Tag: mexico

Peligro… Mujeres en acción!

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★★★½
“On Her Mexico’s Secret Service.”

peligrosIn the sixties, it seemed the world was awash in 007-inspired romps, with immaculate-dressed, heroic secret agents from every nation punching, shooting and sleeping their way through friends and enemies, with a quip and a raised eyebrow. One such Bond-wannabe was Alex Dinamo (Alemán), star of two Mexican movies, 1967’s SOS Conspiracion Bikini, and this sequel, made the following year, whose title translates as Danger! Women in Action. Which is where we come in. For despite stemming from a time and place not exactly noted as a bastion of advanced sexual liberation, it manages to be a damn sight more equal-opportunity than any Bond film of its time, or even since. For not only is the chief villain a woman – territory at yet still unexplored by 007 – Dinamo’s is given a sidekick, Maura (Alava), who is equally as competent, and he is happy to use the skill-sets of a number of other women on the battlefield here, without too much in the way of sexist one-liners.

As in its predecessor, the story sees Alex take on shadowy evil organization S.O.S, the Secret Organizational Service, who intend to carry out various terrorist acts in Central and South America, and exploit the resulting chaos. Initially, the target is a refinery in Ecuador, whose destruction will paralyze the country, and it’s only with the timely delivery of information from Barbara (Angely), that the location where the S.O.S. commandos will come ashore is discovered: it’s up to Alex, Maura and Barbara to hold them off in an extended (and quite well-staged) fire-fight. With that dastardly plot foiled, S.O.S’s evil overlady, Solva (Campbell) moves on to a plan to poison the water supply in Puerto Rico with a biological weapon. It’s up to Alex and Maura, this time with the help of an agent working undercover in S.O.S, to foil that plan, by launching an assault on the facility producing the bioweapon. Yeah, there might be some shooting here too. And explosion. Plenty of explosions.

Frankly, it’s strikingly progressive how gender is mainly a non-issue here, though Alex clearly has an eye for the ladies, whose costumes are designed to reveal as much as conceal. In particular, for a terrorist group, S.O.S. appear to be firm believers in affirmative action, with its top tier mostly consisting of women, all the way up to Solva. Similarly, Alex treats Maura, Barbara, etc. as competent individuals in their own right. The main problem is the stuff around the fringes, which is not as exciting as the makers seem to think. For example, there is a sequence of Barbara scuba-diving which seems to go on for ever; while I’m sure that kind of thing was novel and worth touting in the sixties (Thunderball, made a couple of years previously, had exactly the same problem, as I recall), it has not aged well at all. The film is also generally inordinately proud of production values which are no more than workmanlike. On the other hand – literally – you have stuff such as an S.O.S. operative with a gold artificial limb, whom we first see casually sharpening its edge on a whetstone. That’s still pretty cool, and as knockoffs go, this is better than most.

Dir: René Cardona Jr.
Star: Julio Alemán, Priscilla Alava, Elizabeth Campbell, Barbara Angely

La Culata: Mexican Standoff

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★★
” Like a low-budget Andy Sidaris film. If he was Mexican and couldn’t talk his actresses into undressing.”

I vibrated between 2 and 2 1/2 stars for this, but opted for caution: it’s probably not as bad as it seems, despite an obvious lack of budget and ambition far in reach of its abilities. Or, at least, I maybe liked it a little more. As the alternate title suggests, it’s the third in a series, though information on the first two is scant: there’s no IMDB entry for them, and they appear to have different cast members. The central character is Maria Navajas (Ponce), an abused woman who turned to killing, discovered a talent for it, and took it up as a career. This entry finds her being sought by two different groups of gangsters who believe she ripped them off, as well as the feds. She has to fend them all off, with the aid of a friendly undercover cop (Sevilla) and her agent (played by, according to the IMDB, one of the producers of Napoleon Dynamite!).

There are elements of this that are quite laudable, with a host of strong female characters – not just Navajas, but her main adversary, the mob boss knows as “La Culata” (Cepinska), who has a fondness for female enforcers. Both the roles, and the performances behind them, are interesting enough to hold your attention, and some of the supporting pieces are also decently constructed. However, for every step forward, there’s at least one, and often two back. The storyline is over-stuffed, and at 113 minutes, this would benefit from a lot of editing. The action is largely poorly-shot, probably to conceal the limited combat talents, and with bizarre mis-steps such as one awful moment where the heroine throws her knife down the barrel of an enemy’s gun. Look, if you’re that good with the weapon, just embed it in their eye, alright? There are several moments where it looks like this is going to kick off, but doesn’t – most notably, we never get the expected confrontation between La Culata and Maria, which is a shame. Instead, the finale is the biggest let-down since the Hindenburg.

