Tag: l

The Lady Professional

  By

★★★
“Keeping it professional.”

After a bit of a slow start, this eventually delivers and becomes a good entry in the “female assassin” genre. Just do not expect much in the way of martial arts, as there might have been had this starred the likes of Angela Mao or Sue Shiomi. Ge Tianli (Ho) is the working girl of the title, and uses a nifty Bond-esque gadget in the process of her job. It’s a make-up compact which has been modified to fire lethal darts at her target. Though if I was her boss, I might be inclined to question her choices of location. We first see her killing a guy on a roller-coaster in motion, which seems unnecessarily difficult.

Or perhaps it was just intended to show that she’s such as bad-ass, she can take you out anywhere? Although she’s not actually an assassin by choice. She originally got in the field of work purely for personal reasons, taking revenge after her family was murdered. However, a triad boss, Xiaojiang (Chang) has evidence of this, and consequently, she now has to carry out hits at his beck and call. She’d rather just be serving tea in her cafe. Tianli gets commissioned to take out Shi Yun-pu (Chan), who is about to squeal on a smuggling operation. Fair enough, except the one commissioning the hit then decides he wants to tidy up loose ends, and cuts the brakes on her nifty sports car. 

 You can likely fill in the rest of the plot yourself. She does not take well to the attempted assassin assassination, and works her way up the chain of command to find the man responsible. This is where things get considerably more interesting, after a first half which is rather too chatty, with the odd interruption for compact carnage, and a not particularly exciting car chase. But when Ho (who really doesn’t look particularly Oriental) gets the bit between her teeth, the film certainly amps up a gear. She wears a shiny black (p)leather coat as she climbs the ranks, and while she demonstrates little or no hand-to-hand skills, proves adept enough with a gun to get the job done. 

I particularly enjoyed her battle in a warehouse against three goons, one of whom is Yeung in an early role. It’s established early on that she can’t possible outfight them: her opponents are simply to strong for her to damage them. However, she uses the environment (which also includes a surprising amount of trampolines) against them effectively, leading to a trio of deaths by construction equipment, including a surprisingly messy fatality by industrial chipper. She then dresses as a nun (!) in order to get close to her final target, as he wisely tries to make his way out of the country. By this point, I was enjoying it considerably more than I expected in the early going, where our heroine didn’t seem to be doing much. Stick with it, I’d say, and you may well find an adequate payoff. 

Dir: Chih-Hung Kuei and Akinori Matsuo
Star: Lily Ho, Chang Pei-shan, Chan Shen, Bolo Yeung

Liverleaf

  By

★★★★
“Everyone has a breaking point.”

Haruka Nozaki (Yamada) is just a couple of month away from graduating junior high. But will she make it? Because her life is being made a living hell by bullies at the school. Rumour has it that she “stole” a boy, Mitsuru Aiba (Shimizu), from another girl, Taeko Oguro (Ôtani). As a result, Haruka has become the relentless target of other female students. The staff are no help: the school is going to be closed after this class graduates, and the teachers consequently couldn’t care less. Indeed, Haruka’s father, a substitute teacher – that’s why she ended up transferring in – is being victimized by the male bullies, in a similar way to his daughter.

Things come to a head after fire destroys Haruka’s home, killing her parents and putting her perky little sister in the hospital with severe burns. And when I say, “come to a head”, the rest of the film is filled with some of the more disturbing violence I have seen in recent years. The attitude here feels almost like Battle Royale, in that the people inflicting this level of savagery are basically kids. They are not supposed to be this way, folks. There’s not even the distancing element of a dystopian future, which Battle Royale enjoyed. Nor it is simply Haruka. You can’t claim “one bad apple”, because there are a lot of people here, who seem to live by the motto, “Hurt people, hurt people.”

