Tag: f

Firestarter, by Stephen King

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

Having watched both versions of the film, I followed up by reading the book on which they were based. Despite my general fondness for horror, I haven’t read very much Stephen King: this is only the second novel of his, after Salem’s Lot. First thought: at 576 pages in the mass paperback edition, it’s quite a door-stopper, and you can see the problems in adapting a work of that size into a movie. Inevitably, a lot of the detail and nuance is going to be excised. There’s no doubt, the 1984 version is more faithful; the 2022 adaptation takes the basic concept of a young girl with pyrokinetic powers, on the run from the government with her father, and does its own thing, more or less.

How you feel about those different approaches, probably depends on how you feel about the original book. Despite the length, it wasn’t a chore; I was typically reading 25-30 minutes a night, and never felt like it was a burden. King had a relatively straightforward style, that’s generally easy to read. The novel does, like the 1984 film, move back and forth in the time-line. It begins with Charlie and her dad trying to escape the experimental government program which spawned them, only later filling in how they got to this point – both the events of that program, and the subsequent surveillance, leading to the death of her mother. This, to me, worked better on the page than the screen, where it ended up becoming too convoluted.

You get a good deal more background on “The Shop”, the murky federal group behind everything, and its employees. In particular, a good portion is told from the perspective of near-insane operative, John Rainbird, Here, he’s very badly disfigured, the result of a friendly-fire incident in the Vietnam War, which seems to have helped push him over the edge. His madness is considerably more apparent in the book, along with the dubious nature of his psychological attachment to – almost dependence on – Charlie. The novel also delves deeper into Charlies’ internal struggle for self-control, fighting to keep hold of her talent, rather than letting it rule her.

While both film versions end with her fiery escape from the shop, albeit in radically different ways, the book has a fairly lengthy coda. [spoilers follow]. This covers Charlie’s return to the Manders farm, where she finds sanctuary once more. Inevitably, however, word seeps out and the Shop pay a visit, only to find their target already left. The novel finishes with Charlie arriving at the offices of Rolling Stone magazine, ready to tell her story. From a 2022 viewpoint, this had not aged well, with that publication now a de facto mouthpiece for the establishment, with as much counter-culture credibility as Teen Vogue or Buzzfeed. However, this remains an entertaining read, and if such a talent ever existed, you sense the events it depicts are quite plausibly how things could go down. Here’s hoping we never find out.

Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Pocket Books, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Standalone novel.

Filibus

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★★★
“The first action heroine?”

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

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

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

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

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

Fury of a Phoenix by Shannon Mayer

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

Bea is living a quiet life, far out in the Wyoming countryside, with her husband Justin and young son, Bear. However, this isolation is an entirely deliberate choice in order to escape from her past.  For in her previous life, she was Phoenix Romano, an enforcer and hit-woman for her mob boss father. After deciding she’d had enough of that life, she liberated several millions of his money, and vanished, hoping never to be found again. Naturally, things don’t quite work out like that. Justin and Bear are killed in a car crash, but Phoenix has reason to suspect it wasn’t an accident, and that instead her past life is catching up with her. But why did whoever was responsible for that go after her family, and leave her alive?

Alone, this would have potential for a story of revenge. However, Mayer also lobs in a helping of magic, in the form of “abnormals”, who have certain skills that can be used for good or evil. To be honest, this was not an idea which felt developed adequately – barely at all, in fact – and seemed almost a sop so that the book could be sold in the urban fantasy genre. For example, the fact that her father had entered a pact with the devil for his fortune, didn’t make any particular difference, and could easily have been entirely left out. He could simply have been a powerful gangster – except perhaps for the three hellspawn guardians protecting him. And only one of them see action in this first volume. I did like her talking guns, though again this is an idea which feels underdeveloped. Perhaps later books explore these in more details? On the other hand, there’s something to be said for a heroine without any magic ‘get out of jail free’ talent cards to play.

