Tag: e

The Eye of Ebon, by P. Pherson Green

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

Independent Goodreads author (and one of my Goodreads friends) P. Pherson Green has been writing since the late 90s, and has previously had short stories published in various venues. However, this novel, the opener for his projected White Sword Saga series, is his long-fiction debut. He graciously gifted me with a hardcover review copy; no guarantee of a favorable review was requested, or given. My wife and I read the book together, during the intermittent and usually short times we were both traveling together in the car; so the nearly two months it took to read is misleading. It would have been a much quicker read if I’d read it by myself, devoting all of my individual reading time to it.

This is a work of traditional epic fantasy, set (as most tales in this genre are) in a medieval-like setting resembling the Europe of that day, except in an invented fantasy world. (A helpful map is provided, though it doesn’t show every single locality a reader might like to locate.) It would be fair to say that most if not all English-language epic fantasy written from the last half of the 20th century on owes something to the inescapable influence of Tolkien’s monumental LOTR saga, and this novel is no exception. We have here, ultimately, a quest narrative involving an artifact of great significance (and great seductive power, of an unwholesome sort). The characters’ world is one with a very long history, involving elder races and cataclysmic wars which have consequences for the present. Two non-human races, the Allarie and the Groll, are respectively much like Tolkien’s elves and orcs.

More importantly, we’re very definitely dealing here with a conflict between good and evil, with domination of a world at stake; and the conflict is not simply one of “Us” (the “good” characters) vs. “Them” (the “bad” characters), but rather within “Us” as well, since all humans can be tempted by evil. And like Tolkien (who once famously characterized the LOTR corpus as a “Catholic work”) Green is a Christian author, who writes from a Christian conception of the universe. Neither writer makes any explicit reference to Christianity, and indeed both are dealing with a world in which Christ has not been born; Middle Earth is supposedly our world long before Christianity existed, and Green’s Silver World (he introduces that name only in a short note after the novel proper) is an entirely different world with a different salvation history. But like Tolkien’s Morgoth (“the Great Enemy, of whom Sauron of Mordor was but a servant”) the entity variously known here as the Shadow, the Wyrm, the Foul Pretender or the Dark Beguiler is recognizable as Satan; and the apparently pagan polytheism of the Silver World isn’t quite as polytheistic as it initially seems.

For all that, Green is his own person with his own literary vision and style; The Eye of Ebon is not a direct LOTR knock-off, in the way that Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shanarra is. A major difference, of course, is the distaff perspective. While Tolkien’s Eowyn is an action-capable female, she’s not the heroine of the saga; his major characters, and most of the characters who display any real agency, or play a direct role in defeating evil, are male. Here, the two viewpoint characters, protagonist Samiare (whom you see depicted on the book’s cover) and essentially co-protagonist Rugette are both female, and formidable fighting females who carry the brunt of the book’s down-and-dirty struggle against evil, and who make the key, crucial gut wrenching and difficult moral decisions at the climactic points. (I was already inclined to rate the book at five stars, but those were the moments that clinched it, and for me moved this tale into the ranks of great, rather than merely good, literature!)

To be sure, unlike Rugette, whose combat skills, especially archery, result from rigorous training since she was in her early teens (I’d guess her to be about 30 here) and have been honed in years spent as a high-ranking warrior and scout fighting the Groll, Samiare, an untrained girl of 15, owes her prowess to a mysterious sword. At the very beginning of the main narrative, she lies dying in the snows of her homeland from cold and blood loss after being gang-raped by a band of Groll and renegade humans, who carved an obscenity on her belly, beat her and tortured her with branding irons, after killing her father and making off with her sister. When she cried out for deliverance “to the one god she knew –the one who watched over,” that sword was gifted to her by a glowing man-like being; and it proves to be no ordinary sword. But she still has to hold it and wield it –and make decisions about how she uses it.

The above paragraph suggests another difference from the Tolkien corpus; this narrative is much grittier, and gorier. While the gang-rape itself isn’t really directly described, we can tell it occurred; and while Green doesn’t make the brutalizing and torture here any more drawn-out than it has to be to make us feel it, he does make us do that. This sets a tone for a very violent book; there’s a lot of mortal combat action with edged weapons, and the Groll are an extremely sadistic and treacherous bunch, even to each other. (Tolkien, in a letter, once characterized the orcs as “almost irremediable,” but allowed that no being created by God is wholly irremediable. We get the impression here that the Groll may be; but even here, Green depicts them as having a claim to merciful treatment when they’re disabled in combat, which I regard as a plus.) So there’s a high body count, with quite a lot of humans and humanoids dying, often in nastily unpleasant ways. There’s no “pornography of violence,” but we do see the spilled entrails, severed limbs, split skulls, etc. However, there’s no quoted bad language, and no explicit sexual content. (In fact, the only reference to sex at all, besides the implied rape above, occupies a tastefully phrased single part of one sentence, in 230 pages of text proper. This would definitely not be characterized as a “romantasy.”)

