Tag: four-half-star

The Shadow Strays

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★★★★½
“Dog eat dog”

Director Tjahjanto gave us one of the best action films of the last decade in The Night Comes For Us, a gory and relentless assault of jaw-dropping hand-to-hand mayhem. Follow-up, The Big 4, was a little underwhelming, but I was still stoked to hear about this, in which he puts a heroine front and centre. This is perhaps a step or two short of Night – it’s clear the lead here is not a lifelong practitioner of martial arts like Joe Taslim and Iko Uwais. However, it’s the best film I’ve reviewed on this site in 2024, likely edging out Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, through a combination of sheer force of will and arterial spray.

The Shadows are a sect of assassins, who are basically unstoppable. 13 (Ribero) is a teenage trainee, who screws up a mission in Japan alongside her instructor, Umbra (Malasan), and barely survives. 13 gets put on administrative leave, and her enforced idleness is where the problems start. In a thread strongly reminiscent of Leon, she watches a neighbour get killed by a gang, and takes care of the son, Monji. However, he vanishes, apparently abducted by the gang, and 13 isn’t standing for that. Beginning by turning low-level enforcer, Jeki (Emmanuel), she works her way up the power structure, which goes right to the top of Indonesian political society. The resulting chaos threatens to expose the Shadows, so Umbra is then dispatched to terminate their rogue agent.

This runs a chunky 144 minutes – just a handful shorter than Furiosa – which seems a fair while for a martial-arts film. The Raid 2 and John Wick 4 are the only ones which come to mind as longer. But I can’t say this particularly felt like it; there’s not much slack. We open with the absolutely blood-drenched Japanese operation, which sets the tone early. To be honest, it does such a good job, most of what follows falls slightly short. Ribero is a model and singer, and it feels like Tjahjanto underlights a lot of scenes to help paper over this. But then there’s the final battle, between 13 and Umbra. It’s likely behind only Crouching Tiger as my favorite female vs. female fight ever: utterly relentless, and brutal as hell.

It is a little less impressive in between the fights: originality is, as noted previously, not necessarily the film’s strongest suit. Other threads are set up and them ignored, such as the Shadows’ miraculous serum, which is used by Umbra to resuscitate 13 in Japan, and never mentioned again. Maybe it’ll play more of a part in the sequel, to which the ending strongly hints, bringing in a face familiar to fans of Indonesian action. I’d love to see it, since this is definitely pushing the boundaries of action heroine cinema, in all the right ways. While imperfect, at its best this is enough to make me consider introducing a six-star rating, because it goes places I’ve never seen. When it does, the results are glorious.

Dir: Timo Tjahjanto
Star: Aurora Ribero, Kristo Immanuel, Hana Malasan, Taskya Namya

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

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★★★★½
“The Fast and the Furiosa”

It was a good run. There was a point, not long ago, when action heroines could do no wrong. In hindsight, the golden era may have started in 2012 when the Hunger Games franchise began, along with Brave. Summers which followed brought us blockbusters such as Gravity, Maleficent and Lucy. Subsequent years covered the entire run of the Hunger Games and the end of the Resident Evil franchises (or, at least, phase 1 for them), and things probably peaked with Wonder Woman in 2017. Thereafter things began to decline, though I’d say returns remained strong through much of 2019. That’s when Maleficent: Mistress of Evil and Alita: Battle Angel each made over $400 million worldwide, finishing in the top 25 movies of the year.

The cracks began to show with Captain Marvel, odd though it is to say, given it made over a billion. But to a large extent I suspect it mostly surfed on the success of Avengers: Endgame. Thereafter, Wonder Woman: 1984 flopped just before the pandemic hit, Black Widow underperformed, and since then it’s been almost entirely a series of failures, with only the arguable Hunger Games reboot reaching even $250 million worldwide over almost three years since. Instead, we had one of the biggest bombs of all time in the The Marvels, followed up by the disastrous box-office of Madame Web. And now the prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, managed an opening weekend in North America of only $26.3 million. That’s forty-two percent below its predecessor’s opening, excluding nine years of inflation.

It’s not all action heroines’ fault (though some on social media are claiming so). This year has been dismal in general. With three midweek days left on the month at time of writing, box-office for May is down 36% on May 2023 – and even that was the lowest non-pandemic May since 2001, again without adjusting for inflation. People just aren’t going to the movies in anything like the same numbers. I can’t say I blame them, when films appear on streaming services as little as three weeks after their theatrical release. Going to the pictures is expensive, and especially with the improvements in home theatre, the overall experience can end up being worse than staying at home, between travel, over-priced concessions, idiots talking on their phones, etc. Why not wait?

The counterpoint is experiences like this, a full-on, bombastic, in your face event that made full use of everything IMAX has in its locker, and surpassed anything I could get at home. Now, your mileage may vary. Poor Chris, in particular, found it too overwhelming, triggering motion sickness which forced her to close her eyes any time things got too kinetic – which was a lot of the time. We probably will not be IMAXing again in future. But the only recent comparable experience for me was Godzilla: Minus One. Re-reading my review of Fury Road, I’m a bit surprised I only gave it four stars. I’ve seen it again since, and I’ve just upgraded it an extra half-star. Put another way, Furiosa is every bit its equal. Different, but equal.

It’s a direct prequel, ending at the point when Furiosa (Taylor-Joy) leads the wives to escape from The Citadel. It begins with a much younger Furiosa (Browne) living in the Green Place, a rare place of plenty in the post-apocalyptic hell which Australia has become, along with the rest of the world. She’s kidnapped from there by minions of Dr. Dementus (Hemsworth), leader of the Biker Horde. Her mother is killed trying to rescue her, and Furiosa becomes the little, mute pet of Dementus, until he trades her to Immortan Joe, who runs the Citadel. Over the subsequent years, she becomes a key part of operations, becoming the partner of Praetorian Jack (Burke), who trains Furiosa and falls in love with her.