The good news is, there’s enough going on in the mundane world to make for a solid enough read. There really can’t be much better motivation for revenge, than a mother having to watch helplessly as her child’s life is torn away. Just about everything thereafter develops in a fluid fashion from this, as she reconnects with her old life and finds out the unpleasant truths about… Well, quite a few things, in fact – not least that Justin wasn’t exactly the innocent winter sports professional he appeared. I did have some qualms over her wanting to tell the perpetrator she was coming for them; it seems like bravado, making Nix’s task needlessly more difficult. But I guess, if it’s good enough for Beatrix Kiddo, it’s good enough for any vengeful action heroine. Despite (or, probably more likely, because of) the blatant cliff-hanger, this is probably not a series I’m going to bother delving any further into. However, I can’t say I felt like I wasted the time spent reading it.

Author: Shannon Mayer
Publisher: Hijinks Ink Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 4 in the Nix series.

The Flower and the Blackbird, by Liane Zane

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

My friend Liane Zane kindly gifted me with a paperback copy of this second of her Elioud Legacy novels, as she did with the first one (The Harlequin & The Drangùe), in exchange for an honest review. Having liked the first book, I was glad to accept; and I wasn’t disappointed with the sequel!

The premise of the Elioud Legacy builds on the idea, based on a passage in the book of Genesis, that in the days before Noah’s flood, “and also after that,” there were matings between angelic beings and humans, resulting in mixed-race offspring, here called the “Elioud.” On that foundation, Zane builds the literary conceit that these pairings are still going on at times, that a fair number of humans with some angelic genes still walk the earth, gifted with more-than-human abilities and perceptions in proportion to their angelic ancestry (although using these usually takes some training), and that those who know their ancestry may consciously ally themselves either with God or Satan. Though some, the “Grey Elioud,” would prefer to stay out of the whole cosmic battle….

Readers of the first book will already know the above; and I definitely recommend reading the books in order. Here, events from the series opener are referred to in a cursory way; but you will understand the characters, situation, and prior events better with a reading of the first book, and that one lays an essential foundation for what follows. In the first book, CIA agent Olivia Markham and her two close female friends and fellow 20-something intelligence agents (though from different European countries) met Albanian tycoon Mihail Kastrioti and his two fellow long-lived Elioud warriors for the Lord –and the ladies learned that they also have Elioud blood. That book pitted the two threesomes against the demon Asmodeus and his human acolyte, Joseph Fagan, who happens to head up the CIA’s Vienna office, but who has an agenda and proclivities that his superiors wouldn’t like. (A serious psychological evaluation on him before he joined the Company would have been a really good idea!) But equally importantly, we also learned that each member of the two trios felt a mutual strong attraction to a member of the other one. Since the series is projected to be a trilogy, and it’s in the paranormal romance sub-genre, I figured that each book would feature the story of a different one of these couples, and focus on their relationship.

Here, we focus on Italian intelligence agent Anastasia (“Stasia”) Fiore and Mihail’s side-kick Miro Kos. (“Fiore” is Italian for flower, and “Kos” means blackbird in his native Croatian, hence the book title.) Neither are unaware of feeling attracted to the other, but neither of them welcome it. Stasia’s not immune to male charms; but as a largely secular-minded young woman who mostly goes with the flow of her culture’s mores, she’s always opted to keep her sex life strictly casual. And she’s put off by the whole eternal cosmic battle revelation, and wants no part of it; she wants to keep her feet firmly planted in the familiar mundane security of the “real” world she’s always known. For his part, Miro has psychological baggage going back a long time (to the era of World War I, in fact!); his only venture into romance didn’t end well for him. But circumstances are about to throw these two together.

When last we left Asmodeus and Fagan, the former was in a coma and the latter had been on the receiving end of a partial memory wipe. But some weeks have elapsed since then…. Now, on loan from her agency to the Art Squad of Italy’s national police force, Stasia’s on the track of the thieves of a couple of valuable paintings, one of them a long-unknown, recently surfaced work by Rembrandt, “The Judgment of the Watcher Angels.” This case will be the tip of an iceberg involving not one but two demons, secrets of the classical art world, and high-stakes derring-do and fighting action that will give all six of our favorite Elioud a dangerous work-out, on both a physical and a spiritual plane.

