Tag: f

Fighting Karma, by Reid Bracken

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

This is a sequel to Saving Karma, also by Reid Bracken, and follows on from the events there. When we last saw heroine Bree Thomas, she had taken down, in spectacular fashion, the city belonging to Chinese business mogul Aslam Meng, which was a front for large-scale organ harvesting. At the end, she and her father, Cole, both discover that the other is not dead as was previously thought. Though there’s still quite a lot of road to cover before Cole and Bree will be re-united. That journey is the main topic of this second installment, together with continuing to fight against Meng’s sinister plans.

For – surprise! – the billionaire is not as dead as he seemed at the end of part one. He’s just moved on, though is still obsessed with the idea of extending his life past its natural span. That’s a process in which Bree will be playing a very important role. He is also engaged in a plan to mine rare-earth minerals from the ocean floor in the Andaman Sea, regardless of the ecological price. Hey, if it causes an earthquake, tsunami and swamps Burma, that’s just a bonus opportunity for expansion, right? But there’s dissent in the ranks, with his niece Jade looking to supplant her uncle as the head of the Meng Foundation. 

On its own, this would likely be considered a borderline entry for this site, because it’s as much Cole’s story as Bree’s, if not more so. It’s 35 pages or more before she so much as shows up, and then there’s a significant chunk where Bree is basically out of commission entirely. For good reason, to be sure, but it still diminishes the heroine action quotient. What perhaps pushes it over the necessary quota are the supporting characters. For beyond Bree, Jade makes for a strong and capable antagonist, and Cole also has a (sort of) sidekick, Tita, who ups the content in this department. Bree gets her work in, perhaps most memorably a spectacular escape on a Ducati from a cargo ship in to Macao.

There’s some good tech stuff in here too: if you’re familiar of the concept of “hard SF”, this could be described along the same lines as “hard action,” with a significant helping of gadgetry and cutting-edge undersea stuff which I liked. I must confess to slight eye-rolling when getting to the surprise at the end, because it reminded me of the Oscar Wilde quote: “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two, looks like carelessness.” I’m trusting the author will spin the wheel differently in the third volume which the revelation sets up. There is certainly enough scope that it shouldn’t be too taxing to do, and providing there’s a little more Bree on the menu, I’m looking forward to it.

Author: Reid Bracken
Publisher: Independently published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 2 of 2 (so far) in the Bree Thomas Karma series. I received this copy in exchange for a honest review.

Fool Me Once

  By

★★★½
“An elegant exercise in plate-spinning.”

Maya Stern (Keegan) is having a rough patch. A former helicopter pilot in the military, she was sent home and discharged under murky circumstances. While she was away, her sister was killed in what looks like a botched burglary, and not long after her return, husband Joe is also shot and killed in front of Maya, when they are walking in the park. But is everything what it seems? Because when checking the nanny-cam monitoring her young daughter, Maya sees a shocking site: her supposedly dead husband visiting the house. This kicks Maya into an unrelenting search for the truth, which will send her down a rabbit-hole and uncover a lot of sordid secrets, dating back decades.

I have to admire the script here, which takes an entire loom-ful of plot threads, and manages adeptly to keep them functioning, instead of collapsing into a Gordian knot. As well as all of Maya’s difficulties, there’s [deep breath]: the ongoing health issues of investigating officer, DC Marty McGreggor (Fetscher), who might or might not be corrupt; her nephew and niece discovering they have a half-brother; the supposed suicide of Joe’s brother decades previously; mysterious phone-calls from a video arcade; a dead body in a freezer; and the business shenanigans of Joe’s family, who run a pharmaceutical company under the watchful gaze of matriarch Judith Burkett (Lumley). I was genuinely impressed it all tied together by the end of the eighth episode.

Admittedly, the twists might prove to be excessive for some tastes, and I did spot the big one at the end before it arrived (it’s something I’ve seen in various forms a number of times elsewhere). But I enjoy the almost melodramatic approach, even if the relocation of the story from the United States to Britain required some twistiness around the topic of firearms. Keegan delivers a committed performance as Maya, who is far from perfect, yet relentless in pursuit of “justice” – and quotes used very advisedly there. I also loved seeing Lumley, who was my first celeb crush – longer ago than I like to think, back in her New Avengers days. Now 77 and still awesome, someone needs to make her a Dame, alongside Judi and Helen.