The famous quote, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” often misattributed to Edmund Burke, came to mind here too. Because, while Mitsuru initially pushes back against the bullies targeting Haruka, it’s a half-hearted effort. Though I guess it’s better than the completely useless adults, from parents through pedagogues, to the all but entirely absent authorities. By the end though, you will perhaps be left questioning whether anyone here genuinely falls into the category of “good.” Everyone has their traumas, which have left them negatively impacted, and many are paying it forward to others. This is most apparent in the character of Rumi Sayama (Ôtsuka), one of the bullies’ victims, who ends up joining their clique. 

Naitô directs things with a bleakness appropriate to the story. Much of it unfolds against a backdrop of snowy weather (the title, incidentally, refers to a  winter flower). If there’s one shot of red, red blood splattering across a snowdrift, there’s a dozen. But it’s such an iconic image, I can’t blame him for using it more than once. I note that Naitô himself used to be a teacher. This isn’t the only case where that previous career seems to inform his work, if the title of a previous movie is any guide: Let’s Make the Teacher Have a Miscarriage Club. I’ve seen enough movies that my level of concern for the Japanese educational system, and those who go through it, is certainly non-zero. This ensures it won’t be going down any time soon. 

Dir: Eisuke Naitô
Star: Anna Yamada, Hiroya Shimizu, Rinka Ôtani, Rena Ôtsuka

Lola Colt

  By

★★★
“From stage to stage.”

This spaghetti Western sees Lola (Falana) arrive in the town of Santa Ana with her troupe of dancing girls, after one of them falls ill. They need to stay there while she recuperates, under the care of the local not-quite-a-doctor-yet, Rod Strater (Martell). The town has bigger problems, being ruthlessly squeezed for every penny by El Diablo (Cobos). Lola lost her family to a not dissimilar band of outlaws, and is peeved that the menfolk are utterly cowed by El Diablo, even after Rod explains that the villains has taken hostages and is using them to compel the town’s good behaviour. But after a particularly tragic death, Lola has had enough, and rouses the town folk to action.

In many ways, this is a standard Western, with the lone good guy taking on the villains: hence its subtitle, “Face to face with the devil”. Except, of course, in this case, the guy is a gal. Oh, and Lola is black. I have just mentioned this fact more in the review, than the film ever does, being refreshingly colour-blind. It’s especially remarkable given the era, a good few years before Pam Grier would become a trailblazer back in Hollywood. It’s tempting to read race into Lola being greeted with, “We don’t need your kind around here,” when she steps off the coach. Subsequent events show it’s just the local morality police, who are severely unimpressed with her profession, rather than the shade of her skin. 

In another twist, the villain’s real name is actually Larry Stern, which sounds more like an advertising executive. He’s a businessman who got peeved when his plans for a railroad fell through because the locals wouldn’t sell him their land, and decided to take revenge on them. Falana, though born in New Jersey, was already a star on Italian TV, and also performs a few musical numbers here. Though I did wonder where the music, a full-on jazzy production, was coming from in the town’s saloon, where there are no musicians at all. She certainly brings it with her moves, which are much more Vegas than Old West. And she would indeed go on to become the highest-paid performer in Sin City. 

Until the final assault on El Diablo’s compound, where she demonstrates she does know her way around both ends of a firearm, Lola is more a figurehead to the town’s resistance, encouraging them to break free of their fears.  The physical side of things is mostly left to Rod, who gets a couple of lengthy fist-fights, including one with El Diablo, when he’s not dealing with jealous girlfriend Rose (Schürer). It is this middle section where the film struggles a little, being particularly generic in its elements. But Falana is always compelling to watch, and it’s a shame she wasn’t given many further opportunities in our genre: 1975’s Lady Cocoa was perhaps the closest she came, although it doesn’t quite qualify for inclusion here. 

Dir: Siro Marcellini
Star: Lola Falana, Peter Martell, Germán Cobos, Erna Schürer
a.k.a. Black Tigress

Line of Fire

  By

★★★½
“Australia, American style.”

