Tag: g

Gold Raiders

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★½
“The Tomb was already booked, presumably”

To be fair, for most of the time, this was likely hovering around the two-star range. Not brilliant: it was rather obvious why this had taken six years from being shot, to receiving distribution. But there was some heart evident, and I look kindly on projects which appear to be trying. Unfortunately, we then reached the end, which was clearly intended to work as some kind of stone-cold cliffhanger. Regular readers will know my aversion to these in books. It’s far worse in a movie, especially where you know – given the time elapsed – there’s precious little chance of a sequel to provide any resolution. I’m sure the entire cast has moved on to other things since.

It’s the story of the Sierra sisters, Hera (Swenson) and Athena (Lee), who are part of a secret group called The Society. They have been feuding across the centuries against another secret group called The Order. Hera and Athena are now on the hunt for the lost treasure of the pirate Blackbeard, reported to be buried somewhere near the coast of Virginia. The sister think they have a good handle on it, and along with their local guides, head into the swampy territory in search of the buccaneer gold, guided by Hera’s psychic visions, which pop up conveniently, as needed by the plot. Naturally, The Order are also keen to get their hands on it, and not everyone in the Sierra’s party might be entirely trustworthy.

It begins with an unconvincing depiction of Blackbeard’s death and a somewhat rousing battle for a relic called the Eye of Quetzalcoatl. But once we get past that, the bulk of the movie consists of an awful lot of wandering around marshland here, in lieu of… well, anything much. For example, it might have been nice to have learned about the goals of both The Society and The Order, and why they have been pitted against each other for so long. Nah. Let’s instead just have another of Hera’s obscurist visions where figures, whose relevance remains uncertain, make cryptic statements like, “Remember, as I have risen, things can be buried – can be unburied. Your past journeys will reveal the clue to salvation.” Look, can’t you just email her a Powerpoint presentation?

It doesn’t help that, for a centuries old secret organization, the representatives of The Order are… well, a bit crap. There’s only about four of them to start, and let’s just say, rigorous competence doesn’t appear to be a requirement for selection. Mind you, when they do show an evil streak, shooting people dead in cold blood, Hera and Athena are so blase about it, that the moment is robbed of almost all power. Not that there’s a huge amount of power to begin with, even before we get to one of the most “Wait. Is that it?” endings in recent memory. Well played marketing department though, for the poster and changing the title from the original one of Sierra Sisters: The Hunt for Blackbeard’s Treasure.

Dir: Josh Relic
Star: Kathleen Swenson, Celeste Lee, James Blackburn, Sam Barber

The Girl of Destiny

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★★★
“Lost in translation.”

I’m very cautiously giving this one our middest of mid-tier ratings, which I reserve the right to change in future. Because this one showed up on one of the… “less official”, let’s say Chinese movie channels on YouTube. While the likes of Youku and iQiyi make the effort to deliver subtitles which are typically at least intelligible, I’d say the subs here reached such a level, only about one line in five. Then I still had to figure out cultural context for this period piece, which also seemed to reference local folklore. I guess I should be grateful the soundtrack here was intact. The previous night, I’d watched another film on the same channel which, I kid you not, had random bursts of musak injected, presumably to avoid YouTube’s automated copyright system.

I have to discuss all this, because consequently, I really can’t describe the plot in more than the vague terms. It takes place in Shang Dynasty China, the earliest period for which there’s evidence, when the country was under threat from invasion by the Luo people. A heroine arose to stand against them, Fu Hao (You), who was destined by fate to be the country’s saviour. [There’s something here about her being descended from a heavenly bird, but I am absolutely vague on the details there!] She teams up with the Emperor’s heir, Wu Ding (Ma), despite the objections of his father. For the emperor wants him to marry a noble-born, yet less heroic woman (Li), rather than a peasant girl like Fu Hao.

