★★★½
“Almost everything, everywhere…”
Sitting somewhere between Everything Everywhere All at Once and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, you will find this British comedy. It shares the same immigrant culture clash origin of the former, and the teenage angst of the latter – though, fortunately, without Pilgrim‘s smug self-awareness. It’s the story of Ria Khan (Kansara), a teenage daughter in an Pakistani family in Britain who wants nothing to do with her family’s expectations, and instead, dreams of becoming a stuntwoman. Her older sister, Lena (Arya), recently dropped out of art school and, to Ria’s horror, is now heading towards marriage to hunky scientist Salim (Khanna). He basically represents everything about traditional culture Ria detests.
She decides her sister must be saved from this fate, with the help of her plucky school-chums, and in increasing defiance, both of her family and the evidence that Salim is a nice guy, who genuinely loves Lena. That is, until Ria stumbles across the secret laboratory under his house, and it turns out she might have been right all along. Except, it might be his mother, Raheela (Bucha), who is the evil mastermind, with a plan to… No, I can’t say. Not so much for reasons of spoilerness, more because it’s such a dumb idea for a villainous plot, James Bond wouldn’t give it house-room. Even in the Roger Moore era. Regardless, Ria’s only hope is now to kidnap her own sister from her own wedding, under the nose of both Rahella and the bride’s parents.
This manages to tread the fine line between self-awareness and blatantly being “meta”. Ria is excellent, delivering fiercely as the committed teenager, who is 125% sure she is utterly correct, regardless of what any so-called “facts” might indicate. However, the real star is likely Khanna, who in just a few scenes manages to steal the entire movie, as the epitome of an evil overlord. I did sense some of the cultural beats might be lost on those outside Indian society. Most of the time, there’s enough context you can work out the details (and it was refreshing that the script avoided the obvious “arranged marriage” trope). But what is an “Eid” and why would you have an “Eid soiree“?
The action is surprisingly robust, setting up each fight with an introductory title. It generally delivers with emphatic oomph that provoked comment from me more than once: the fight between the two sisters was particularly savage. It was also appreciated that Ria’s idol is Eunice Huthart, who genuinely is one of the top British stuntwomen, having doubled for Angelina Jolie in Salt. I would have welcomed a bit more action, especially towards the end. It seems to be setting up a big fight between Ria and Raheela: this doesn’t arrive, instead being simply Ria landing the signature move she has been failing to complete all movie. But as an entertaining mix of dry British humour and flying fantasy, this works better than I expected.
Dir: Nida Manzoor
Star: Priya Kansara, Ritu Arya, Nimra Bucha, Akshay Khanna


This is another example of someone simply trying to do too much on their movie. For Linch not only starred in, produced and directed this, she also edited it, did the sound design and was the colourist. It’s not hard to predict her talents are not equally divided. It’s a shame, since I really wanted to enjoy this: much like its heroine, there’s a plucky, can-do attitude present, which can only be admired. Unfortunately, anyone above the age of eight is going to be quite hard-pushed to overlook the flaws. While the action is not especially one of those, the volume there is underwhelming, and the romantic, comedic and dramatic elements are hugely variable, to put it politely.
This Taiwanese kung-fu potboiler just about manages to sustain interest for an hour, before losing the plot (literally, and such as it was to begin with) down the stretch. It begins with ten martial arts masters stealing an omnibus edition of fighting manuals from the local Shaolin temple. Trying to get entry, and failing, because they won’t admit women, is Shi Fu Chun (Kwan). With the help of former head priest Lin Chiu (Chan), who still lives nearby, she is taught a slew of skills, and ends up assigned the task of recovering the purloined books, and restoring the temple’s honour. Oh, except the “positive kung-fu” learned is causing Shi Fu to transition into a man. So she/he (inexplicably, the 1977 film does not provide us with preferred pronouns…) needs to find and learn some “negative kung-fu” stat, to counter the process.
Chinese kung-fu movies took off in the early eighties, after the success of Shaolin Temple, starring an unknown teenager called Jet Li. Over the years that followed, a slew of imitators followed, with varying success. Where these largely differed from their Hong Kong counterparts, were in a more grounded approach to combat: wire-work and trampolines were avoided, in favour of players who (like Li) were martial artists first, and actors second. I believe the same is true of the heroine here, though information about Lin is hard to come by. According to the IMDb, this was her acting debut, though it’s tricky to grade her work there, thanks to the rather clunky dubbing on the print viewed for this review.
I guess this is, at its heart, about the quest for a treasure map that has been torn into two pieces. Though you could be forgiven for not really noticing, as most of the cast seem to forget about it for the bulk of the running time. The heroine is Shao Wa (Chi), whose father is killed by the Three Rats in their quest for the map. She ends up being punted off a cliff and presumed dead by them. Naturally – it’d be a short movie otherwise – she’s not as dead as they think. She’s rescued by the inevitable kung-fu master and his annoying sidekick, Lee Ta Fa (Hung), who nurse her back to health, and give her the skills necessary to beat the Three Rats.
I was pleasantly surprised when this random kung-fu film found Tubi (under the Silver Fox title) turned out to be by the creator of
★★½
If the title is more than a bit blunt, it’s certainly accurate. May Lin (Cheng) is a brash hooker, who runs a sideline in blackmail videos with her flatmate, Nana. But one night she comes home to find Nana near death, the victim of a brutal client. She tells the police about the video, but before she can give it to them, the perpetrator – rich and influential politician, Kao Tien Chin (Cho) – sends an army of beige trenchcoat wearing killers to take care of both Nana and May. The former succumbs, but the latter escapes and goes on the run. With the police force apparently leaking like a sieve and the case being shut down from on high, prosecutor Yin Li Shan sends his niece, Nancy Cheng (Mishiwaki), to link up with May and bring her in. But they’ll have to get past the trenchcoat mafia, among other threats, for there to be any hope of justice.
I kept moving between 2½ and 3 stars for this. It is pretty chatty, and the focus is not as much on the title character as I might have hoped. But there’s no denying that Leng (Shi) is a very solid character, and when she gets her chances to shine, does so in a memorable fashion. This is nowhere better illustrated than her final battle, where she takes on an enemy – who just tried to molest Leng, believing her drugged – while they both balance on a tight-rope. There’s no particular reason for the fight to take place in such an environment. The ground would have been perfectly fine. But it adds an extra dimension, and the way it’s filmed makes it feel surprisingly possible that they were wobbling about up there.
Yeah, I think if I’d seen this under the alternate title of On the Waterfront, I might well have passed it by. Though that is probably a slightly more accurate description of the contents here, even allowing for the complete absence of Marlon Brando. [At least we didn’t have to deal with the expectations set by the Italian title, which translates as “The merciless hand of Bruce Lee strikes again”!] It takes place around the Whampoa wharves in Shanghai, where various crime families are jostling for position and control, with varying degrees of morality e.g. whether or not they approve of drugs and/or sex trafficking as a means to make money. Particularly of note here are Red Rose (Tang) and Zhou (Chang), who eventually end up allies against their common enemy (Chen).