Certainly, don’t be fooled by cover art which appears to have strayed in from Single White Female, or something similar. This is a zero-budget action movie, but coming from a culture which doesn’t exactly regard women as equals, deserves some credit for putting them front and centre. However, the execution in this case leaves just too much to be desired.

Dir: Jorge Ramirez Rivers
Star: Cecilia Ponce, Anna Cepinska, Guillermo Iván, Manuel Sevilla
a.k.a. Maria Navajas 3

La Mujer Murcielago (The Batwoman)

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★★½
“If Batman was a woman. And a Mexican wrestler. Who swam. A lot.”

Someone is abducting wrestlers, extracting serum from their pineal glands and dumping the bodies in the ocean, at various locations around the world. Most recently, Acapulco. Investigating the crime is Batwoman (Monti), a rich socialite who has a masked alter-ego that fight crime. Oh, and is also a pro wrestler. Which makes her ideal for this case, since she can hang around the gym and check out suspicious characters, while working on moves with her fellow luchadorettes [Not a real word, but I like it]. Who is involved? The blind lottery ticket salesman? The chief of police? Or Dr. Williams (Cañedo), who won’t let anyone on to his ship, which is called Reptilicus, by tha way, and who possesses a sidekick called Igor? Go on, take a wild stab in the dark…

Turn out Williams is attempting to create a race of man-fish hybrids. When sneaking around his ship. Batwoman is caught, and only escapes by flinging a flask of something noxious into his face. Now a disfigured mad scientist, naturally, he vows vengeance on our heroine, sending his scaly creation off to bring her back, so that she can become the first literal fish-wife. The sight of which immediately turns her into a screaming, fainting kind of girlie, and it is a kinda creepy creation, even it’s obviously a man in a rubber-suit. Though as we see at the end, if you want to turn Batwoman into real terror, you need a staple from sit-coms of the era.

This 1968 film came only three years after Thunderball, and shows much the same amazed fascination with underwater photography, which has not aged well. Sure it was amazing at the time: now, not at all. Indeed, that could be the theme of the entire movie: I’m sure it was pretty daring, especially in sixties Hispanic culture, which wasn’t exactly at the forefront of women’s liberation. Now, the main thought it provokes, is wonder at how they managed to avoid someone from DC Comics driving down to slap the makers with a massive law-suit, purely on the basis of the poster.

In the film’s defense, it’s probably not its fault that I came down with a nasty spot of indigestion while watching, which doesn’t exactly leave me with fond memories of it. Monti certainly looks the part, an Italian-born actress and model stepping up from supporting roles in Santo films, as part of a ferocious blitz where she appeared in 30 films over five years, before becoming a TV host. She spends most of the time running about in her blue bikini and mask, which certainly beats George Clooney’s nippled Batsuit. If falling some way short of the promise of the very cool poster, it’s not entirely unwatchable as B-movies go, especially given its age.

Dir: René Cardona
Star: Maura Monti, Roberto Cañedo, Héctor Godoy, David Silva

La Metralleta

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★★½
“Mexploitation, let down by shoddily-staged action.”

Mexican culture is just so damned macho, there isn’t much room for action heroines, though there have been a few. As well as Santo and Blue Demon, The Wrestling Women donned the lucha masks in the sixties, and La Reina del Sur had a surprisingly feisty heroine for the telenovela genre; we’ve covered a couple of other entries previously, also covering life on the criminal side of the tracks.

However, this would be the first I’ve seen where the heroine is a Mexican policewoman. It’s Lt. Diana Gonzalez (Dosamentes), who is focusing her efforts on catching drug lord Constantino, and has had some success in disrupting his operations. He takes revenge by targetting Diana’s younger sister Sandra (Buitron), turning her into a junkie and eventually killing her, making it look like she was taking part in an S&M party. But far from taking the hint, this just causes Diana to become even more determined, and reckles – starting with the nightclub singer who got Sandra hooked, she works her way up the food chain from there.

