to skip away to enjoy drinks on a Mexican beach. Maybe I’ve just seen too many episodes of Ozark. Though this is not about “real life” in the slightest, more a glammed-up version of the gangster lifestyle. If still lacking the resources to sell that dream, everyone involved seems to have made progress from last time, and if not eagerly anticipating Bag Girls 3, I’m not dreading it.

Dir: Wil Lewis
Star: Crystal The Doll, LA Love The Boss, Jenicia Garcia, Chevonne Wilson

Love Lies Bleeding

  By

★★★
“‘Roids and rage.”

In a trans-continental coincidence, both Dieter and I ended up watching and writing our own, independent reviews of this. At least we agreed on the three-star rating!

Well, you might or might not like the way this ends… However, you certainly will remember it. Credit director/co-writer Glass for apparently deciding to live (or die) by the mantra, “Go big or go home.” Literally. It’s in line with a general feeling she doesn’t want to take the easy options at any point here. It doesn’t always work. Boy, does it not. However, I respect the approach. It takes place in a small New Mexico town towards the end of the eighties, where Lou (Stewart) is a gym manager, a lesbian and the estranged daughter of Lou Sr. (Harris). He is a gun-range owner with a very shady sideline in arms dealing, and a desert ravine into which his enemies vanish.

Things are upset by the arrival in town of Jackie Cleaver (O’Brien), a bodybuilder on her way to Vegas for a contest. The two begin a passionate affair, in which Lou also introduces Jackie to the dubious joys of steroid use (though I’m fairly certain these do not work in quite the way depicted here). Lou has another situation, in that her sister Beth is trapped in an abusive relationship with her husband. Jackie decides to take care of this problem for Lou. However, doing so causes more issues than it resolves, not least in that it brings down law enforcement heat on Lou Sr. as the most obvious suspect. Dad demands his daughter fix things, causing Lou to threaten to expose her father to authorities.

It’s all a very grubby take on the lesbian-noir genre, whose best-known example is probably Bound. Stewart seems consciously to be trying to break out of her Twilight reputation, though results so far have been mixed. At least this isn’t the Charlie’s Angels reboot, so for that, we thank her. It is not exactly subtle in its gender depictions: every single male depicted here is violent, though it’s interesting how Glass embraces the view that violence is the only solution, too. Though it’s complex: Jackie declines a gun, saying “Anyone can feel strong hiding behind a piece of metal. I prefer to know my own strength.” Let’s say, that’s not a position she maintains throughout.

O’Brian, who was a bodybuilder before turning to acting, and has a black belt in hapkido, certainly has the physical presence needed for the role. I was less convinced by Stewart, feeling as if her character was stuck in a permanent sulk. The failure to establish her as likeable leaves the relationship with Jackie feeling implausible: if Lou has hidden depths of appeal, they’re apparently buried at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. The decision to wander off, on a number of occasions, into territory closer to David Lynch than the Coen Brothers is one I would not have made, personally, and is likely to alienate a significant number of viewers. A straight (pun not intended) telling of the story would have been preferred. But you do you, Rose. You do you.

[Jim McLennan]

Today on the menu: Lesbian thrillers! Somehow this seems to become the new “trend-du-jour” as a new sub-genre. This year already saw the Ethan Coen-directed lesbian crime comedy Drive Away Dolls and the novel adaptation Eileen with Anne Hathaway. Lesbian-themed movies seem to have come a long way since movies such as Desert Hearts (1985), Thelma & Louise (1991; hey, stop, were these two actually lesbians?) or Fried Green Tomatoes (1991). The difference today is that films can be more direct in their depiction of whatever they want to show. Whether this is really an advantage, is up to the individual viewer. Rose Glass (Saint Maud) shows in her second theatrical movie that she can keep up with male directors of bloody thrillers. The film was a co-operation of British TV Channel 4 and American studio A24, which seems to be building a reputation for slow-burn horror movies.

Principally, the movie is a modern film noir (think Coen brother movies minus the humor). But it also could be called a film soleil, like the French 1980s subgenre of film noir, with most of the story playing in broad daylight. O’Brian and Stewart give good performances, which is satisfying because my usual problem with Stewart is that in most of her films, she almost seems like she is sleepwalking. But not here. I don’t have much to say about Ed Harris who is great and convincing in anything he plays. For me the secret star of the movie is Anna Baryshnikov (yes, the daughter of ballet dancer Mikhail) as the ill-fated ex lover of Stewart’s character.