Dementus, meanwhile, is working to become the wasteland’s supreme ruler by taking over the Citadel, Gastown and the Bullet Farm. In an ambush at the last-named, Jack is captured and tortured to death, while Furiosa escapes only by tearing off her own arm. She returns to the Citadel, providing key advice to Joe in the ensuing war. But she never loses sight of her final goal: to make Dementus pay for what he did to her and her mother. Given she appears in Fury Road and Dementus does not… Well, you can probably figure out how this is going to end. Though the reported final nature of her revenge is not what you might expect, and has a certain poetic resonance, given what happened previously.

It isn’t quite the same relentless stream of action as Fury Road, and at almost half an hour longer, that’s no bad thing. There’s no shortage of action, but it tends to align with the way the story is broken into chapters. So you get a series of Drama-Action-pause segments – or occasionally for variety, Action-Drama-pause. There were concerns regarding the amount of CGI in the trailer, and I will say, it’s not as almost entirely physical as Fury Road either. However, what’s used is integrated very well, with only a couple of moment wheres the action momentarily seems obviously adjusted digitally. I suspect some of the landscapes were also enhanced: they and cinematographer John Seale’s work is so stunning, I don’t care there.

My other concern was having Taylor-Joy replace Charlize Theron, who simply has more presence. That does remain an issue, though to the new actress’s credit, to a lesser degree than I feared. It’s also countered by having much more of a real antagonist here in Dementus. The first film was mostly an extended chase sequence: Furiosa was running from Immortan Joe, after helping his wives escape, and they shared very few scenes together. Here, Dementus gives us a stronger “villain,” and the film as a whole is better for it. Hemsworth brings a charismatic power to his character, to the point where you can see why his henchmen follow him, unto death. Furiosa, in contrast, is really not much of a people person.

It’s difficult to pick out any one action highlight, because they are all very, very good. I think the ambush at the Bullet Farm might me the one which sticks most in my mind for now, though this may change on (the almost certain) re-viewing at home. It’s one which offers the most interesting environment, including buildings and smoke stacks, while the others are somewhat limited by operating in a desert. I mean, it is called “the Wasteland” for a reason. However, when Miller puts Jack and Furiosa in their rig, which is being stormed by almost endless waves of raiders, you really do not need a backdrop. Indeed, you could argue that any such would be at best irrelevant, and at worst a distraction.

You would be hard-pushed to argue that the $168 million budget is not up on screen. I lost count of the times when I wondered whether what I was looking at really existed in the physical world, or was matte paintings and CGI. Part of me wants to peer behind the curtain and watch the behind the scenes videos. However, part of me would prefer to sustain the illusion, which was a factor in the sense of wonder that often washed over me during the screening. It’s the quest for that sense of awe which keeps me going to cinemas, even if most of the time, I end up leaving disappointed [I’m looking at you, Godzilla X Kong…]

I also want to praise one other aspect, which may not transfer as well to my home environment (and I admit it is limited in this area): the audio. There are not many times when I can specifically point to this in particular as significantly enhancing the experience. I’m not an audiophile, and generally put what I see considerably ahead of what I hear. But in this case, Tom Holkenborg’s score and the rest of the sound elements were a notable and impressive component. From the rumblings of the engines through to the wind whipping across the Wasteland, the sonic design really worked, and allowed me to feel like I was being brought into the world of Furiosa. Well played

The problem from a business perspective is, it seems all but certain the makers are not going to recoup their investment, making it less likely you will see investments like this going forward. Fury Road probably just about broke even, so this was always going to be a gamble, especially without your leads. And, indeed, outside of the title, entirely without the character who has powered the franchise since its first installment, all the way back to forty-five years ago. In hindsight, a reaction of “What the hell were they thinking?” is probably understandable. But I am glad less-wise heads prevailed. If this is to be the end of the Mad Max universe, it goes out on another spectacular high, and not many franchises are able to say that.

Dir: George Miller
Star: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, Alyla Browne

The Harlequin Protocol, by Liane Zane

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

This is the second novel in the author’s Unsanctioned Guardians trilogy, a prequel to her earlier Elioud Legacy series. The new trilogy presents the background of how the three heroines of the first one (all of whom were intelligence agents, though of different nationalities) met and formed their sub rosa partnership as off-the-books rescuers of female victims of sexual abuse and trafficking. In the first book, The Covert Guardian, Zane focused entirely on Olivia Markham, who would become the trio’s ringleader, describing her recruitment and first mission with the CIA. Olivia continues to be the main (and almost sole) viewpoint character here, but this installment also introduces the other members of the threesome, Capt. Alzbeta “Beta” Czerna of Czech military intelligence and Anastasia “Stasia” Fiore of Italy’s CIA equivalent, AISE.

My impression is that about two years have passed in Olivia’s career since the previous book (the date for this one, 2011, isn’t mentioned in the text itself as I recall, though it is in the cover copy; but I don’t remember any exact date for the first one.) Here as in all of Zane’s work, her knowledge of spy-craft, of the various brands, specs and capabilities of firearms and explosives used by U.S. and European military and intelligence services, and of the cultural and physical geography of a variety of European settings is a strength of the series, and never delivered intrusively. (Action here moves from Berlin to Brussels, to Prague and the Czech-Polish border region, and to Venice.)

We also get an inside look at the bureaucratic mindset of the present-day CIA (which has been negatively commented on in nonfiction writings by intelligence professionals who know about the subject), the penchant of some of its honchos for turf and ego protection, and the tendencies towards abuse of power that can be endemic in secret organizations. (The latter is a point of contact with John LeCarre’s work, though I suggested in my review of the previous book that Zane’s vision is more like that of Manning Coles or Alistair MacLean –like the latter, she does view espionage in moral terms, as properly concerned with thwarting genuine evil, but she’s also realistic about the moral shortcomings and conflicting agendas that intelligence agencies staffed by fallible humans can be prey to.)