Green has a serviceable, dignified and assured, naturally flowing prose style that holds interest well. Settings, scenes and people are described vividly enough to be pictured in the reader’s mind (and some of the scenes conjured rival those depicted by Robert E. Howard or A. Merritt for atmosphere and spectacle!), but not over-described. World-building is delivered along the way of the storyline, without info-dumps (there are a couple of roughly page-long appendices, “About the Silver World” and “The Four Lands,” which should be read). There aren’t many serious typos, the worst one being that “reigns” tends to be substituted when “reins” is meant (but that’s a quibble). We come to realize before long that the Prologue describes events taking place millennia before the main story, and occasional interspersed flashbacks set in the same time-frame aren’t distinguished by typeface or a heading; but the reader quickly comes to identify and understand these, and they do convey important information.

There’s no cliff-hanger here; the challenge of the main plot is brought to its conclusion. But it’s clear that the overall epochal struggle of the Four Lands is only beginning, and I’m invested in continuing the series!

Author: P. Pherson Green.
Publisher: Gold Dragon Publishing, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Echo 8

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★★½
“Easier to forget.”

This bills itself as “Australia’s first female-led independent action movie”. Seems a bit of a stretch, considering how many films we’ve reviewed from Down Under previously, such as Avarice. Heck, Agent Provocateur had a similar plot in 2012. However, this has had a lengthy trip to the screen, shooting having started prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. Four years later, it’s finally available, and is clearly a labour of love for those involved, not least Tran who wore multiple heads on the production. Between that and the limited resources, I’m reluctant to pan it savagely, but the truth is, even with a rating which is cutting it slack for these reasons, the end product is still not very good. It’s more “shows some potential” than “would recommend.”

The main problem is a script, which is basically a mix of movie cliches #27, the assassin who defies orders, and #32, cinematic amnesia, which naturally releases information at the exact pace needed by the plot. Echo 8 (Tran) has been brought up since she was a young child to be a trained killer, and now works alongside her partner, Delta 1 (Vuong), under the oversight of boss Agent 5 (Hara). But she’s also experiencing flashbacks of her early life, which are causing her to question what she’s doing. When Echo 8 is ordered to kill local activist Hanh (Chan), who is digging into areas potentially troublesome for the organization, the assassin decides not to carry out her task.

Needless to say, Agent 5 is less than happy at the situation, and Echo 8 finds herself going from the hunter to the hunted. If this sounds familiar, it’s all very much what we’ve seen before: Naked Weapon uses basically the same story, or more recently, so does Thailand’s The Kill List. A well-worn plot isn’t necessarily a problem, if you do well in other areas, be it performances or action. Its something the films mentioned manage, to considerably greater success than Echo 8, which succeeds only intermittently. You have also to get past the idea of killers who walk around dressed like ninjas on Halloween night – hardly inconspicuous – and get into random fights in night-clubs, because that won’t draw attention to themselves either.

The viewer must then deal with a slew of supporting actors who don’t need to give up their day jobs. Tran is okay, and Vuong actually good, with a dry sense of humour that’s welcome. Some others, though, may be delivering their lines phonetically, and the action is similarly mixed. The small scale of the production sometimes comes through, and even within the same fight, you’ll get one punch that seems to have impact, followed by two that clearly miss the mark. There are odd distractions, like the fight where someone is wielding a child’s plastic chair: what is that doing in an underground car-park? The ending is left open and a trilogy is planned. While I’m not averse to giving it a look, I hope those involved learn from this experience and do better next time.