Although this is very much an Australian movie, in both setting and characters, it feels quite a bit out of place there. We begin with a school shooting in which twenty students are killed. It would be utterly unprecedented there. According to this article, Australia’s most recent school shooting occurred back in May 7, 2012. It adds, “No one was injured.” Well, that’s kinda weak, isn’t it? I was reliably informed, everything in Australia is trying to kill you. Anyway, ex-soldier and police officer Samantha Romans (Garner) is first on the scene here, but fails to engage the active shooter. Her teenage son, Tim, is one of the victims. Inevitably, questions are asked of her in the aftermath. Not least by ambitious journalist Jamie Connard (Tolj), who negotiates a lucrative contract to write about events.

One condition: she needs to get Romans to tell her side of events. Initially, the cop won’t speak to the writer, so Connard ups the ante, posting an online video vilifying Romans and blaming her for Tim’s death. The journo’s husband, Greg (Cousins) is appalled, and asks her to stop. But ambition and greed overpower her common sense, especially because the tactic seems to have worked, Samantha agreeing to meet Jamie. Except… the policewoman doesn’t show up, and when the scribe returns home, she finds Greg and their daughter missing. She soon gets a phone-call from Samantha, and has to begin a hunt which is intended to push to and beyond her mental limits.

And, perhaps, teach her something about what her prospective subject went through on that traumatic day at the school. For in certain ways, it feels a little bit like a sister to The Hitcher, with someone having their life utterly upended by an unstoppable force. Trauma as twisted, Nietzschean life-coaching, if you will: what does not kill you, makes you stronger. The main difference is, there, the victim was picked for no particular reason. Here, it’s very specific, and to be honest, Connard does seem like a bit of a bitch, particularly in the early going. But by the end, she and her family have been put completely through the wringer, and it’s hard not to empathize with them.

However, you also gradually learn about Romans’ past as well, although we know early on she has lost her husband and another child, before Tim. The specifics, beyond that, are likely grimmer than you would have expected, or even imagined in a nightmare, to the point I wondered how she could have continued to function. While the two lead performances are very good, it does have some pacing issues. Where The Hitcher was absolutely relentless, this does on occasion grind to a halt and become static and chatty. In the main though, it remains a strong, if extremely dark, thriller, pitting two women against each other, both of whom are not the kind of characters you see often on-screen. 

Dir: Scott Major
Star: Nadine Garner, Samantha Tolj, Brett Cousins, Damian Walshe-Howling
a.k.a. Darklands

Lilli, a Girl From the Big City

  By

★★★
“The original Barbie”

The subtitle is not a joke. Lilli began her life as a comic – just a single drawing, with a line of her saying something funny – in the German newspaper Bild. Drawn by German artist Reinhard Beuthien, it ran from 1952-1961. With her child-like face, perfect slim figure, and long blond hair that she carried as a ponytail, Lilli was an attractive young woman. Also, she was saucy, sexy, independent and single: not at all as you would imagine young women to be in 1950’s Germany. It’s unsurprising that “Bild-Lilli” had her fans, and that dolls in her image would be produced from 1955 on. Though these were originally meant not as toys, but for marketing purposes.

When Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler went to Germany on holiday in 1956, she discovered the dolls and wanted to bring them to the American market. She had her designers create a new doll based on Lilli, and released her under the name “Barbie” in 1959. It seems Handler was afraid of copyright claims by the original producers. For Wikipedia tells us: “Mattel acquired the rights to Lilli in 1964, and all the promotional and merchandising activities related to the character were discontinued after then.” So, yes: while Mattel changed details here and there, Barbie was originally indeed a German girl named Lilli. Though looking at the All-American girl Barbie embodies today (also her animated movies, as well as the recent live-action one), it’s hard to recognize Lilli in Barbie nowadays.

