Tag: e

Ebony Hustle

  By

★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

  By

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

  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

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

Eight Strikes of the Wildcat

  By

★★★
“Pussy Riot.”

I guess this is, at its heart, about the quest for a treasure map that has been torn into two pieces. Though you could be forgiven for not really noticing, as most of the cast seem to forget about it for the bulk of the running time. The heroine is Shao Wa (Chi), whose father is killed by the Three Rats in their quest for the map. She ends up being punted off a cliff and presumed dead by them. Naturally – it’d be a short movie otherwise – she’s not as dead as they think. She’s rescued by the inevitable kung-fu master and his annoying sidekick, Lee Ta Fa (Hung), who nurse her back to health, and give her the skills necessary to beat the Three Rats.

The clue there is in their name, for their martial arts are all rodent-inspired. This being a seventies Taiwanese flick,  means all their movies are accompanied by a dubbed-in soundtrack of squeaking. Literally, every move they make, sounds as if they are breaking in a new pair of loafers. Their big move involves all three of them forming a mouse, with one the head, the next the body and the third the hindquarters and tail. It’s every bit as loony as it sounds. You should probably have worked out from the title how Shao Wa is going to counter them: and, yes, this means her moves are accompanied by caterwauling. For variety, she also does “beauty kung-fu,” which seems to involve a lot of pouting.

There are a lot of training montages in this one, though I minded less than I generally would, because they’re quite entertaining in their own right. Chi, who doesn’t appear to have made any other movies, is clearly flexible and gymnastic, and some of the stuff she pulls off is genuinely impressive [I mean, I regard getting out of bed in the morning as an achievement], such as the splits onto a trapeze. I suspect there could have been wire-assistance involved there, yet enough of the other stuff she does clearly was her, to make it plausible. It’s hard to tell under the dubbing whether her acting is any good, though that’s more a bonus than a requirement.

Eventually, the Three Rats kill her master, and Shao Wa goes after them, accompanied by the almost entirely useless Lee, whose contribution to that point is roughly split 50/50 between unhelpful remarks and sexual harassment. When it comes to the final fight between Shao Wa and the Three Rats, he’s more of a colour commentator than anything effective. It’s one of the few cases I can think of where the last battle is a one vs. many, with the heroine being the one. Like the rest of Shao Wa’s fights, it is a little too obviously staged, yet is a decent effort. It would probably have been at least 25% better without the sound effects, however. It’s definitely an area where less would have been more.

Dir: Yi-Hsiu Lin
Star: Dan Dan Chi, Li Tao Hung, Hung Tsai, Tao-Hung Lee

Ever After

  By

★★½
“Off-centre, not dead centre”

This is not your normal action heroine film. Nor is it your normal zombie apocalypse film. While it certainly nods in both directions, it seems entirely committed to going in its own direction. My mental jury is still out on whether or not this was a good thing or not. I think if I’d perhaps been prewarned what to expect, I might have been better equipped to handle this. It takes place after the outbreak of a plague, with the dwindling number of survivors now holed up in two cities: Weimar, where infection is an immediate death sentence, and Jena, reported to be trying to research a cure. 

The mentally fragile Vivi (Kohlhof) tries to do her part by volunteering on the fences surrounding Weimar, but a brutal incident on her first day sends her into a state of shock. She tries to head for Jena on the automated train which runs between there and Weimar. On it, she meets Eva (Lehrer), who is considerably more versed in the ways of survival. When the train breaks down, the two young women have to set off on foot across country. Which is where things get increasingly odd, as they bump into characters such as the Gardener (Dyrholm), who is running a market garden in the middle of the apocalypse. The zombies themselves also begin to mutate, such as the one on a wedding dress, whose face is half plant. Is nature healing? Or is a human apocalypse not necessarily such a bad thing from the perspective of the rest of Earth’s species?