It reminds me of the various versions of the Mulan legend, with a plucky heroine coming out of nowhere, when the country needs her most. There doesn’t appear to be quite the same element of needing to hide her identity; though for reasons discussed above, it’s hard to tell. I will say, it looks better than I anticipated, with some impressively large-scale battles. I was a bit concerned they were going to make her fly, in line with her avian lineage. Fortunately, Fu Hao’s talents appear to lie particularly in things like mountain climbing; there’s a nice moment where she and Wu Ding jump out a high window to escape, landing on a kite being flown by an ally.

If the broad strokes here are all decent, there’s a severe lack of detailed depth – again, that may be me more than the film. It does also feel rather comfortable and safe. It ended up exactly where I expected – she basically sends the Luo leader home, after giving him a good telling-off – and I don’t think any significant plot development (of the ones I understood!) came as the slightest surprise. I get the sense it may have been quite jingoistic, pitting the heroic Chinese against evil foreign invaders. Hardly the first there, and it wasn’t especially egregious. If this ever appears in a more intelligible version, I’ll probably give it a re-review. I feel it deserves that.

Dir: Dong Wei
Star: You Jingru, Ma Xueyang, Ma Shuliang, Li Linfei

The Guardian Initiative, by Liane Zane

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

Like the previous two books, this conclusion to the Unsanctioned Guardians trilogy (a prequel to the Elioud Legacy trilogy) was a generous gift to me from the author. (There was no pressure to write a positive review; the book stands easily on its merits, and she knew I’d liked the previous installments, as well as the original series.) Given their prequel status, it’s not really necessary to have read the Elioud Legacy books to enjoy reading these three; though if you have, it does give you more acquaintance with and understanding of the main characters (and conversely these books flesh out the background of the original three, and answer questions readers of those may have had). But the Unsanctioned Guardians books DO need to be read in order. Most of my general comments about the first two apply to this one as well; the premise builds organically on the preceding books, and the author’s style, literary vision and handling of content issues is consistent across all three books.

About a year has elapsed since the events of the previous book. CIA agent Olivia Markham landed on her feet sufficiently, after the events in that one, to preserve her career with the Company; but since then, at her request, she’s been moved to a desk job. For most of the interim, she’s been in charge of an agency safehouse in Montenegro, which fronts as a free clinic for the town’s numerous foreign refugees, run by an NGO that’s not aware of the CIA connection. (The clinic work is real; when she was recruited by the agency in the first book, Olivia was a college pre-med student, and she has EMT certification.) She’s also fallen in love with a French medical doctor at the local hospital; the two are living together, and will get engaged in the first chapter. But …she’s about to cross paths with an Islamic terrorist mastermind from the previous book. Meanwhile, Italian spy Stasia Fiore is still investigating the theft of a Predator drone from the Italian military; and Capt. Beta Czerna is soon to be approached by a desperate woman who needs help in rescuing her sister from the clutches of a Polish crime lord who’s into sex trafficking (among other villainous things). Circumstances are about to converge these plot strands, and bring all three ladies together for a violent, high-stakes thrill ride.

As before, Zane moves the action of the tale briskly through a variety of European locations and a trip to Morocco, in this case, making considerable use of Internet research to handle the physical geography of her scenes with photographic realism. Again, she demonstrates her strong knowledge of espionage tradecraft and modern weaponry, and handles action scenes well. The body count in this book is significantly less than in the previous one, but the suspense factor is taut and constant. There’s brief reference to loving pre-marital sex, as well as to off-screen sexual violence, but nothing explicit in either case. One short scene could be described as “sensuous,” but it consists of three sentences. Bad language is minimal, and within the bounds of reasonable realism. We’re still essentially in the realm of descriptive fiction, rather than the supernatural fiction of the first trilogy; but here there are a couple of brief incidents, not observed by viewpoint character Olivia, that suggest a bit of supernatural assistance, and readers of those original three books will readily recognize their old friend Zophie at one point.

