Tag: crime

Pieces of Modesty, by Peter O’Donnell

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

The six stories in this collection of short fiction featuring iconic heroine Modesty Blaise were all originally published in the Australian publication Pix in Jan.-Feb. 1970. O’Donnell intended them to be published in book form with illustrations by Jim Holdaway, then the artist for the Modesty Blaise comic strip; but Holdaway died that year, and the book-form collection wasn’t published for another two years. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieces_of_Modesty .) In the interval, however, at least one of the stories, “A Better Day to Die,” was reprinted in an American magazine (I don’t recall which one), where I read it –I think in the spring of 1970, while I was still in high school. It was my first introduction to the character, and one of very few exposures I’d had in fiction to a kick-butt heroine (they were much less numerous in my youth than they’ve since become). My teenage self was pretty awe-struck by Modesty in action; so that gave me an abiding interest in her fictional exploits, although this is still only the second book by O’Donnell that I’ve read.

While this is the sixth installment of the series, because the stories are strictly episodic and not connected to each other, and are set at various times in the 60s, they don’t really have to be read after the first five novels to be understood and appreciated. (It would probably be best to read the first novel first, just to provide a foundation.) In a couple of stories, references are made to events, and characters reappear, which are probably drawn from the novels; but any information about past events that we need to know is supplied. Five of them are written in third person; “I Had a Date with Lady Janet” is unique in that Willie narrates it in first person, which helps to develop his character more deeply. The settings are mostly British or continental European, with one tale taking place in South America. All six adventures involve Modesty in a wide variety of situations, which illustrate various aspects of her personality and abilities; that may explain the collection’s odd title. (Don’t worry –Modesty is not dismembered!)

O’Donnell writes with a very readable, professional style, and creates captivating story-lines centered around well-developed characters. His plots aren’t overly convoluted, and their various elements dovetail nicely; that doesn’t keep some of the stories from having surprise twists, which grow naturally from the soil of the tale itself, as legitimate surprises should. (I did guess the general outline of one, before the author revealed it.) This is, of course, action-adventure pulp fiction; unusual, extreme and sometimes life-threatening situations are the norm, and our main characters are larger than life. That doesn’t mean the writing lacks literary quality, nor that it’s without realism, psychological and otherwise. Neither of those are in fact lacking; and neither is moral vision, and the ability to evoke serious thought about ethical questions. The author just evokes the kind of thought about them that today’s literary-critical clerisy doesn’t welcome, because he thinks that right and wrong are real categories, and that virtues such as courage, loyalty and justice actually ARE virtues.

In commenting on individual stories, I want to avoid spoilers. I’ll say simply that “A Better Day to Die” presents a serious, balanced and fair debate between absolute pacifism and the position that violent resistance to murderous and other harmful aggression is a legitimate last resort to protect the inoffensive, including oneself. (Modesty maintains the latter, and O”Donnell clearly agrees with her, as I do –but she respects the pacifist position.) “The Giggle Wrecker,” set mainly in East Berlin in the days of the Cold War, brings back the memory of that era vividly, and to my mind refutes the claim of some that there was an absolute moral equivalency between the West and Soviet totalitarianism. Willie’s narrative and “A Perfect Night to Break Your Neck” are noteworthy for their positive portrayal of physically handicapped characters (both of whom not only pull their weight, but enjoy serious romantic relationships with partners who appreciate them as persons).

“Salamander Four” is the only selection here that indicates Modesty’s openness, on occasion, to uncommitted sex (although there’s no explicit sexual content there, or in any of the stories), but the psychology of it is understandable and she comes across to me as misguided rather than callous and selfish –it’s clear that her intention isn’t knowingly to be hurtful or exploitative. Finally, “The Soo Girl Charity” is the most disturbing of the stories, in that (though without being graphic) it provides a look into the dark reality of the exploitation of women by sexual sadists, and into the even darker reality of what pounded-in cultural brainwashing of females to accept patriarchy and male domination actually does to their psyches. (I didn’t feel that the victim here being Asian indicates racism or cultural stereotyping; I think that simply reflects a reality that, at least in the 60s, traditional rural Asian cultures still tended to promote that kind of brainwashing to a greater degree than Occidental ones –even though the sexism of our culture is bad enough.)

