Tag: crime

Gang of Women (Essabet el Nissae)

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★½
“Turkish not-such-a-delight”

gangofwomen2Having enjoyed (albeit in a loose definition of the term, admittedly) Karate Girl, I figured I’d dip my toe again in to the world of the middle Eastern action heroine, with this promising-looking poster, which came out the year before. It may be Turkish. It may be Lebanese. It doesn’t matter much. Because it’s largely disappointing as a GWG film, though you probably haven’t seen anything like this before. Unless, that is, your normal viewing combines slapstick comedy, manic overacting and musical numbers that appear to have strayed in from a Quaalude-overdosed Bollywood film. The main point of interest is probably that there was a time when Beirut was less a war zone than the Monte Carlo of the Eastern Mediterranean.

The story, such as it is, focuses on Murad (Arkin, who could be played by Bruce Campbell if anyone ever does a Hollywood remake), a journalist under pressure from his editor to get some more exciting stories. Along with his fraidy-cat photographer, Fouad (Yasin), he visits a supposedly haunted house and they get a picture of an apparent spectral apparition. However, it turns out the house is actually the lair of an all-woman group of counterfeiters, whose cover is as nightclub entertainers, and the photo is now potentially incriminating evidence against them. Their boss sends a stream of minionettes to retrieve the picture and ensure they don’t get exposed, but Murad is also falling for Seham (Sabah), one of the singers for the group. Is she what she seems? And what of the mysterious, unseen “lady” who is in charge of the crime gang? Before all is revealed, there will be laughter, PG-13 rated stripteases, a cat-fight, pauses for the heroine to burst into song, and manly fisticuffs.

gangofwomenI will confess that I enjoyed this a little more than the 1.5 star rating above, which is based more on expectations and genre interest. I was looking for some sleek Eurospy nonsense, not comedy which would be rejected by the Carry on crew as unnecessarily broad. In the right mindset – which would have to be fairly undemanding – this could be entertaining nonsense, and as noted, is so “not Hollywood,” it should certainly have novelty value. I’ll admit, I did laugh when Fouad and Murad dressed up as women, to enter a health club for a rendezvous with one of the gang, simply because it’s so ludicrous: Arkin is the least-convincing lady you’ll ever see.

But it’s incredibly dated and localized, with aspects that would shame a local amateur dramatic society. Witness, for example, the cameo by Farid Shawki, an icon of Arabic cinema. He’s introduced by someone saying, “It’s OK, it’s Mr. Farid Shawki,” which is about as clunky as imaginable, and also patronizes the audience by thinking you have to tell them [it’d be like having Clint Eastwood in a Hollywood film, and introducing him with, “It’s OK, it’s Mr. Clint Eastwood”]  The musical numbers largely consist of Sabah lip-syncing while standing as still as a deer caught in headlights, which is about as enthralling as it sounds, and even for its time, what passes for the action sequences appear to have been made up on the spot, with whatever happened on the first take, making the final cut. Nice scenery (of the geographical as well as human kinds) can only take you so far.

Dir: Farouk Agrama
Star:  Cuneyt Arkin, Sabah, Ismail Yasin, Mayada

Foxy Brown

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★★★★
“…and I’ve got a black belt in bar-stools!”

foxyBrown (Grier) has a drug-dealing brother Link (Fargas), who works for a mob run by Steve Elias (Brown) and Katherine Wall (Loder). He tells them where to find Foxy’s boyfriend, a former undercover cop, a betrayal which leads to the latter’s death. Understandably peeved, Foxy works her way in to the gang responsible through their modelling agency, a prostitution front used to keep happy the judges and politicians who protect them. But when her presence is discovered, she’s shot up with heroin and sent off to the ranch where they package the smack. Does that stop her? Hell, no.

