Tag: crime

Paradox Effect

  By

★★½
“Not much effect on me.”

I’m always down for an Olga Kurylenko film. She’s been in some good entries on the site previously, including Sentinelle and High Heat. Her track record gets her the benefit of the doubt, for an entry like this, which might be a bit marginal if it starred another actress. Though American, it takes place in Bari, Italy where recovering junkie Karina (Kurylenko) is putting her life back together, and looking forward to the arrival of her young daughter, Lucy (Astons).  However, on the way home from a late-night shift at the bakery where she works, she stumbles into a murder commited by mob courier Covek (Trevena), which becomes a car-chase, ending in a fiery crash.

The problem is, this  burned up the drugs Covek was supposed to be delivering to Silvio (Keitel). He “recruits” – quotes used advisedly – Karina to acquire a replacement stash, a process which drags them both through the Italian underworld over the course of the night. Matters are not helped by a couple of factors. Silvio has Covek’s son as a hostage, so noncompliance is not an option. Oh, and did I mention that Covek is actually an Interpol agent, who will go to any lengths to make sure Silvio faces justice? On the other side, Karina will go to any lengths to make sure her own daughter is not harmed. But the trail of destruction being left in the wake of her and Covek’s hunt for heroin is not exactly subtle. 

I wanted to like this more than I ended up doing. It feels as if Karina needs to be more central than she is. She ends up spending too much time either doing Covek’s bidding, or following him around, and that’s not what I wanted to see. Kurylenko > Trevena, except the film doesn’t seem to realize it.  Keitel, another actor I like, is also underused. To the point where, up until the very end, I half-wondered if he filmed all his scenes somewhere else, and was then spliced into the movie during the editing stage. That turns out not to be the case. But the mere fact it seems possible is another illustration of the wobbly execution. 

Even basic stuff like the film’s title, which is both strikingly generic and never explained, is maddening. Opening with a quote from Nietzche sets intellectual aspirations the rest of the movie isn’t able to sustain. I will say, it is technically decent: I appreciated little things, like them deciding to blow up a genuine car, rather than faking it with CGI. When given the chance, Kurylenko does well in the action, though quite why Karina has these skills is never explained. It would have been improved by being the film depicted in the poster (I must have missed Kurylenko’s pleather suit), simply having Karina trying to get the replacement drugs herself. In that scenario, Covek becomes surplus to the film’s requirements. A win-win, I’d say. 

Dir: Scott Weintrob
Star: Olga Kurylenko, Oliver Trevena, Harvey Keitel, Alice Astons

Eenie Meanie

  By

★★★½
“Eeenie Meanie – minor no.”

I don’t know which is more irritating: a film that isn’t very good, or a film which teeters on the edge of greatness, then botches it. This falls into the latter camp. Writer/director Simmons does a lot right, especially considering it’s his feature debut. But just when my finger was hovering over the seal of approval, the film makes a near-disastrous wrong turn. This happens to a degree I found myself annoyed and impressed in equal measures. The first thing it gets right is casting Weaving, who has quickly become one of my favourite action actresses. Here, she plays Edie, who been driving getaway for her criminal dad since her early teens. Now though, she’s trying to go straight: she has a bank job and is attending college.

Naturally, life isn’t that forgiving. A one-night return to her useless, junkie, intermittent boyfriend John (Glusman) left her pregnant. When she goes to tell him, he’s neck deep in trouble from his latest scheme, which has left him in debt to local boss Nico (Garcia). No problem. John can pay it off by robbing $3 million from a local casino, which will be giving out the money as the prize in a poker tournament, loaded in the trunk of a muscle car. He just needs someone to steal the vehicle and be a getaway driver. Much against her better judgment, Edie finds herself agreeing to help, to save John’s life. But again, fate has no interest in making it easy for her. Various figures from Edie’s past return to run interference, both emotionally and more directly.

