Tag: crime

Emily the Criminal

  By

★★★★
“Parks and Illegal Recreation.”

For six months or so, our morning routine involved the consumption of an episode of Parks and Recreation with breakfast. Our favourite character on the show was Ron Swanson, but not far behind was April Ludgate, played by Aubrey Plaza. She was the mistress of deadpan misanthropy, delivering lines like “I’m just gonna live under a bridge and ask people riddles before they cross.” We’ve not seen her in much since the show ended, but the concept of April Ludgate, career criminal, was too delicious to pass up. So here we are, yet I must admit, Plaza is almost good enough to make us forget April. Well, except for one roll of the eyes, which was vintage Ludgate.

She plays Emily, a young woman saddled with an inescapable pit of student loans, for a basically useless qualification, and an unfortunate felony relegating her to food delivery work. A chance encounter brings her into contact with Youcef (Rossi). She earns $200 for making a fraudulent credit-card transaction on his behalf, and is offered the chance to earn ten times that, for a larger, riskier purchase. With regular employment clearly not the solution, Emily embraces her new, illegal career, working with Youcef, much to the disdain of his Lebanese brothers. As their infighting escalates, Youcef decides to cut and run, only to be beaten to the punch. Emily won’t stand for that: “You’re a bad influence,” says Youcef, as he and Emily prepare to rob his brother. He’s not wrong. 

On one level, Emily’s situation is a result of her poor choices. Running up eighty grand in debt for an art degree and committing felonious assault are both decisions she made, of her own free will. These have consequences. Yet I increasingly found myself rooting for Emily, and her refusal to be ground down by the unfairness of life, or those seeking to exploit her – both in the legal and illegal employment sectors. She possesses undeniable smarts, and a righteous anger at the undeserved success of those she sees around her. Her wants are not excessive, and her crimes are… if hardly victimless, non-violent. At least, if you don’t count those who try to take advantage of her. For Emily wields a mean stun-gun.

If the world won’t give Emily a chance, playing by their rules, she’ll simply make up her own rules. She’s not willing to conform just to become society’s victim, and in this, weirdly, it has elements in common with urban flicks like The Bag Girls. There’s also no sense of honour among thieves, though the authorities and police in this movie are notable by their complete absence. Certainly, the threat of arrest is never a consideration for Emily, or at least, doesn’t alter her trajectory. The ending is ambivalent, to put it mildly: crime appears to pay, though it seems Emily may be addicted to the adrenaline high as much as the ill-gotten gains. While the morality here may be questionable, Plaza’s performance still makes it more than worthwhile. 

Dir: John Patton Ford
Star: Aubrey Plaza, Theo Rossi, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Gina Gershon

Bad Girls

  By

★½
“Faster, Pussycat! Dull! Dull!”

I didn’t realize until this started, it was by the director of the (non-GWG) The Theta Girl, which was a self-indulgent and flawed, yet ultimately not worthless, drug-trip revenge flick, made for no budget and with obvious passion. This is more of the same, yet wears out its welcome considerably quicker. It doesn’t feel as if Bickel has learned anything of relevance from making his previous effort. It may be more technically flash (not quite the same thing as “proficient”, you should note), yet he seems to have learned nothing about narrative. The film here unfolds at two speeds: dead slow and utterly manic. If this was a person at a party, you’d quietly sidle away from them.

It begins in the latter mode, with three strippers led by Val (Renew) robbing their club, and going on a crime spree, leaving a trail of dead bodies in their wake. Their goals are vague, partly heading to Mexico (the part of Mexico is played by South Carolina roadside attraction, South of the Border), and partly kidnapping each lady’s favourite rock stars, who conveniently mostly happen to be playing shows that night in the same area. Throw in a random hotel clerk, and you have a six-pack of characters, sitting around in motel rooms and cars, revealing their innermost secrets and taking quite a few illicit pharmaceutical, as the largely unlikable authorities close the net on them.

I think I greatly preferred it when Val and her gal pals were killing people. The first 5-10 minutes of this are insane, a genuine assault on the low-fi senses that positively burns the retinas. You have to wonder how Bickel could possibly keep up the level of manic energy, and to some extent, it’s probably a good thing he doesn’t, or your television would probably melt from the raw heat. However, there’s almost nothing offered in its place, in terms of plot or character development, until the final few minutes, where the police finally track the trio down and launch an assault, which is resisted with all the fire-power available. It’ll certainly wake you up if you dozed off: something which I will neither confirm nor deny happened to me.