There is a fair amount going on here to unpack, and it feels like the kind of party to which you have to bring your own booze. For the film offers no easy answers; indeed, I’m not necessarily certain what are the questions it is asking. At times it felt like there was a religious aspect with the Gardener being the snake in Eden. Yet at others, it is more about the different ways Vivi and Eva come to terms with the traumas they have experienced. Vivi shuts down, emotionally and mentally, while Eva adopts a hard shell, prepared to do whatever is necessary to survive. Also of note: there are almost no male speaking roles, though it’s subtle enough not to matter [The crew are also largely women]

There are still the required moments of threat, heroic sacrifice, etc. familiar from the genre. However, these feel almost perfunctory, as if imposed on the director in some kind of contractual obligation. The film might have been better to avoid the standard beats entirely, as these feel out of line with the rest of the movie. On the other hand, if it had gone full art-house, it’s possible I would not have bothered watching it, and almost certainly wouldn’t be reviewing it here. Still, it’s an approach to the zombie film I’ve definitely not seen before. Even if this wasn’t what I expected – or wanted, to be honest – that has to be worth something. 

Dir: Carolina Hellsgård
Star: Gro Swantje Kohlhof, Maja Lehrer, Trine Dyrholm, Barbara Philipp
a.k.a. Endzeit

Everything Everywhere All at Once

  By

★★★½
“I’d have settled for two of three.”

This has been a long, long time coming. I’ve been a fan of Yeoh since seeing her Hong Kong starring debut, Yes, Madam, which came out all the way back in 1985. Over the years since, her career has had its ups and downs, including complete retirement after her marriage in the late eighties. She returned, and is the only actress to have appeared in two movies rated five stars here: Heroic Trio and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. But her career in Hollywood has been limited to sterling support roles, in both movies and television, encompassing everything from Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies through Star Trek: Discovery to Crazy Rich Asians. A starring role, appropriate to her talents, never seemed to come along. 

Until now. Thirty-seven years after Yes, Madam, and at the age of 59, this film finally puts Yeoh where she deserves to be: front and centre. Yet, perhaps partly due to how long I’ve been waiting for this, I must confess to being a bit disappointed this is not a classic to match the titles listed above. Oh, it certainly has its moments, and Yeoh is as good as expected. However, its 139-minute running-time feels more a curse than a blessing. The concept at its core is almost infinite in scope, and I did feel the movie was trying to include all of it. Less could have been more, with a targetted approach preferable to the relentless overload adopted by the makers, which left me feeling as if I was drinking from a fire-hose.

The multiverses here literally rotate around Evelyn Wang (Yeoh), who runs a laundromat teetering on the edge of failure, with her husband, Waymond (Quan). Their marriage is also failing, her relationship with her daughter, Joy (Hsu) is on rocky ground, and she has to go to an appointment with hard-ass IRS tax auditor Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Curtis). The last is where things kick off, as she is visited by a Waymond from an alternate universe, who tells Evelyn she is the only hope of foiling the evil Jobu Tupaki. That’s an alternate Joy, who has gone insane and created a black hole-like vortex which could destroy all the multiverses. Fortunately, Evelyn’s abject failings at life give her the ability to tap into all the skills and knowledge of the other, better versions of herself.

Like I said: almost infinite in scope. Apparently, co-writer/director Kwan was diagnosed with ADHD during the creative process: to be frank, it shows. While the imagination on view is admirable, the film bounces about between ideas at a ferocious rate, almost regardless of whether they deserve it. We spend an inordinate amount of time in a multiverse where everyone has long, floppy fingers. Yet there is also buttplug-fu, which is an example of the movie going places you’d never have expected could be so entertaining. Or a lengthy, surprisingly engrossing, scene in which two rocks in an otherwise lifeless multiverse have a conversation in captions. Because why not?

To the film’s credit, it never abandons its characters, and that helps keep it grounded. Albeit only just, on occasion the movie standing on its tippy-toes as it tries desperately to avoid being blown away by its own excesses. It’s perhaps telling that, despite all the film’s visual bluster, the most effective moment for me was among the simplest, one character telling another, “In another life, I would’ve been happy just doing laundry and taxes with you.” As such, Yeoh is the story’s heart, and gets to demonstrate her unquestionable acting talent. It has been fascinating to see the development of that, especially considering her lack of not just experience but any formal training. I mean, she first entered the field close to four decades ago, as a former Miss World contestant. How many of them eventually go on to get talk of an Oscar?