Simmons has a crisp ear for dialogue, and there’s a blistering pace from the beginning. We learn quickly about the skeleton of Edie’s dysfunctional upbringing, then how she’s doing her best to escape it. However: you can take the girl from the dysfunction, but you can’t take the dysfunction from the girl. That’s clear when her bank is robbed, and she critiques the criminals’ work: “They made, like, five mistakes before they even hit the drawers.” In motion, this is a beautiful thing to behold, with some solid, crunchy car-chases and action which feels grounded. The problems are the emotional and dramatic elements, which ring horribly hollow. I get John saved her from being pimped out by her foster father. But her loyalty to him doesn’t sit with her otherwise hard-nosed pragmatism.

Worse still is her inexplicable desire to reconcile with her now wheelchair-bound father (Steve Zahn), in a scene which appears to have been spliced in from a Hallmark film. Things get mercifully back on track for the heist and its aftermath, which are thrillingly staged. Just when I was creeping towards the seal of approval again, it can’t stick the landing, with a finale too tidy for its own good. It’s like Simmons fell too much in love with his lead character – something I certainly understand – and pulled a happy ending out of thin air for Edie. Given some of her acts, I would be hard-pushed to say she deserved it, morally. Yet it is another fine entry in Weaving’s filmography, and despite the missteps, far from a bad start for Simmons either.

Dir: Shawn Simmons
Star: Samara Weaving, Karl Glusman, Andy Garcia, Jermaine Fowler

Extraction, USA

  By

★★
“Wears its bleeding-heart on its sleeve.”

Marni (Johnson) is stuck in the titular town, where oil fracking is causing problems from earthquakes to poisoning the local water supply. She’s barely scraping by as a single mom to teenage son Jason (Strange), working as a bartender for sleazy owner Daryl (McMahan), who has a bad case of wandering hands, and hustling customers at pool. Her life is upended when Steph (Carpenter) comes into the bar, kicks Marni’s ass on the pool table, and the two end up making out in the back alley. When Steph becomes aware of Darryl’s safe full of cash, she suggests they liberate it, to finance a new life for them and Jason, far away from Extraction.

Naturally, things do not go quite as planned. The first attempt ends in failure, though  do discover the source of Darryl’s unreported income. [There’s a huge plot-hole here, in that they’re seen in Darryl’s office, and end up having to knock the witness out. They would surely have been identified, yet the matter is never mentioned] Realizing her actions could put Jason at risk, Marni regrets her decision and breaks up temporarily with Steph. They reconnect and decide to make a second attempt, this one a higher-risk plan involving kidnapping Darryl and forcing him to open the safe at gunpoint. [Though weirdly, they buy Airsoft guns mail-order for this. Was Walmart closed?] However, getting the cash might not be the end of the matter.

The main issue is, it feels like the makers are more interested in checking off boxes as a good diversity and liberal ally. Fossil fuels, male chauvinism and big business are bad. LGBTQ, people of colour and feminist activism are good. The plot? Secondary, with the robbery not even being suggested until virtually the half-way point in the film. The problem is, it doesn’t quite have the impact intended on me. For example, Marni complaining about her student loans, resulting from her taking a useless degree, is not the sympathetic flex Yonts believes. Choices have consequences, sweetheart. Did she take on this voluntary debt before or after having Jason? Neither inspire pity here.

I found all these elements and questions a distraction from what should be the meat and potatoes of the plot – or given the film’s sensibilities, the tofu and garden salad of the plot. There’s a whole thread where the drugs are being sold to the oil company to make their employees work harder and… I can’t even. Crop the whole thing down to a tightly-focused heist, and we’d all be much better off. The performances are fine, certainly good enough for that,  though I’m trying to work out the ages here too, since Marni seems way too young to have a son of that age. I initially thought she and Jason were brother and sister.  The problems here are very much on the scripting side, with an ending which is as unsatisfying as the rest of it.

Dir: Mike Yonts
Star: Leanne Johnson, Marlee Carpenter, Chase Strange, Derek McMahan

Choppa City Queens

  By

★½
“Black to very basics.”

We return to the prolific well of Jeff Profitt, last seen here with Keisha Takes the Block. And by prolific, I mean that the IMDb lists now fewer than thirteen upcoming projects he is slated to direct. Fortunately for my backlog, most of these do not appear to be candidates for the site: I do confess some curiosity as to what Trap House Pizza is about. Anyway, both Choppa and Keisha are among the six features he directed in 2023, a number he exceeded last year. Quality is clearly subsidiary to quantity, and this has much the same problems as the last film we covered here, In particular, it’s mostly talk and not enough action.