At points, it feels as if this is intent mostly on checking off a list of film influences, most obviously Russ Meyer and Jack Hill. Though it’s largely superficial i.e. for a supposed trio of strippers, they really don’t show a lot of skin, and might as well have been secretaries. Or nuns. [Hmm. I have an idea for a movie] As with Theta, Bickel deserves credit for simply making his own damn movie. I just hope the next one actually is his own. For rather than a homage to classic exploitation movies of the sixties and seventies, this plays as a third-generation VHS copy of them, and you will be considerably better off sticking to the original inspirations.

Dir: Christopher Bickel
Star: Morgan Shaley Renew, Senethia Dresch, Shelby Lois Guinn, Cleveland Langdale

9 Bullets

  By

★½
“Copy of a copy of a copy.”

While this is not an “official” remake of Gloria, it’s so damn close that I have no problem considering it as one. Writer/director Gaston seems to have… um, a bit of a track record in this area, shall we say. She previously appeared here by directing Beyond the City Limits, a film with such a strong resemblance to Set It Off, that it was released on DVD as Rip It Off. Some might call that a particularly appropriate title, and here, she once again seems to be sailing quite close to a lawsuit. It was purely by coincidence we watched this, the weekend after seeing the two versions of Gloria, and Chris took only a few minutes to call it out.

It’s definitely the worst of the three, and I write that as a fan of Lena Headey. She has done sterling work in things such as Game of Thrones and Gunpowder Milkshake, among others, so to see her in this mess is almost tragic. I almost can’t be bothered to provide a recap – a link to my Gloria review would suffice – yet here we go. A man is caught stealing money from organized crime, so he and his whole family are liquidated, except for young son, Sam (Vazquez). He escapes with an iPad that’s crucial to the mob’s operation, and is rescued by neighbour Gypsy (Headey). They go on the run from the henchmen seeking to recover the iPad, and Sam gradually breaks down Gypsy’s chilly facade, despite her ties to the criminals, being an old flame of its boss, Jack (Worthington).

Ouch. But… but… Sam has a dog! And Gypsy is a retiring burlesque dancer, now writing an autobiography! It’s totes different! No. No, it isn’t. Especially since neither of these are significant. The only relevance of the latter seems to be to allow Headey to show that she still looks pretty good in her late forties (pasties, please: this isn’t some cheap exploitation vehicle). Meanwhile, Sam manages the genuinely impressive feat of managing, somehow, to be more annoying than the kid in the original, burbling on in a child genius way about his booming cryptocurrency portfolio. Yeah, that aged like milk.

Despite Headey’s best efforts, there’s no aspect here which wasn’t done better in both the original, and the remake starring Sharon Stone. Even the new stuff falls flat, such as a weird and almost irrelevant subplot where they steal an already stolen car with a hooker (Anthony) in the back seat. None of the relationships are convincing, and the only moment that has any intensity does not involve any of the main characters. It occurs after Gypsy drops off the dog at the cabin belong to friend Lacy, played by veteran actress Barbara Hershey, who demonstrates an admirably no-nonsense approach to their pursuers. Please, do not even get me started on the finale, where Gypsy literally turns out to be bulletproof. When a film leaves you thinking, “Who came up with this shit?”, it’s never a good sign.

Dir: Gigi Gaston
Star: Lena Headey, Dean Scott Vazquez, Sam Worthington, La La Anthony

Gloria (1980)

  By

★★★½
“Gloria, you’re always on the run now…”

Yeah, I’ll confess to having Laura Branigan’s eighties hit running through my head on repeat almost the entire movie, even if its lyrics can only be tangentially tied to it. What also struck me is how strong of an influence this was on Luc Besson’s Leon, especially at the beginning. I mean: a criminal gang takes out an entire family in a New York tenement, except for one child, as punishment for the father having tried to steal from them. That survivor takes refuge with a very reluctant neighbour with mob ties, who then has to protect the child as they move about the city. There’s even a scene where one of the gang fires his gun at a nosy resident.

In this case, the protective neighbour is Gloria Swenson (Rowlands), and the child is Phil Dawn (Adames), son of a mob accountant, who is also in possession of a highly incriminating notebook given to him by his father. Gloria makes no bones about her opinion, telling the parents, “I hate kids, especially yours.” However, necessity is the mother of motherhood, as it were, and her maternal instincts end up being awakened by six-year-old Phil, who swings wildly between acting three times his age and one-third of it. Gloria has no issue with using lethal force against those she perceives as a threat, as she seeks to broker a deal that will trade the book in exchange for her and Phil being allowed to walk away. This brings her into contact with mob boss Tarzini (Franchina) – not for the first time.