Dir: Maria Tran, Takashi Hara
Star: Maria Tran, David Vuong, Takeshi Hara, Gabrielle Chan

Escape

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★★★
“Now, I always fight back…”

This feels almost like a throwback to the silent era, and ‘white slave’ films with titles like Traffic in Souls, combined with a significant fear of ‘the other’. As such, it’s both painfully simplistic, and endlessly fascinating in the layers of interpretation which can be read into it, should you be so inclined. On the most basic level, it’s your everyday tale of “good” girls, kidnapped for sale to the highest bidder, who need to fight to retain their modesty and virtue. [Though let the record show, at no point is there any bikini-wearing wielding of automatic weapons, despite what the poster clearly wants you to think. The heroines here prefer weapons of the blunt and/or pointy variety]

Director Ford is no stranger to this site, having previously given us Never Let Go and The Ledge. This is similarly workmanlike, benefiting from a straightforward approach and uncomplicated plot. Young, attractive women on holiday (this was filmed in the Canary Islands) are being abducted and sold off as sex slaves. The tactics used by Andras (Cronin) and his gang vary from luring their targets to a remote cabin, to barging into their vacation apartment and chloroforming them. The net result is the same: they end up in a cell, deep in the bowels of a remote building, awaiting shipment to a buyer, located somewhere even more foreign. The latest victims are Tamsin and nurse Karla (Marks), who join seven other girls in peril, including Lucy (Rankin).

As well as the clearly xenophobic approach – foreign places are bad, and foreigners worse – there’s also a notable class element here. All the girls appear “nice”, from middle- to upper-class families, while their captors are rough-hewn working-class thugs. The exception is Jude (James): also the only one with a conscience, he provides Karla and friends with the opportunity to free themselves. This mass escape definitely feels like it’s taken from women-in-prison films, the women turning the tables on their captors. Karla, in particular, initially intends to leave, but for reasons connected to her past (everyone here has issues – see the quote, top), decides to go back and make Andras pay, using the pointy weapons mentioned above.

This is the gnarliest, though not the only bit of violence here, and the film doesn’t hold back. Despite some digital blood, other effects are clearly practical and the audio work enhances the effect nicely. There’s an subplot about the search for the girls back in Britain, which is almost entirely superfluous, and could surely have been replaced with some gratuitous nudity. The film is so chastely moral in that department, it could almost pass the Hays Code. It feels like there are too many interchangeable victims as well, who sometimes blur together, especially when they are running in different directions. Is that Tamsin? Or Karla? But it’s rarely boring, and as a melodramatic throwback, pushes enough of the right buttons.

Dir: Howard J. Ford
Star: Sarah Alexandra Marks, Sophie Rankin, Sean Cronin, Louis James

Ebony Hustle 2: Ballistic Protection

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★★
“A slight improvement.”

There are times when I end up asking myself deep philosophical questions, like “Why am I doing this?” or “Isn’t there something else on which I can use my time?” In this case it, was “Who thought a sequel to the painful exercise which was Ebony Hustle was necessary?” To be fair though, this is an improvement. A half-star might be pushing it, to the point I did wonder about introducing a ★¾ rating. Or possibly a ★ and 11/16. It’s not good, to be clear. But it’s definitely less aggressively incompetent, with some of the most annoying rough edges smoothed down. For example, the audio this time mostly (although not entirely) lives around the same level, and there’s only one Facetime scene.

We are once more in the world of Ebony Howard (Lamb), a private eye who still doesn’t appear to be much private eye-ing. Of the three strands in this story, just one involves paying work, Ebony seeking to serve papers on a baby daddy to compel him to take a paternity test. There is also her investigation into the unexplained disappearance of Onyx, a friend from her strip-club days. This gets kicked up after she discovers Onyx’s phone with a video on it. Just do not expect closure for this thread, because the film ends in a way suggesting it will be a key element of Ebony Hustle 3: This Time We’re Semi-Competent, no doubt coming soon to a low-rent streaming service near you.

The bulk of it is, again, Ebony’ relationship drama. In this case, it’s with Mac (Howard), a promising basketball prospect who is being pressured to take performance-enhancing drugs by his manager, Bryan Calvin (Polo). This makes him become highly irritable, and causes Ebony so start digging into what’s going on, and Calvin does not take kindly to this interference with his meal ticket. With the help of her former strip-club boss, who is now a health guru, Ebony finds out the truth about what Mac is taking, and confronts Calvin. This is likely the only scene in which the film’s subtitle comes close to being relevant, as it’s the only time where the heroine wields a gun, or even gets physical.

The movie does a reasonably good job of managing the story, though the Onyx plot-line is largely ignored in the second half, until a late text message for sequel purposes. Lamb and Howard are not painful to watch, the latter being quite credible as a baller (though I notice the gender-neutral league he’s trying out for doesn’t appear to extend its equality to white women…). But there are way too many false steps, such as the lengthy scene which feels more like a presentation for a health supplement MLM, and the film remains in desperate need of more action and less dialogue.  At least you can now probably see Foxy Brown from here, though you remain in need of a telescope for that.