You have three friends: Leah (Robinson), Jada (Alysha) and Shanice (Collins), all of whom are out of work and seeking a way to make money. Leah literally stumbles across a cache of weapons belonging to gun dealer Ricky (Profitt), and convinces him to let her sell his merch in the ‘hood. For the “Choppas” of the title are Kalashnikov AK-47’s, the weapon of choice for the discerning gang-banger. After the initial sale goes well, Leah gets a bigger order, and has to ask for the guns on credit. Which is a problem, first when Leah’s buyer delays paying for the weapons, and then Shanice’s boyfriend Ray discovers what she’s doing, and decides he wants in on the action. That eventually leads to the only bit of AK action this provides.

The skeleton of a decent movie is present here. It’s possible to read the above synopsis and see how it could be done in an exciting manner. For instance, tensions escalate among the group as the lure of the profits from their new, illegal, but hopefully temporary business, drags them over to the dark side, when the trio only wanted to make a living. It’s a classic tale of the slippery slope into criminality, with the net of the authorities closing inexorably around the participants. Unfortunately, the resources here do not allow for anything like that. It’s telling that the women are buying just three (3) guns at a time, and there are absolutely no cops to be found here at all. 

Meanwhile, the script is strictly of the Point A to Point B variety, without real energy. The trio of lead actresses are okay: there are a few scenes where you can believe they genuinely are friends. The main problem on the performance side is Profitt himself, who is a contender for the world’s least convincing gun-runner. Used cars? Perhaps. Cellphones? Certainly. But now illegal firearms. He’s also very white, and I speak as someone whose skin colour is legally classified as “transparent.” If they’d made him an Aryan Nation type… that would have been a wrinkle. That, however, would be too much like hard work for a film which seems to be uninterested in anything except the path of least resistance to an underwhelming ending.

Dir: Jeff Profitt
Star: Tuckeya Robinson, Jasmine Alysha, Chanel Collins, Jeff Profitt

Robbin

  By

★½
“Robbed of two hours of my life.”

I’ve seen worse films, to be quite clear. Technically, this is perfectly acceptable, with an apparently reasonable budget, put to decent use. But I don’t think I’ve seen one which has been more annoying. It manages to hit that sweep spot of being both incredibly stupid, while also congratulating itself for being very smart in its attempts at social commentary. But the annoyance extends beyond that, to purely instinctive reactions like really bad hairstyles sported by some players. I can’t explain these responses, and am not interested in analyzing or defending them. But they certainly played their part in my steadily increasing irritation at the plot, characters and execution, over an excessively long running-time of one hundred and sixteen minutes.

The heroine is Robbin (Serayah) – and, yes, there are two b’s there. She is a former bank employee, who was falsely accused of stealing two million dollars. With the evidence stacked against her, she took a plea agreement rather than risk a long jail sentence. When she gets out, she decides the best way to respond is… by actually stealing from the bank. Yeah. Let that morality and wisdom sink in. She assembles her old crew from the South Central ‘hood where she grew up, and they begin planning their heist. But one theft is deemed insufficient payback, and another, even bigger robbery is planned. This is despite the increasing attentions of the police, including a detective (Lee), who has known Robbin and her friends since they were kids.

Far and away the worst thing here is the script, also by Stokes. It demonstrates a repeated, startling level of ignorance about how banks work, how computers work [authority check: I spent over a decade in IT with HSBC], and how the police work. For example, in the world of this movie, a detective under announced and active investigation by Internal Affairs for corruption, is not only allowed to keep working on the case concerned, she then gets to lead a raid on the suspects’ base of operations. #NotHowCopsOperate Hell, you could possibly also throw how criminals work onto this heaping pile of no-knowledge, since at one point a robber clearly asks a bank cashier for “No unmarked bills.” Um… shouldn’t that be “No marked bills”? 