I was uncertain about whether or not this qualified here, but I think the final episode delivered the necessary amount of bad-assery from Maya. It does suffer from an unnecessary coda, set eighteen years (!) after the plot basically finished, and therefore presumably at some point in the future. Still no flying cars, unfortunately. I’ve not read the book on which this is based, but this is certainly much more engaging than the turgid Hulu mystery, Murder at the End of the World. I’d definitely not be averse to watching other adaptations of Harlan Coben work. Turns out this is the eighth made by Netflix, though the others are presumably Maya free, because… well, let’s just say “reasons”, and leave it at that!

Creator: Danny Brocklehurst
Star:  Michelle Keegan, Dino Fetscher, Joanna Lumley. Dänya Griver

Fear The Night

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★★★
“Bows before bros.”

Director LaBute is best known around these parts for his ill-conceived remake of classic horror The Wicker Man, which is generally regarded as spectacularly bad,  and is probably best-known for spawning memes involving Nicolas Cage and bees. So expectations going into this were… not high, shall we say. On that basis, the three-star rating is something of a pleasant surprise, though most of the credit for this should got to its star, rather than the director. Tess (Q) is a veteran of the war in Iraq, who is struggling to reconnect to her two sisters. Rose is getting married, and is nice enough that Tess is willing to attend her bachelorette party at the family cabin, deep in the country. But Beth (Foster) is a straight-up bitch.

So Tess isn’t exactly having a good time. All the giggly gal-pals are not her idea of fun; between that and Beth’s sniping, Tess’s new-found sobriety is on thin ice. Such familial and mental health concerns are quickly rendered irrelevant, by the unexpected arrival of an arrow, right through the middle of one of the guests. Turns out a local group of drug dealers want inside the house, which up until the unexpected arrival of the bridal party, had been being used as a safe place to store their ill-gotten gains. All of a sudden, it’s less about cheeky appetizers, getting tipsy and male strippers, more like a no-holds barred fight to try and survive the night.

This isn’t exactly subtle: LaBute seems fairly obsessed with the battle between the sexes (something certainly an element of The Wicker Man), though here it’s more of an all-out war. Fortunately for the fairer sex: Tess is far and away the most competent of anyone here. This is established in an early, nice scene at a gas station where the women are being hassled by three locals. While Tess doesn’t exactly de-escalate the situation, it does a good job of establishing her background, and zero tolerance for anyone who disrespects her or the military. Of course, being Maggie Q, it’s no surprise when she can deliver, despite being severely outweighed by her opponents, in a crisp, crunchy manner that does not mess around.

Less effective are… Well, everyone else, to be honest. The villains, in particular, are a fairly mediocre bunch, who go down surprisingly easy, even when they end up going hand-to-hand with a bridesmaid rather than an annoyed veteran. For example, Mia (Crovatin) is chosen to try to make a break for a nearby house for help, having been a track athlete as school. When cornered by one of the men, the resulting bludgeoning is delivered from her end. Outside of their bows, the limited threat they present here definitely stops this from being all it can be, and the ending is more of a damp squid [on review, I’m letting that typo stand…] than Tess deserves to get. But Q is entertaining as ever, and helps overcome what sometimes feel like unnecessary attempts at social commentary.

Dir: Neil LaBute
Star: Maggie Q, Kat Foster, Travis Hammer, Gia Crovatin 

Furies

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★★★½
“If you don’t want men to push you around, be stronger than them.”

This is a prequel of sorts to Furie, partly telling the story of how its villainess, Thanh Soi (Toc) came to be (also: not to be confused with The Furies). However, it’s more the saga of Bi (Quynh), the daughter of a rural prostitute who makes her way to the city seeking her fortune.  There, she joins Thanh and Hong (Rima) under the protection of the Svengali-like Jacqueline (Ngô), who trains and indoctrinates them towards their eventual mission. This involves bringing down the leader of the city’s underworld, who has been exploiting women for years, in addition to other unsavoury activities. 

He goes by the descriptive and fairly accurate name of Mad Dog Hai, and his underlings are little more sane. When the trio of women make their presence felt by sabotaging a drug deal, Hai is not happy, and from there, it’s an escalating series of tit-for-tat attacks. We also discover that Jacqueline’s motives are not purely altruistic, being considerably more personal then she originally admits. There’s an argument, which the movie does not explicitly address, that she’s exploiting the three young women herself, albeit in a different way from Mad Dog. Rather than physical abuse (of which the film is certainly not short), hers is a psychological approach, taking their anger against men and focusing it against Hai, as well as sharpening it to a particularly fine point.