However, long before the sale of rights, in 1958, Lilli had her own live-action movie. [I wonder if Mattel buying Lilli is why I haven’t seen this movie on TV for 30 years or more. It has never been released on videotape, DVD or Blu-ray.] This starred Danish actress Ann Smyrner, who won the role in a contest. Smyrner spoke only a little German, so was dubbed by German voice actress Margot Leonard. She would go on to fame for also dubbing Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot, Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg – basically, everyone young, female and sexy in 1950s and 60s cinema. I mention her especially, because I think that without her voice, Lilli might not have worked so well as a film character.

In this story, Lilli works as a reporter for a newspaper. Her introduction is already notable, driving an elegant sports car at high speed into a parked vehicle. When a policeman tries to fine her, she flatters and confuses him, kisses him on the cheek and leaves. In the newspaper office, she resists the flirtation of her boss with a move – is it early martial arts? – that leaves him on the ground. Really, we had not seen a female character like that in a German movie. It might have been slightly different in America, with some female characters in westerns and swashbucklers, but here, this was new. Although things were about to change, as I remember Lieselotte Pulver, whose Spessart Inn series of films began the same year.

Lilli is sent to report on a missionary congress in Sicily, getting there by ship. Honestly, I sincerely doubt this movie was filmed there, because we hardly see any Italian landscapes here. You see signs in Italian painted on walls indicating this is a hotel, a restaurant and so on. It’s meant to convince you that you are there because… well… it’s written in Italian language, so it must be Italy, right? Most of the scenes are inside on sets, and all of these might well have been in a German film studio. Also, some characters speak German with a fake Italian accent. It might have been convincing for a German audience in the 50s, but these feel kind of hilarious nowadays. (Although we still get German actors playing Italian characters, at least they leave out the fake accents now!) The opening credits say “Produced in the Arca studios, Berlin”, a facility which also produced a movie set partly in Africa!

But let’s be fair. For a 50s movie, Lilli’s adventure is quite exciting. She meets an old man (Siegfried Schürenberg) onboard the ship, who asks her for a favor and soon turns up dead in his cabin. She finds money printing plates in her room. Her investigations in Sicily lead her to a car garage where a traitor from a gang (Friedrich Joloff) is killed. As one of the murderers tries to abuse Lilli, he accidentally tears off her dress, leading to Lilli running away in her lingerie, causing a commotion in the streets until friendly sailors bring her back to the hotel. 

Another body appears, this time in her hotel room, and she gets friendly with potential love interest Mr. Morton (Hoven). He turns out to be up to no good, offering the gangsters a hand in getting the printing plates – most of these gangsters (including the gangster lady, below) are obviously not smart enough to deal with Lilli. When her little Italian friend is kidnapped, the big bad turns out to be the priest who accompanied her already on the ship (Peters). Lilli escapes, and has her sailor friends beat up the criminals in their own pub. The movie ends with the gangsters arrested, and Morton turns out to be Lieutenant Collins of Interpol, working undercover to help capture the villain. As Lilli already had Collins tied to a chair, she leaves her love interest struggling to free himself – a bit of revenge on her part.

Thinking about it, Lilli seems to spend most of the movie’s runtime escaping from some dangerous place or situation. She shoots with a gun at a vase, and engages in a – for the 50s – acceptable car chase. She even drives backwards, and fakes her own death by tossing the car down a slope​, Dr. No style. Though probably not acceptable for today anymore, she does it all in high-heels. But that trope is ironically subverted, when after that big chase, one of her high-heels breaks. This seems to be a bigger nuisance for her than the chase! But I have to say: for a German production, in a time when there were virtually no local crime films and no one would have understood the meaning of an “action movie” here, this film is almost ground-breaking.

However, that doesn’t mean it is “good”. Lilli survives more due to luck than intelligence, and her enemies aren’t too bright either. Characters often don’t react as would be appropriate or logical. Why the chief of police (Rudolf Platte) feels the need to chase Lilli, because a body was found in her room, escapes me; she is hardly a danger to the public. Morton walking into the gangsters’ den and immediately being accepted by them is implausible. Lilli and Morton kissing, when they have barely met or exchanged more than three words, is even more so. The revelation of the priest being the villain has no punch at all, despite clearly being intended as a big twist. Another problem is dialogue which doesn’t give enough information for scenes to work or have impact. But then, this is close to the first attempt at a German crime movie after WWII, and doesn’t take itself too seriously. Lilli is adequately sassy, some of the gangsters are quite simple minded, and everyone falls head over heels for Lilli, as if they had never seen a beautiful girl before.