In terms of messaging, stylistic features, and the quality of the writing, this volume is much of a piece with the preceding one. We have the same Christian grounding (the author is a Christian, of the Roman Catholic denomination) and strong good vs. evil vibe. Also in evidence is the same quick narrative pace, vivid characterizations (all six of our principal characters have quite distinct personalities, rather than being clones of each other), local color clearly based on serious research, capable depiction of action scenes and high technology, and solid knowledge of the actual geography of the locales where events take place, which I’m guessing comes from very extensive use of Internet maps and pictures. The relationship between the hero and heroine develops over a period of months, so we don’t have the same insta-love problem as in the first novel. Readers interested in the shady side of the art world, including art theft, will appreciate the use of that angle here (in that respect, the book might appeal to fans of such novels as The Collection and Zrada by Lance Charnes, though his works don’t have any supernatural elements).

Unlike the first novel, this one does have some explicit (and unmarried) sex, though it’s described in a way that comes across as loving rather than lewd. The author is aware that this poses issues; but it’s also, in the circumstances, not an unrealistic development, human nature being what it is. This is a stirring tale of a strong, respect-worthy hero and a tough, straight-shooting (in more ways than one!) heroine fighting evil and finding a committed connection to each other along the way. Though I don’t recommend starting the series here, I’d recommend this book to any reader who liked the first one!

Author: Liane Zane
Publisher: Zephon Books; available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

 

The Super Femmes

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★★
“Hardly super, thanks for asking…”

Running a crisp 58 minutes in its omnibus edition, this is a bit like Kung Fu Femmes. Both were originally web series, but have now made their way on to Amazon Prime, which is where I stumbled across them. This is rather less grounded, taking place in a world where superheroes and supervillains exist, doing battle in the usual manner. While not technically based on a comic-book, it might as well be – the poster makes that abundantly clear. The IMDb description calls it “filled with satire.” I’m not so sure, and think we probably need to have a talk about what “satire” actually is. Creator Garris seems largely to believe that simply repeating the cliches of the genre passes the bar. He’s wrong. There needs to be exaggeration of these tropes, and that’s largely missing here. Its absence leaves this mostly a bad comic-book, rather than being a parody of one. For example, adding visual effects like “POW!” to punches is hardly inventive, and certainly not satire.

The heroine is Cat Nips (Vanelle), who is investigating the mysterious disappearance of another superheroine, Smash Mistress (Caruana). She has been kidnapped by malevolent genius Mad Mort (Gordon), who has a machine which can absorb her powers, and inject them into his short-lived clones of Smash Mistress, which do his evil bidding. Not helping matters, the local superheroes group, led by The Smoking Cape (Paris), have gone on strike, to protest budget cuts proposed by the city’s mayor – who is actually their leader, in his daytime identity. What’s up with that? There’s also a guild of supervillains, though not everyone in it is happy at Mad Mort’s plans to take things over.

Occasionally, it does work, mostly when Garris pushes the boat out beyond the cliches into more imaginative territory. There’s the Golden Goddess, a retired superheroine now reduced to selling “magical” headbands on line. And some of the villains are entertainingly crap, such as Pasta Fingers and White Rapper Kid – not exactly useful powers. Things get thrown for a loop at the end with the unexpected arrival of a superheroine from the future, who states, “I’ve come from season three.” That’s the kind of self-referential nonsense which the series needs more of. It’s on considerably less solid ground when trying to take right-on jabs at, for example, the portrayal of women. Considering the costumes of the ones here, this comes off as empty cant.

The production here is low-end, but solid enough in most regards. That also applies to the performances, few of which are memorable in either direction. And that might be part of the problem: it’s all rather too low-key. If you think of comic-book movies, the characters which stand out e.g. the Joker (whether played by Jack Nicholson or Joaquin Phoenix, tend to be those that are over-the-top. But the delivery here skews more toward the prosaic, and character names like – and I wrote this down – “Sharon MaBooty” don’t go far enough towards making up the difference.

Dir: Dean Garris
Star: Vanelle, Leah Caruana, Roger Paris, Robert Gordon

Feral Recruit, by Ginger Booth

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

While this does take a bit of time to get going, it’s worth persisting with. For there’s some particularly impressive world building here, and characters who are not your typical young adult fare. This takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, after an Ebola outbreak has devastated the United States, causing it to disintegrate into a collection of “superstates”, combining various old states into larger, autonomous territories. New York was, to borrow a (profane but accurate here) line from Snatch, “Proper fucked.” After the disease broke out, the city was sealed off and the epidemic left to burn itself out. The population was decimated, both by Ebola, and the lack of food which followed, known as “The Starve”. Only now, years later, has the city been re-opened and the survivors are beginning to rebuild.