At 109 minutes, it’s arguably a little too long, and the film generally works better in action, then when pushing the more melodramatic elements. The makeover montage of Bi, for example, is superfluous and too obvious. If the editing during the fights is perhaps slightly too frenetic, it isn’t too much of a problem. This is more than made up for by the high-impact nature of the combat, with all three characters (and Jacqueline, by the end), going full force into an endless slew of faceless minions, thrown at them by Hai. There’s also a motorcycle chase/fight, apparently inspired by John Wick 3, though the execution is painfully green-screen. Would it have hurt the makers at least to get a wind machine, and create the illusion of movement?

When sticking to the purely physical stuff though, it’s mostly effective stuff. Nothing ground-breaking, admittedly, yet there are times when sticking to the basics and keeping things simple is probably for the best. It’s not exactly an advertisement for Vietnam: Chris turned to me when it finished, and firmly crossed the country off her holiday destination list. The city does seem a bit of a sewer, to put it mildly, though I must say the cinematography here is all pastel neon colours, and nicely executed. It at least helps lightly paper over the wholesale unpleasantness which is going on. I’m fairly sure this cost a fraction of bigger Netflix originals like Extraction II, yet for entertainment value, it’s not so far behind.

Dir: Ngô Thanh Vân
Star: Dong Anh Quynh, Toc Tien, Rima Thanh Vy, Ngô Thanh Vân

Family Blood

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★½
“Bloody hell.”

Tubi TV has become a goldmine of obscure, weird and, very occasionally, wonderful content for me. When I say “obscure”, I mean their selection includes films like this, about which the IMDb has only the barest of information. No external reviews; no user reviews; not even a rating. The film exists, and at the time of writing, nobody on the Internet has apparently noticed. To be honest, there is  good reason for this: it’s another one of those modern blaxploitation vehicles, which seem to exist mostly for the director’s pals to show up on the soundtrack. Yet even by the low standards of that genre, this is technically inept, with woefully shoddy audio and almost no storyline to speak of.

What there is, occurs ten years after the event – not that you’d know it, if it wasn’t for a caption saying “TEN YEARS EARLIER”.  Det. Lens Smith (Stagger) tells the story of his ultimately unsuccessful efforts to locate a group of women assassins, operating at the time in Las Vegas. There was Dawn (Jaye), Phoenix (Cantrell)… and it then appears the group ran out of proper names, with the others being called Red Death (Douglas), White Tiger and – I kid you not – Yellow Fever. I have to repeat, there’s really no plot here. One of them is married to another LVPD detective. There’s some light bickering among the women. At the end, Det. Smith gets up and walks away, vowing to re-open the case. That’s it. 

Pluses are hard to find. It’s barely an hour long: that’s one. Initially, I thought it might eschew the usual crap rap, with the first murder accompanied by electro-Celtic bagpiping, which was at least different. This didn’t last long, unfortunately. There are occasional moments of droll humour, referencing the Die Hard and Lethal Weapon franchises, and one victim gets an extra bullet, for having had the temerity to touch his assassin’s ass. Though most of the killings are uninteresting or even unintentionally laughable. What assassin worth their salt, would climb to the roof of a building to try and shoot their victim on the sidewalk with a silenced handgun? I know nothing about guns and still realize that’s flat-out stupid.

As is sadly common, the audio is about the worst aspect. The talking head interview of Det. Smith is the only time where this is acceptable. Anything outside is doomed to be muffled; anything inside is equally inevitably afflicted with a tinny echo. I had to keep my finger permanently hovering over the volume button, turning it up whenever anyone was speaking, knowing that at any second the crap rap would burst out and send my ear-drums to Bleeding Town. In the end, I enabled the closed captions instead. Problem solved. The women are reasonably attractive, and keep their clothes on, with nothing more than a bit of cleavage to show for your troubles. It’s all, very definitely, not one of Tubi’s finest moments.

Dir: Bowfinger Stagger
Star: Kevin Stagger, Marlo Jaye, Porsha Cantrell, Ta’Sha Douglas

Fight for Survival

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★★
“Suffering from a bit of an identity crisis.”