Dir: John Wayne S. III
Star: Michelle l Lamb, Jessica Mitchell, Jahaziel Howard, Polo

Ebony Hustle

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★½
“Credit where credit is due…”

When the best part of a movie is the opening credits, we have a problem. That’s the case here, with an 007-influenced montage that feels as if it cost more than the entire rest of the film to put together. However, by that point, the movie was already on thin ice, because the volume of the music was roughly three times that of dialogue in the pre-credit scene. Lunging repeatedly for the button on the remote is always a red flag for any indie movie, and proved accurate here. The same goes for the gratuitous name-checking of much better black heroines, such as Christie Love and Cleopatra Jones. They just draw attention to the deficiencies here – not that they are hard to see.

The unusually named heroine (Lamb) is a former stripper turned insurance fraud investigator, and unwillingly accepts a case to look into the disappearance of 16-year-old girl, Ny’Kia (Elizabeth). She had become part of the retinue of former gangster turned pastor, Caleb Truth (Chandler, who looks like you ordered Snoop Dogg on wish.com). He is supposedly a reformed character, and speaks all his lines in rhyme. This is an affectation which grows steadily more annoying, every time he speaks. It seems it may even have irritated the makers, because that thread – which I’d have thought would have been the main plot – is ended, alongside Truth’s doggerel rapping, with relatively little trouble by Ebony, when there’s still half an hour to go.

The remaining time is largely filled by Ebony’s romantic entanglements. She’s a highly predatory cougar, which seems something of a double standard, considering the way she goes after Caleb Truth, for activities that aren’t really that different. There are also far too many unconvincing FaceTime conversations, though at least these are largely free of the audio issues which infect many of the face-to-face scenes. There is one which does work, between Ebony and former husband, police detective Wayne (Stevenson), both expressing regret over their shared past. Both actors are convincing, and it offers a rare moment of emotion which feels genuine here. It helps it’s understated and quiet, standing in sharp contrast to the shrill yelling and show-boating which permeates just about every other moment.

I can see where the makers were trying to go. It’s just that they managed to ignore all the elements which made black heroines of the seventies so memorable. Here’s a clue, it wasn’t flirty chat-chat with younger men over the telephone. Not to say the likes of Foxy Brown weren’t sexual creatures: it just never felt it was their main raison d’etre. Here, it feels like… well, Ebony may have left the strip-club, but the strip-club never left Ebony. Her crime-fighting trails in, a long way behind and seeming little more then an afterthought. Any time this feels like it might be achieving its ends, something happens – such as Ebony’s boss appearing, an early contender for worst actor of the year – and it all comes crashing back to earth.

Dir: Jamezz Hampton
Star: Michelle l Lamb, Andrew Chandler, Ryan Elizabeth, Joel Stevenson

Evangeline: Memoir of a Teenage Serial Killer, by KC Franks

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

When I see “Reader discretion is advised,” on an Amazon page, I tend to take it with a grain of salt. I’ve been enjoying media at the outer edges for longer than most readers here have been alive, and so am not easily shocked, disturbed or offended, to put it mildly. I’m ussure this quite managed to do any of those, but I will definitely say this: yes, reader discretion is advised. This is a rough, nasty and often unpleasant read. But it’s dealing with rough, nasty and often unpleasant topics, so the approach is entirely in keeping with the subject matter and not inappropriate.

The “heroine” – and I use quotes advisedly – is Angeline Gottschalk, a teenage girl who lives in rural Nebraska and has a truly unfortunate life. Her mother is mentally ill, she’s bullied at high school (in part due to having a stutter), and her stepfather, a local deputy sheriff, has bee abusing Angeline in the most vile ways imaginable since she was aged eleven. Eventually, Angeline’s psyche snapped, and split off an alternate personality as a way of handling the abuse – basically, acting as her psychological stunt double. Evangeline, as the other part of Angeline is named, calls herself “Defender of the weak. Champion of the abused. Bold. Fearless. And extremely pissed-off.” But the title of the book is arguably more accurate: serial killer. 

Oh, her targets are more than a little Dexter-like, to be sure – beginning with the stepfather, who will not be abusing anyone, ever again. But Evangeline then decides to target the deserving, in her mind, sex offenders who live in the local area. Rather than just being a stand-in for Angeline in the darkest hours, she begins to act independently, setting up a conflict between the two personas, which only one can win. For Angeline wants nothing more than to be left alone – ideally with her crush, Caleb Quinn. Except, Caleb’s brother, Billy is one of her biggest tormentors, and he has friends whose intentions and actions a) are even worse, and b) make them prime targets for Evangeline’s brutal methods of summary justice.