The cast is almost a “Who’s Who” of German actors at the time. Schürenberg (the German dubbing voice of Clark Gable and Shere Khan in The Jungle Book) would become very well-known due to his “Sir John” character in the Edgar Wallace movies. They also often featured Peters prominently, who made a career out of playing secondary villains. He would later appear in Dario Argento’s first giallo and could be seen next to Sean Connery in A Fine Madness (1966). Platte was a very well-known actor who started in films in 1929 and would work into the 1970s. Joloff was part of SF-TV series Raumpatrouille Orion (“Space Command Orion“, 1966), a German equivalent to Star Trek, and the German voice of James Mason and Dr. No. The Austrian Hoven had a big run in 50s and 60s German genre cinema, then became a director of horror and erotic movies at the end of the sixties. But perhaps the biggest name appears at the end. Udo Jürgens was a huge star in the German music scene, with hit after hit until his death in 2014. Here, he sings the title and end songs, and plays one of the sailors.

After this movie Smyrner made a career in German and Italian movies of the Sixties, appearing in German krimis, romances, adventure movies, westerns and even the early wave of erotic comedies at the end of the decade. She could also be seen in two early American SF movies. According to another well-known actress, Smyrner was interested in both men and women, though struggled with her image as an early “sex bomb”. After she left the film scene, when German film production effectively stopped in the early 70s, she started to write articles for Danish newspapers, mostly about theological themes. 

The Lilli movie, though almost forgotten today, paved the way for things to come. One year later, crime-comedy Nick Knatterton, based on another beloved comic strip, from magazine Quick, made it to the big screen with a similarly impressive cast. 1959 also saw the release of the first Edgar Wallace movie Der Frosch mit der Maske (“Face of the Frog”). That crime film focused more on horror, and was a major hit with audiences, leading to a series of 32 Edgar Wallace movies through 1972. Obviously, the less serious approach of Lilli, didn’t quite click with audiences at the time. But without this kind of pioneering work, would we have seen what came after? This little flick is amusing fluff, doesn’t harm anyone, and might have been a revelation for German girls in the 50s, with no other choices than becoming a house wife or a secretary! While the story is kind of a fantasy, Lilli shows there may be alternatives.

Dir: Hermann Leitner
Star: Ann Smyrner, Adrian Hoven, Claude Farell, Werner Peters
a.k.a. Lilli – ein Mädchen aus der Großstadt

Lamb Game

  By

★★★½
“Ribbons and bows.”

This kinda teetered on the edge of inclusion or not, for about 90% of the movie. The heroine is quite passive, and the action is largely handled by others. It’s still solidly entertaining, and is definitely upper-tier as Die Hard knockoffs go. But it didn’t have a sufficient action heroine quotient… until the very end. There, she finally gets her act together, and takes the fight to her opponents. Was it enough? I was still on the fence, until one bravura shot convinced me. It doesn’t necessarily make logical sense, sure. However, it was just so damn cool, I had no option but to stamp its card and allow the movie entrance through these hallowed portals.

It begins at a wedding, where Shirley (Hung) is about to get married. A gang of jewel thieves led by Di (Chan) shows up, and a firefight with the authorities breaks out. Her husband-to-be decides to have a go. It does not end well for him. A few years later, Shirley gets locked in the building where she works at an archery hall, during a typhoon. By chance, Di and his cronies are also there, working on another robbery. He’s not happy when he realizes Shirley has witnessed him killing his target, and sends his over-sexed brother and another minion to hunt her down. Fortunately for Shirley, another resident in the building is blind martial artist, Nan Ge (Cheng, who used to be married to Yukari Oshima).