My only minor criticisms were that in one place, we have a truck that apparently drives itself onto the scene, and nobody picks up on that fact; and in another, a character assumes knowledge of a location she wouldn’t know at that point. But that nit-picking stop me from greatly liking the book, especially given the strong emotional effect of the storyline. This is a wonderful depiction of the forging of a team that has each other’s backs, and of female friendship under fire (literally). Zane’s handling of Olivia’s moral and emotional growth here is also powerful and superb. All of these factors ably set the stage for readers to move on from here to the Elioud Legacy trilogy, if they haven’t already read it. The kick-butt quotient here takes account of the fact that we have not just one, but three gun-toting heroines racking up bad-guy corpses.

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

Giantess Battle Attack

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★★★
“…the harder they fall.”

I was expecting this to be a follow-up to the previous Giantess films, most recently Giantess Attack vs. Mecha-Fembot! But it isn’t. This is instead, a sequel to Attack of the 50 Foot CamGirl, which I haven’t seen. However, I doubt it matters. This is much the same mix of titillation, tongue-in-cheek comedy and B-movie campiness. I think it’s safe to say, if you liked the earlier movies (and, personally, I was amused more than their quality probably deserves), this will likely hit the right spot. Director Wynorski has been doing this kind of thing for over forty years, and has no illusions about it. He has a cameo in this, complaining about the gratuitous nudity, which ends with him being pied off. And why not?

Following the events of CamGirl (I guess, anyway), the gigantic Beverly Wood (Smith) is now working in a quarry. She is trying to pay off all the damage she caused in the first film, with the help of loving boyfriend and quarry foreman Mike (Gross). A chance to escape her debts comes in the form of a $50 million PPV catfight against Anna Conda (Max), who is going to be supersized for the battle. But Beverly wants to go the other way and return to normal dimensions. Meanwhile, an extra-terrestrial threat looms, in the shape of Spa-Zor (Hall) from the planet Buxomus. She saw footage of Bev’s rampage, and travels to Earth to find an opponent who can match her size and skills.

There is, apparently, a whole giantess fetish thing. It’s not something I’m into. However, I was still amused enough over the brief (sixty minute) running time. It’s clearly not intended to be taken seriously, from the opening scene on Buxomus featuring a very terrestrial doorbell sound, and lines lifted shamelessly from Star Trek. That sets the lighthearted tone, and the film does a decent job of sustaining it thereafter. Even the obligatory sexual content is an improvement on Mecha-Fembot, played in a way closer to a fifties nudie-cutie than contemporary smut. It feels as if the cast and crew are all on the same page, pulling together, and for me, this helps paper over the obviously limited resources.

Naturally, it ends in a three-way fight, pitting Beverly and Anna against Spa-Zor at an oil refinery, which comes over like a fever dream version of a Godzilla finale. This is never going to be mistaking for high art or great cinema, and it’s certainly not for everyone. I wouldn’t argue if you said it was terrible – and, I suspect, neither would Wynorski. However, hand on heart, I was more entertained by this than The Marvels, which felt like a soulless commercial item, created purely for profit. While I’m under no illusions – a goal here was to make money – it feels like that was not its only purpose. I’d argue this is therefore closer to being true art. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off for a nice lie-down in a dark room. 

Dir: Jim Wynorski
Star: Ivy Smith, Brian Gross, Masuimi Max, Kiersten Hall

Guilt

  By

★★½
“Guilty of being kinda dull…”

This starts off strong, with an attention grabbing scene where a woman gets a visit from a plumber. She offers him a glass of water, and… Things do not go as expected. For the woman is Jessie (Shay), a psychiatrist on a mission. She has made it her purpose in life to punish paedophiles whom she feels have been too lightly punished by the law. The man is one such, and it does not end well for him. Specifically, he is stabbed, and buried in a shallow grave, deep in the Australian outback. Safe to say the film has got my attention. Unfortunately, it’s more or less downhill all the way from here.

The main problem is probably the script, which fails to build on this dramatic opening. For example, shortly after, we see a policewoman, Detective Swan (McKenzie) puzzling over the unexplained disappearances of a number of paedophiles, and it appears to be setting up a cat-and-mouse hunt. Except, she all but vanishes for the next hour, only reappearing significantly at the end. There’s also Jessie’s relationship with her younger sister. Or the hint that some kind of PTSD is responsible for Jessie’s vigilante activity – either connected to her own childhood, or perhaps her experiences in the military, where she served in the Middle East. None of these elements ever come together, feeling more like loose ends than coherent parts of the story.