Following on from the success of Coffy, director Hill teamed up again with Grier – this was originally intended to be a sequel, under the original title Burn, Coffee, Burn! but AIP decided to make a new character instead, albeit with more or less the same script. There’s no shortage of grindhouse material, with neither the nudity nor the violence being soft-pedalled: interestingly, given this, the heroine doesn’t actually kill either villain, though you could certainly argue Elias, in particular, suffers a fate worse than death. The plot and characters have stood the test of time well, even the scummy Link, who has a pretty compelling explanation for his life of crime: “I’m a black man, and I don’t know how to sing, and I don’t know how to dance, and I don’t know how to preach to no congregation. I’m too small to be a football hero, and too ugly to be elected mayor.”

It’s an improvement on Coffy in a number of ways, with Grier more self-assured, and Hill apparently having a better handle on things as well. While it has been criticized for race-baiting – there are literally no good Caucasians – I’m as white as they come and it feels more like an attack on established power. The supporting cast also deserve credit, with Brown and Loder appropriately sleazy, Sid Haig being Sid Haig, and Juanita Brown deserving mention as another prostitute. Lots of moments here to treasure, including a spectacular death by propeller, Foxy hiding a gun in her afro (!), and a lesbian barroom brawl that’s glorious, which leads to the line at the top of the review. Among the dykes there, are Stephanie and Jeannie, stuntwomen from the famous Epper clan. with the latter a mentor to Zoë Bell.

But this is Grier’s show, and she carries it magnificently, even if at times it feels more like she is modelling the Foxy Brown fall collection, rather than engaging on a roaring rampage of revenge. [Some things about the seventies are likely best left there: the fashions would be one of them!] That’s a minor complaint, as what we have here is an iconic heroine, who has rarely been matched in the 40 years since, for her combination of heart and brain, courage and empathy, all wrapped up in one seriously kick-ass package.

Dir: Jack Hill
Star: Pam Grier, Peter Brown, Antonio Fargas, Kathryn Loder

Alley Cat

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★★
“Never quite sinking to tedium, yet never rising to reach interesting.”

alleycatAnother review compared this to Savage Streets and Vigilante, from the same era, and I can certainly see the similarities. Black belt Billie Clark (Mani) finds herself hamstrung by the ineffectual legal system, after she stops a rape – and, indeed, ends up going to jail, which is more than can be said for the attackers. With the help of a sympathetic cop (Torti), who’s also her boyfriend, she works her way up the chain to the sleazeball at the top, Krug (Wayne), presumably named after the villain of another grindhouse classic, The Last House on the Left. But it’s a climb not without its personal cost.

It seemed an almost cursed work, going through a lengthy hiatus mid-shoot, with one director for each chunk, and a third who then fiddled with the movie post-production. The results are about as uneven as you’d expect, but are hampered mostly by the characters involved being bland and forgettable. For someone who has gone through quite a lot, Billie is pretty damn phlegmatic about it all, rarely even bothering to get angry, though does believe cleanliness is next to vengefulness, going by her multiple shower scenes. Mind you, this lack of colour is line with Krug, who is not particularly scary himself, and is hardly a criminal mastermind in charge of an evil empire, his gang consisting of about three guys, with the combined IQ of a Pomeranian.

The supposed martial-arts expertise of the heroine leaves a little to be desired, too. If you’re going to make a point out of someone being a black belt, you need to be able to deliver at least convincing fakery in this department, but there are few moments when Mani (or even her obvious stunt-double) reach the necessary level of semi-competence. The fact that she’s still capable of beating up the bad guys, simply makes them look even more woeful. They’d have been better off letting her hang on to the gun, instead of using that instead to trigger the whole “women in prison” subthread, which feels like it comes from an entirely different movie, rather than just a different director. I couldn’t quite muster the loathing to turn it off: it’s the kind of film that just sits there, occupying 90 minutes of your life.