The film has a strong sense of style, though for me it felt more like the mid-80s than the end-80s. A feeling of unhealthiness permeates the whole film, be it Stewart’s constant smoking (while listening to tapes telling her how unhealthy cigarettes are), the use of drugs to build up muscle tissue, or Ed Harris growing caterpillars and beetles. The relationships of the characters here, be they familiar or otherwise, also feel rotten. It’s definitely not the ideal family promoted by the Reagan administration in the 1980s (But then, in 1989 Bush Sr. was president).

It seeks to comment on the abnormal body cult of the eighties, the decade where hypertrophic heroes like Arnie, Sly and Dolph became big stars – though female bodybuilding is still a thing today (Julian Sands’ last movie before his untimely death dealt with the subject). Also, the characters here seem weird and far from sympathetic: everyone is sweating all the time, Harris with his long hair, Stewart looking as if she is permanently on drugs. They all look like people one wouldn’t necessarily want to meet. Then there is Jackie: while never directly said, it’s implied her erratic behavior is the result of the drugs that Lou gave her.

Glass doesn’t shy away from the ugly or disgusting. One of the first scenes show us Stewart cleaning a clogged toilet (remember the scandal when Hitchcock showed us a clean toilet in Psycho!). Later, we see a body whose jaw is broken into pieces, O’Brian vomiting up Stewart in a hallucination scene and Harris eating a horned beetle. If you are a fan of beautiful pictures this movie might not be for you! Some scenes reference typical Hitchcock or classical thriller suspense scenes, like Harris looking for his son-in-law in his flat while Stewart hides in the closet, or FBI agents interrogating Stewart, when there’s a corpse behind her couch

But not everything works: for example, Lou and Jackie hooking up so quickly was not very believable. But what do I know? I’m neither American nor was I out of puberty in 1989. At the same time I never thought that Jackie might be using Lou for her own advantage, as the movie wants me to believe. So, yes: the characters in the script needed more effort to work. Glass uses some interesting techniques to enhance the creepy atmosphere. Some scenes have a distortion effect with slow motion, very bright lights, coloring e.g. Harris filmed with a red light, and disturbing sound effects. Unfortunately, she spoils otherwise competent work with a final scene which feels as if it would fit better in a fifties sci-fi film than a thriller? Whose perspective is it supposed to be? It might have been meant as a feminist or lesbian empowerment message, but logically makes zero sense.

For me the big deal breaker is the end scene: After telling her father she is nothing like him, Lou completes a murder Jackie didn’t finish. In a way, she is indeed like her father: The same way he tried to protect her out of love, she protects her new found love. Not long ago The Marsh King’s Daughter showed a similar “like father like daughter” scenario. Not that I liked Lou much before: she appeared constantly angry, snappy, possessive, vindictive and irrational. But when she kills a virtually innocent person to secure her relationship, she becomes totally unsympathetic. Probably a great role for an actress but you cannot expect an audience to sympathize or even identify with such a character.

In classic Hollywood noirs, dark-hearted anti-heroes would pay for their crimes. Among many examples, Fred MacMurray getting shot for his sins by femme fatale Barbara Stanwyck in Billy Wilder’s classic Double Indemnity (1944). Heck, even Thelma and Louise paid with their lives for a more or less accidental killing. In modern films it seems if evil is done by women, film makers are reluctant to give them the punishment they deserve, and let them off the hook. I find such story-telling hypocritical and highly questionable: what message is being sent to an audience?

It is okay to commit crimes if you don’t get caught? Killing an innocent is justified in the name of love? Female characters should get off for crimes every man in every movie would be killed for? It seems to be a double standard – I just call it inequality. If you want equal treatment, take it all, including the negatives. No, cherry-picking allowed. Please don’t call me morally sour: I had for example no problem with that famed lesbian noir, Bound (1996), a film where “Love Lies Bleeding” stole some of its ideas from, directed by the Wachowskis. There, the two heroines got away with a murder and theft but they had to defend themselves from a mad angry mafioso. This is different and feels different.