Instead, she eventually kidnaps Grace (Flowers), a woman who helped her boyfriend to traffic in young children, but who claimed to be abused by him, and so was considered a victim as well. Similarly, if properly developed, this could have been a good source of tension. Was she actually an accomplice, just playing the abuse card? Again, the script seems almost to get bored with itself and drifts away to Vigilante Movie Cliche #45, where Jessie discovers that one of her previous victims was actually innocent. This triggers an existential crisis in Jessie, and she carelessly leaves her thoroughly incriminating diary for the receptionist at work to find, giving Detective Swan the break in her case she needs. Yeah, you’ll understand why I rolled my eyes a bit at that.

I did appreciate the effort to be nuanced. Given the topic of avenging angel versus child molesters, it would have been very easy to become a one-sided and shrill polemic (we’ve seen those in the past). Here, there’s a bit more subtlety, acknowledging that everything isn’t necessarily black and white. It’s also very female-centred, with almost all the significant roles going to women, and the individual performances are decent or better. But the lack of a compelling narrative sinks this ship, with it left feeling like a series of largely unconnected strands. Perhaps if we’d been brought along on Jessie’s journey, and saw how she became a vigilante, it might have been different? As is, there’s not even much resolution, and we are simply 95 minutes later in the day.

Dir: Karl Jenner, Lyndsay Sarah
Star: Janet Shay, Hayley Flowers, Mikaela, Franco, Kirsty McKenzie

Girl with a Gun: An Annie Oakley Historical Mystery, by Kari Bovee

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

This is an interesting idea. Take a real-life historical action heroine, whose life provides the underlying framework, and write a fictional story around that. Obviously, Annie Oakley really existed, and the broad strokes of her life here are accurate. If you’ve read our article on her, you will already know she did indeed take part in a shooting contest against famed marksman Frank Butler. That helped win her a spot on Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, with which she traveled both the United States and the world, amazing crowds with her markswomanship. The book adheres to these elements faithfully.

However, there’s a lot more going on here, which Bovee has added in. Almost as soon as Annie starts working for the show, her tent-mate, a young Indian woman, turns up dead. She is not the last corpse to do so, and there are no shortage of suspects in the crimes being committed either. The show’s manager, Mr. LeFleur, who seems to carry a torch for Annie. Twila Midnight, a medicine woman of mysterious origins, who conversely, has a passionate dislike for the heroine. Vernon McCrimmon, with whom Annie had crossed swords in the past – ending badly for him. Or possibly even Frank Butler, whose skills are failing him, with Oakley taking over as the show’s top attraction, or Buffalo Bill himself, who has skeletons in his own closet.

It’s likely not much of a spoiler to rule out the figures who actually existed like Butler, but Bovee does a decent job of keeping you guessing among the other characters. The evidence points one way, then the other, before things come to a head after an attempt is made on Annie’s life. This is only foiled due to the hedonistic tendencies of her replacement tent-mate. I think it probably works better as a whodunnit, rather than as an action story. Though there are plenty of rounds fired over the course of the book, these are almost entirely in the show’s arena, and the descriptions don’t generate a great deal of energy. You are instead left with a sense that perhaps you needed to be there.

This is a fairly straightforward story, with a generally good sense of historical time and place, capturing 1885 in the mid-West. Though I was amused by Twila saying, “His fever is high. It may be a virus,” since the first virus was not discovered and isolated by science until 1892. There’s not an enormous amount of complexity to Annie’s character here either. She’s relentlessly good-hearted, even to people who really do not deserve her kindness. But that’s part of her heroic nature, I guess, and Annie’s desire to provide for her family, as well as her loyalty to her horse, Buck, who also comes under threat, make for admirable qualities. I’d call this a solid read, which doesn’t seek to push the envelope, and if not aiming high, does hit most of its targets. D’you see what I did there?