This Taiwanese kung-fu potboiler just about manages to sustain interest for an hour, before losing the plot (literally, and such as it was to begin with) down the stretch. It begins with ten martial arts masters stealing an omnibus edition of fighting manuals from the local Shaolin temple. Trying to get entry, and failing, because they won’t admit women, is Shi Fu Chun (Kwan). With the help of former head priest Lin Chiu (Chan), who still lives nearby, she is taught a slew of skills, and ends up assigned the task of recovering the purloined books, and restoring the temple’s honour. Oh, except the “positive kung-fu” learned is causing Shi Fu to transition into a man. So she/he (inexplicably, the 1977 film does not provide us with preferred pronouns…) needs to find and learn some “negative kung-fu” stat, to counter the process. 

This is mostly standard stuff, with the novice being trained by the master, before going out into the world and putting her skills to the test. Except it feels like the movie was edited down from a four-hour version, as the story jumps from Shi having about three of the ten parts, to her heading back to the temple with them all. The heads of the ten clans then show up, and it all becomes almost incomprehensible. About the only part that I am certain about, had them forming what looked disturbingly like a kung-fu version of the Human Centipede [now, that’s a movie I would… if not perhaps pay to see, certainly consider downloading from a dodgy website]. I think one of the clan leaders tries to fight his way into the temple, defeating various occupants in different styles, leading up to a fight again Lin. He faked his own death to get Shi accepted, and since then, has apparently been sitting around the temple, covered in gold paint, because that’s what they do to dead ex-leaders.

There are a couple of bits which are kinda cool, such as Shi having to accept the branding of the temple, carried out through her carrying the red-hot cauldron depicted on the poster. One of her skills involves the ability to extend her arms and legs to remarkable length, which leads to some interesting fights. However, the old gender re-assignment plot may well reach new depths of implausibility. Somehow, this is repeatedly mistaken for a man. Another weirdness (at least, to contemporary Western viewers) is the good luck symbol on the clothing worn by the heroine and her allies. Yep, it’s the ol’ Buddhist swastika. Beyond such trivial concerns, the main problem though, is that most of the fights are pedestrian and uninteresting. The makers even bring Judy Lee in, and don’t allow her to get into action. This shows a severe misunderstanding of how things should be done, and if you pass on this, you’ll not be missing much.

Dir: Cheng Hou
Star: Polly Shang Kwan, Chan Wai-Lau, Che Chi-Sang, Judy Lee
a.k.a. Lady Wu Tang or Shaolin Tamo Systique

Fountaine and the Vengeful Nun Who Wouldn’t Die

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★★
“Jack of all trades, master of nun…”

You will probably understand why the title more or less rocketed to the top of my watch-list, especially when accompanied by the poster (right). Naturally, it was almost inevitable that it could not possibly live up to either: the question was mostly, how far short it would fall. The answer is, “a fair bit, yet not irredeemably so,” even if the first half if considerably duller than I wanted. Indeed, it’s also rather confusing, in terms of what’s going on. As well as I can piece things together, Mary (Stern) is a nun who gets sent to an asylum after losing her sister, though it turns out to be less a mental-care facility than you’d expect.

There, she meets and falls for another nun, Lee (Tripp), and the pair escape. Mary eventually falls in with a vigilante group, intent on taking down the criminal empire of Fountaine, while Lee is abducted by the same group. With the help of trusty sidekick Sam (Clower), who was also Lee’s adopted brother, Mary acquires the set of special skills necessary, in addition to a fetching zebra-striped eye-patch and a very pointy Samurai sword This leads to storming Fountaine’s headquarters, in order to rescue her love. I think that hits most of the main points, though I accept no responsibility if I’m wrong. To be honest though, this is not really plot-oriented, being a collage of elements from exploitation cinema over the last fifty years.

The most obvious influence is probably Kill Bill, which was itself a patchwork assembly, so we’ve got to the point where exploitation cinema truly is eating itself. The other angle is clearly the nunsploitation genre of sinful sisters, though it has to be said, this is remarkably chaste in comparison. I think there is only one pair of breasts and zero full nudity in the whole thing, a tally at which Jess Franco would laugh patronisingly. It isn’t even close to being the first “retro grindhouse” entry that harks back to the style, trailing a decade behind both Nude Nuns With Big Guns and the recently reviewed Sister Wrath (a.k.a. Nun of That), the latter in particular doing a better job at being more than a third-gen photocopy of the genre.