Because the author and I are Goodreads friends, she graciously gifted me with a review copy of the paperback edition of this book, as she has with all of her books, as soon as it was published; though she knew I’d really liked the previous book, she didn’t pressure me for a favorable review, but trusted that the book would stand on its merits. It definitely did; I actually liked this one even better! What earned the added appreciation (and the fifth star) was what I felt was the heightened dimension of moral challenge and choice here, which for me often makes the difference between great and merely good fiction, and which isn’t as strongly present in the first book. Discerning what the right thing is here requires thinking for oneself, not just obeying orders; and deciding to do it comes with a real risk, not just of harm to life and limb, but of disapproval from the powerful, of serious repercussions to one’s career, and maybe of legal punishment. The strong, distinct characterizations of the three heroines, who are each very different individuals though sharing a basic gut instinct for justice and decency, is also a positive feature that makes the book stand out from the pack.

Bad language here is minor. There’s no explicit sex; Olivia stumbles on a gang rape at one point, but it’s not graphically described, and though we see the traumatized and abused victims of sex trafficking (and in one case the dead body of a victim), we aren’t forced to see what they went through. As far as Olivia’s personal life is concerned, it’s briefly mentioned that since the first book, she’s been intimate with only one man, whom she loved and expected to marry (readers of the preceding trilogy will know that didn’t happen!), but the couple’s privacy isn’t violated.

We do have a lot of violence here, and a high body count, but Zane doesn’t make it any more gory than it has to be. IMO, this trilogy should be read in order. However, I wouldn’t say that the previous trilogy necessarily needs to be read first; and it’s really in a different genre(s) than this one, so might not actually appeal to all of the same readers (though I greatly like both). This is neither obviously supernatural fiction (though readers who’ve read the Elioud Legacy will pick up on something that others won’t) nor romance. But it should appeal to all fans of action adventure and espionage fiction, especially those who appreciate heroines in action roles (here, we’ve got not just one but three ladies who can and do kick some serious evil-doer butt!).

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

In the Line of Duty IV

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★★★★½
“A thinly connected series of action set-pieces…but what set-pieces!”

Back in the early nineties, I saw a double-bill of this and Jackie Chan’s Police Story at the late, lamented Scala Cinema in London, and it blew my mind. I had literally never seen anything like them before. The only martial arts movies I’d watched previously were crappy American ones, which made little or no impression. That afternoon changed my life, and awakened a love of the genre that persists to this day. But would In the Line of Duty 4 stand the test of time? There are certainly movies I loved from the same era, which are now a bit cringe, to put it mildly. So it was with some trepidation that I hit play…

Nope, it’s still goddamn awesome. Sure, it’s a bit rough around the edges, and both the plot and performances are little more than means to an end. But the end justifies the means, 100%. I can’t remember the last time a film provoked so many exclamations from me. It felt like every other scene, there’d be another terrific feat of physical prowess, agility or simply endurance. It’s amazing to see Donnie Yen, then a young, skinny and rough-edged twentysomething, but clearly with raw talent in spades. It took almost thirty-five years for him to get the recognition he deserved, with his co-starring role in John Wick 4.

According to another review, 42 of the film’s 93 minutes are action. Reading this, my immediate reaction was, “That little?” Because it feels like it’s almost a non-stop procession of set-pieces, a highlight reel in feature form. It’s not just hand-to-hand combat either. There are some great vehicular stunts, such as a motorcycle chase, or a fabulous battle in, on and around an ambulance. It’s clear that we really have Cynthia Khan dangling off the front of the vehicle, in a way that looks genuinely dangerous, and quite probably was [the eighties in Hong Kong cinema wasn’t exactly a poster-child for health and safety!] I do wish they hadn’t undercranked some sequences; they’re impressive enough they don’t need to be sped-up.

For when all is said and done, the fights are flat-out awesome. It’s not just Khan and Yen, though they obviously get most to do. Everyone here is well up to the task, both showing off their own stuff and letting the stars look good by selling for them. On the female front, I want to give special praise to Farlie Ruth Kordica, who fights Cynthia around a lift-shaft in another sequence which feels disturbingly life-threatening. She only appeared in a couple of other films, which feels like a real shame, based on her performance here. It’s a wonderfully inventive scene (bottom), taking full advantage of the potential in the environment. 

There is a case to be made that Yen is the star here, above Khan. The end caption doesn’t even mention her character, Insp. Yeung Lai-Ching, though Khan definitely is not outclassed. But Lai-Ching is the film’s emotional heart, always intent on doing the morally ‘right’ thing, even if it’s not in line with the law. She is the Jiminy Cricket, trying to keep Donnie’s loose cannon in check, while also trying to figure out who’s the mole in her department. The story, incidentally, has aged well: the CIA openly dealing drugs in order to fund Latin American rebels? That’s not something you would expect to see in an American film from that time, the whole Iran-Contra thing being seen as a bit of an embarrassment. Fittingly, it is Khan’s character who delivers the final blow to this Yankee scheme, falling to its doom and taking the American flag with it.

I will admit that the soundtrack is underwhelming: despite two credited composers, it feels like stock tracks pulled at random from the library. There are also times when the plot logic is less than logical, with bad guys and good guys popping up in convenient places for the next showdown, with little or no explanation. Yet this hardly dampens things, because: yep, means to an end. The eighties was an amazing decade for action cinema, from The Empire Strikes Back, through The Terminator, Aliens and Die Hard. I can honestly say that In the Line of Duty 4 deserves to be ranked among those, and remains one of the best examples of Hong Kong cinema, doing what it does best.

[Original review] I don’t think I’ve ever seen a HK film with more action; it seems that every five minutes, along comes another breathtaking fight or stunt sequence. Of course, when you have a master at the helm (Yuen did the fights for The Matrix), you expect a little more, but this is fabulous, even by his standards.