As you can perhaps guess, it’s all going to get very messy, both in the emotional and blood-spattered senses. The writing style feels a little rough and ready, almost bordering on the literary version of torture porn in some scenes. Franks tears into the violence with much the same glee that Evangeline tears into her victims: male readers may find themselves crossing their legs uncomfortably from time to time. There’s a near-total lack of empathetic characters in this: even Angeline is little more than a human piñata for life’s torments. Still, it’s sometimes good to peer over the edge into the abyss of humanity’s darkest depths, and this book certainly delivers on that. A stand-alone novel is fine. Any concept of a series here would not be something of interest.

Author: KC Franks
Publisher: Seven Crows Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Stand-alone novel.

The Escape

  By

★★
“Not so great…”

I’m just going to begin by quoting the opening credit titles. Spelling, grammar and punctuation as received. “At the early stage of Republic of China, Yuan Hsi Hai wanted to rebel the democratic government & be the king. But there were 300,000 soldiers at Yuan Wan under the command of General Tsai obstructed his desire, so he cheated General Tsai to Peking & confined his movements. So Yuan who lived in Chu Jen Hall could fulfil his ambition but…” I reproduce this because, to a large extent, that’s everything I’ve got in terms of the over-arching plot here. It’s all about Tsai (Kwan) getting out of the city, in order to lead his troops and, presumably, frustrate Yuan’s dictatorial ambitions.

Key to this is Peking Opera star Hsiao Yu (Lee), who is hired by Yuan’s men to keep an eye on the General. However, she’s not as loyal as her employer would hope, and she gradually becomes attached to and involved with Tsai. This eventually results in her helping him to escape the house arrest under which he has been placed. I believe this to be true with… let’s say 90% confidence. There does appear to be other stuff going on: none of it is able to make it through the terrible presentation, and out the other side, to provide details which I prepared to commit to the keyboard. It’s kinda clear why Lee’s Queen Boxer made it out in the West, and this didn’t, even though both were made around the same time.

This did rather well at Taiwan’s 1973 Golden Horse awards, winning Best Film, Leading Actor, Screenplay and a special award for “Outstanding Performance” going to Lee (she lost Best Leading Actress to Hsiao-Lao Lin in A Heroic Fight). All I can say is, it must have been a very slow year in cinema, for this largely plodding and uninteresting history-political drama to have triumphed. Though, again, the presentation does it no justice. For example, there’s one scene where Tsai is repeatedly writing something in large letters on paper. It’s clearly very important to him. Unfortunately, the subtitles – as ever, intended for a Chinese audience, not a Western one – don’t bother to translate it. So its significance is entirely lost.

Lee is about the only reason to watch this, and the film definitely goes up a gear whenever she’s on screen. Her background actually was in the Peking Opera, making this right in her wheel-house. The director – and some sources also credit both Kwan and Florence Yu Fung-Chi – wisely lets her talent shine through, and it’s a no-nonsense approach that works. Witness, for example, the casual way, she shoves a victim out of the way with her feet, after crushing his larynx. But one of the problems is, I honestly couldn’t tell you who’s she’s fighting at the end, or why, since the General has already escaped. It’s just another element lost in translation here, like so many others, and leaves this an underwhelming entity, in the only form available.

Dir: Min-Hsiung Wu
Star: Judy Lee, Peter Yang Kwan, Lee Hung, Cheung Kwong-Chiu 

An Eye for an Eye (2000)

  By

★★
“Somewhat eye-dentical.”

This opens with a scene that is almost a direct life from the similarly titled Eye for An Eye, directed by John Schlesinger four years previously. Here, businesswoman Carmen Pak (Cheong) is on a video-call – or, at least, the primitive 2000 version thereof – with her daughter, Shan (Tong), when someone breaks in and attacks Shan. Carmen can do little except watch in horror as her daughter is brutalized and raped. Though Shan identifies her rapist as Kiu Chi Yeung (Tong), there’s enough doubt over her statement, specifically regarding a tattoo he does not posses, that the police are unable to do anything. After further tragedy, Carmen decides to seek the justice she has been denied, through her own hands.