The heroine here is Ava Panic – originally pronounced “Pah-nich”, but no-one bothers now. She survived as a gang rat in the White Rule group, rising to become “Queen Bee”, alongside its leader, Frosty. Eventually growing disenchanted, she left for a more official life and work, running one of the crews involved in rebuilding Manhattan. But an opportunity arises with the army looking to recruit new soldiers for the security forces. While they’re prepared to overlook Panic’s questionable past, how can a tiny girl, no matter how fierce and capable, cope with the ferocious physical demands of basic training? Never mind the discipline required by the military, a sharp contrast to her lawless gang rat life.

At times, it does feel like I was thrown in the deep end; there is a whole series of prequels available, which might have addressed this. A Book 1 needs to be able to stand on its own, and this was on slightly shaky ground there early on. But the depth of the world gradually made sense, and I appreciated the gutsy way in which Booth made her heroine imperfect. Indeed, making her a white power supporter – even a former one – is kinda risky, in terms of evoking heroine empathy. Admittedly, she joined White Rule after a particularly shocking incident, and Booth manages to make both Ava and Frosty more than the obvious Aryan stereotypes.

There has clearly been a lot of thought put into the detail of how society might be rebuilt after a world-shattering event like this – and another follows in the second half, when a tsunami triggered by the collapse of the melting ice-caps, sweeps the East coast of America. Perhaps it gets bogged down a little too much in those minutiae on occasion, though it’s never long before Ava’s progress forward continues. Interestingly, it doesn’t end quite the way I expected from the synopsis, but it’s always good when some problems are too much for a heroine to overcome; it makes them more human. This first installment finishes with Ava’s life heading in a different direction, and it’s one I’d be curious to follow her into.

Author: Ginger Booth
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 4 in the Calm Act Feral America series.

The Fox and the Eagle by David Kantrowitz

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

I don’t typically buy fourth books in a series, but didn’t actually realize that was the case here until after I’d finished it. From what I can gather, this is set in the same universe at its predecessors, but introduces a new set of characters. It certainly works well enough as a stand-alone entity, and poses no problems read on its own.

There are really two action heroines here. Evangeline Adeler is a CIA agent, who is investigating a strange series of abductions, when she becomes its latest victim. Turns out these are carried out by the Kira’To, aliens from a nomadic asteroid called the Eagle, hundreds of light years away. Humans are being taken  in order to provide “a fresh genetic source” for the Eagle’s inhabitants – inbreeding generally being a bad thing. However, Eva is having none of that, escaping an arranged marriage and winning her freedom after prevailing in a trial by combat. The other heroine is Reveki Kitsune, a teenage girl and farmer’s daughter, who ends up the sole survivor after an attack on her uncle’s spaceship, the Fox, by members of a neo-criminal group called the Syndicate.

Due to this, she inherits the Fox, and meets Eva, who becomes part of the ship’s new crew while looking to find a way back to Earth. Their subsequent adventures take them on a raid to acquire a stash of neptunium, discovering the truth about Vecky’s parentage, and linking up with Tomoyasu, a long-time exile from the Eagle who is seeking to return there in order to stage a coup. The Eagle has a Japanese-based culture, for reasons apparently related to previous injections of abductees from there, This means Tomoyasu can take over if he can beat the current leader in a samurai duel.

It’s a decent slice of space opera, though does get rather confusing during the final battle on the Eagle, where Kantrowitz struggles to keep his multiple balls in the air. At one point, it looked like a major character had been disposed of with a single sentence, though I should have realized from this, that it was a red-herring.  Still, he has some occasionally nice turns of phrase. For example, I particularly liked this line: “The pistol made a sound like someone dropped a steel refrigerator full of beer one hundred feet from a helicopter onto a concrete surface.” I was also amused by the way Eva likes to drop Earth culture references, e.g. “Thank you, Doctor House”, which no-one else ever gets.