Ah, you want to know about the sex scene? Unfortunately, there is hardly anything mentionable to see here. The short scene is quickly cut and over before you can blink. Audiences are better served erotically either with the aforementioned and superior, though less stylized Bound, or Italian giallo films of the 1970s which seemed more open to  showing sexuality or nudity than modern American movies. But what can you expect, with the new guidelines in movies which require “intimacy coordinators”, primarily so the production won’t be sued. I now feel a great need to watch Basic Instinct again!

So, what’s my conclusion? Well, the film is definitely watchable, a very stylish modern bloody film noir. And if you want to see a movie with lesbians or involving bodybuilding, you might not want to skip it. But its unsympathetic characters prohibit a second viewing or a whole-hearted recommendation from me.

[Dieter]

Dir: Rose Glass
Star: Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, Ed Harris, Anna Baryshnikov

The Squad

  By

★★½
“#SquadGoals: Try not to suck.”

I was braced for this to be terrible, based on IMDb user comments which were either scathing, or came from accounts with one review – a sure sign they were astroturfed. On that basis, I guess I was pleasantly surprised. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not great, and only occasionally brushes against good. But it’s semi-competent, at least once the director calms the hell down, and stops giving us musical montages in lieu of content. The titular trio are Gina (Carrasquillo), Bella (Hansinger), and Dani (Evans), orphans who grew up together and have now turned to a life of crime. In particular, this spring break is spent by a lake in Oklahoma, seeking to muscle in on the local drug trade.

If you have ever seen Ozark, you will know that such activities are never received kindly, and it’s not long before the expected trouble shows up. This is most notably in the shape of rival drug dealar J.C. (UFC fighter Avila), but she is only the tip of the problem-shaped iceberg. People want The Squad out of the way, and/or to provide the source of their supplies. Double-crosses, backstabbings, police activity, abductions, rescue and a fairly significant body count follow as a result, though largely in a by the numbers approach, all the way to an ending that is clearly hoping for this to become a franchise. I would not be holding my breath for this to come to fruition, shall we say.

The three leads are both the best thing this has to offer, and its biggest problem. They’re photogenic, and spent much of the time wearing bikinis, which is not a chore for this viewer. However, when it comes to being convincing drug dealers, the results are much less consistent. It’s only now and again that they succeed in projecting the necessary sense of threat when facing off against their rivals: Gina probably does best in this department. The rest of the time they feel more like coeds cosplaying as drug lords, and seem about as dangerous pushers as Ed from Shaun of the Dead. The whole orphan thing feels like padding, despite the short running time of seventy-eight minutes.

To a certain degree, it feels like it wants to be Charlie’s Angels for bad girls, though regrettably, seems more inspired by the “gritty” reboot version, than the fluffy concoction of the original movie. It’s also hampered by the lack of personality to be found here: there is only one character, sliced up thinly and divided across the three protagonists, where again, Gina seems to have co-opted the lioness’s share of proceedings. Despite a plot that does keep moving forward – occasionally, a little too forward – the action is nothing special, with the trio ending up having to be rescued by a man on more than one occasion. Not exactly empowering. Looks better than it sounds, and I think that applies to almost every aspect of this.

Dir: Rick Walker
Star: Meghan Carrasquillo, Alea Hansinger, Grace Evans, Julia Avila

She season two

  By

★★★½
“Joining our story in progress…”

“Where’s season one?” you may be wondering. It’s a fair question: I thought I had reviewed it here, but there’s absolutely no sign of it on the site. Perhaps that one didn’t meet the necessary action quota? It is true that the first time the heroine shoots someone is the opening episode of the second part, and it thoroughly messes her up. Anyway, we’re here now. Said heroine is Indian policewoman Bhumika Pardeshi (Pohankar), who has been part of an operation to try and nail major narcotics dealer Nayak (Kumar). This involves her going undercover as a prostitute, in order to get into his circle and act as an informant there – obviously, this is a highly hazardous position for her. There’s a whole domestic situation to handle as well.