One quibble I had with the latter story is that I thought the premise had Modesty and Willie acting (at least, for their current post-Network situation) out of character in a couple of respects. A more important issue was with a comment about a brutal gang rape of a teen girl that occurs in one of the stories. That the incident could realistically be expected to happen, given the mentality of thugs put in a position to dominate unarmed females, I don’t deny (sadly, it would be more unrealistic if it didn’t); O’Donnell doesn’t treat it graphically and clearly disapproves of it. But afterwards he has Modesty thinking, at one point, “Just as well it had been Rosa. She was a sturdy peasant type with nerves like sisal. In a little while she might even begin to relish the cachet of having been raped by guerillas.” To be sure, the author doesn’t suggest that she relished the rape itself. But in the first place, I don’t think being raped carries any cachet, in a culture that sees virginity as a valuable commodity and sees rape victims as “damaged goods.” In the second place, I can’t imagine that this would be a reaction Rosa would ever have, nor that the idea would be one that Modesty (who was a rape victim herself in the past) would ever think. It comes across as the kind of insensitive, emotionally tone-deaf perception a male author might have who doesn’t have any real ability to imagine the actual psychology of a rape victim.

Overall, though, these caveats didn’t keep me from really liking the collection as a whole. Modesty is one of my favorite action heroines, and one whom I see as, on the whole, a pretty good role model –she has her faults, which are recognizable; but if both male and female readers pick up on emulating her virtues, they’d find a great many to aspire to. I’m glad to have spent this interlude in her fictional world, and still hope to read more of the Modesty canon eventually.

Author: Peter O”Donnell
Publisher: Souvenir Press, available through Amazon, currently only as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Bubblegum and Broken Fingers

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★★½
“Pap fiction.”

Outside of Kill Bill, I’ve never been a fan of Quentin Tarantino. But this film did give me some appreciation for him. Because it’s only when you see Tarantino done badly, that you realize the aspects he does well. It undeniably takes some skills to keep a story-line involving multiple sets of characters in the air, especially when centered on a Macguffin like a suitcase whose contents are never revealed. Jackson tries to do exactly the same thing here, and the result is, frankly, a mess, where you’re left caring little or nothing about any of the participants.

It starts with two low-level henchmen on their way to make a deal outside Las Vegas, swapping a large quantity of cash for the suitcase in question. This ends with the opposite side dead, and the pair on the run. They come across two German pedophile tourists, who have kidnapped Heidi (Daly) along with a mute girl, Tiny (Tyla). However, turns out Tiny isn’t the innocent she appears, and she takes the suitcase, being part of a all-female criminal cabal herself. They’re being pursued by a variety of law enforcement agencies, who have their own agendas. It’s as if the writer (also the director) had only one solution to any story issues: introduce more characters, rather than developing the ones already present.

It’s the script which is the glaring weakness. The performances are fine, Jackson makes good use of locations in and around Las Vegas, and there’s a particularly impressive sequence told without dialogue. Indeed, having a major participant who can’t speak – except through an electronic text-to-voice synthesizer – is navigated well, when it could easily have been a disaster, bringing things to a grinding halt any time she appeared. But the pattern soon becomes obvious. Introduce some characters. Start to develop those characters. Abandon them, leaving them (in some cases, literally) dead at the side of the road. Rinse & repeat for an hour or so, until your audience can no longer be bothered to care about anyone.

You’re presumably intended to keep your eye on the suitcase. Yet we never learn what is in the case, capable of triggering all the carnage and corpses. How annoying. It could be argued that it doesn’t make any difference. Unlike Pulp Fiction though, it feels as if it matters, because this is clearly the focus of everyone’s efforts, rather than a supporting act to the sideshow, as in the Tarantino film. As we seem to have said quite a lot lately, I suspect this is a result of having the director film his own script, leaving him too close to the project to spot its flaws. Jackson has good technical abilities, and it’s certainly possible to imagine a version of the same story, with the pieces re-arranged, some expanded and others excised, where this became a Bitch Slap-esque gem. Instead, it’s a struggle to pay attention, through an ending that has little to offer except more dead bodies.