Instead, it concentrates on the violence, though to mixed results. When it concentrates on practical effects, it’s not bad and occasionally reaches impressive. However, bad CGI is something you would never have seen in the seventies, and its presence here is equally unwelcome and unsatisfactory. The other problem is the lead actress falling short of the charismatic heroines in the films which inspired this. Pam Grier. Tura Satana. Dyanne Thorne. Meiko Kaji. Christina Lindberg. Stern will not be joining them in the pantheon of greats any time soon. And good retro grindhouse is capable of being entertaining, even if you have no knowledge of the genre’s history. I’m rather less than certain that’s the case here.

Dir: James Dean
Star: Mallory Stern, Ron Clower, Jaclyn Tripp, Zera Lynd

Fly Like a Girl

  By

★★★
“American girls only need apply…”

This documentary is about the field of women in aviation, combining archive footage with interviews, covering the range from those who aspire to fly (giving their Lego aircraft lady pilots!) to those who have been into space, fought combat missions in the Middle East or dodged death in aerobatic displays. There’s not any particular structure to proceedings, choosing instead to bounce around between its topics and subjects. This helps keep things fresh, yet at the cost of any narrative beyond, I guess, “Women can do anything men can”? Which, to be fair, deserves saying in the aviation field particularly: how much strength is needed to handle a joystick?

As you’d expect, the interviewees are a bit of a mixed bag. Historically, perhaps the most interesting is Bernice ‘Bee’ Haydu, who was a WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots) in World War II, and aged almost a hundred at the time she was interviewed; sadly, she died not long after. I think what made her and the others interesting, were being the ones who had actually done something. While wanting to be an astronaut, say, is fine, it can’t compete with Nicole Stott giving an eye-witness account of what it’s actually like to be on the Space Shuttle as it takes off. Or Vernice Armor, the first African American female combat pilot and her tale of flying an attack helicopter, running down to its final missile and being the last hope for a pinned-down squad of troops. That kind of thing could easily become a Major Hollywood Movie.

I think my favourite of all the people interviewed was Patty Wagstaff, a three-time winner of the US National Aerobatic Championships, who seemed remarkably down to earth (pun intended) about her exploits. Seeing her fly upside down, to cut a ribbon with her propeller just a few feet off the ground, was genuinely impressive. On the other hand, Sen. Tammy Duckworth came over as a career politician, with career politician speak that was easy to tune out. Maybe she has stories of her time in the military that are the equal of Armor’s. You wouldn’t really know it from the bland content she contributes to this.

My main complaint, however, was the absolutely American focus. It felt as if no-one outside the United States had ever left the ground. No mention of Sophie Blanchard, the first aeronautess. No mention of British pilot Amy Johnson. No mention even of the Soviet Union’s Night Witches. They’re only the most successful group of female combat fliers in aviation history. But they’re not American, so for the purposes of this film, they don’t exist. The only meaningful reference to anywhere else, is when there’s a passing mention of Bessie Coleman having to go to France to get her pilot’s license. On that basis, it feels like a missed opportunity, only scratching the surface of its topic and wearing a large, nationalistic set of blinkers.

Dir: Katie McEntire Wiatt
Star: Nicole Stott, Tammy Duckworth, Patty Wagstaff, Vernice Armor

Fear of a Black Planet

  By

★★
“Not everything is black and white…”

It’s interesting to look at the film’s IMDb page, and contrast the reviews, where there’s nothing less than an 8/10, with the rating, where 73% of votes are a 1/10. One “review” was actually a rant about other reviews which appear to have been removed? Something odd there. There’s no doubt, the film is not so much tackling a contentious topic, as driving head-first into it at 80 mph. Even the title (obviously inspired by the Public Enemy LP of the same name) is an incendiary one, guaranteed to raise the hackles of many – and, to be honest, not without reason, because of the assumptions it makes. It’s a shame, since the film is at least slightly more nuanced than the title makes it seem.

We’re still deep in problematic territory, however. The topic of race relations in post-Trump America is not something a 70-minute film can address in any meaningful way. While I have to admire the intent, it feels like this was doomed to fail from the get-go, and delivers only the most ham-handed of commentary. Fay (White), a newly graduated black cop, is on the way to visit her father’s grave when full-on race war breaks out. She takes shelter in the warehouse belonging to artist Nova (Kott), only to find it’s not much of a safe haven. For Nova turns out to be part of a white militia group, run by Lestor (Benton). They’ve got a van and are plotting something not very nice with it.