Then there’s the whole clunky parallels to Robin Hood, beginning with the heroine’s first name. All her team – fresh off robbing a convenience store, I note – suddenly acquire altruistic reasons for their move into big-ticket crime. Add on a nasty racial strand, where just about everyone black is good, and everyone white is malicious and evil, to an almost tiresome degree, and you will perhaps begin to see from where my irritation stems. “Tubi Originals” are well-known for setting a low bar, to put it kindly. This falls short of reaching that bar.  If it weren’t for the fact that Tubi is a free service, I would seriously be contemplating cancelling my subscription.

Dir: Chris Stokes
Star: Serayah, Erica Pinkett, Jadah Blue, Robinne Lee

Outlaw

  By

★★★
“A Rocinha Tale”

Interestingly, this is based on a somewhat true story, written by Raquel Santos de Oliveira. She comes from Rocinha, one of the most notorious slums in Rio, where she grew up on the streets. “By 11, I was already carrying a .38 revolver,” she says. In the mid-eighties, she was the girlfriend of Ednaldo de Souza, the man in charge of crime in Rocinha, and took over after he was killed in a gun-battle with police. She exited the gang a few years later, and was able to straighten our her life, quit using cocaine, and wrote a book, Number One, at the suggestion of her therapist. While fictional, it’s clear it draws a great deal from Rsquel’s own experiences.

It begins with the childhood of Rebeca (Bomani), which includes being sold off into prostitution at an early age. She’s able to dodge that, by instead working for local boss Amoroso (Cortaz), until the boss gets assassinated on the order of rival Del Rey (Otto), who thene takes over. Rebeca is able to switch sides, and falls in love for another member of the gang, Pará (Amorim). Naturally, any happiness they find together is short-lived and when she loses him as well, Rebecia decides to take revenge, even though her target is operating in cahoots with corrupt members of the police force. The story unfolds in flashback, Rebeca making a tape as her building is under attack, believing her story is all that will be left of her.

This makes an interesting contrast to non-GWG film, Elite Squad, which takes place in a similar setting, only told from the point of view of an honest police officer. [It’s highly recommended, by the way] Outlaw doesn’t run more more then eighty minutes, and so there’s isn’t a lot of slack. Indeed, I suspect it might have been better told over a longer period, since there are points where it feels like it is galloping through its story, mixing historical footage with modern content, aged to look like it’s the eighties. It is quite effective on a high level, but in the second half especially, I didn’t feel as if my attention was being solidly held, due to a narrative which seemed to lack flow.

It does seem like Wainer was heavily inspired by the gangster works of Martin Scorsese, such as A Bronx Tale. Okay, that one was directed by Robert De Niro, but he was clearly Scorsese influenced as well. It’s very down-to-earth, rather than glamourous, and doesn’t stint on the violence which goes along with the criminal territory. The strong sense of place you get might be the best element of the film, since Bomani only occasionally succeeds in inhabiting the skin of her character. If this had been the pilot for a TV series, such as one of my telenovelas like Dueños del paraíso, I would likely be interested in watching it. As a complete story, it’s fine but leaves little impact.

Dir: João Wainer
Star: Maria Bomani, Jean Amorim, Milhem Cortaz, Otto
a.k.a. Bandida

The Casino Job

  By

★★★
“Stripper’s 11.”

Make no mistake, this is a cheap and tawdry excuse to show nekkid women, which may well leave you with a more cynical view of human nature. But if you’re going to watch a cheap and tawdry excuse to show nekkid women… You could probably do a lot worse. The main area in which this punches above its weight is in the script, which has had some thought put into it. The viewer may actually leave the film knowing more about Nevada gaming regulations than they did going in: nekkid women and genuinely informative. I did not see that coming. It also has a final twist which will make you rethink much of what has happened.

It takes place in Las Vegas (though the less glitzy resort of Laughlin stands in for Sin City at certain points). Sleazy strip-club and casino owner Barry (Mauro) needs four of his ladies to make a good impression on his business partners, but the evening ends with one woman, Jennifer (Joiner), alleging he raped her. Due to lack of physical evidence, the cops won’t take action, but Jennifer’s friends, led by Amber (Martinez), swear to take revenge, and cook up a scheme that will relieve Barry’s casino of a good chunk of cash. The aim is more than simple larceny, but also to drop him in hot water with the gaming authorities, who require casinos have enough on hand to cover winning payouts.