Dir: Sean Jackson
Star: Camme Tyla, Mandy Williams, Brenna Daly, Jason Nious

Tiger Girl

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★★★½
“Changing of the stripes”

Maggie (Dragus) just failed the police entry exam in humiliating fashion, and is now taking a course to become a security officer, despite her meek nature. She encounters Tiger (Rumpf), a street punk girl who is everything Maggie is not: brash, confident and perfectly willing to go toe-to-toe with anyone she feels deserves it. The pair strike up an unlikely friendship, with a purloined uniform allowing Tiger to join Maggie in her security work, and in turn engage her increasing fondness for mayhem and violence. Meanwhile, Tiger’s example helps bring Maggie – or ‘Vanilla’, as Tiger calls her in half-mocking endearment – out of her shell. Though Tiger’s drug-dealing friends are less than impressed to find her palling around with a wannabe cop. And as Maggie begins to adopt a more… physical approach to confrontation, it becomes clear that Tiger’s restraint is something Maggie does not possess.

This offers an interesting exercise in societal contrasts, between two young woman, both making their own way in the world, in radically different directions. Maggie would nominally be the approved one, with her plans for a career in law enforcement, while Tiger engages in petty theft and mugging (albeit ‘only those who deserve it’) in order to keep her and her two druggie boyfriends fed, in the attic in which they squat. However, the longer the film goes on, the more you realize it’s Tiger who has the stronger moral compass. Even though she engages in criminal conduct, often for the mere fun of it, she has her own set of rules – with which you may or may not agree – that guide her conduct and keep her out of serious trouble. When Vanilla, revelling in her new found confidence, begins to go beyond those, it sets the stages for a confrontation between the friends.

I must confess, there are times when I thought this was going to end up in a twist where Tiger was a figment of Maggie’s psyche, just like… well, a certain cult movie of the late nineties, shall we say (in case you haven’t seen it!). Nothing quite so psychological shows up, and to be honest, the actual plot is probably the least interesting thing this has to offer. For instance, there’s a subplot where Tiger’s pals end up in debt to “Biggie,” a local drug-dealer, and it’s up to Tiger to get them out of the mess. Despite an interesting twist, when we find out Biggie is actually another woman, the thread just peters out into nothing. Rather more successful is the droll humour, for example, depicting Vanilla’s degenerating relationship with her completely straight-laced security teacher (Feldschau).

It it, however, a film which stands or falls largely on the strength of the central pair of performances, and both actresses are very good in their roles. I just wish we had got the complete version of the full-on fight between the young women and a gallery owner, which the film merely teases.

Dir: Jakob Lass
Star: Ella Rumpf, Maria-Victoria Dragus, Enno Trebs, Orce Feldschau

Hellcat’s Revenge

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★★½
“Mums of Anarchy”

The leader of all-girl biker gang the Hellcats is brutally beaten and murdered, by Repo (Kosobucki). Her replacement, Kat (Neeld), tries to get to the bottom of the killing, and take vengeance on the perpetrators. Complicating matters is Repo’s position in the Vipers, another motorcycle club with whom the Hellcats have previously had generally friendly relations. Part of that is due to Kat’s on-again, off-again relationship with their leader, Snake (Kabasinski); he also has the advantage of being cosy with some of the local cops, who divert confiscated drugs back to the Vipers for resale. But was he aware of – or did Snake perhaps even order? – Repo’s actions?

This is a mix of elements that work well, and those that don’t. The characters and performances aren’t bad. Neeld nails the right “do not mess with me” attitude – even if it seemed as if some of her tattoos were rubbing off on occasion! – looking and acting the part required, as well handling the action required better than I anticipate. And normally, a director putting himself in his own film is a red flag which screams “vanity project”, yet Kabasinski is equally solid in his role. Though disturbingly, he reminded me of Axl Rose some of the time. To varying degrees, this compatibility extends throughout the cast, e.g. the cops look like cops. You’d be surprised how often that is not the case in low-budget films.

Yet other aspects come up short. Most obviously: for a biker movie, it has a remarkable lack of… well, bikes. In fact, while I may have blinked and missed it, I don’t think there is a single shot of a Hellcat on, or indeed anywhere near, a motorcycle, at any point in the film. There’s also an ambivalent approach to female nudity. While there are plenty of that low-budget staple, the strip-club scene, the men involved are strikingly bored by it. Which may be the point: yet if they’re not interested, why should viewers be? And Neeld remains resolutely clothed. If you’re going to tout having a Playboy cover-girl in your B-movie… Well, it’s not unreasonable to expect a bit more than (admittedly, impressive!) cleavage.