The issue here is the script, which has so many flaws it’s hard to pick out the worst. It’s probably Fay’s repeated failure to nope the hell out of there, despite prolific opportunities. Though the competition in this category is tough. Why does Nova let a “monkey” in to their lair, on multiple occasions? Why do the militia not permanently dispose of Fay the first chance they get? Shouldn’t they – oh, I dunno – lock the door to prevent Fay’s white boyfriend, Ric (Price), from coming in? It’s not as if civilization outside has collapsed into anarchy and utter chaos. Oh, my mistake: it supposedly has. Or maybe not immediately recruit Ric onto their team? Guess you just can’t get the white supremacists these days…

None of these have anything to do with the film’s apparent message: it’s basic storytelling. The performances are fine, and the direction occasionally impressive; the ending works better than it should. However, these aspects deserve a much better plot, and aren’t enough to salvage the endeavour as a whole. With regard to the messaging, it’s not as painfully didactic as I expected from its title, tending to let its morality flow from the situations. Though any pretense at balance is limited to a two-minute appearance by a vigilante apparently affiliated to the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, going by his multiple references to “white devils”. The reality, of course, is that 90% of people, black and white, don’t hold these kinds of extremist views. Here, 90% do, making it as much a dubious fantasy as Birth of a Nation.

Dir: Detdrich McClure
Star: Jay White, Amanda Kott, Joshua Benton, Keli Price

The Flood

  By

★★★
“Destroy me? They made me…”

The first eighty or so minutes of this are really good: powerful, committed and extremely angry film-making. And justifiably so, I would say. Unfortunately, the film runs for a hundred and seventeen minutes, and definitely goes off the rails towards the end. The gritty realism which was perhaps the movie’s strongest suit is replaced by odd fantasy sequences, such as the fugitive couple suddenly dressed, in the middle of a forest, as if they were attending a Victorian embassy ball. I’m not certain what the point of these elements, or the anachronistic pop songs were. I am certain that they didn’t enhance my appreciation of the film in any way, and that’s a shame, considering how assured it had been in the early going.

There’s no doubt aboriginal Australians received a really bad deal from their government, up until very recent times. As this film documents, they were forced off their lands, and their children frequently taken away as wards of the state. Even those who served their country honourably in World War II, like Waru Banganha  (Cook), were denied basic civil rights on their return to civilian life. Hard to blame Waru for going berserk, and killing some of the Mackay family who had sexually abused his wife, Jarah (Lane), and their daughter, Maggie (Williams), while he was fighting in the jungle. Worse is then to follow, as Jarah is gang-raped while in custody, in an attempt to get her husband’s location. “Don’t let what they did you destroy you,” a friend tells her. Jarah responds with the chilling line at the top of the review. She’s not wrong, as she takes revenge on the Mackays and their cronies, first rescuing and then alongside Waru.

What’s interesting is that, despite his military training, it’s largely Jarah – no mean shot with a gun herself – who takes the lead, and shows little or no mercy. She has decided that they must pay, even those who were only tangentially involved in ripping her family apart, and does so with a clear-headed intensity and ferocity which is wonderful to behold. This kind of story can easily feel like pandering, playing on liberal white guilt, yet McIntyre avoids that. The closest cousin to the body of this picture might be the blaxploitation flicks of the seventies, where the hero or heroine was pushed too far, and eventually stuck it to “the man”. Abosploitation? Though if we’re making up words, it also feels like a “Vegemite Western”, despite the post-war time-frame.

Throughout this, there have been flashbacks and memories that could be dreams. However, these have generally been restrained, and if not maybe adding too much to the film, don’t feel like they hurt it. That changed in the final third, with the pace dropping close to zero, just when it should be ramping up to a climax with all guns blazing. I will admit in particular to rolling my eyes at the redemptive fate of the main antagonist, who deserved considerably worse than he received. The energy and momentum this possessed, just about carries the film over the finish line. Yet I can’t help feeling. it should have been a great deal more effective.

Dir: Victoria Wharfe McIntyre
Star: Alexis Lane, Shaka Cook, Dean Kyrwood, Dalara Williams