Author: Kari Bovee
Publisher: Bosque Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 3 in the Annie Oakley Mystery series.

Griselda

  By

★★★★
“Calor blanco”

This is far from the first time we’ve covered films, series or documentaries about Griselda Blanco, the drug boss who ruled Miami with a lead fist in the eighties. There was Colombia narconovela La Viuda Negra. Lifetime TVM Cocaine Godmother, starring the not exactly Colombian, Catherine Zeta-Jones. And there was factual retelling, Queen of Cocaine. Now, we get the highest-profile version, made by Netflix and starring probably Colombia’s best-known actress. Albeit best-known for her role in long-running sitcom, Modern Family. We saw her here previously in the underwhelming Hot Pursuit, but this is a very different kettle of fish. Concern was understandable. Would she be up to the dramatic lifting required for such a heavy and complex role?

Yes. That’s the short answer. She does a fine job of depicting a character whose defining trait, in this rendition, is single-minded determination. It’s an aspect apparent from the start, where she flees her abusive husband in Medellin. Griselda arrives in Miami with her three kids, and little more than the clothes on her back. Oh, and the kilo of top-shelf cocaine, swiped from her spouse. Through sheer refusal to take no for an answer, she finds a buyer and convinces him to give her a shot [she meets him in Miami’s Mutiny club – Chris was actually a member there back in the day!]. When he stiffs her, she reels in a Colombian supplier, convinces him to front her 100 kilos, then creates her own market and network of dealers.

It’s kinda inspiring, weirdly. Early on, the series can be seen a twisted version of the American dream, where an immigrant can come to America, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and anyone can achieve success if they work hard. The reality is, Blanco didn’t arrive in Miami seeking asylum from domestic abuse, but fleeing increased law-enforcement heat for drug trafficking in New York. Not exactly what Vergara described the show as, depicting “How beyond all odds, a poor uneducated woman from Colombia managed to create a massive, multi-billion dollar empire in a male-dominated industry, in a country that was not her own.” You go, #girlboss! #slay!

Often literally. For her chosen profession here is thoroughly illegal, and the hard work involves ordering brutal violence against your rivals and enemies. This might be a cause for concern. But who are we to quibble? The makers have said they didn’t want to make a hero(ine) out of her. Neither did Brian de Palma, and yet, you can buy Scarface T-shirts. The market decides for you, and the way it depicts the violence for which Blanco is responsible seems more like an attempt at plausible deniability. It’s the usual double standard of Hollywood: making disapproving noises, while also depicting Griselda strutting glamourously out of the Mutiny, blood spattered on her cheek from a recent victim. 

Griselda has a strict zero-tolerance for anyone who thinks she is a soft mark because she’s a woman. Especially in the early part of her career, was quite willing to wield a baseball bat or gun to that end. Later on… well, she had people for that sort of thing. But as we head into the second half, things get progressively darker. Griselda starts to become paranoid, suspecting the people around her – an attitude not helped by her taste for smoking crack. She believes there’s an informant in her circle, and takes brutal action against those who she thinksit might be. Things peak at a birthday party for Dario (Guerra), her third husband. It ends in Griselda letting loose with her gold-plated MAC-10 (top).

The irony is, there’s no informant: just good police work. For on the other side of the law, the series gives us June Hawkins (Martinez, bottom), intelligence analyst and detective in the local police force. She was also a real person, one who played a significant role in the pursuit and capture of Griselda, being one of the first to realize a woman had taken over the drug trade in Miami. I suspect her role was likely inflated somewhat, in order to act as a counterpoint to her target: co-creator Doug Miro admitted about the character, “There’s a fair amount of artistic license.” That applies to the whole series, though I’m not inclined to complain.