This is supposed to be set in Hong Kong during the late nineties, not that any Western viewer could probably tell. But especially in the opening scene, at the wedding, it does feel like a throwback to the golden days of Hong Kong action cinema, before the British colony was handed back to the Chinese. There’s some glorious slo-mo, blood squibbing and gun-fu, that really had me thinking this might be an undiscovered gem. The rest can’t quite live up to the same, heady delights. Yet it’s still a nicely crafted piece of low-budget entertainment, with some particularly impressive photography, which seems to have strayed in from a much bigger production. The setting is cool too, although it appears nobody in Hong Kong has heard of “fire exits”.

Shirley does spend most of the early going running and hiding, with the most memorable bit of violence an encounter with a protruding nail. Eventually, though, Nan Ge is no longer around to protect her, because… of reasons, and she has to fend for herself. Shirley’s employment might be a factor there. It’s a shame, from our perspective, this took so long to show up, since there’s potential for a lot more. To be clear, I was still enjoying proceedings – just on a non-GWG level. When “Action Shirley’ finally does appear, it’s more like dessert than the main course. Go in with that as your expectation, and you should still find yourself enjoying the meal.

Dir: Huang Yi
Star: Lynn Hung, Ricky Chan, Mark Cheng, Zhao Jing Shu Yu

The Last Exit

  By


★★★★
“Manson family values.”

Genuinely good Tubi Original shocker! Well, that’s a bit harsh: there have have been decent ones before – such as Lowlifes, which certainly has some DNA in common. But this is likely the best I’ve yet seen, anchored by an excellent performance from Richardson. This takes place on a dark and stormy night, in a remote Scottish farmhouse. Rose (Richardson) is taking care of her disabled husband, with the help of daughter Maisy (Soverall), where there’s a frantic knocking at the door. It’s two men, Matty (Cadby) and his badly injured brother, Jack (Linpow). Their car got into a wreck nearby, and they are in desperate need of help. Naturally, they aren’t innocent passers-by. 

No great surprise there, and it turns out they are fleeing from a robbery, with the intention of getting across the North Sea to Norway. However, there was a third member of the gang, who didn’t survive. He’s the son of the man who planned the heist: for obvious reasons is not happy about the situation, and ends up heading for the farm. However, that is not the biggest problem Matty and Jack face. For it turns out they aren’t the only ones keeping secrets, and they have just chosen the wrongest possible home to invade. Told you it was not dissimilar to Lowlifes.  The question of who are the villains here becomes a good deal less clear, the more we know about everyone involved.

To that end, much credit to the script, also written by Linpow in an impressive feature debut. It reveals the necessary information at the right pace, and just when you think you know what’s going on, it’ll throw another twist at you. Loyalties shift from scene to scene as the characters discover more about each other, or themselves, and the situation becomes inextricably messy. You know it’s going to end in messy violence, and the film certainly doesn’t disappoint there. The cast are all solid – though in the credits, I notice the production had a “sensitivity consultant”, which is apparently a thing now. I’d like to offer my services as a crass insensitivity consultant to any movies interested. My qualifications there speak for themselves.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. It is, however, Richardson’s movie, having the toughest arc to handle as she moves from caring and compassionate mother to… Well, I guess technically she is still a caring and compassionate mother. It’s just that, well… /gestures vaguely at the screen. The film opens and closes with meaningful quotes about motherhood and the emotions it can trigger. Although what transpires between them, makes them read in radically different ways. To that end, I was getting notes of French horror flick Inside, another story of maternal instincts gone horribly wrong, or Matriarch, also set in Scotland with visitors getting more than they bargained for. Yet despite the influences, this is its own creature, powered by Richardson, and is a solid thriller to the very last shot.