Diana is knows as “La Metralleta”, which is Spanish for machine-gun, due to her weapon of choice – which, in a testament to lax Mexican gun-control regulations in the early nineties, she takes home after work, in what appears to be a shopping bag. The two things this has going for it are the script and the central performance. The story is nice and direct, and it seems appropriate that Constantino and his henchmen really don’t take Diana seriously until it’s too late. Dosamentes also does well with her role, and is nowhere near as matronly as the sleeve on the right would suggest, despite being in her forties. She has a steely intensity, especially after the death of her sister, that works nicely.

What doesn’t work? Sadly, the action is completely crap. Constantino’s men are from the Imperial Stormtrooper school of marksmanship, unable to hit La Metralleta, even when she’s basically standing in front of them with no protection at all. Worst yet are the woeful attempts at fisticuffs: wisely, the makers keep these to a minimum, but the couple of scenes where Dosamantes tries to go hand-to-hand are unutterably awful. It’s a shame, since I’d have been prepared to settle for mere competence on this front, because there’s enough going on elsewhere in this to keep your interest.

Dir: Roberto Schlosser
Star: Susana Dosamantes, Carlos Cardán, Juan Gallardo, Blanca Buitron

Backyard

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★★★
“The film that could only have been made in Mexico, where female life is cheap…”

The US border is all that separates El Paso, Texas, from Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, but the two cities’ ways of life are worlds apart. On the Mexican side, the bodies of women turn up, almost every week: sexually assaulted, with signs of torture and/or body parts missing. The police barely bother to investigate; the victims tend to be far from home, low-paid workers in the factories which drive Juarez’s employment. Into this comes police captain Blanca Bravo (de la Reguera), who vows to track down the perpetrators. But doing so pits her against the multinationals who could do without the bad publicity; against her commander, who says to her face that “women make good nurses, but lousy police officers”; and state politicians, who are uneasy about exactly what she might uncover.

This is based on a very unpleasant reality, also covered in the Jennifer Lopez movie, Bordertown, but one senses that was sanitized for American palates. This doesn’t soft-pedal anything: the brutality, corruption, sexism and poverty depicted makes for pretty challenging viewing. You may recognize de la Reguera from her role as the nun in Nacho Libre, but this is right at the other end of its portrayal of Mexico: barely controlled anarchy where, if you pick the right person, it’s possible to get away with murder. This is personified by the story, running parallel to Blanco, of a young women, who arrived in Juarez to seek work, and her eventual fate. While harrowing, this angle doesn’t shed much extra light on proceedings, and probably dilutes the film’s focus.

The central performance, however, is solid, with Blanco portrayed as someone willing to put everything she has – her career, or even her life – on the line, to protect those who have little or no protection in the eyes of the law. If the film has little to offer in the way of surprises (especially if you’re a fan of Dexter, you’ll be able to spot the psychopath a long way off!), and nor does it offer much in the way of resolution, it’s a decent, if grim, look at a world just a couple of hours drive from where I’m writing this in Arizona. And it’s a world I’d rather keep at arm’s length if possible.

Dir: Carlos Carrera
Star: Ana de la Reguera, Asur Zagada, Marco Pèrez, Alejandro Calva

Perra Maldita (Damned Bitch)

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★★★½
“This cheap Mexi-trash is fun to view, though if you don’t speak Spanish, may lose some depth.”

Camelia (Palmer) sees her way out of the ghetto in Ramiro (Saenz), a friend of her father’s who always has more than enough easy money. She convinces him to employ her as an apprentice, but discovers she likes sharing his life of drug-deals and casual slaughter. But they soon find out, they may not be the only ones capable of a good double-cross…

The translated title is appropriate, whether she’s gunning down rivals or being used as a wager in a card game. Perhaps the most chilling thing is her taciturn acquiescence when she’s lost in the latter, which demonstrates how far her (originally virgin) character has come. Palmer certainly has a forceful presence that helps overcome obvious limitations on the action front; despite copious training montages, Camelia is much less effective and impressive with her fists than a gun. Then, her cold-blooded passion – I know that seems a contradiction in terms, but it’s the best way to describe it – can truly flower.

The script and acting are solid, with occasional moments of effectiveness where the film punches above its weight, such as her mentor explaining why you must always be ready for a quick escape. More of this kind of depth would have been welcome, as would, I confess, subtitles: even Chris had a hard time with the gutter slang frequently used here, and without a translator, you’ll miss details like Camelia’s family heritage, which is steeped in blood too. These factors likely prevent this from getting the seal of approval; but on the whole, the performances are surprisingly credible, and this is the best girls-with-guns example of Mexploitation we’ve seen to date.