To this movie’s mild credit, it does divert from its American predecessor after the opening sequence, though this never manages to find its own identity entirely. It’s based on a rather shaky premise: namely that someone accused of rape would then, almost without hesitation, embark on a relationship with his accuser’s mother. It’s not even as if Yeung doesn’t know who Carmen is, which could have given the concept a sheen of plausibility. She’s right there when Shan physically attacks him after they both leave the police station. The script tries to walk a line of uncertainty as to whether or not Shan is guilty, though not particularly successfully. If you can’t figure out who was the perpetrator before the final confrontation, you haven’t been paying enough attention.

I did like the supporting character of Officer Chan (Ko), who initially comes off as a bit of a callous jerk, caring more about his mahjong losses than the rape case he’s investigating. However, he becomes more sympathetic as things unfold, being more a harried and overworked cop, who still tries to warn Carmen into taking care of things herself. It’s likely a better arc than the heroine gets, her development being largely summarized in a training montage where she hides a knife in the sofa, and uses it to attack innocent watermelons. It’s a curiously specific bit of practice, one made all the more odd by having little or no relevance down the road. She’s no more than semi-competent in terms of self-defense.

The same grade likely applies to the film-making on view as a whole. I can’t point to any elements that are especially deficient. Yet even less can I point to any elements which demonstrate innovation or even artistry. Everything plods along in workmanlike fashion, towards an ending that offers no particular surprises or thrills. Considering the subject matter, it’s surprisingly tame as exploitation, and would barely seem out of place as a Lifetime original movie. I was left yearning for the lurid excess of someone like Wong Jing to inject some pep into proceedings. We are, after all, talking about an anti-rapist vigilante here. This feels more like Carmen is fighting white-collar crime of some kind.

Dir: Yuen Shu-Wai
Star: Angie Cheong,  Michael Tong, Blacky Ko, Leila Tong

Emily the Criminal

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★★★★
“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

Enola Holmes 2

  By

★★★½
“The fair sex is your department.”

I had forgotten how much I really did not like the original movie. It’s particularly hard to believe, because this sequel is a significant improvement in just about every way. Most of my criticisms from the review seem to have been addressed. For example, the most annoying character, Enola’s mother, played by Helena Bonham-Carter, is all but absent, and the second most useless role, aristocrat Lord Tewkesbury (Partridge), is considerably less irritating, serving an actual purpose. Sherlock Holmes (Cavill) is shown to be the great detective, familiar from Conan Doyle’s stories. Last but not least, Enola (Brown) is a more mature, less precocious character, and even her fourth-wall breaking seems more natural and less an affectation. 

The story is better too. It begins with Enola, now trying to make her own way as a detective, is engaged to look for a missing young woman, who has vanished from her match factory job, after purloining some documents from the owner’s office. Digging into this brings Enola into a web of corruption extending high up in the government, and eventually overlaps with Sherlock’s investigation into financial irregularities in the Treasury department. Enola finds herself framed for murder by the shadowy Superintendent Grail (Thewlis) of Scotland Yard, and has to avoid the authorities’ grasp, while working with her brother to untangle the web of intrigue. It doesn’t quite all work – the overlap with Sherlock’s case is never well explained – yet it is almost always interesting and entertaining. 

The biggest step up is likely Brown’s portrayal of the heroine. Two years is a long time for a teenager: we saw our own daughter go from a problematic 16-year-old to an 18-year-old human being, and much the same transformation has occurred here. Similarly, Enola now seems like an actual person, not the artificial character created for a book. Her relationships – especially with her brother, though also with Tewkesbury – reflect this, and seem like the kind real people would have. The near-absence of showboating feminist Eudoria Holmes helps, though there are still moments that may provoke slight to moderate eye-rolling. I’d say the finale at the match factory falls into this category, and is certainly unnecessary. 

The action feels at a slightly lower, or at least, less frenetic level. The main set-piece is Enola’s breakout from prison (this is also where her mum shows up, along with her martial arts teacher sidekick). It’s not bad, though does feel more like a duty, and an add-on instead of an organic part of the movie. The incorporation into the plot of an actual event, the matchgirl strike of 1888, is a nice idea, grounding the plot, though does become a vehicle for some obvious soap-boxing. “Radical” maybe isn’t quite the compliment the film thinks. In the main, however, this was a very pleasant and unexpected surprise, whose 130 minutes seemed considerably shorter. Bring on a third installment, and hopefully sooner rather than later. 

Dir: Harry Bradbeer
Star: Millie Bobby Brown, Henry Cavill, Louis Partridge, David Thewlis