Dir: Matthias Hoene
Star: Joely Richardson, Neil Linpow, Sadie Soverall, Harry Cadby
a.k.a. Little Bone Lodge
[A version of this review originally appeared on Film Blitz]

Last County

  By

★★½
“Who’s home-invading who?”

I suspect the main problem here is a story which takes too long to get going. By the time things do kick off, my interest was already on… if not quite life support, it was likely seeing a doctor regularly. While things do then perk up in the second half, it feels too late. We begin with Abby Gardner (Ohm), a recovering alcoholic and mother to a young daughter, whose marriage falls apart after a car accident with the child in the back-seat. Her husband gets custody, and Abby begs for them to come visit her. Before that can happen, her home is entered by Bennet (Rand) and his wounded partner, who have absconded with a duffel-bag full of drug money.

The good news? It’s not long before the cops start to show up, under Sheriff Bill McLean (Campbell). The bad? They are far more interested in the loot than the well-being of Abby, Bennet or anyone else who gets between them and the hold-all. After an enthusiastic bit of rake-wielding (!), Abby goes from hostage to something closer to an accomplice. It’s a decision which makes her hopes for survival, and being re-united with her daughter,  significantly harder to achieve. The idea does offer an interesting (if highly cynical) twist on the usual home-invasion dynamic. Rather than fighting against the intruders, the home-owner ends up working with them, because they are now less of a threat than those supposed to protect her.

I did feel this switch in sides for Abby was a little too sudden. If she’d been given a darker past, then her siding with the drug mules would have been more credible: a fondness for booze did not cut it for me. I also never liked her very much. While it’s one thing to have a nuanced character with shades of grey (and that’s certainly the case with Abby), her maternal status was wielded like it trumped everything. Not for me, it didn’t. As a result, there were points where I almost forgot she hadn’t been part of Bennet’s crew all along. On the other side (literally), I appreciated how the cops ranged from almost honourable to entirely self-serving in their goals. 

I would say things escalate towards the expected face-off, in which Abby, Bennet and Sheriff McLean stand in a triangle, pointing guns at each other. But “escalate” may suggest a little more impetus than is actually present. It does remain watchable, with Ohm and Campbell delivering the best of the performances – you can see each figuring out their next move, like chess grand-masters. The ending, however, seems a little too convenient for its own good, and while I get that everyone may under-estimate Abby, that only goes so far. Technically, it’s solid enough. I was just never particularly engaged, and the innovation present in the concept doesn’t follow through to the characters. It’s going to be forgotten as quickly as its generic title.

Dir: Barret Mulholland
Star: Kaelen Ohm, Gord Rand, Nicholas Campbell, Keaton Kaplan

Lady Lawman

  By

★★½
“Badge of honour.”

After the pleasant surprise which was Lady Outlaw, I went back to the well of Mauser movies, for this one, which seemed similarly themed, but made three years earlier. It’s definitely a bit less successful. More talk, and that is almost impressive considering how chatty Outlaw was. The central performances are okay, but some of those around the edges… Hoo-boy. However, this did actually introduce me to a historical action heroine I hadn’t heard of. So let’s discuss the real F.M. Miller, though it’s clear the film is filling in a lot of blanks – not the least of which is giving her a first name, Francis. In reality, nobody seems to know what her initials stood for.

However, she certainly seems deserving of respect. She was made a deputy Marshal in 1891, and consequently worked mostly transporting and guarding prisoners. But a contemporary report said, “Miss Miller is a young woman of prepossessing appearance, wears a cowboy hat and is always adorned with a pistol belt full of cartridges and a dangerous looking Colt pistol which she knows how to use.” Here, she’s a rancher, who is brought on board by Buck Johnson (Jecmenek), to help hunt down notorious outlaw Richard Andrews (Leos). He’s an interesting character, being a Black slave-owner. Or former slave-owner, the film taking place after the end of the Civil War. He turned to outlawing, and became quite a leader, to the point his men are willing to die for him.