There are other problems: the scenes don’t flow into one another, and some seem to have needless padding in them. Here’s an example: in one sequence, Kat is being briefed by her lieutenant Stone at a railway station. Six words of meaningful dialogue are preceded by twenty seconds of Stone walking along the platform to reach her boss. In terms of content, there’s simply isn’t enough here for the length, not least because we know from the start who the perpetrator was, significantly reducing the mystery. Sure, there’s a twist, though since even I could see it coming, it won’t be sitting beside The Sixth Sense in cinematic history. Given the obviously limited resources, this still isn’t bad, and I’d not mind seeing more of Neeld. However, my attention was held only intermittently throughout, rather than consistently.

Dir: Len Kabasinski
Star: Lisa Neeld, Len Kabasinski, Deborah Dutch, Mark Kosobucki

Widows

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★★★½
“Widows piqued.”

This is based on a TV series from Britain, which ran for two seasons in the eighties – I’ve seen it, but for some reason never got round to writing about it. The show would have been right in our wheelhouse, being written by Lynda LaPlante, who also created Prime Suspect. This version transplants the action from London to Chicago, and retains the basis story at its core. When their husbands die in connection with an attempted armed robbery, the wives of the late participants decide to take up the mantle of criminal enterprise, using a dossier of plans left behind. However, the motive is different here. The money stolen, and subsequently destroyed, belonged to crime boss Jamal Manning, who demands Veronica Rawlings (Davis), wife of the robbers’ leader, repay it back. All two million dollars of it.

It ups the ante compared to the British version: there, it was largely a desire by Mrs. Rawlins, simply to follow in her husband’s footsteps. It probably makes Veronica more sympathetic, though she’s not quite as hard-ass as Dolly was, across the pond. Less effective is the desire to add various political and social subtexts to things. For Manning is standing for office in a local election, seeking to disrupt things by going up against Jack Mulligan (Farrell), the scion of a long-standing dynasty. While it turns out both the original robbery and Veronica’s planned crime play into this power struggle, it does divert from the main story. And don’t even get me started on the Rawlings’ son having been killed by the police, an entirely pointless thread. [Except when shooting people, the cops here are notable by their absence] With considerably less time available than in the original, which ran for six, hour-long episodes, this is problematic.

It’s especially so when it comes to depicting the rest of the widows beyond Veronica, who are given scant attention in term of their characters. This is a shame, especially in the case of Alice Gunner (Debicki). The actress cuts a striking figure, not least because she’s 6’2″ – or one inch shorter than Brienne of Tarth. :) Rodriguez is similarly wasted, in a role that doesn’t make much use of her presence. Fortunately, Davis is up to the task, and is just as impressive as she was in Lila & Eve. [Though despite some efforts, Chris still hasn’t got me to watch Davis in How to Get Away With Murder!]

Falling therefore into the category of good, rather than great, it would perhaps have been better to copy the British structure and make this a mini-series – though does anyone still make those any more? Shonda Rimes is, perhaps, the contemporary American version of LaPlante, and the creator of HtGAWM would have seemed an ideal person to do such an adaptation justice. Water under the bridge, however, and if you can overlook the occasionally over-earnest wokeness on display, this is still solid enough, anchored perfectly well by Davis’s fibe performance.

Dir: Steve McQueen
Star: Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Colin Farrell

Code Name: Griffin, by Morgan Hannah MacDonald

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

A painfully clunky mix of spy and crime thrillers, this really needs to decide which it wants to be. Alexandria Kingston – code name Griffin, in case you hadn’t guessed – was an abused child, with the good fortune to be rescued and brought up by Margaret Murphy, the head of Irish organized crime in Boston. Though to avoid Alex being targeted for leverage, she was never acknowledged to be part of the family. As an adult, Alex joined the CIA and became a top field agent, jet-setting over the globe on demand. But when her foster mother suffers a stroke, she returns to Boston to find herself in the middle of a war for control of the turf. The rival Killeen clan, sensing an opportunity, pounce. It’s up to Alex and her brothers to defend the family – and then take the battle to the Killeens.