Dir: Victor Ordoñez, Edward Victor, Al Valletta
Star: Karin Mani, Robert Torti, Michael Wayne, Jon Greene

Devil Hunters

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★★½
“When Sibelle Hu asks ‘Mind if I smoke?’ she may not mean what you think…”

devilhuntersBonus half-star for the final scene, which has the three leads leap out a window, as a giant explosion goes off behind them. Rather too giant, as a mistake in the amount of gunpowder used, apparently led to both Hu and Lee suffering third-degree burns. You can see it below: the part of the roman candle in the middle, is played by the former. :( Which may explain why the film abruptly ends there, over a montage of apparent newspaper clippings, and the heartfelt well-wishes of the director to his injured stars. Such sacrifice can only be admired.

Though, as with Michelle Yeoh’s accident on The Stunt Woman, you can’t help wishing it had been made in the service of a better movie. Particularly early on, this seems nothing more than a set of random action scenes spliced together, without rhyme, reason or a plot to connect them. Eventually, it turns out that there is virtually a queue of people, all with reasons for a grudge against gangster boss Hon San (Wong Wai), who appears to be the “devil” of the title. Among these are cop Inspector Tong (Hu); Hon San’s underling, Chiu Shing (Francis Ng); Chai Sun (Lui), who seeks vengeance for the death of his father; and finally, an enigmatic young woman Abby (Lee). By the time of the fiery finale, alliances are formed, the true villain revealed, and a great deal of butt kicked, but you’ll be hard-pushed to retain significant interest through the plethora of subplots as they unfold.

Perhaps the main problem is that, between getting these and the action in, there’s very little time for anything else, such as making us give a damn about any of the characters. Without exception, they appear to be out of the box of Hong Kong stock clichés: deceitful gangster, stoic cop, etc. and none of the plot twists will provoke much more than an “Eh.” Overall, you’re better off taking this as the “random action scenes spliced together” mentioned earlier, and having it on in the background while you do something more productive.

Dir: Chin-Ku Lu
Star: Sibelle Hu, Alex Man, Moon Lee, Raymond Lu
a.k.a. Megaforce 2, Red Force 3, Ultra Force 2

Sailor Suit and Machine Gun

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★★★½
“Lured in by the title, stay for the well-acted drama.”

sailorsuitThe novel by Jirō Akagawa which spawned this has proved rather popular in Japan. It also inspired two television series, in 1982 and 2006, but this film was the earliest adaptation, coming a year before the first show. Izumi (Yakushimaru) is in a funk because of the death of her father, but gets a shock when dozens of yakuza suddenly show up at her school. Turns out, he had a rather shady past, and had just been named heir to a gang, on its boss’s death: his own departure suddenly leaves Izumi next in line. Initially reluctant to take over, she does so, simply to spare the members from a futile death. And it’s not as if they’re a massive organization anyway: most of those at her school were on loan to them for the day(!), so how much trouble can really ensue…?

Of course, the answer is more than she expects, since it turns out her father may have been holding a large package of drugs, and its owner, Fatso (Mikuni), now believes Izumi and her gang have it. Her place is ransacked while she’s out, and there’s also the questionable Mayumi (Kazamatsuri) who claims to know Izumi’s father, but whose past is even murkier. Let’s just say that, by the time the film ends, their numbers will have been reduced from the already fairly feeble count of four, with which they start. It’s not exactly a glamourous life at the bottom of the organized crime pyramid, and the movie doesn’t portray it that way. There is, however, an odd unevenness of tone and style, which swings from drama to comedy to art-house. Sômai seems to have a fondness for setting his camera up some distance – in one scene at the end, a very great distance – from the characters, and letting things unfold. It’s certainly striking on occasion; there’s a sequence where a cop wants to interrogate Izumi, but her bodyguard won’t let him in, despite being obviously and horribly over-matched, and another achingly long-take that flows effortlessly from pedestrian to motorcycle traffic.