Which is where Buck comes in, because he lost two deputies in a suicide attack by Andrews’s men. As a replacement, he brings Francis (Jasso) on board – initially for her tracking abilities, learned before her husband was gunned down by highwaymen. However, after bringing in Andrews’ sidekick by herself, she earns her marshal’s badge, and the search is on for Andrews. This involves rather more riding and talking than anything, up until a grubby brawl in the mud during a rainstorm, which is actually well-handled. However, given the blank slate that Miller presents, I would prefer them to have given her more to do. There’s no surprises here, in particular the personal connection between her and Andrews, which is not the revelation the film seems to think.

Jasso is fine as the heroine. There’s a down to earth quality about her which is winning, and she knows it’s her gun which levels the playing field against men larger and stronger than her. Jecmenek is decent too – Buck is absolutely ruthless, which makes sense by the end of the film. “Violence solves everything,” he says. Elsewhere, as mentioned, more of a mixed bag, and that’s being charitable. Some scenes are more wooden than a fence-post, and given how dialogue heavy this is, we have a real problem. Still, based on it and Outlaw, it seems Mauser’s talents are trending in the right direction. If we get the cross-over hinted at by the end of Outlaw, I would certainly not mind.

Dir: Brett William Mauser
Star: Ryan Lakey Jasso, Jake Jecmenek, Carlos Leos, Ernest Martinez

Lady With a Sword

  By

★★★
“Can’t argue with that title.”

This was originally titled after its heroine, but since that obviously wouldn’t work in the West, it was changed to become about as generic a title as you could get. Behind this is a decent little flick, which is also worthy of note, because it may be the first Shaw Brothers action film to be directed by a woman. Pao-Shu Kao had been an actress with the studio since 1958, but this ended up being her sole movie as director for Shaw, as she started her own company, Park Films, with her husband. But this, her debut, is the highest-rated on the IMDb of the eleven features she helmed, at a respectable 6.8.

The heroine is Feng Fei Fei (Ho), who gets distressing news when her nephew, Hu Tou (Meng) shows up. He narrowly escaped with his young life after he and his mother, Fei Fei’s sister, were set upon by brigands, with Mom being killed. Fei Fei isn’t having that, so immediately sets out to take revenge on those responsible. She tracks down the first one, but this is where things get awkward. Because it turns out he’s Chin Lien Pai (Nam), the scion of a family friend, and worse, is the person to whom Fei Fei has been betrothed since they were young. While it’s a bit vague on the details, I guess vengeance would bring dishonour to her relations. Or, at least, make subsequent family get-togethers more than a little uncomfortable.

The first half-hour of this is really good, likely peaking with a hellacious fight at a brothel, where Fei Fei takes on what appears to be the entire population of China. It’s also notable, because next door, Hu Tou is also fighting, and it’s quite impressive too. East Asian films, be they Chinese, Taiwanese or from Hong Kong tend to use kids as comic relief, and the results tend to be grating and irritating. Not so here, with Hu Tou taken seriously, and allowed to take part in battles that work because he uses quickness and agility, not strength. But it is mostly Ho’s film and she gets a slew of solid fights, including against her fiancé’s mother, defending her son.

Unfortunately, after the brothel brawl, the film does tend to become a bit chatty and, worse, spends too much time on Chin and the other bad guys. It may be an attempt by Kao to deepen the portrayal of the villains beyond the shallow. However, guess what? I don’t care. The original attack firmly cements them as murderous scum-bags who deserve to die, and nothing is going to change my mind on this, thank you very much. The only interesting section sees Chin’s parents sharply differ in reaction to their son’s crimes: Dad thinks it brings shame on the family, Mum (as noted above), not so much. Fortunately, the ending gets back to the fighting, though it’s disappointing how Fei Fei needs help. Entertaining enough, yet after how if began, it seems a lost opportunity. 

Dir: Pao-Shu Kao
Star: Lily Ho, Seok-hoon Nam, Hsieh Wang, Yuen-Man Meng
a.k.a. Feng Fei Fei