Donnie Yen is perhaps the most under-rated martial artist of our generation, and watching him here, it’s hard to see why he hasn’t become a major star, rather than lurking in (effective) supporting roles in Blade 2 and Highlander: Endgame. For speed, agility and skill, his fights are almost without equal, and most female co-stars would be overshadowed. Fortunately, Cynthia Khan, though occasionally clearly doubled, does more than enough to keep on the same lap – the fight atop, alongside, and dangling from the front of, a speeding ambulance is eyepoppingly extreme, while her aerial battle around a lift shaft is also worthy of mention.

The story is clearly secondary to all this, but for the record, Khan and Yen are cops, one from Hong Kong, one from America, who team up to find a witness to a murder. Double-dealing and twists abound, though most are so obvious, you suspect they were just waiting for cast members to get out of hospital. :-) Interesting to see a foreign view of American cops – even Yen is a barely-controlled psychonaut. Khan is more sympathetic, but characterisation never goes beyond the most basic. However, this is an action movie, and as such, it’s near-perfect, with invention, energy and hardcore guts to spare from all concerned.

Dir: Yuen Wo-Ping
Star: Cynthia Khan, Donnie Yen, Michael Wong, Yuen Yat Choh

The Draka and the Giant, by Liane Zane

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

Liane Zane brings her Elioud Legacy trilogy to a rousing and powerful conclusion in this novel, which was actually my favorite of the three. (Full disclosure at the outset: Liane, who’s a Goodreads friend of mine, generously gifted me with a paperback ARC, because she knew I’d really liked the two earlier books. No promise of a good review was offered or requested; this book amply earned that on its merits.)

This is definitely a series that needs to be read in order. Our story here opens in medias res, and readers who begin here won’t have much knowledge of the premise or the situation –nor, especially, of the characters and their relationships. You really need the context of the first two books to fully appreciate this one. (With that context, though, it becomes a wonderful capstone to the arch the author has crafted!) However, for the benefit of readers who haven’t read either of those books nor my or others’ reviews of them, and who may not have seen the book description either, the titular “Elioud” are human-angel hybrids (matings between the two races having begun before the Flood, and some unions –or rapes of humans by fallen angels– supposedly continuing to occur). Depending on their degree of angelic inheritance, Elioud may have special abilities that most humans do not, and may be quite long-lived (as in, centuries) as well. Those who are aware of what they are may choose, like other humans, to knowingly serve God or Satan (or, also like many humans, to imagine that they can just ignore that whole conflict and be neutrals). But for those on one side or the other, the term “spiritual warfare” may be a lot more literal than it is for most believers.

Near the beginning of the series opener, the three heroines of the trilogy, a close-knit trio of cross-national friends in their early 20s, all of them both working for their respective countries’ intelligence services and involved on the side in a sub rosa vigilante operation of their own against sex traffickers and predators, met three long-lived Elioud warriors, who revealed to the ladies that they also have angel ancestry. Together, the six of them were involved in fighting the nefarious plots, continued across the first two books, of the fallen angel Asmodeus, who’s now set himself up as a cult leader for a sect of brain-washed humans who call themselves bogomili, after a medieval heretical sect (but who are a lot more malevolent and murderous than their earlier, peaceful namesakes). The other aspect of the series plot is that each member of these two trios felt a strong attraction to a member of the other one. It wasn’t hard to predict that each of the three novels would focus on one of these pairs, and that the course of their romance would be an important plot strand. So here, Beta Cerna and Andras Nagy take center stage.

For me, in the previous books, these two characters had always seemed the least interesting and appealing, largely because I didn’t really know them. Indeed, Beta (short for Alzbeta –she’s Czech) is hard to get to know. She’s a “lone wolf” with very few friends, and a brusque manner that can come across as practically feral. And because Andras is big, strong and taciturn, and mostly inclined to obey orders, it’s easy to fall into the trap of subconsciously dismissing him as not very smart or sensitive (though that’s a great mistake!). But here they come into their own; we see them as the complex and special people they truly are. The previous book ended with Beta arousing a sleeping, half groggy Andras for an unexpected sexual encounter in his bed –and then vanishing before morning. When this book opens, none of the other five main characters have seen her for three years (so it’s now 2018). But we soon learn that there’s been more of a reason for her disappearance than her commitment issues. Much is going on, and Asmodeus (and his fellow demon Yeqon. whom we met in the second book) are exponentially ratcheting up their plans, which won’t bode well for humanity if they come to fruition. But the Archangel Michael (directed, of course, by God, though here He operates offstage) has plans too….

Many of the strengths of the preceding books are evident here also. Zane realizes the settings well (events take place in several European countries), and flavors the narrative with glimpses of the various customs, languages, folklore and cuisine of the nationalities represented. Her characters are round, vivid, dynamic, and distinct (every one of the six main characters have their own unique personalities, rather than being clones of the others, but the supporting characters are also clearly drawn). There’s a strong good vs. evil conflict (with a recognition that we wage this conflict in our own hearts, not just with other people), with high stakes and a lot of dramatic tension. Though this isn’t commercial “Christian fiction,” it’s fiction written by a Christian (the author is a practicing Roman Catholic) and the basic message is Christian. (As in much supernatural fiction, the angels vs. demons conflict is a metaphor for the spiritual conflicts of the real world.) My one quibble here is that our heroes and heroines don’t pray much in crisis situations (and they’re up to their eyeballs in the latter, which would do wonders for my prayer life!). But that’s a fairly minor point. It was also actually easier for me to achieve “suspension of disbelief” here than in the first two books, despite the continuing murky points of angelology/demonology, and the ramping up of Elioud powers here (the mating of two Elioud warriors enhances their abilities). Perhaps that’s because by now I’ve gotten more used to my Elioud friends and their fictional world. :-)