However, if you’re looking for action, even at the cheesy level of Sukeban Deka, you’re better off elsewhere. Despite the attention-grabbing title and poster, there is only one, brief moment of machine-gun madness. While that may be part of the point – it’s almost Izumi’s last hurrah, giving her very few options – it is a shame that such a striking concept was not more enthusiastically embraced. We do still have a heroine who is brave, loyal to her friends, and through Yakushimaru’s solid portrayal, comes to three-dimensional life. Finally, if Kazamatsuri looks familiar, that’s probably because, 20+ years later, she played the proprietress of the House of Blue Leaves in Kill Bill, Volume One…

Dir: Shinji Sômai
Star: Hiroko Yakushimaru, Tsunehiko Watase, Rentarô Mikuni, Yuki Kazamatsuri

Zero Woman: Assassin Lovers

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★★★★
“Grimly fiendish yet effective killers’ romance.”

zerowoman3Mob boss Daidohji (Yutani) has the city almost within his grasp, thanks to a minion promising him material he can use to blackmail the mayor. But his success is short-lived, as the minion is taken our by Rei (Takeda), who is then ordered by her boss Takefuji (Nishioka) to finish the job, taking out Diadohji and the rest of his gang. Not that the mobster is sitting back and waiting: he hires his own assassin, Katsumura (Matsusa), to get to Rei before she can get to him. However, neither killer is exactly happy with their role as pawns in the bigger scheme of things, and when they meet, it’s time for a little R&R. As in “romance and rebellion.”

This is the best of the saga which I’ve seen to date, mainly because it does a better job of striking a balance among the various elements. The storyline and characterization are not lazily ignored in preference for more easily exploitable elements; not that there’s any shortage of either sex or violence, but they seem to flow naturally from the plot, rather than appearing to drive it. The relationship between Katsumura and Rei has some credibility to it, with each seeing a reflection of themselves in the other. But will that be able to over-ride Rei’s strong loyalties to Section Zero? The film does a good job of keeping that in doubt, right up to the very end, where Rei is given the ultimate in ultimatums by Takefuji, and it’s not clear what way she’s going to jump.

There’s also a nice, slick look to the film, which unfolds under an apparent endless array of neon lights, and on perpetually-moist streets, a visual style that helps conceal the low-budget nature of proceedings. While the story may rely to heavily on the clichés of the genre, those involved, on both sides of the camera, execute – pun not intended – their responsibilities with enough flair and energy to counter-balance its shortcomings, and the end result is certainly a significant improvement on the first two films in the revived series.

Dir: Masahide Kuwabara
Star: Kumiko Takeda, Keiji Matsuda, Charlie Yutani, Tokuma Nishioka

Violet and Daisy

  By

★★★★
“Hanna turns eighteen. Not what you’d expect from the writer of Precious.“

sealThis opens with two young women, Violet (Bledel) and Daisy (Ronan), peeved because their favourite singer, Barbie Sunday, has cancelled an upcoming concert, to which they’d been looking forward. Their conversation continues as they approach an apartment, curiously dressed as nuns, and delivering pizza. However, curiosity will likely turn to bewilderment: when the door is opened, the girls both pull out hand-guns, and a brutal gun-battle erupts. Welcome to the surreal, yet oddly heart-warming world of Violet and Daisy, two hit-women who are talked out of a planned holiday with the promise of a job, offering them enough money to buy their hearts’ desires: clothes from Barbie’s Sunday’s fashion line. Except, their target, Michael (Gandolfini), seems bizarrely happy to see them. I mean, as well as him helpfully telling them where to get additional bullets, after their misguided attempt to shoot him with their eyes closed, none of their other victims have ever baked them cookies before…

From there, things are gradually revealed about the participants and their various issues. Violet, the older assassinette (Bledel was almost 30 while shooting this), acts as a mentor to Daisy, who has just turned 18, and hasn’t yet come to terms with the violence required for the job. It’s an interesting contrast to Ronan’s younger, somewhat similar, yet far more callous character in Hanna. Meanwhile, lurking in the background is Iris (Jean-Baptiste), the number one killer, who is intent on ensuring that Violet + Daisy don’t feel too much sympathy for their intended victim, and back out of the job. Michael, meanwhile, is keen for them to get on with it, because a pair of more unpleasant fates are also coming towards him. It’s nicely nuanced, shifting from blackly-comedic – check out V+D’s “internal bleeding dance” – through to poignant and emotional, the latter enhanced by the death, earlier this year, of Gandolfini.