It’s all utterly implausible. Apparently, the CIA don’t bother doing any kind of background check on their employees, and have no problem recruiting and giving security clearance to people with close ties to organized crime. Alex, meanwhile, wobbles uncertainly between remarkable proficiency and incompetence, as necessary to the plot. She can reel in a member of the Killeen family by simply ordering a whisky, yet this top-notch spy inexplicably can’t form sentences when faced with her former childhood sweetheart. I admit her latter burbling is actually kinda endearing, but c’mon: have some consistency in your lead character. And, of course, the Murphys are an almost saintly crime family. By which I mean, they still do prostitution and human trafficking, they just do them the right way. Yeah. About that…

This still might have made for an interesting detour in an established series, if we were already fully convinced of her talents as a CIA operative, with an unrevealed past. Instead, we get barely a handful of pages at the beginning to establish her credentials, with no real context: she exists in a vacuum. There’s also a fondness for the kind of florid consumerist prose I thought had gone out of style with Bret Easton Ellis culminating in this remarkably superfluous description of Alex’s perfume: “The sensuous bottom notes of Sri Lankan sandalwood and Indonesian patchouli were mixed with high notes of Bulgarian rose and citrus to add a feminine touch that was irresistible to the opposite sex.” I swear, I literally rolled my eyes at “high notes of Bulgarian rose”.

I can’t knock the action too much. There is a steady stream of set-pieces throughout the book, and MacDonald does describe these with a clear eye, and no shortage of savagery. [You wonder what, exactly, Boston law enforcement are doing while all this is going on, since Alex does not mess around, and the pile of bodies left in her wake is considerable. It just needs to be in the service of a much better constructed plot.

Author: Morgan Hannah MacDonald
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 2 in the Griffin series.

Sólo quiero caminar

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★★
“Oceano’s quatro”

We watched this Spanish film, by coincidence, on the same night as Ocean’s 8, and the Hispanic entry came off as a poor imitation, even though it was made a decade earlier. A four-woman gang’s attempt to steal from Russian mobsters in Spain falls short, though only a single member of the crew is arrested. One of those who escape, Ana, marries Mexican drug-lord Felix (Yazpik), only to discover over the ensuing months, he’s an utterly abusive bastard. After she is pushed out of a car at high-speed, ending up in hospital, the other three, including her sister Aurora (Gil), the one who was caught, decided to take revenge on Felix. The plan is to start by stealing first his data then move on to his money, the loss of which will cause his new Korean partners to kill him. However, his right-hand man, Gabriel (Luna), begins to suspect the women – yet his qualms about Felix’s increasingly brutal ways help lead to increasingly split loyalties.

This isn’t as good as the above synopsis – or the German DVD sleeve on the right! – might make it sound. Instead, it’s a two hour-plus mess, with far too many scenes serving purposes that are either poorly explained or entirely non-existent. Aurora’s time in prison, for example, is virtually irrelevant, except for another scene showing what bastards men are [she is eventually released thanks to the provision of sexual favours to a corrupt judge; one of the themes here seems to be that men are degenerate sleazeballs]. And when the heist goes into motion, there’s absolutely no sense of structure, which would allow the audience to follow along. Why is that tunnel being dug? Does anyone know what’s going on? And then there are the “Koreans”, who are very clearly speaking Chinese. Not sure if this was casual racism, or just extremely sloppy film-making.

Despite the above critical evisceration, it’s not entirely without merit. There’s something of a Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorsese feel to this, not least in the conspicuous use of music to punctuate proceedings. That includes both usual Hispanic entries like Los Lobos, to entirely unexpected content, such as Patti Smith’s cover of the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter. Those inspirations are also reflected in Yanes’s unstinting eye for violence. The scene where Felix takes a hammer to the hands of a victim is nasty – yet necessary, bringing home beyond any shadow of doubt how evil he is. When things are in motion, Yanes seems to have a decent handle on how to shoot and edit things, and I liked most of the performances here as well, from a fairly well-known cast. It’s just a shame the script seems to consist of pages torn from a better movie, thrown up into the air and placed in random order. The struggle simply to follow what was happening, entirely sucked the life out of my initial enthusiasm for this.

Dir: Agustín Díaz Yanes
Star: Victoria Abril, Ariadna Gil, José María Yazpik, Diego Luna
a.k.a. Just Walking or Walking Vengeance

La querida del Centauro

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★★★
“This land is Yolanda…”

A sold enough entry, this benefits from a well-written script, but gets marks taken off for having a heroine who is rather too passive. Yolanda Acosta (Paleta) is sent to a higher security facility when she is recaptured, following an escape from her previous prison. It’s a mixed-gender facility (common in Mexico), and she comes to the attention of Benedictino Suárez (Zurita), a.k.a. “Centaur”, a  local crime boss who is also incarcerated. He falls hard for Yolanda – the title translates as “Centaur’s Woman” – and when his escape plan comes to fruition, offers to bring her along with him, to the ranch on which he’s hiding out. And that’s where the problems really start for Yolanda.