Bad language here is minimal. There are some references to lewd and disgusting sexual behavior (Asmodeus and Yeqon hang out in Amsterdam’s red-light district, and their sexual attitudes are what you’d expect from demons), and one instance of premarital, though not casual, sex; but Zane doesn’t emphasize the former any more than she has to, and the latter is explicit only up to a point. (Basically, the romantic content is quite wholesome, and a wedding –I’m not saying whose!– is one of the more moving scenes in the book.) This is definitely the most violent book of the series, though, with two major pitched battles and a body count through the roof, not all of the casualties being bad guys. However, fans of action thrillers won’t mind this, and fans who like their heroines tough will love Beta. (She’s a deadly accurate shot with both a pistol and a long gun, but her favorite weapons are her chain whip and her karambit, a hooked originally Indonesian knife modified as a switchblade, which she finds it soothing to flick open and closed when she’s nervous, the way some people tap their foot. :-) )

While this is, like the others in the trilogy, a thick, substantial novel, at 525 pages it doesn’t feel a bit overly long; I was immersed and interested immediately, and stayed so for every page. It’s also a highly evocative read emotionally, with some beautiful writing and imagery in places (and some very grim images as well). I’d enthusiastically recommend it to fans of supernatural fiction with Christian themes, of action thrillers or action heroines (or heroes), and of paranormal romance.

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.

Avenging Angels: The Wine of Violence, by A.W. Hart

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

Like “Franklin W. Dixon” and “Carolyn Keene,” “A. W. Hart” is the house pen name assigned by the publisher to all the various authors of individual books in the series of which this novel is the seventh installment. In this case, though, A. W. is actually my Goodreads friend Charles Gramlich (that’s no secret; he’s credited in the “About the Author” note at the book’s end). Although I’d read and liked a couple of his short e-stories previously, I’d never tried any of his long fiction. So, when I saw this novel mentioned in one of his blog posts last year, I was intrigued enough to buy a copy. (Barb and I read it together, since she’s an avid Western fan, and I knew this would be right up her alley.)

In choosing to read this installment by itself, I guessed correctly that it can be treated as a standalone. The series premise is explained in passing near the beginning, without needing any burdensome long exposition. Just after the end of the Civil War, then 16-year-old twins George Washington (nicknamed “Reno”) and Sara Bass were orphaned when a band of renegade ex-Confederate soldiers raided the family’s Kansas farm and brutally slaughtered their parents and siblings. The twins’ father, a Lutheran pastor as well as a homesteader, had brought the two up as Christians familiar with the Bible, and also trained them both to handle firearms very capably. He lived long enough after the attack to charge his two surviving kids (they’d been out on the prairie when the raiders struck) to avenge the outrage, and to rid the world of murdering evildoers. After serving justice on their family’s killers in the series opener, they went on to become successful bounty hunters, despite their youth, with their ensuing adventures in the subsequent books each apparently episodic and self-contained (so the series doesn’t have to be read in order).

We’re not given an exact date for the events of this installment, but I’d guess it to be roughly 1867, and the twins’ age by now to be about 18. Our setting here is western Missouri and the Arkansas Ozarks, a region genre fans might not associate with Westerns; but in fact, in real life, this area was as much a frontier as the contiguous Kansas and Indian Territory countryside, there was a lot of movement and economic interchange across the state lines, and lifestyles and attitudes didn’t differ much on either the western or eastern sides. The tale begins in medias res, with our Avenging Angels stealthily closing in on the camp of a band of train robbers. Early on, one of these outlaws will drop the name of Rev. Eli Cable. He’s an apparently mesmerizing and charismatic preacher who’s building his own settlement, New Kingdom, in the Ozarks –and who may or may not be the mastermind behind this train robbery. It’s up to our hero/heroine to find out the truth about that; and naturally, it won’t be a simple matter of just riding up to his door and asking him.

This is a well-plotted, ably written novel, with a fast pace and a lot of action. (There’s no “pornography of violence,” but the body count is high, and gun/knife fight scenes, etc. are described simply and straightforwardly.) Some factors give the book a bit more depth than run-of-the-mill Westerns. Eli Cable is a highly complex character; the author looks realistically at the hatreds and grievances left on both sides in the aftermath of America’s bloodiest war, in an area where the fighting was often up-close and personal guerilla war, without justifying hatred or demonizing all ex-Confederates; and the faith of some of the main characters gives a spiritual dimension to the story. (Gramlich himself isn’t necessarily a Christian now, but he was raised as a Roman Catholic and treats faith sympathetically; the book, and evidently the series as a whole, is Christian-friendly.) What we would today call post-traumatic stress disorder also gets some scrutiny. Besides the Western elements, elements of the mystery genre are also deftly incorporated. Bad language is very minimal; and though there’s mention of rape and prostitution, there’s no sex as such. (Reno’s faithfully given his heart to a young lady back home in Kansas.)

My impression of series written by multiple authors is that the main characters can tend to be drawn quite blandly, with a minimal profile that’s not expanded on, so as not to confuse new-to-the-series writers. (After well over 100 books, for instance, all we really know about the Hardy boys is that Frank’s blonde and Joe’s dark-haired. :-) ) Here, though, both the Bass siblings come across as three-dimensional characters whom we do get to know as persons, not as stock roles; and while they’re twins, they’re not clones of each other. In this particular episode, the demands of the plot give Reno more “screen time” in the middle chapters that make up the longest part of the book; he’d have to be described as the main character. But Sara’s role isn’t negligible; she’s a full (and lethal) participant in the many fight scenes, recognized by Reno as smarter and deadlier than he is, and I’d also judge her to be faster and more adept with a pistol than he is (though she admits he’s better at handling a long gun). Both are likable, but she comes across as the more reserved of the two, and also as the one who still has the most anger over the tragic fate of their family.

This would be a quick read if you had a normal amount of time for reading (with our “car books,” of course, Barb and I don’t, hence the long time it took us!), and I think most genre fans would find it enough of a page-turner to make their reading sessions as long as possible. I’m not looking to get drawn into another long series right now, and investigated this volume only because I know the author (electronically); but it made enough of a favorable impression that, if I had handy access to other books in the series, I’d definitely check them out too!