There seems something almost Tarantino-esque about this: more than the hefty body count and a generally whimsical style, definitely a surprising choice as the directorial debut of the man who gave us the bleak urban coming-of-age story which was Precious. Like QT, Fletcher, who wrote the story too, has an excellent ear for dialogue, though fortunately lacking the more egotistical aspects, and the movie also jumps back and forth in time; so, as in Pulp Fiction, some scenes don’t make sense immediately, until the blanks are filled in later. Throw in cult icon Danny Trejo in a cameo role, and Orphan Black herself, Tatiana Maslany, as Michael’s estranged teenage daughter, and you’ve got one of the most unexpectedly pleasant surprises of 2013 overall. It’s an engaging and effective action heroine film too, and one which doesn’t rely purely on adrenalin and cleavage. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course…

Dir: Geoffrey S. Fletcher
Star: Saoirse Ronan, Alexis Bledel, James Gandolfini, Marianne Jean-Baptiste

Bring me the Head of the Machine Gun Woman

  By

★★★½
“Sam Peckinpah would likely approve – as long as he has a console in the afterlife.”

machineWhen not spinning platters as the DJ at a tango club in Chile, Santiago Fernández (Oviedo) likes nothing better than to kill, rob and steal – at least, from the comfort of his couch, as he plays a game just dissimilar enough to Grand Theft Auto to avoid a lawsuit. There is, of course, a huge difference between video-game malfeasance and the real thing, as he discovers after being unfortunate enough to overhear a conversation of local crime boss Che Longana (Alis), in which he makes the titular request, said skull belonging to his ex-girlfriend (Urrejola), who is also an assassin of no mean talent. Caught eavesdropping, Santiago’s escapes execution by promising to deliver her to Longana – a task for which he is woefully unprepared, despite the countless hours of console practice for a life of crime.

While containing nods to the grindhouse era, the style is very much more GTA, with villains being introduced by a still, on which is overlaid their value, and Santiago’s car, as he drives around town, being filmed from behind and slightly above, the standard angle for the genre. Progress is even broken down into a number of missions, whose success or failure is documented by a large on-screen graphic. Yes, it’s undeniably gimmicky; however, at a brisk 73 minutes, including credits, it’s a gimmick which just about manages to avoid overstaying its welcome. My main problem is instead a strong preference for the Machine Gun Woman – she’s never named anything else – over Santiago, because she is exactly the sort of creation, in attitude as much as dress-sense, who would be perfectly at home in a video-game. Brutal and manipulative, she’s simply more interesting than the snivelling hero, who sole redeeming feature appears to be that he loves his Mom.

By the end of the film, he’s the one charging in, with all guns blazing to rescue her – albeit, after he has forgotten to mention a tiny detail on their initial assault against the Boss Level. Still, considering the film’s events unfold in barely a day, it’s a remarkable transformation, even by video-game standards; not least in his ability to hit the broad side of a barn, something notable by its absence early on. That said, it’s still an entertaining and briskly-told tale: Espinoza is very much aware that the “cut scenes” are likely to be of lesser interest to his audience, and whizzes through them to get to the next spurt of action. The results are clearly not intended to be taken too seriously, and shouldn’t tax the attention span of even the most ardent gamer.

Dir: Ernesto Díaz Espinoza
Star: Matías Oviedo, Fernanda Urrejola, Jorge Alis, Francisca Castillo

Zero Woman 2

  By

★★½

Confusingly titled in the West, without any indication it wasn’t the first of the rebooted franchise, this perhaps explains why there’s little or no explanation of… Well, anything, really. What is Section Zero? Who is Rei? Where did she come from? “Never mind about that,” seems to be the film’s attitude, “Here are Natsuki Ozawa’s breasts to distract you from such trifles.” That’s particularly the case early on, when it seems Rei is unable to go five minutes without showing them off, whether it’s through being molested, becoming inescapably randy or simply taking a soapy shower (to wash off the blood after a kill, so I guess it’s a shower necessary to the plot – it also replays the intruder shower scene from its predecessor, with a different ending).