She’s definitely the most bad-ass of the characters, and I did feel the split focus of the narrative was a bit of a problem. Her story ends up having to share chapters with Vecky’s and Tomoyasu’s, when I’d have preferred to hear more about Eva – as a newcomer to this setting, I’d have been learning about the galaxy at large, along with her. Everything ends in a bit of a cliff-hanger, with the roles reversed: Eva is no longer the only “stranger in a strange land,” and it’s clear that further parts will be arriving. I’m somewhat interested in more, but would welcome a sharper direction on the writing.

Author: David Kantrowitz
Publisher:Kyrie Devonai Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
4 of 4 in the Reckless Faith series.

Firecracker

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★★★
“Less a damp squib than expected.”

Admittedly, I did have to pause this five minutes in, because I had a strong sense that I’d seen it before. Turns out that wasn’t the case, I was just confusing it with another Cirio Santiago movie. There are quite a few candidates, but I think it was most likely Angel Fist. For both films feature blonde Americans, going to the Philippines in search of an errant sister, and have a kung-fu scene in which the heroine’s clothing proves optional, if you know what I mean and I think you do. So confusion is understandable.

The heroine here is Susanne Carter (Kesner, who ended up becoming well-known as an Orson Welles historian!), whose sister has vanished after getting too close to a criminal gang run by Erik (Metcalfe). They are nothing if not broad in their empire, which as well as the usual drugs, prostitution and gambling, also include martial arts death matches, put on in what appears to be a supper club. Dinner and a show, as they say. This is convenient, since whaddya know, Susanne has a sixth dan black belt in such things. She uses her skills to impress Erik’s similarly kung-fu able henchman, Chuck Donner (Hinton) and get close to the operation, seeking the truth about her sibling’s fate. However, turns out there is already a police operation investigating the gang, and Susanne’s presence puts that undercover case at risk.

The martial arts here are… not great. Kesner just about reaches decent on occasion, although there seems to be clear doubling going on for the more athletic moments. However, the film certainly has no shortage of action, and some of the supporting cast are good enough that the film passes muster as overall entertainment. Easily the greatest sequence is the one where Susanne is pursued on her way home by two street thugs, and through a series of misadventures, her costume is steadily reduced, going from an evening dress and high heels to, by the end of the fight, just a pair of panties. I can honestly say I have never previously seen anyone’s bra be cut open with a scythe in the middle of a fight.

That sequence, along with the villain’s demise – bamboo stakes get shoved into both his eyes simultaneously! – and the quite glorious poster (click on the image to see it full size), are sufficient to make me willing to overlook most of the film’s obvious flaws. This is very much the kind of thing  meant, when people talk about the eighties being a golden age of action movies on VHS. This is certainly not a good movie, fun though it is to see the likes of Diaz – an almost ever-present sidekick, who was to the Philippino film industry, what Michael Ripper was to Hammer Films. Yet if I’d stumbled across this for one of my all-night video sessions during the decade, it would have left me thoroughly satisfied, having given me everything I was looking for.

Dir: Cirio H. Santiago
Star: Jillian Kesner, Darby Hinton, Ken Metcalfe, Vic Diaz

The Final Level: Escaping Rancala

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★★★
“Game girls.”

Make no mistake, this is a cheap and unashamed knockoff of Jumanji, made by the company who specializes in these mockbusters, The Asylum. It’s not their first such venture into the action heroine genre. If you remember my evisceration of Tomb Invader, you’ll understand why I approached this more out of a sense of obligation than any genuine interest. And, yet… While severely lacking in large-scale style, it was able to stand against its inspiration unexpectedly well in some other areas. Considering my extremely modest expectations when I turned this on, that has to be regarded as a win.

Back in 2012, Jake (Root) vanished out of a shopping-mall video arcade. His sister, Sarah (Chancellor), has felt guilty ever since about leaving him alone there, but is now getting ready to open an arcade/bar, partly in tribute to Jake. The last machine to arrive is Rancala, and when switched on, there is someone already shown as playing it: and his icon looks disturbingly like Jake. When she, the arcade’s tech manager Rae (Tuttle) and its social media guru Chrissy (Sweet) hit start, they are sucked into the game, and have to make their way through various levels, to reach the war camp where Jake is to be found, alongside Rancala’s despotic ruler.