It is a fairly straightforward rise-and-fall, charting first Griselda’s path up to the top, when she was earning $80 million per month. This is followed by the slow but likely inevitable collapse, as her business rivals and law enforcement catch up with her. We know how the story eventually ends – in a pool of blood outside a Medellin butcher’s shop. The series doesn’t bother going all the way to the end. It finishes with Blanco released from jail, sitting on the beach. But it’s not a happy ending, having just been told that she has lost almost everything for which she worked: three of her four sons have been murdered. Conventional morality wins out in the end.

In terms of production value, this is definitely several slices above the other efforts, even if Los Angeles stood in entirely for Miami (the latter no longer resembling what it was at the time). Of particular note is the make-up work on Vergara. It must have been a challenge, because events unfold over a significant number of years: your lead is, obviously, more or less fixed at a point in time. Initially, there’s little of note, but it gradually builds up, in a way that’s so subtle you might not notice. Until, by the end, you suddenly realize the character no longer looks like the actress. Though still rather prettier than the real Griselda.

I highly doubt this will end up being the final or even the definitive version of the Griselda Blanco story. The last surviving son, Michael Corleone, filed suit against Netflix, and reports indicate he has his own version of the family story he would like to tell. For now, however, this is the best adaptation of her life. If obviously skewed towards a questionable message of feminist “empowerment” which the makers wanted to send, Vargas’s strong performance holds the strands together and makes for a captivating experience. 

Dir: Andrés Baiz
Star: Sofía Vergara, Alberto Guerra, Martin Rodriguez, Juliana Aidén Martinez

Giantess Attack vs. Mecha-Fembot!

  By

★★½
“The bigger they come…”

The first Giantess Attack! movie was an unexpected guilty pleasure: while obviously low budget, it had no pretensions and an undeniably goofy charm that, at least for me, helped paper over the cracks and microscopic resources. The end of it teased this very movie, and most of the main players have delivered on that promise. Can lightning strike twice? The answer is… not quite. Even at a crisp 67 minutes, it still feels like there is a lot of padding, with recycled footage and elements that go on, after their amusement value has expired. That said, it ends in another impressive giant battle, and still contains some genuinely amusing moments.

Frida (Riley) and Diedre (Tacosa) have split after the events of the first film: the latter has vowed never to become a giantess ever again, and has retreated to her “Fortress of Immeasurable Guilt” to build popiscle-stick models. Frida pays her a visit, and they end up in what can only be described as a cat-fight version of the famous brawl from They Live, over Diedre’s refusal to put on glasses. However, the main threat is the surviving Metaluna twin (Nguyen) from the first movie, who is plotting revenge on Earth. To that end, she kidnaps a scientist, miniaturizes him and forces him to make the mecha-fembot of the title, which goes on the rampage through LA. The only hope is our two heroines, though before they can save the city, the duo first need to reconcile.

There can’t be many movies which open with a Katey Sagal impersonator, but here’s one. It follows with a brutal parody of those cloying, guilt-ridden Sarah McLachlan ASPCA commercials, which is spot on, and resurfaces as a bit of a running joke thereafter. Then, however… the film kinda loses its direction and energy for much of the first half. The sequence where the scientist ends up in Metaluna’s lair, for example, is excruciatingly over-stretched. The same goes for Frida’s ascent up to Diedre’s fortress, where the sole element of humour is that she goes mountain-climbing in go-go boots. Some sequences definitely feel more aimed at the fetish crowd, of whom I am not one.

Once the robot is built – I confess, I did laugh at the supposed method of activation – and unleashed, things become a lot more fun. For we get what we came for, which is cheesy, OTT and completely ridiculous F-sized action. It’s a mix of model work, CGI and green-screen, all done with more enthusiasm than actual resources, yet remains the kind of film-making for which I have an odd affection. Much of Los Angeles is, indeed, destroyed, and our heroines are sentenced to 9,000 hours of community service as a result. Naturally, a third entry is teased, accompanied by the outrageously English accent of the eye-patch wearing “Nicky Fury”. Even if this sequel was a little weaker, I still cannot stop myself from looking forward to: Giantess Attack… In Space!