Fortunately, their novelty apparently wears off for the director, and we get on with the actual plot, which involves a stolen suitcase of bearer bonds, belonging to a politician. Rei is sent to retrieve them, working her way up through the shady network of fences which handle such things. As help, she’s assigned a member of the regular police (Watari? – credit information is basically non-existent here), but he turns out to have his own plan, to recover the bearer bonds himself and make a nice profit by selling them back to their owner. However, said owner is also working his own way up the chain, and kidnaps the sister of one of the thieves, as leverage for the return of his property. That brings the perp (Kosugi, the son of Sho Kosugi, iconic star of a million ninja flicks) into an alliance with Rei, and they storm the warehouse where the hostage is held, for a bloody confrontation.

It’s more obvious that this is clearly shot on video – and not particularly HD video at that, though that may be a product of its era as much as anything. This generaly gets better as it goes along, unless you are interested in Ms. Ozawa’s breasts, in which case your mileage may vary. The plotting contains a decent number of twists and turns, and Kosugi helps deliver a competent amount of action. However, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t struggle through the earlier sections. In particular a scene where she is forced by a fence whose day job is a butcher, to sniff coke and then raped by him. While at least he gets his just deserts (let’s just say, there’s a meat-hook involved), it’s both entirely unnecessary and clearly intended to titillate the audience. Not cool, and it left a bad taste in my mouth, which even an impressively nihilistic conclusion was unable to remove entirely.

Dir: Daisuke Gotoh
Star: Natsuki Ozawa, Saori Iwama, Kane Kosugi, Hiroyuki Watari
a.k.a. Zero Woman

Prime Suspect

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Before there was The Cooler, before there was either version of The Killing, and obviously before there was Maria Bello’s short-lived Americanized take, there was Dame Helen Mirren as Jane Tennison, one of the canonical figures of action heroine television over the past two decades. Though only fifteen feature-length episodes were aired – that works out at only one a year between the show’s debut in 1991, and its finale in 2006 – it has become an archetype for its portrayal of a female detective, relentless in her pursuit of criminals, but considerably more ill at-ease and abrasive when handling the people with whom she has to work. She’s great at spotting clues, interrogating suspects and putting together the pieces. However, Tennison’s personal life is a complete mess, she screws up any relationships on an almost daily basis, and is completely incapable of striking a balance between work and everything outside it.

Such a complex character requires an actress of the highest talents, and Mirren provides it. Before her film career, she cut here teeth with the Royal Shakespeare Company, though her early cinematic work includes both classic (The Long Good Friday) and entries which one suspects she’d rather forget (Caligula!). But even in the latter, she still carried herself with grace and poise, elevating the material. By the early nineties, she was respwected, yet not quite as renowned as she would become – her first Oscar nomination would not be until 1994, for The Madness of King George. Even now, Mirren acknowledges the show’s importance in her career: “It was an incredibly important part of what’s got me to where I am today. It was intense, many many hours on a set with many different directors, many different writers. I loved it, and that’s the way you learn.” Series creator Lynda LaPlante was also well established, having previously created a similarly iconic female character, on the other side of the law, in Dolly Rawlins, for her crime series, Widows.

While far from the first to portray a British female detective, the new show was a fairly-radical departure from previous entries such as Juliet Bravo or The Gentle Touch which, as the latter’s name suggests, sought to portray a kinder, gentler police force, with heroines comfortable at both home and work. LaPlante was having none of that, placing Jane Tennison in situations which contrasted her skills at police-work with her abject failures elsewhere (the show wisely chooses to focus much more on the former). Right from the start, Tennison has to prove herself in a male-dominated environment against the constant suspicion that she reached her position because of affirmative action, rather than on merit. Finding the right person for the role was crucial, LaPlante told NewsWeek in 1994, “She’s not physically heavy, but she has a strength inside her that is unusual. There’s a stillness to her, a great tension and intelligence in her face.”