Rowlands is great in this, and you can see why she’s one of the few actresses to have been nominated for an Oscar in a girls with guns role. Director Cassavetes was her husband – he was originally just going to sell the script, but took on the director’s role after his wife was cast – and their long history of working together likely helped provide her nuanced performance. The problems are elsewhere. Phil is certainly no Matilda, and I was largely with the opinion Gloria expressed above. There’s also no-one like Stansfield, to act as an antagonist. Tarzini isn’t seen until the end, and up to that point, Gloria is opposed largely by a series of faceless goons.

Even given her background, it does seem remarkably convenient how she and they seem to stumble into each other in every other scene. It’s as if the film took place in a small farming town, rather than a city of over seven million inhabitants at the time. However, the film is never less than engaging due to Rowlands, who was fifty when the film came out, so is definitely older than your typical action heroine. Though your biggest takeaway may be how early eighties it all feels. Chris, who lived in New York at the time, loved that even seeing a car identical to her first one parked in a scene. Personally, I just had to marvel at how an unaccompanied six-year-old could buy a train ticket from New York to Pittsburgh without anyone batting an eyelid. Truly, a very different world… But what I really want to know is this: what happened to Gloria’s cat?

Dir: John Cassavetes
Star: Gena Rowlands, John Adames, Basilio Franchina, Buck Henry

Gloria (1999)

  By

★★½
“Gloria, non in excelsis“

Nineteen years after the original, four-time Oscar nominated director Lumet opted to remake Cassavetes’s movie. Though by some accounts, it was more a case of him wanting to work, rather than being particularly attracted to the project. If the results are anything to go by, he should have stayed at home. For the film was a bomb, and leading lady Stone received a Razzie nomination for her efforts. I wouldn’t have said she was that bad, though she’s clearly not at the same level as Gina Rowlands in the original. It does also address some of what I felt were its’ predecessor’s weaknesses. However, it tones down the central character, and this helps lead to what you’d be hard-pressed to argue is other than an inferior product overall.

It keeps the basic premise. Gloria (Stone) becomes the unwilling custodian of a young boy (Figueroa), whose family was wiped out by the mob. However, the kid is in possession of incriminating data, which could either be his salvation or his death knell, so Gloria has to protect him as the Mafiosi try to hunt him down. The big change is, rather than being a neighbour with some mob ties, Gloria here has just got out of jail, having served a three-year sentence after refusing to squeal on her boyfriend, mob lieutenant Kevin (Brit actor Northam, sporting a very credible New York accent, i.e. Chris didn’t complain about it!). When he brushes her off, she absconds with both the boy and the floppy disk which holds the data here. All 1.44 MB of it, I guess. For comparison, the original image of the poster (right) is larger than that. Gotta love tech in the nineties.

This does give the film a clear antagonist in Kevin, something lacking in the previous version, and the child here is less irritating, with a character that seems more consistent. The problem is Stone’s take on the character, which feels like the “Is Diet Pepsi alright?” flavour of the character. This one is considerably less ruthless: while she is happy to wave a gun around, I don’t recall her ever shooting anyone, which Gloria v1.0 did with an almost reckless abandon. Her motivation is also considerably more selfish, spawned (at least initially) by a desire to hit back at Kevin for dumping her.

You can perhaps tell the difference simply by comparing the posters for the two movies. The one here appears more interested in putting Stone’s cleavage front and centre: I note the kid did not stay in this picture. Indeed, on its own merits, this would have been a fairly marginal entry for the site, since it’s closer to a thriller-drama than an action movie. It does possess some effective enough moments, though some of these are cribbed wholesale from the original. This is not as terrible a remake as its reputation indicates: the core concept is too strong for that. Yet any purpose to it remains obscure at best, and entirely missing at worst.

Dir: Sidney Lumet
Star: Sharon Stone, Jean-Luke Figueroa, Jeremy Northam, George C. Scott

Boxcar Bertha

  By

★★★
“Tracks of my tears.”