The first series was mostly about her relationship with one of Nayak’s lieutenants. In the second, she returns to the streets, with Nayak himself as the target. This alone also exposes Bhumika to danger, though she proves more than capable of taking care of herself against violent pimps. Indeed, this proves significant in the second half, after Nayak has supposedly been killed in a police operation. The truth is, he’s still operating, with Bhumika now his second-in-command, using the hookers to move drugs for him. Has she genuinely fallen for the crime boss? Or is this simply Bhumika embedding herself deeper, so his entire network can eventually be brought down?

This question is one which is at the core of the second series. How undercover is she, and how much is the experience going to change her as a result? By the end, the answer to the second part is clear. “A great deal”, to the point where Bhumika may not be able to resume her former life, either as a cop, or as a family woman. There’s a speech where she explains her feelings to Nayak, and how he gives her both love and respect, something she’d never received from a man before. It is thoroughly convincing, and gels with Bhumika not perhaps being “conventionally beautiful,” though she more than makes up for that in an intense and fiery charisma.

I suspect it probably counts as fairly raunchy by Bollywood standards, though this element would likely be PG-13 rated in the West. But it still doesn’t pull its punches, in its depiction of a society that is an enigmatic mix of old and new attitudes, both embracing and resisting change. I think I preferred this slightly more the first season, although without a grade to check, I can’t be certain! It feels like there is less emphasis on the domestic elements – the walking cliche who was Bhumika’s abusive and estranged husband, is barely there if at all. There’s definite scope for a third series, potentially pitting Bhumika directly against her commanding officer, Jason Fernandez (Kini). But before that, do I now need to go back and re-view season one? Stay tuned…

Creator: Imtiaz Ali
Star: Aaditi Pohankar, Kishore Kumar G, Vishwas Kini, Resh Limba

Apaches: Gang of Paris

  By

★★★
“Creuser deux tombes”

I guess the title is trying to riff off Gang’s of New York, though this is set significantly later. It begins in 1884, when the Apache gang run the Parisian underworld. Young orphans Billie, Paulie and Tricky are on the fringes, until Tricky is killed when forced to play Russian roulette by the gang’s leader, Jésus (Schneider). Billie is framed for the death by a corrupt cop, and spends fifteen years in jail. When she gets out, now a grown woman, Billie (Isaaz) seeks revenge on all those responsible for Tricky’s death, infiltrating the Apaches to get close to Jésus. Matters are complicated, by the presence in the gang of Paulie (Paradot), who was brought up by Jésus, and also by the seductive nature on her of the Apache lifestyle. 

There’s a fair bit of truth to the history here. From what I’ve read, the Apaches were a force to be reckoned with in Paris, from about the turn of the century through the outbreak of World War I. They valued style as much as savagery, preying on the middle- and upper-classes. I’ve not been able to find any indication women were a significant part of the Apaches, beyond using prostitutes as decoys to lure and distract the intended targets of a mugging. Still, can’t argue Billie makes the necessary impression, stabbing the Paris police chief (who is also the man who framed her) to death in a cinema, when she was indeed supposed just to be there as bait.

To this point, the film has done well at generating the atmosphere of a wild, anarchic setting, and populating it with interesting characters. It even manages to overcome the deliberate use of anachronistic songs on the soundtrack, opening up with the not-so sultry 1880’s sounds of… um, Iggy Pop? The problem is, the further in we and Billie get, the less interested she appears to be in her vengeance. The turning point might be when she goes after someone who has abandoned the Apache lifestyle entirely. My reaction to this was, “Oh. Is that it?” – and not for the last time either. You may well find yourself saying the same thing when the end credits abruptly roll.

The problem is less her diversion from revenge, than the absence of anything significant to replace it. I’m usually the last person to want romance in a genre film, but that would at least have helped explain her growing indifference to something which clearly sustained Billie through her fifteen years in jail. The nearest is when Paulie tries to kiss her and she repels her advances. It’s only when Jésus gives her an order she can’t obey, that Billie remembers why she’s there, though what results is hardly redemptive. I’ve read the budget was 4.5 million Euros, and if that’s true, I’m very impressed, since it looks consistently good. With a decent lead performance too, it feels they were just half a script short of having a successful feature.

Dir: Romain Quirot
Star: Alice Isaaz, Niels Schneider, Rod Paradot, Artus

[A version of this review previously appeared on Film Blitz]