Doing so requires them to bring on board a friendly blackjack dealer, Scribe (Franke), and also use their womanly wiles to ensure everything goes to plan. That’s what I meant about human nature, because every man here can be easily manipulated to do anything, with the promise of a little action. This is absolutely required by the plot, in order for the heist to work. And every woman is perfectly willing to do the manipulating. By the end, you could argue the case that nobody here, even Jennifer, should be classified as a nice person. And I write as someone who, in my youth, was not unfamiliar with strip-clubs, and so is under no illusions about the illusion, if you see what I mean.

Still, if none of the characters were likeable, the mechanics of the heist managed to keep me interested, along with the way Barry is kept out of touch and unable to deliver the needed funds. He then ends up trying to take revenge on the girl-gang, and it’s that what proves his ultimate downfall. There’s a lovely montage at the end, showing everybody getting laid… ending with Barry in jail, also getting laid. I genuinely LOL’d at that. The women are undeniably easy on the eye, particularly Irina Voronina as the club’s top earner, Paradise. Really, its clear the makers have kept their ambitions here restrained and, I suspect, on those terms, it should be considered a success. Clearly nonsense, yet was I not entertained? Yes: yes, I was.

Dir: Christopher Robin Hood
Star: Amylia Joiner, Dean Mauro, Ilsa Martinez, Jay Anthony Franke

Cadejo Blanco

  By

★★★½
“…the size of the fight in the dog.”

Cross another country off the map: Guatemala, in this case. I should probably start by explaining the title. The “cadejo” is a dog-like spirit from local folklore, which comes in two varieties. The black (negro) one is malicious, appearing to and trying to kill travellers, while the white (blanco) is benevolent. According to Wikipedia, it “protects people, including drunks, vagabonds, and people with grudges from all evil. Emphasis added, because now and again in this, there appears to be one watching over the grudgeful heroine here, Sarita (K. Martínez). She is on the hunt for her sister, Bea (P. Martínez – maybe they’re real sisters?), who vanishes one night, after the siblings have an argument at a local nightclub.

Sarita had just discovered Bea had been seeing a gang-banger, Andrés (Rodriguez), who worked on the weekend there as a barman. She goes to his home town where he operates, and infiltrates the gang, seeking to find out what happened to Bea. Gaining their trust is not easy: she has to act as bait, luring a rival of the group’s boss into a hotel for an assassination attempt. She then discovers Bea may have been abducted by another gang operating in the area, and volunteers for a more active role in the next murder. What price is she willing to pay, in order to discover the truth about Bea’s fate, and make those responsible pay for their involvement?

The common theme here is everyone underestimating Sarita, and how far she will go to achieve her aims. The most obvious culprit is the first target, who sees in her only a fresh whore to bed. It’s a superbly tense sequence, beginning with an extended single shot of her arriving at and exploring the club where the target is located. It then becomes increasingly fraught as he first wants to take her home rather than the designated hotel – and it turns out he has a room there already. You’ll find yourself holding your breath as Sarita has to improvise: what she may lack in experience, she makes up for in quick thinking. And, by the end, in her utter ruthlessness, again underestimated by her victim.

At 126 minutes, it could perhaps use some tightening. However, it’s rarely boring, simply as a depiction of existence at the bottom of society, where life is disposable. As Andrés’s friend Damian (López) says to Sarita, if any of them die, “Nobody will care. We don’t matter to anyone. They’ll all be very happy we’re dead.” Lerner used a lot of non-professional actors, some of whom had first-hand experience of gang life, and the resulting authenticity powers the film through the choppier waters it sometimes encounters. I would recommend not investing too much in Bea’s fate, since the specifics are never detailed. Yet it isn’t the point. This is Sarita’s story, and by the end, she’s far from the brave innocent we met at the beginning.

Dir: Justin Lerner
Star: Karen Martínez, Rudy Rodriguez, Pamela Martínez, Brandon López

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