Author: A.W. Hart
Publisher: Wolfpack Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
7 of 12 in the Avenging Angels series.

Made to Be Broken, by Kelley Armstrong

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

Although I first experienced this series through the two sequel novellas, this second installment of Armstrong’s Nadia Stafford trilogy would be best read after the series opener, Exit Strategy. References are made to events in the first book, and to parts of Nadia’s backstory which are detailed there, and these are much more meaningful if you’ve read the first installment. Even more importantly, Armstrong really introduces Nadia’s complex character and current circumstances in depth in the first book; the development she undergoes here presupposes that foundation. (That’s also true for other characters from that book who continue to play roles here; you need the full-orbed picture to understand them.)

Some six months have passed since the events of the earlier novel. Nadia’s kept in contact with Quinn, a U.S. federal cop who secretly moonlights as a vigilante assassin. He’s romantically interested in Nadia; her feelings about him are more ambiguous (even to her), but she values his friendship. As a teen, she came close to qualifying for Canada’s Olympic distance shooting team. That gives her very formidable skills with a sniper rifle; and when this book opens, she’s peering through the scope of one from a belfry in downtown Toronto. Quinn’s solicited her help with one of his hits. That particular episode, though, is over quickly and painlessly for all concerned. It serves mainly to remind us (and to clue in readers who skipped the series opener) that as fictional female sleuths go, our protagonist is not nearly so law-abiding a member of that sorority as, say, Nancy Drew. She is, however, one who has some investigative know-how, which she’s willing to use in a good cause if it’s needed –and it’s soon going to be, sorely.

Even with her off-the-books side income, Nadia can’t afford to pay more than a tiny staff at her guest lodge; but out of kindness, she’s given a job as assistant housekeeper to a 17-year-old girl from the nearby small town of White Rock, Sammi Ernst. Sammi’s foul-mouthed, barely literate, and has a chip on her shoulder; the latter isn’t surprising, given her life situation. She’s the out-of-wedlock daughter of Janie Ernst. Both women are widely looked down on in the community –Janie because she’s a drunken, mean-tempered, self-centered deadbeat, and Sammi mainly because she has Janie for an (abusive) mother. Also a single mom herself, Sammi’s not promiscuous like Janie (she had a single affair, with a visiting rich college kid who wasn’t interested in marriage or fatherhood, and left her to bear his unacknowledged daughter alone); and also unlike her own mom, she genuinely loves baby Destiny, and wants to work to support her, rather than making a dead-end career out of welfare dependency as Janie has.

When, soon after Nadia’s return home, Sammi and Destiny don’t come back from their usual evening walk in the woods, there are things that strongly suggest to our heroine that their disappearance wasn’t voluntary. But White Rock’s police force is small, not especially competent, and has other priorities; and the two senior officers despise Nadia because of the way she was kicked out of the force years ago, so aren’t disposed to take anything she says seriously. As far as they’re concerned, Sammi obviously just ran off; because, hey, that’s what trashy teens can be expected to do, right? Most of the townsfolk are quite content with that explanation. (Janie’s only feeling about the matter is anger at losing the rent money she charged the girl.) Of the few who aren’t, Nadia’s the only one actually capable of looking into the matter. But though Jack’s been out of touch for about six months, he’ll soon be at the lodge recovering from a broken ankle. (And don’t forget about Quinn, either.)

This is a gritty, page-turning mystery, reflecting the violent stylistic school associated mostly with American writers (rather than the more cerebral traditional school of Doyle and Christie). A number of people are going to die here, not all of whom deserve to, because we’re dealing with ruthless villains with no consciences. (While this is fiction, it looks at a dark underbelly of anomic modern society in a way that could easily be true.) And Nadia being who she is, the mode of dealing with some of these types may be with the business end of a pistol. As another reviewer commented, her ethics and moral compass may not be something all readers endorse (I don’t, as such –and Nadia doesn’t claim saint status for herself, either).

But she does HAVE ethics and a moral compass; and for me, the way she sincerely tries to grapple with balancing it with the realities of a very grim world, in which the law doesn’t always serve justice or protect the helpless, is one of the great strengths of the series, and a source of its considerable emotional power. That’s as true of this book as of the others. Despite the body count, there’s no wallowing in blood and gore, and no sex as such, though there are a few “sexual situations.” Romantic feelings and angst are not a major strand of the plot here. Nadia’s narrative voice, IMO, is perfect for these books. The one negative is the amount of f-words and profanity from some characters, especially Jack. I admit that this is “realistic” for speakers who are steeped in this milieu, and have the backgrounds that some of them do; but I don’t really need that much pedantic realism. But the strong character portrayals and serious moral reflection here earn the book its stars despite that factor.

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

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

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★★★★½
“The wind rises.”

After the enormous critical, if not commercial, success of Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro, Miyazaki was commissioned to create a manga series for Animage magazine, with a potential film adaptation attached. Publication began in early 1982, but it would take a dozen years, albeit of intermittent publication, before that story was complete. When the series’s popularity among Animage readers was established, work began on the film adaptation, covering the early portion of the manga. Since this was before Miyazaki’s own Studio Ghibli was founded, an external company, Topcraft, were commissioned to create the animation. The budget was only $1 million, with a mere nine-month production schedule leading up to its release in March 1984.

It takes place on a post-apocalyptic world, a thousand years after the near-mythical “Seven Days of Fire”, pushed humanity to the edge of extinction. Since then, nature has taken over much of the planet, covering it in an expanding toxic jungle where the very air is poisonous in a few minutes. It is populated by equally lethal creatures, at the top being the “ohmu”, gigantic insectoids capable of destroying anything in its path. The human race is reduced to clinging on to the fringes, such as the small kingdom of the Valley of the Wind, in which a never-ending breeze keeps the toxins at bay. There, the king’s daughter, Nausicaä (Shimamoto), is one of the few brave enough to enter and explore the jungle, and has developed a mutually respectful relationship with its strange inhabitants.