Dir: Tono Chavez
Star: Valeria Palmer, Fernando Saenz, Eleazar Garcia Jr.

La Guerrera Vengadora 2

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★★½
“Schoolmistress by day…crawls through impressively large air-ducts by night.”

Chagoyan is perhaps the nearest thing Mexico has to offer to an action heroine. She best known for her role in Lola la Trailera (‘Lola the Trucker’), in which, she played the daughter of a haulier – she takes over his business and goes out for vengeance, after he’s gunned down for refusing to assist a drug-cartel. Almost a decade later, that director’s son would helm this, in which Chagoyan plays a teacher who moonlights as a crime-fighting vigilante. Not having seen part one isn’t much of a problem; presumably it explains her origins, and perhaps how she gets to spend so much time away from her job. All we see here is one class, before she and her midget sidekick take on a gang who kill one of her pupils (with a surprising amount of blood, it has to be said). Then, when she’s blamed for kidnapping the daughter of the police chief, she has to find the real culprits and clear her name.

This swings wildly from surprisingly decent to laughable, as far as action goes. The explosions and stuntwork are credible. However, to call Chagoyan “unconvincing” is putting it mildly, not least the opening sequence where she rides into a hostage situation on her motorbike and saves the day – see Heroic Trio for how it should be done. But there are occasional moments (the crossbow bolt through the hand) that made us sit up and take notice, tiding us over the dumb comedic interludes. [Though any film with a flour-covered midget will always find a special place in our hearts.] There’s a lengthy finale in an underground labyrinth, pitting our heroine and her explosive-tipped crossbow bolts against evil minions with flamethrowers, before coming back above ground to answer the age-old question, which is better: a helicopter or a rocket-launcher? If that has ever kept you up nights, this is the film for you.

Dir: Raul Fernandez Jr.
Star: Rosa Gloria Chagoyan, Rolando Fernandez, Edna Bolkan, Jorge Vargas

El Jardinero 2 (The Gardener 2)

  By

★★½
“Mexican lady mob boss runs out of steam, if not of costumes.”

Not seen part one? Never fear! Thanks to the magic of flashback, we see that Lilia Gallardo (Herrera) killed her husband, shot his son Pablo, and has now taken over their drug business. This is to the dismay of his men who, with typically Mexican machismo, feel a woman is unsuited to the role, and also Pablo, who is not dead, but is now recuperating on a nearby ranch, waiting his opportunity for revenge.

This starts in fine, trashy style. Lilia is bleached blonde, collagen-lipped, and has wildly inappropriate outfits from Sluts R Us. Her approach to treacherous henchmen is fully hands-on, not to mention fully-automatic, and transcends the lack of English subs on the DVD. The sexist bitching lends an authentic edge to the idea of a woman operating in a man’s world – and if you’re wondering, credit to Chris who translated for me, while rolling her eyes at Lilia’s clothes. Particularly the three-inch wide miniskirt…

Unfortunately, it gets bogged down and talky as things progress; the heroine recruits an assistant of somewhat alcoholic bent, and also gets involved with a South American Mr. Big. Meanwhile, Pablo is growing fond of the rancher’s daughter (Bernal), but she witnesses a shootout, and is captured by Lilia’s men. It’s all rather more plot than I wanted to see, and the hoped-for face-off between Bernal and Herrera fizzles, despite what seems like significant setting-up. You know it’s all heading towards a Pablo-Lilia showdown, and it’s giving nothing away to say that’s exactly where it ends, though even this comes off as something of a damp squib. Still, think we’ll be keeping an eye open for its predecessor.

Dir: Enrique Murillo
Star: Lorena Herrera, Eleazar Garcia, Claudia Bernal, Luis Reynoso

Bandidas

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★★★★
“How the West was Wo(ma)n…”

Let us make no mistake about this, this is a frothy confection of a film, which is not intended to be taken seriously; to do so, would be a serious mistake. The closest parallel here is probably to think of it as a distaff version of Shanghai Noon, with an odd couple teaming up for fun ‘n’ frolics in the Old West. Robber baron Tyler Jackson (Yoakam) comes to Mexico to take away land from the locals so a railroad can be built. In the process, he kills the fathers of both farm-girl Maria (Cruz) and rich-girl Sara (Salma), so he can take their property and bank respectively. To get revenge, each lady independently decides to rob the same bank at the same time, and are forced to team-up; their widely-disparate characters initially cause friction, but they eventally come to respect each other, after being trained by retired robber Bill Buck (Sam Shephard).