Dir: Jeff Leroy
Star: Tasha Tacosa, Rachel Riley, Christine Nguyen, Vlada Fox

God is a Bullet

  By

★★★★
“God, faith, mayhem and a lot of blood”

To be honest, I never read Boston Teran’s novel. I wasn’t aware of the story until this movie came out here on DVD – but then the book was also never released in my country. I’ve every intention to read it and have already ordered it in English. However, I can’t make any comparisons between the book and the movie adaptation, directed by Nick Cassavetes, son of John Cassavetes.

It seems that when Teran’s novel came out in 1999, it caused quite a stir in Americas crime literature circles. Most agreed about the literary quality of the book: it won several crime novel awards and was nominated for even more. At the same time, its dark outlook on life, as well as the strong violence, were criticized. Teran’s style has been compared to that of Hunter S. Thompson, Jim Thompson and Cormac McCarthy. The author himself, who writes many different sorts of novels, is seen as some kind of mystery: few people seem to know him personally and he doesn’t give many interviews. But maybe he is just not interested in being a public personality (and why should he?), constantly standing in the limelight as some “star authors” do.  The movie rights were quickly bought by Hollywood and Nick Cassavetes planned an adaptation.

It seems to have been a passion project for him. But for whatever reason, it needed a quarter of a century until the movie, filmed in 2021 in Mexico City and New Mexico, would see the light of day. The main character is Bob Hightower (Coster-Waldau, best known as Jamie Lannister in Game of Thrones), a police officer searching for his daughter. She was abducted by a violent sect who also killed his ex-wife and her husband. A former member of the sect, Case Hardin (Monroe) declares herself ready to help him. According to her, he would never have a chance to find the gang by official means, without his daughter getting killed immediately. Bob accepts her assistance, though doesn’t know how trustworthy Case is. Does she really just want to help him rescue his daughter, from the fate that Case herself experienced 12 years ago? Or does she have other motives?

That’s the story in a nutshell. But it’s much more complicated than that, and you also shouldn’t expect this to be a non-stop action movie: it isn’t. I think you could maybe call it a road movie. The search for the young girl, while actually leading there in the end, is more a “McGuffin”, in that it moves the main protagonists forward – but under the surface, a different story is being told. There is an evaluation or discussion about faith, belief, God and values between Bob and Case. He is a believer in God and Christian convictions, while she is essentially atheist. Inevitably, they clash in the beginning until they develop an understanding. They come from two different sides of the spectrum. It’s the cruel descent into a man-made hell, where there is hardly any law except what you make for yourself, like an old-time Western, which makes them partners who rely on and save each other again and again.

It’s the most fulfilling part of the movie. In a way, Case is Bob’s guarding angel; she knows about those people, how they behave, how to deal with them, also the danger that they embody as human life has hardly any value for them. Bob goes “undercover” to find his daughter which also means he has to look and appear like these people, so gets a full-body tattoo by “The Ferryman” (Foxx in a larger supporting role). The aim is to contact the sect, whose cult leader Cyrus (Glusman) is a specific piece of human scum, and deal with him. All of what has happened ties back to Bob’s father in law and his superior at the police office, though he doesn’t know this.

It’s an exciting and I’d even say great piece of film work, though regrettably, will probably never get the attention it deserves. As far as I can see the film never ran in German cinemas, and only I was barely aware of the movie coming out on DVD and Blu-Ray. As the movie wasn’t produced by one of the big studios, the money for marketing might not have been quite there, I assume. The film was criticized for the amount and intensity of violence and so-called misogyny, due to the fact that the movie doesn’t hold back. But bad things happen to everyone in this story, regardless if you are male or female, black or white. In that respect the film is truly democratic, mistreating everyone equally. There are no safe spaces for anyone here.

While I personally have seen worse, a little word of warning. The movie includes rapes, vicious murders, child prostitution, drug addiction, poisonous snakes, slashed throats, head-shots, and people getting killed with flame throwers or suffocated with a plastic bag. You name it, the movie has it. That said, the depiction of all the carnage listed is not gratuitous. I never had the feeling that Cassavetes indulged in violence for violence’s sake. However, if you belong to the more squeamish, this might maybe not be the movie for you.