After the success of Bloody Mama, producer Roger Corman wanted to follow up with another film depicting lawlessness in the Depression. He found his source material in Sister of the Road, supposedly the autobiography of a thirties drifter called Boxcar Bertha. No such one person actually existed: it was assembled by the author, Dr. Ben L. Reitman, from multiple characters he met while helping women in trouble in Chicago (a fictionalized version of the doctor may appear in the movie). Corman hired the then almost unknown Martin Scorsese, who was directing his first commercial film; its predecessor, Who’s That Knocking at My Door, grossed only $16,085.  Scorsese was given a schedule of 24 days and a budget of $600,000.

It begins with Bertha Thompson (Hershey) hitting the road after her father is killed when his crop-dusting plane crashes. Accompanied by her father’s mechanic Von Morton (Casey), she falls in with union leader Big Bill Shelly (Carradine), who is rousing workers against railroad owners such as H. Buckram Sartoris (played by Carradine’s father John), as well as card sharp Rake Brown (Primus). Bertha becomes an outlaw after shooting a man who catches Rake cheating, and Bill’s union activities end up leaving him in prison. Bertha helps break him out, and the quartet take up a life of crime, robbing the rich industry barons, who are none too pleased by the gang’s activities. Inevitably – especially if you’re familiar with Scorsese’s better-known work – it ends in blood.

In that, as well as the era and the story of young love gone violently wrong, it feels not dissimilar to Bonnie and Clyde, made five years earlier. But Bertha is a considerably more independent character, who has to fend for herself on more than one occasion, after her three colleagues are arrested and sent to prison. Though violence is never her first choice, it always remains an option. That’s true right through the brutal finale where Bill is nailed to the side of a train, only for Von to show up with a shotgun. It is a scene that could have come from Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (three years earlier), yet also feels like pure Scorsese.

The socialist and pro-union political leanings, turning Bertha and her crew into Depression-era Robin Hoods, is also interesting. Scorsese would not be a stranger to a sympathetic portrayal of the criminal classes, from Mean Streets through Casino to The Irishman. Yet it also remains a Corman film, clocking in at a brisk 88 minutes, in sharp contrast to Scorsese’s subsequent fondness for sprawling epics. Hershey, then at the beginning of her lengthy career, would provide the necessary nudity. Though it’s notable that even when working as a prostitute, she might allow the use of her body, but her heart always remained Bill’s. Despite the exploitation elements, it all feels a bit worthy, and it’s no wonder Scorsese would quickly go his own way, his interests not in line with Corman. For example, the crucifixion of Bill, with Bertha in the role of Mary Magdalene is a tad too on the nose. The heroine is an interesting enough creature on her own terms, not to need this kind of unsubtle embellishment.

Dir: Martin Scorsese
Star: Barbara Hershey, David Carradine, Barry Primus, Bernie Casey

Black Medicine

  By

★★★
“The Hypocritic oath…”

I guess, at its heart, this is the story of two mothers. There’s Jo (Campbell-Hughes), an anaesthetist who has been struck off the medical register, for reasons that are left murky. She’s now practicing her healing arts on the underground market, from patching up dubious stabbing victims, to carrying out unlicensed abortions. Jo lost her daughter to meningitis, and has split from her husband. Then there’s Bernadette (Brady), a wealthy but no less murky character. Her daughter is dying, and in desperate need of a transplant. To that end, Bernadette has kidnapped a young woman, Aine (McNulty), with the intention of using her as an unwilling organ donor, and needs Jo’s help for the operation. But when Aine – who would be about the age of Jo’s daughter had she lived – escapes and hides in the back of the physician’s car, Jo is left with a series of difficult decisions.

Set in Northern Ireland, this is solid rather than spectacular. It has a good central performance at its core by Campbell-Hughes, who plays a complex and contradictory character. For example, Jo has a major drug-habit, yet remains highly functioning. [I’d never seen someone administer illicit pharmaceuticals through eye-drops before. Chris, apparently, was aware of this: I bow to her superior knowledge of such things, likely stemming from her life in eighties New York!] You sense the point that what she is being asked, and eventually ordered, to do has crossed a moral line in the sand, even if her recalcitrance is going to cause more problems. That’s because Bernadette is prepared to do whatever it takes to save her own daughter – something Jo was unable to do.