When they start their campaign, Jackson brings in a specialist in the new ‘scientific method’ of criminal investigation, Quentin (Zahn), to help track down the bandidas. However, after discovering Sara’s father was poisoned, heis convinced by the pair that he is actually working for the wrong side, and comes across to join them. The latest security measures are defeated – with the aid of a pair of ice-skates! – and as a result a train is loaded with the Mexican government’s gold reserve, to ship it to safety in Mexico. The bandidas resolve to take the cargo, but Jackson and his gang are waiting for them…as is Quentin’s fiancée…

This was co-written by Luc Besson: he is the engine-room of European cinema, listed as a producer of no less than 60 titles over the past five years on the IMDB. He likely deserves a place in the Girls With Guns hall of fame, having directed Nikita and The Messenger, given Milla Jovovich and Natalie Portman their action-debuts in The Fifth Element and Leon respectively, worked as an uncredited co-producer on Haute Tension, and now delivers this. It came up in response to a request from the two leads, who’ve wanted to work together for a long time, and he handed the script to two Norwegians, making their feature debut [but with a lot of commercial experience].

However, there’s no doubt that it’s the leading ladies who make this one click, right from the first scene together, where Sara confronts Maria, who has snuck in to the house to argue with Sara’s father about the ongoing land-grab. The bickering between the two, which continues, in an increasingly friendly way, through the entire film. Maria snipes at Sara because the latter can’t fire a gun to save her life – in a beautiful touch, she gets terrible hiccups when she tries; Sara taunts Maria for her lack of education.

The two also argue over who is the best kisser, notably in a scene where they are dressed as Paris showgirls, and are trying to extract information from Quentin, who is tied to the bed. And Steve Zaun was actually paid to take part? ;-) That’s about as far as the film goes, sexually speaking; much cleavage, but no actual nudity. A fondness for the heroines splashing around in water, especially early on, and the above-mentioned comedic seduction scene, is about as close as we get to exploitation. That news may disappoint some readers, but it really wouldn’t be in keeping with the overall tone of the movie, which is light-hearted and firmly PG-13 rated, despite lesbian scuttlebutt which circulated afte a press conference where Penelope (gasp!) touched Salma’s butt.

What did disappoint me was the action. I expected more from Besson, who helped give us such gems as The Transporter and District B-13, as well as the titles mentioned above, though a couple of moments stand out. There’s a bravura slow-motion scene in the final battle – bullets, knives, bodies and debris fly in a single shot, the camera panning back and forth to capture the carnage. But, the most amazing part is seeing a horse, with a rider on its back, climb a ladder. This was apparently a combination of training (the horse, with a stunt rider, walked up a specially-made set of stairs) and CGI work by Parisian FX house Macguff, to replace the stairs with a ladder, add dust and bounce, etc. It’s a throwaway moment, in a throwaway film, but is worthy of note, and applause.

That may be perhaps down to the leads’ lack of experience: Cruz’s only real brush with the action genre was Sahara, Hayek has more background (working with Robert Rodriguez helps there), but neither of them would appear to be looking to make a name for themselves with their work here. A sequel is hinted at by the ending; however, that this $30m production went all but straight to video in the US and notched only $18m overseas would seem to rule this out. One wonders why, for a film set in Mexico and with two Hispanic leads, why they didn’t speak Spanish; one assumes Besson, with his eye on the international market, went for the more commercial English, even though Cruz seems slightly ill-at-ease thee.

These qualms are relatively minor, and if not the all-out action fest I was hoping for, it’s certainly among the best Westernettes of recent years. This is not a genre which has been kind to action heroines in the past, including such bombs – justifiable or not – as Bad Girls and The Quick and the Dead, as well as less high-profile turkeys as Gang of Roses. Bandidas is nowhere in the same league, and if survives almost entirely on the charisma and energy of Cruz and Hayek, that’s by itself is something which most movies would like to have. If you can certainly argue that to some extent this is a vanity project, here, I’d be very hard pushed to call vanity a sin.

Dir: Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg
Stars: Penelope Cruz, Salma Hayek, Steve Zahn, Dwight Yoakam

"If you can certainly argue that to some extent this is a vanity project, here, I’d be very hard pushed to call vanity a sin."