One of the fascinating things about the show is the change that Tennison undergoes over the course of the series, which is particularly apparent if you watch them all in relatively short order. It would be hard to imagine an American show sticking with the same character over such a long period, but the infrequency of the production likely helps, and we see Tennison evolve over the length of the show from a somewhat tentative and naive detective, becoming hard-bitten and cynical (for very good cause), eventually ending up an alcoholic, teetering on the edge of complete burn-out and suffering from blackouts and the DTs, who is trying to solve one last case reach retirement through sheer, bloody-minded willpower. It’s a fascinating arc to watch, and I particularly appreciated the way, at the end of the final episode, the writers didn’t provide an obvious or “fluffy” ending, which could have compromised the integrity of the entire show.

“Women are taught to smile, to be pleasant, to be charming, to be attractive. Tennison doesn’t do that. She is driven, obsessive, vulnerable, unpleasantly egotistical, and confused. But she is damn good at what she does and is totally dedicated.”
— Helen Mirren

Mirren is the sole character to appear in all the episodes. She’s supported by a swathe of faces you’ll recognize if you spend any time watching British television or movies. The first series alone included future Oscar nominees Tom Wilkinson and Ranulph Fiennes, as well as Zoe Wanamaker, and others to be seen include David Thewlis, Ciaran Hinds, Jonny Lee Miller, Mark Strong, Frank Finlay and Peter Capaldi, recently announced as the new Dr. Who [in Suspect, he plays a transvestite, which is certainly… different]. Most of the series are single stories, told over two 100-minute episodes, except for the fourth, which is a trio of individual parts. This extended length, allowing a single crime to be dissected in greater depth, is another difference to American shows, which tend very much to be “crime of the week,” with or without also a longer story arc.

While all the cases are homicides, they cover a wide breadth. After the first season, there tended to be an underlying social issue: this could be racial, political or class-based, and often provide an additional level of difficulty to the investigation. Particularly in the early seasons, Tennison is depicted as having to fight prejudice from her colleagues. The feminist aspects (perhaps thankfully) do fade somewhat, once she becomes more established, though the level of support she gets from her superiors is never something on which she can rely. Throughout, she struggles with self-doubt and loneliness in her position, no-one able to understand the pressures of the job, and help share the burden on her shoulders. But part of her strength is that it never interferes with her dedication to the case, or her pursuit of those responsible for wrong-doing. Unlike a good number of her colleagues, who are sometimes prepared to sacrifice justice for the sake of expediency, Tennison’s morality is absolute, and she won’t compromise it for anything, regardless of the potential personal cost.

Obviously, this isn’t “action” in the “fisticuffs and car-chase” mould of policework (I’ll refer you to Red and its sequel if you want to see Mirren wielding the heavy weaponry!). Virtually the only weapons Tennison wields are her mind and her tongue, but it’s hard to tell which is the sharper, and they are both undeniably effective at getting to the truth, no matter how deeply it may be hidden. Her bravery is undeniable, not just in the perpetual quest for justice mentioned above, but her willingness to put herself into potentially lethal situations when the need arises., such as at the end of the fifth series where she faces an armed suspect, alone and without anything to protect her. While it’s one thing to go into such situations with the physical presence to handle them, doing so when you don’t have such an ability, is probably even more courageous.

Though some episodes are now more than 20 years old, they hardly seem dated at all: the writing is still sharp as a razor, and can stand with anything you’ll find on television today. But it’s Mirren’s performance which makes this work, and is why I just didn’t bother with the US remake; good though Bello might be, she can’t hold a candle to the original. There’s a reason Mirren was nominated for six Emmys, winning two, and six BAFTAs, taking home three. Virtually every cop show with a female lead which has come out since – or, at least, all the good ones – owe something to Prime Suspect, and a central character who embodies the tension between work and home life. Never shying away from the darker side of law-enforcement, or the toll it exerts on those who maintain it, this isn’t just one of the best recent action heroine TV series, it’s among the best TV series of any genre or era.