Firstly, her teenage daughter, Cristina, is on the outside, being taken care of by Yolanda’s sleazy step-mom., who is trying to sell off Cristina’s virginity. Second, is the ensuing power struggle between Centaur and a rival; using Cristina as leverage, Yolanda is coerced into going undercover at a local gym where they operate. Third? Local cop Gerardo Duarte (Brown) who wants to use Yolanda to arrest Centaur. Initially, he offers immunity to her, but eventually their relationship becomes more… personal. Finally, and by no means least: did I forget to mention Centaur is married? And his wife, Julia (de la Mora) does not take kindly to rivals; on her orders, one of Yolanda’s cellmates has an eye gouged out.

You have to feel for the heroine, whose chief concern is simply wanting the best for her daughter. But every time Yolanda tries to do the right thing, circumstances conspire to foil her, and she inevitably ends up mired in deeper trouble. It reaches almost Shakespearean level of tragedy, with death following in her wake, from prison to the ranch. Even Duarte ends up believed by most to be dead, though this is mostly for the benefit of his health. since there’s a mole inside the police department who is funneling information to the cartel. He’s left to carry on his investigation as a “ghost”, with the help of allies on the force, which complicates his efforts to help Yolanda and Cristina extricate themselves.

The performances are solid enough, and the characters here almost all occupy a morally grey middle-area. You may not endorse their actions, yet you can see why they decided there was a need for them. I was particularly impressed by de la Mora, whose portrayal of Julia puts her over as both smart and brutal. She knows her position as Centaur’s “legitimate” woman leads to both power and risk, and wields the former to mitigate the latter. She also keeps incriminating evidence about Centaur elsewhere, with a “dead woman’s switch” of regular text messages, and instructions to release it in the event the messages stop. That’s genius.

I’d like to have seen Yolanda be rather more active. Admittedly, her options are limited, especially once her daughter comes under the control of Centaur as well. However, she is set up in the prison as a character with no qualms about getting tough when necessary. Once she’s back on the outside, that physicality seems almost to evaporate for 30-odd episodes. When she goes undercover in the gym, she ends up having to face Lola, a relation of Centaur’s rival who has taken a dislike to Yolanda, in an unsanctioned match. Otherwise, she seems curiously reluctant to get her hands dirty, even in defense of Cristina, and with no shortage of firearms around, of which she could take advantage.

The rest of the show, however, is quite savage for a TV series; one death in particular is by head-shot of impressive nature, more befitting The Walking Dead. It ticks along quite nicely, though it’s never less than obvious whereabout we’re going to end up, more or less from the point Yolanda arrives on the ranch. We eventually get there, and the table is set for a second season. Not sure the sequel will exactly become a priority, yet I’ll leave this show on my Netflix watch-list for potential viewing.

Created by : Lina Uribe and Darío Vanegas
Star: Ludwika Paleta, Humberto Zurita, Michel Brown, Alexandra de la Mora

Women of Mafia

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★★★½
“Poles apart.”

This is new territory for me, being the first Polish film to qualify here. Turns out, director Vega has, largely single-handedly, driven a bit of a new wave of cinema from that country. Rather than the lugubrious dramas of Krzysztof Kieślowski, Vega is more like Guy Ritchie, making violent gangster flicks. In this case, the script came with direct input from the gangsters themselves, one of whom contacted Vega after being annoyed by their portrayal in a previous movie. Probably wisely, he opted to take their criticisms on board here…

It’s very much an ensemble piece, covering the stories of five different women. Though perhaps the film’s biggest issue is they’re not quite different enough, and for some time, I was sure that two were the same person! It starts with police officer Bela (Bołądź), being recruited to go undercover and infiltrate the Mokotowska organized crime gang, whose boss Padrino (Bogusław Linda) rules Warsaw with an iron fist. She becomes the lover of one of his top henchmen, known as Cieniu (Fabijański). When he eventually is arrested, his wife Anya (Warnke) and their nanny, Daria (Dygant), take on the mantle, and start working for Padrino instead.