It’s the contract and similarities between the two women which keep the film interesting, both being utterly convinced their actions are morally justified, although the film-makers’ sympathies are clearly more with Jo. Less effective is the plotting, which feels far from watertight. Perhaps the biggest hole is the way in which Bernadette discovers Aine’s location, after the latter places a call to her boyfriend from Jo’s landline. Aside from being very stupid on Aine’s part, and not in line with the street-smart character to that point, I’m not sure I even know anyone who has a landline. Except for my father, and he’s 85. Jo’s ex-husband seems to exist purely to give Bernadette some kind of leverage, and generally, there are a number of unanswered questions whose answers I feel would have benefited the narrative.

Eastwood, making his feature debut, does have a nice style, depicting Belfast almost entirely at night, in a moist, neon-drenched way that lends it a certain exotic flavour. This would make an interesting double-bill with the similarly Irish-set A Good Woman is Hard to Find, which is also about a woman forced into an unwanted confrontation with the criminal world, by the sudden arrival in her life of an unexpected visitor. This isn’t quite as compelling, lacking the relentless sense of escalation, yet did still keep me engaged for the bulk of the running time, and offers an original scenario with effort put into developing both its heroine and the villainess.

Dir: Colum Eastwood
Star: Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Amybeth McNulty, Orla Brady, Shashi Rami

Knucks

  By

½
“Knucks sucks.”

I’m tempted to leave my review at that. But there’s a famous quote by critic Roger Ebert, going off on Bruce Willis flop, North: “I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.” I was always impressed, and hoped one day to find a film capable of producing a similar reaction. This is… close. It is, let’s be clear, utterly terrible, with almost no redeeming qualities. Yet it’s either not bad enough, or more likely, too bad to generate such a reaction. That would be giving it more power and credit than this deserves. 

Why are we here? This is less an existential question than a desire to explain why I’m writing a review. It’s because of this synopsis: “Two women attempt to come up after beating their drug dealer to death.” That was good enough to get it on my radar. However, within a couple of minutes, it was clear I had made a terrible mistake, and was about to be in for the longest 66 minutes of my life. Here’s another quote, from the BBFC, explaining the 15 rating: “There are scenes in which a child is abducted by two men, but it is not clear what their intentions are.” The two words “not clear” are the best way to summarize the misbegotten art-wank which I endured, substituting pointless video manipulation for plot, characterization or any positive aspects.

It’s as if the makers had obtained a list of all the elements I despise most about pretentious movies, and had treated it as a request list. Random colour filters. Check. Strobe effects. Check. Shitty heavy metal soundtrack. Check. Obtuse dialogue. Check. Scenes unfolding in murky near-darkness. Check. Shaky, hand-held, extreme close-up camerawork. Check, check and, in no uncertain terms, check. The basic plot, and I use the word in its loosest way, is mostly ripped off from True Romance, with heroines and sisters Kathleen (Leidy) and Taylor (Harlan) attempting to sell a bagful of drugs obtained from the dead dealer, to someone who looks like a Kid Rock impersonator.

But this doesn’t really show up until the final fifteen minutes. Until then, we get meaningless flashbacks to their abusive childhood (of course!), in which their film-maker father seems to be involved in porn and snuff. I am not exaggerating when I say either of these would likely be more entertaining. Things come to a head, when the original owner of the drugs shows up, burbles threateningly for a bit, before keeling over. It ends in much the same way as the previous hour has unfolded: an incoherent mess. I was genuinely relieved by the short running-time, though if it had been much longer, it might well have been a rare cinematic “did not finish.” The terminally slow end credit crawl was easily the best thing about this. Largely because it indicated the end was mercifully nigh.

Dir: Gage Maynard
Star: Dasha Leidy, Hedley Harlan, Mindy Robinson, Alan Bagh

Filibus

  By

★★★
“The first action heroine?”

Ladies and gentlemen, we appear to have a new record holder for the earliest action heroine feature film. Dating from all the way back in 1915, and thus pipping Joan the Woman by a year, comes this silent Italian movie. It’s about Filibus (Creti), an infamous thief whose exploits have become legendary, to the extent that one of her victims offers a large reward for her capture. Filibus, in one of her alternate identities, Baroness Troixmonde, visits the victim, asking if she can put her amateur investigation skills to the test. There, she meets Detective Kutt-Hendy (Spano), who is on her trail, and decides she’s going to frame him for her crimes. Drugging him, she obtains his fingerprints, and uses these as some of the evidence against Kutt-Hendy, implicating him in the theft of a pair of valuable diamonds.