It’s as a result of this that I kept watching the film, because I genuinely cared what happened to Evelyn. I wanted to see her figure it all out and make peace with the various forces trying to tear her humdrum life apart. From that angle, it’s close to soap-opera, albeit an unusually effective one. Except, of course, the means by which that peace is potentially achieved, includes multiverse hopping, and fighting an evil version of your own daughter, who wields a gurgling plughole of doom. It’s the overlap between the mundane and bizarre where this finds its own voice. The problem is, it tries too hard to live up to the title. Sure, give us everything, everywhere. I’d just rather it hadn’t done so, all at once.

Yet, similarly, it leaves an awful lot of potential on the table. Why is kung-fu virtually the only talent Evelyn uses? Tap into a universe where she’s a cab driver, and give us an epic car-chase. Or the one where she’s a cat-burglar, for heist purposes. It’s not hard to come up with a dozen such threads. Perhaps the makers were constrained by their budget, a relatively cheap $25 million – less than Crazy Rich Asians. They do an admirable job of squeezing value out of it; again, the sheer pace probably helps, with your brain trying so desperately to keep up, it’s hard-pushed to pay attention to any of the finer details.

But I’m glad I won’t go to my grave with my final paid cinematic experience being Terminator: Dark Fate. [Though the two Neanderthals beside us, talking loudly and checking their phones throughout, really make me think we are done with theatres] The Daniels deserve credit for the obvious invention displayed, and this is the kind of original property I’m happy to support, over another sequel and/or shitty comic adaptation. I also must mention the supporting cast, who are uniformly great, particularly Hsu as both aggravated daughter and multiiverse threatening villainess [There’s also a cameo by another eighties Hong Kong action actress, Michiko Nishiwaki. Maybe she’ll get her own movie next?]. That it stars one of the most under-rated actresses in Hollywood, finally getting the opportunity she deserves, is alone reason enough to see this. Just don’t expect too much.

Dir: Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
Star: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis

Enhanced

  By

★★½
“X Offender”

The German title for this is, apparently, Mutant Outcasts, and that perhaps gives you a better insight than the official, relatively generic title. There’s more than a hint of X-Men to this, though the superpowered members of humanity in question here, are artificial constructions, created as part of a secret research project by the military-industrial complex. They are now out in the world with the regular population, but are being recaptured by operative George Shepherd (Tchortov) and his squad. Their latest target is Anna (Bale), who had been living quietly as a car mechanic, until she’s forced to use her powers after a gang of thugs show up. That gets her on George’s radar – but also that of David (Mark). While initially, he seems on Anna’s side, turns out he has been killing the superpowered citizens, and absorbing their powers into himself.

There’s a nice mix of grey here, in that George shifts sides as he realizes the truth. But the authorities, such as his boss Captain Williams (Holmes) are not “evil,” as such, but genuinely believe the escapees present a serious threat to the rest of the population. To some extent, he’s not wrong, as the potential for their powers in the wrong hands e.g. David’s, is very significant. It might have been nice if he had been one of them too, for balance; the actual explanation is, I must admit, rather implausible, even in a film about vat-grown mutants with paranormal abilities. It all builds in a rather predictable way to the face-off at the headquarters of Military-Industrial Incorporated, where David walks in, and starts tossing bodies about like rag-dolls.

The director’s background is in the stunt world, and you can tell this, with plenty of scenes of his colleagues throwing themselves around enthusiastically. I was rather disappointed with the lack of screen-time given to Anna’s powers, though this is somewhat redeemed by a good hand-to-hand battle between her and David which forms the film’s climax. To that point, I was seriously wondering whether this should even be reviewed here, but it managed to push the needle over the necessary red line. Most of the time, this is adequately entertaining, though comes off more as an upper-tier SyFy original movie: workmanlike, rather than memorable.

Indeed, I watched it less than an hour ago, and already found myself having to Google certain points like character names. Bale does make a reasonably good impression; she comes over a little like a low-rent version of Tatiana Maslany. The rest of the cast, however, struggle to create any significant impact; the line between them and the generic stuntmen that go flying around is a thin one. There is definitely a strong sense of deja vu in the overall concept: if you’ve not seen several films or series about poor, unfortunate superheroes being persecuted, you’re clearly not trying! But this is reasonably well-executed as to just about get over the red line as passable entertainment too.

Dir: James Mark
Star: Alanna Bale, George Tchortov, Chris Mark, Adrian Holmes