It was Bela and Daria I conflated, initially thinking that Cieniu [which is Polish for “shadow” – never say we’re not educational here!] had got Bela a job in his house, after falling for her. I was eventually disavowed of that, not least because Daria has a real talent for the criminal world, in particular the brutality necessary to survive. This becomes particular apparent after the film’s most harrowing scene, where she takes her revenge on another gang who tried to muscle in on her drug-running business. By the time she’s done, all that’s left of them is their teeth. To be honest, Vega might have been better concentrating on her character, as Daria’s transition from mild-mannered nanny to bad-ass is awesome.

The rest of the stories and character arcs are more of a mixed bag. Bela largely vanishes from the film in the middle, which concentrated on Ania and Daria – the former is a real trophy wife, dumb as they come, and interested only in being able to spend money. There’s also Padrino’s daughter, known as “Futro” (Julia Wieniawa-Narkiewicz), who is the apple of her daddy’s eye – made apparent in a great scene where he praises her singing talent… and we then hear what she sounds like. That affection can be used against him, and when Futro’s drug use becomes a problem, Bela poses as a therapist to get into her father’s house that way. The fifth woman… I literally have no recollection of: Siekiera, played by Aleksandra Poplawska. Sorry. 

Even at 138 minutes long, the film is perhaps spread too thin: a mini series might have given the material more room to breathe. However, this is still an impressive, entertaining watch, and the time flies by. It’s slickly produced, and populated by figures who bear the shape of real-life – albeit perhaps in an exaggerated form. Vega has stated his intention is to make a trilogy, and the end certainly points that way. I’m looking forward to the next installment.

Dir:Patryk Vega
Star: Olga Bołądź, Sebastian Fabijański, Katarzyna Warnke, Agnieszka Dygant
a.k.a. Kobiety Mafii

Miss Bala (2011)

  By

★★★
“Beauty (queen) and the beasts.”

Pageants and drug cartels may not seem like topics that combine, but in South and Central America, they’re perhaps closer than you’d think. El Chapo’s third wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, was a Mexican beauty queen. In 2013, the previous year’s winner of the “Sinaloa Woman” pageant, Maria Susana Flores, was killed in a clash with police. According to USA Today, she “died like a mobster’s moll, carrying an AK-47 assault rifle into a spray of gunfire from Mexican soldiers. Hit below the neck, she dropped into a dirt field and bled to death, her carotid artery severed.” And then there’s the (loose) inspiration for this story: Miss Mexico International 2009, Laura Zuniga, was stripped of the title after being detained on suspicion of drug and weapons violations, in circumstances best described as murky.

The heroine here, Laura Guerrero (Sigman), is portrayed as mostly innocent, or at least a victim of unfortunate circumstance rather than deliberate intent. An aspiring candidate for Miss Baja California (the film’s title puns off this, translating as “Miss Bullet”), her nightclub trip with a friend turns into a more of a nightmare, as it’s the scene of an assault by La Estrella cartel on the DEA officers there. Trying to find out if her friend survived gets her kidnapped by La Estrella’s leader, Lino (Hernández), who decides that Laura can be useful. With her father (Zaragoza) and kid brother held hostage, Laura has little option except to agree. Her tasks will include couriering money across the border, helping uncover a DEA infiltrator within the gang, and acting as a honey trap to ensnare General Duarte, a leading light in the government’s forces.

It certainly shines a harsh light on the whole “narco culture” south of the border, coming over as an uncomfortable mix of telenovela and action film. Which may be the point. The director brings a very static, almost disinterested style to proceedings. The camera sometimes sits fixed, either in front of or behind the characters as events unfold – it feels almost like a video-game occasionally. At other momets, its eye pans slowly across unfolding events, for example gliding down a hallway during a home invasion, or across a beach as an informant is executed. This offers a clinical contrast to the passionate family loyalty driving Laura: her father and brother come first, last and always. Unfortunately, Lino knows that, and it provides an easy key with which she can be manipulated.

Despite the unflattering portrayal, this managed to become Mexico’s official Academy Award candidate, though didn’t make the list of nominees. I’d prefer the heroine to have been more pro-active, rather than the reactive character she is for much of this, though again, I sense this is an entirely deliberate choice, reflecting the lack of control most of the Mexican people have over their fate in this lethal war. Perhaps this is something which will be addressed in the pending Hollywood remake, directed by Catherine Hardwicke – best known for the first Twilight film, though let’s try and not hold that against her – with Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez in the lead. But the previous track record of such remakes, suggests disappointment is probably more likely.

Dir: Gerardo Naranjo
Star: Stephanie Sigman, Noé Hernández, José Yenque, Javier Zaragoza