There’s a lot of remarkably cool stuff here, considering the era, such as the airship by which Filibus travels, allowing her to drop silently into any desired location. Kutt-Hendy does his best to catch his target, e.g. using a tiny hidden camera to catch her in the act. But she always manages to be one step ahead of him: with the aid of some more drugs and her minions, the gadget only catches the detective apparently red-handed (right). Kutt-Hendy begins to believe he may actually be Filibus himself, visiting a doctor who wonders if his patient may be committing crimes in his sleep. The tables are eventually turned after the cop figures out how to stop being left unconscious. However, Filibus has the last laugh, escaping and leaving a note that suggests they may meet again.

There had been earlier serials with female protagonists, such as 1914’s The Perils of Pauline, and also occasional movies, e.g. Protéa. with supporting characters who were “heroine adjacent” for want of a better phrase. But it feels as if Filibus could be transplanted wholesale into the modern era, with little or no modification. Indeed, the way she uses another alternate identity, Count de la Brive, to court Kutt-Hendry’s sister, Leonora (Ruspoli) has been seized upon enthusiastically by some, calling the heroine a champion of transgenderism, even though this plot thread never goes anywhere significant. It exists purely to get Filibus close to her target, and there’s no evidence her interest is genuine.

Let’s be clear though: if surprisingly modern in story, the production values on this are as primitive as you’d expect from the era. Production company Corona Film were a short-lived and low-budget studio, and compared to Joan, this is a considerably less impressive spectacle. You also never get any real sense of emotion from the lead actress: Creti was almost unknown, even at the time. This contrasts with Spano, who does act to good effect, particularly his angst at apparently being a criminal. It’s on YouTube, though you have to find your own subs for it, and it’s entirely silent there – I’d suggest providing your own soundtrack when viewing. But as an example of something that is arguably a century ahead of its time, it is worth a watch.

Dir: Mario Roncoroni
Star: Valeria Creti, Giovanni Spano, Filippo Vallino, Cristina Ruspoli

Yakuza Princess

  By

★★½
“Anyone for Brazillian sushi?”

The above odd combination is actually a fairly accurate assessment of what you have here. It’s a Yakuza action-thriller… but rather than being set in Tokyo or Osaka, is relocated to the Brazillian city of Sao Paolo. As an introductory credit helpfully informs us, this has the largest Japanese population of any city outside Japan. The story concerns two separate people’s quests for their pasts, which (to absolutely no-one’s surprise) turn out to be intertwined. One of these is Akemi (MASUMI), who as a young child was the sole survivor of a 1999 massacre of her Yakuza family back in Japan, was subsequently spirited away by allies and is now living in Brazil. The other is Shiro (Rhys-Meyers), an amnesiac who wakes up in hospital with no clue as to how he got there or his identity, except for a Japanese sword.

Also in the mix is Takeshi (Ihara), a Japanese mobster, who discovers Akemi’s location and heads to Sao Paolo to track her down. But what are his intentions? What are Shiro’s intentions? Indeed, what are anyone’s intentions? For this is a film which plays its cards very close to its chest, in a murky world where loyalty is hard to establish, and may not be what it initially seems. This makes for a rather frustrating viewing experience, since we are largely in the dark – along with the heroine, in all fairness. Still, Akemi and Shiro don’t even meet up until after 40 minutes have passed; up to which point, this has felt like two separate movies, taking place in the same location.

There’s also some stuff about the sword Akemi wields eating souls, though this can largely be ignored without impact. It all adds up to a rather excessive 111 minute running-time, and would likely have been helped by some choice editing. The action is occasionally not bad, but is definitely hampered by an editing style, which refuses to have the camera pointed in the same direction for longer than half a second. What the film does mostly have going for it, is solid cinematography, which makes Sao Paolo look like a side-street in Blade Runner. But outside of scraps of Portuguese dialogue, I didn’t get much Brazillian flavour, rendering the setting somewhat pointless.

There are some interesting or appealing moments, such as where Shiro sits down with a couple of veteran Yakuza to watch an old samurai flick, or Akemi’s escape with him over the roof-tops. However, there’s a lot of walking about and chit-chat, before we eventually get to the meat of the matter, and it’s not enough to sustain broad interest. I suspect it may have been better if the film had concentrated on either Akemi or Shiro, both in terms of providing greater focus, and in slimming down the running time. For what results here is something which seems a bit bloated, yet despite that, doesn’t imbue its characters with enough depth.

Dir: Vicente Amorim
Star: MASUMI, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Toshiji Takeshima