That said, the movie feels honest in showing a different side of America: the ugly, dark side you usually don’t see in all these feel-good Hollywood movies anymore. You get the sense this is about real people experiencing real pain. Despite the violence, that is stretched over two and a half hours, giving the movie a certain kind of calmness and tranquility. Cassavetes gives his characters time to develop and it pays off handsomely. Scenes can breathe, and unlike a lot of movies today, it’s not all cut-to-the-chase. In the end, Bob and Case are just two lonely people who find each other, during their journey through backwoods towns and the desert, a trip that has something of a cathartic quality.

In the end – and that’s why it’s here – it’s in the main Case’s story. Yes, Bob hopes to find his daughter but he always appears a bit bland compared to her fascinating, broken character. The movie begins and ends with her. There are flashbacks and you start to realize that she is not just lost, she has been robbed of her childhood, that no one really cares for her. She may be on a journey to her own death as Case has no real place that she can call home. The whole depiction reminds me of characters like Revy from Black Lagoon or Lisbeth Salander. Or maybe it’s just my imagination running wild.

In any case, I was highly impressed by Maika Monroe’s performance and the movie as a whole. I personally had no problem with the depicted violence, and think this movie deserves more exposure. All told, if you want to see something different from the typical Hollywood entertainment, this might be of interest.

Dir: Nick Cassavetes
Star: Maika Monroe, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Jamie Foxx, Karl Glusman 

 

Good Ol Girl

  By

★★★
“It’s… complicated.”

This documentary takes a look into the lives of three women in Texas, who are all operating in the male-dominated world of ranching. Some were born into it, while others came to it through choice. In particular, Mandy Dauses falls into the latter category, having left her East-coast home because she felt that Texas represented the best chance to fulfill her ambition of becoming a ranch manager. On the other hand, Sara Lemoine Knox is struggling to balance what she feels is an obligation to carry on in the family business, with her own goal of becoming a lawyer. Meanwhile, Martha Santos is looking to find work in that line, but without her own property, is finding it a challenge.

It’s a way of life which is gradually becoming more endangered for both men and women. For example, Martha’s family used to own land near Laredo, but they sold it to satisfy the ever-increasing appetite for land on which homes and businesses could be built. Similarly, Sara’s heart really isn’t in farming, even though she was given her first property, covering 160 acres, at the age of 12. Even beyond their chosen (or imposed) profession, they have other ambitions. Mandy desperately wants to start a family, but at age 37, time is running out for her. Though during the course of the documentary, she does discover she is pregnant. These are all imperfect lives, and that’s probably the point, offering an non-idealized take that’s radically different from the fictional, romantic version of cowgirls.

Dauses likely represents the most interesting and complex of the characters. On the one hand, she’s clearly a strong, independent woman, who moved half-way across American in pursuit of her dreams. On the other, she still cooks dinner for her long-term boyfriend, John, who expects a meal to be ready on the table when he comes home (regardless of the fact that she has her own job, too). Outside of the story of her pregnancy, however, there is not much sense of development. This is more a snapshot of the three women’s lives at this moment in time, without any narrative. When the end credits roll, nobody is particularly in a different place from there they were at the beginning.

This is not to say there’s any need for forced drama, but there’s not even much sense of time passing. Contrast, say, documentary series Clarkson’s Farm, which had a much more compelling narrative, simply through covering an entire year. Of course, it had the advantage of more time to tell its story, but the dramatic moments here, such as coming across a dead cow in the middle of giving birth, have no particular emotional resonance. Instead, it’s most interesting when you are shown the difficult task the women have to balance the various forces (internal or external) in their lives, looking to achieve harmony. The film probably needed to do a better job of that itself, if it wanted to have a lasting impact.

Dir: Sarah Brennan Kolb
Star: Mandy Dauses, Sara Lemoine Knox, Martha Santos, Joyce Gibson Roach