The balance is destroyed when a plane from the kingdom of Tolmekia crashes. In its cargo is an enormous “God Warrior” – one of those which carried out the Seven Days of Fire – recently dug out from where it had been buried. Tolmekia and their rivals, Pejite, are wrestling for control of the warrior and the power it wields, and the crash drags the Valley of the Wind into their conflict. In particular, Princess Kushana of Tolmekia (Sakakibara) intends to use the warrior to destroy the jungle and restore mankind’s dominion over the planet. Nausicaä is ferociously opposed to this scheme, especially after discovering that the jungle is actually purifying the atmosphere and soil, absorbing the toxins from the apocalypse. She’ll do anything to stop Kushana, including being willing to sacrifice her own life if necessary.

There’s a lot going on here, as you can see. It’s somewhat understandable why, when initially shown in the West (one of the first examples of anime to receive a theatrical release), 22 minutes was cut out, in order to market it as a children’s film, retitled Warriors of the Wind. The problem is, like almost all of the director’s work, it is not a children’s film. This is not a uncommon mistake – presumably based on them having a child as the central characters, and because they’re animated, which still largely equates to Disney in many people’s minds. But they’re more about that age capturing an innocent and idealistic mentality. This is undeniably mature and thoughtful cinema. In just his second feature, and first original film, Nausicaä establishes several themes which would run through almost all of Miyazaki’s future work, in varying degrees: the joy of flight, concern for the environment, and a strong female presence.

Miyazaki’s father ran an airplane parts company in World War II, and even his film company, Studio Ghibli, was named after an Italian plane. Almost every one of his movies includes a flying sequence, and Nausicaä certainly has plenty of them, whether its the heroine skimming across the desert on her one-person glider, or gigantic warships looming, threateningly, in the sky. Despite the imperfect animation, a result of the limited resources, the sense of wonder and awe is undeniable. If you don’t want to take to the skies after seeing these scenes, you might want to check for a pulse. Similarly, there’s no denying Miyazaki is firmly on the side of nature, with his heroine believing all life to be sacred, and humanity deserving no special place above any other species. If mankind can’t live in harmony with the world, the movie suggests, it’s mankind which needs to change. Bending nature to our will is always going to backfire.

But it’s with the depiction of womankind that the film truly succeeds. In Nausicaä and Kushana, you have two fully-formed characters that are not just among the best in animated film, they could stand beside the protagonist and antagonist of most live-action movies. The latter, in particular, demonstrates Miyazaki’s skill at depicting those who would be flat-out villains in less nuanced films, instead being given motivation and depth. While you may not agree with Kushana resurrecting the God Warrior, you can understand what she is trying to accomplish. Her actions stem from a genuine belief that what she is doing is best for the future of mankind. She just has a military-industrial approach to that, in sharp contrast to the one emphasizing ecological science and harmony, preferred by Nausicaä. Interesting to note that, in the 2005 Disney English-language dub, Kushana was voiced by Uma Thurman.

The story here builds to a stellar climax, in which a massive herd of ohmu are lured into a stampede towards the valley, while simultaneously the God Warrior is unleashed by Kushana, to horrific effect. [The animation for the latter was done by a young Hideki Anno, who’d go on to become a master of the genre himself, best known for Neon Genesis Evangelion. In a 2006 Japanese poll, Evangelion was the only anime ranked ahead of Nausicaä as an all-time favourite] Our heroine puts herself in harm’s way in an effort to stop the carnage, and… Well, I won’t spoil it in detail; Miyazaki manages to pull off an ending which could easily have come off as contrived or ridiculous, and is instead emotionally satisfying. With even the Tolmekians forces humbled by nature, as environmental messages delivered by teenagers go, it’s certainly a great deal more effective than an angry Scandinavian shrieking “HOW DARE YOU!” at the audience.

Dir: Hayao Miyazaki
Star (voice): Sumi Shimamoto, Gorō Naya, Yōji Matsuda, Yoshiko Sakakibara

She Never Died

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★★★★½
“Angel of vengeance”

This is neither a prequel nor a sequel to He Never Died, but is clearly related, and takes place in the same universe. Like its predecessor, it was written by Jason Krawczyk, who hands the directorial reins over to Cummings for this. And it probably works better as a result. I tend to think having a separate writer and director allows each to build on the other’s talents, while countering the weaknesses. In particular, He, which starred Henry Rollins, didn’t have quite enough plot to sustain it. That isn’t an issue here, resulting in improved pacing. Combine this with the ultimate “give no damns” performance at its core, and you’ve got one of the best action heroine films of 2019.

That performance is Adeliyi’s portrayal of “Lacey”, whose real name we learn at the end, and which will make some sense to students of Biblical lore. Like Rollins’s character, she plays an immortal being, doomed to wander the planet for eternity, sustained only on human flesh. However, she operates on a code, eating only scumbags. This still brings her to the attention of local authorities, in particular the thoroughly world-weary Detective Godfrey (MacNeill). But when he discovers Lacey’s nature, he makes the ill-fated decision to weaponize her, and points her in the direction of a sex-trafficking ring run by Terrance (Danby), which he has been unable to take down by more formal methods. Complicating matters is the gang’s victim, Suzzie (Madeira), whom Lacey encounters during her first mission, and who becomes something of her acolyte.

Lacey is potentially among the most taciturn bad-asses of the genre, a woman of few words, whose remarkable healing powers allow her to take a baseball bat to the head, and then discuss the mild irritation of having to wait for a detached retina to repair itself. No wonder Suzzie is confused, wondering “Are you just a jacked-up lady blitzed out of her mind? Or a government experiment on the lam? Robot? Zombie? Vampire? You sound like a vampire.” The contrast between the pair, one hyper almost to the point of manic, the other deader than deadpan, is a joy. Seeing Adeliyi in action is another. This film doesn’t shortchange her diet, and Cummings background in horror is apparent. About the only person who can half-stand up to Lacey is the person in charge of the traffickers – which makes me wonder if they, too, may be more than human.