A few things help elevate this above Tomb Invader. Firstly, the three leads – naturally, one blonde, one brunette and a redhead – are likeable and come over as genuine. They’re competent without being arrogant, and soundly motivated by loyalty, both familial and to each other as friends. Next, there’s a low-key sense of wit here, like the very video-game way characters bounce back and forth while waiting for battle to commence, or the backpacks of infinite holding. Fans of The Asylum [and I’ll admit, I am one] will also get a kick out of the familiar adversary which is Level 1’s boss. A shame this wasn’t developed further with other Asylum monsters showing up throughout proceedings. And finally, the action is decent. Not so much for its integral quality, as for being edited by Mark Atkins in a clear and coherent way that’s better than many Hollywood films, which give the appearance a weed-whacker was applied enthusiastically to the footage.

It’s not all good news, unfortunately. On arrival at the war camp, things grind to a halt, despite the appearance of Bai Ling in a role far smaller than her name on the cover implies. The film comes close to stalling out entirely, just managing to rouse itself for the final battle. And given the scope for invention here – this is a video-game world where anything can happen – there’s little evidence of imagination being allowed to flower, beyond a poorly-rendered and largely pointless CGI battle rhino. Spectacle is an area where Jumanji is clearly far superior, and it also could draw comedy from the contrast between the real-life characters and their in-game counterparts. Here, they’re exactly the same – just in skimpier costumes (provoking the line, “Do you think a man designed this game?”). Overall, however, I found myself enjoying this less than its big-budget brother, by an unexpectedly small amount.

Dir: Canyon Prince
Star: Jessica Chancellor, Emily Sweet, Tiana Tuttle, Brandon Root

Les Filles du Soleil

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★★★
“Three into one won’t go”

There’a a good film in here. Actually, there may be as many as three good films in here. But the way in which they are melded together, manages to rob a good chunk of the power and impact from all of them. We begin by following Mathilde H (Bercot), a war journalist clearly modelled on Marie Colvin, down to the eye-patch and traumatic experience in Homs, Syria – Mathilde lost her eye there, Marie was killed. She has just started the process of embedding herself in Kurdistan, covering the locals’ attempt to regain territory taken from them by ISIS. The second story is that of Bahar (Farahani), leader of a Kurdish women’s battalion, who was forced to flee her hometown, losing her son in the process. She has heard rumours he is being radicalized and trained as a child soldier in occupied territory, and will risk anything to liberate him.

But wait! There’s more. For Bahar was also captured by ISIS herself, and held as a sex-slave, until she managed to escape and make her way back across the front-line. Her subsequent recruitment into the military, gives her the chance to take revenge on her captors – both for herself and for the thousands of other women who weren’t so lucky as to regain their freedom. On their own, any of these stories would be fine. The problem is that Husson does a real dog’s dinner of assembling them into a single narrative, and the result weakens all of them. There’s a convoluted structure of flashbacks and side angles, to the point that Mathilde ends up serving little narrative purpose herself. It’s a pity, as in Farahani, the director has found a marvellous actress, worthy of playing the heroine. In particular, she has amazing eyes that are both luminous and expressive. She reminds me a bit of the famous “Afghan Girl” photograph.

Of the three stories, probably unsurprisingly, it’s the most action-oriented one which I liked best. Bahar and her fellow soldiers make their way into enemy territory through a tunnel. It’s mined, yet they have a captured ISIS soldier to guide them past the booby-traps… or will he? It’s almost painfully tense, and a stark reminder that in this kind of war, you can never truly relax, with potential death lurking around every corner. It also helps that Bahar carries herself in a way that seems legitimate and battle-hardened (a bit of a shame the film isn’t apparently interested in the details of how she went from being a wife and mother, to commanding troops on the front-line). But just when this is getting a full head of steam, we suddenly switch to an extended flashback of her time in captivity. This would have worked much better as a chronological narrative. Instead, it’s a fatal blunder from which the film sadly never recovers. Rather than surging towards a climax, it peters out in sadly predictable melodrama.

Dir: Eva Husson
Star: Golshifteh Farahani, Emmanuelle Bercot, Zubeyde Bulut, Maia Shamoevi
a.k.a. Girls of the Sun