It’s one of the intriguing questions which this poses. Particularly at the end, after things appear to have been tied up nicely, the story opens an entire case of cans of worms, with both Godfrey and Lacey having encounters that’ll leave you going “Hmmm…” And that’s not even including the Bikers of the Apocalypse. While it’s definitely not necessary to have seen He Never Died, the cross-over of information may slightly enhance your information of both. I’m wondering if it’s all pointing towards a third entry – They Never Died?- in which the characters from these two films team up. If so, where do I start the queue?

Dir: Audreey Cummings
Star: Olunike Adeliyi, Peter MacNeill, Kiana Madeira, Noah Danby

Screened at Phoenix FearCon 2019

Revenge

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★★★★½
“Women always have to put up a fucking fight.”

This French rape-revenge movie is the most blood-drenched GWG film I’ve seen since Kill Bill, Volume 1, and is not for the faint of heart. However, the good news is, it’s not the rape part of the equation which is hard to watch: this is depicted with admirable restraint, occurring mostly off-camera. The director has stressed that the story isn’t about the rape, and I’m delighted with that: it has always struck me as the least interesting element. It’s a plot device, to kick-off what matters. Focusing on it, as some films have done, seems to me like focusing on turning the ignition key, instead of driving the car. This, instead, offers a road-trip to remember.

The victim is Jen (Lutz), a young girl having a weekend in the Moroccan desert with her rich, married boyfriend, Richard (Janssens). He’s also there to do a spot of hunting with his pals, Stan and Dimitri (Colombe and Bouchède). They four have a night drinking and dancing, but the next morning, when Richard heads off to make travel arrangements, Stan rapes Jen. On Richard’s return, he tries to smooth things over. Jen is having none of it, and storms off. Knowing that any legal complaint would destroy his marriage, Richard fakes calling for transport out, then pushes Jen off a cliff. Her landing is… not a soft one. Convinced the problem is solved, the men leave disposing of the body until later. Except, Jen isn’t dead, and when the trio go back, she’s not there. Helped by some impressively strong peyote – in this case, the drugs clearly do work – she patches herself up, and turns the hunters into the hunted.

First, let me address the improbably-resilient elephant in the room. Yes, her survival and pursuit is implausible, with a couple of large holes. Literally: one of the film’s two highly cringe-inducing pieces of self-surgery shows Jen patching up a hole in her stomach. Yet there must, of necessity, be an even larger one in her back. What happened to that? To be honest, they didn’t need this aspect at all: simply surviving the fall would have been hardcore enough. She also goes barefoot through the entire film, without a whimper. In the Arizona summer, I can’t take the garbage out barefoot without leaving singed skin on the drive. One shot of her pulling the shoes off her first victim would have fixed that.

It’s a shame, albeit a minor one, because virtually everything else is perfect. The transition of Jen, from the stuff of Richard’s fantasies, to that of his nightmares – he’s the one who delivers the tagline above – is impeccably handled. Even her good looks transform. At the beginning, it’s a shallow and utterly conventional prettiness – which she has exploited into a weekend getaway to a luxury location. By the end, she has paid a terrible price for this. Yet even as she’s missing minor body parts, disfigured, drenched in blood (both hers and others) and covered in desert grime… she’s glowing. Her inner beauty shines through, increasingly illuminating the bad-ass bitch she has become over the course of proceedings.

For a film lauded for its supposed up-ending of the male gaze, this feels a bit odd, since it could be read as the sexual assault triggering Jen’s blossoming: rape as psychological therapy. She should thank her attackers! [The image of a rising phoenix branded into her skin, due to her impromptu first-aid, is not exactly subtle in its imagery. Then again, the entire film is not exactly subtle, and proudly defiant as such] If that reading is on shaky ground, it’s also amusing to note Revenge utterly fails the dreaded Bechdel Test, despite being brutally empowering, to a degree rarely seen. More evidence – as if it were really needed – of how shitty the Bechdel Test is at evaluating films.

The good thing is that the feature’s entertainment value in no way relies on any kind of Identity Politics 1.0.1. to work. It functions perfectly well as a stripped-down pursuit, which neither asks for, no offers, any kind of quarter on behalf of the participants – for their genders or any other reason. There’s a steady, relentless escalation to proceedings from the moment Jen takes flight, to a final confrontation which redefines “paint the walls blood-red”. That’s a jaw-dropping pursuit round the house where things began, and includes proof that cling film, like duct tape, has a thousand and one uses.

The director says the only previous example of the rape-revenge genre she watched was Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left. Though if true, the proximity of names for the heroine here and in the genre’s most infamous entry, I Spit On Your Grave, is a striking coincidence. That aside, it’s interesting to note that the only other female-directed entry, Baise-moi, was also from France. And in tone, this has almost as much in common with À l’interieur (Inside), which was just as blood-drenched, and similarly gave absolutely no fucks. Much credit to Fargeat for this “take no prisoners” attitude, and delivering a thoroughly uncompromising piece of cinema; kudos for all of her cast as well, in particular Lutz, who go all-in to no less a degree.

I’ve been watching extreme films for thirty years or so, and let’s be honest, you get a bit desensitized to it all. We went to see this one at a local art cinema, and from their reactions, it was clear that most of the audience were, let’s say, not as “experienced” in the ways of savage cinema as Chris and I. Their responses merely added to the fun: I’d kinda forgotten how audience reaction can enhance a film (their goddamn rustling of snacks… not so much, but let’s move rapidly on). At the end, after all was said and done, one of the other attendees blurted out loud, “Best ten bucks I’ve ever spent.” I’m not inclined to disagree. Despite its flaws – which I acknowledge and embrace – if 2018 offers a film which packs a bigger punch, I can’t wait to see it.

Dir: Coralie Fargeat
Star: Matilda Lutz, Kevin Janssens, Vincent Colombe, Guillaume Bouchède