Tag: mother

Revenge (TV)

  By

★★★★
“The mother of all vengeance stories.”

This is the first Thai TV series I’ve seen, and while I suspect it’s not exactly par for the course, I found it undeniably impressive. Behind a generic title, it’s easily the most intense of the telenovelas I’ve seen, regardless of location. [Note: various sources have different names for the characters: for consistency, I’m giving the ones used by Netflix] It’s a long, extended rampage of vengeance, in which the heroine, Maturos (Panyopas), goes after the perpetrators of a particularly vicious group-rape. The assailants are a local gang, who extract revenge on both Maturos and her daughter, Peung (Ruayruen), following their co-operation with the police. It’s an assault which leaves Matukron almost catatonic, and when half the gang are found not guilty in the subsequent trial, Maturos opts to find her own justice, adopting a variety of characters to get close to them. But the killing comes at the cost of her own sanity, which splits her personality into two: a caring and compassionate half, and an alternative persona which demands ever-more savage vengeance.

The story is told in the context of Maturos’s trial, so we know there’s no question of her getting away with it [that would probably have been a step too far!]. But will she get the death penalty, life imprisonment, or be found not guilty by reason of insanity? The show unfolds in flashback, occasionally interrupted with moments from the trial, telling the story of how she came to be facing multiple charges of murder. It begins with mother and daughter leaving their abusive husband and father. It’s the resulting precarious financial situation, moving them into a flat in a less than desirable neighbourhood, and bringing them into contact with the gang. They accidentally come into possession of a drug stash belonging to the posse, and hand it over to the authorities.

This triggers the brutal punishment on them both, on top of a building during a storm. It’s a lengthy ordeal, which occupies much of episode #4, with Maturos and Peung left lying on the roof. Though the police are able to arrest the suspects, the rain washes away much useful forensic evidence; only three of the seven are convicted, despite the best efforts of Inspector Patorn (Tangtong). He feels responsible for what happened, and had been somewhat involved in a relationship with Maturos before the attack. Afterward, however, that quickly proves to be impossible.

Indeed, it’s not long before Maturos’s alter ego, Roong, starts to show up. At first, she is subservient, appearing only in mirrors, but gradually becomes to dominate, taking control for much of the time. Not helping matters – though it is one of the most interesting angles – is the encouragement of Yuki Fukushida (Amratisha), who rescues Maturos from an abduction attempt by her ex-husband. Yuki runs a “victim’s support group”, for those abandoned by justice. It’s really more to do with helping them acquire the necessary set of skills to punish those who did them wrong. Needless to say, her encouragement doesn’t do much for our heroine’s sanity, instead letting her tap into her inner psychopath. The ex-husband is the first to experience that.

For the four unconvicted perpetrators, the pattern in the following episodes is similar. As shown on the poster (above, right), Maturos adopts a range of disguises – old woman, porn distributor, bar girl, human trafficker, or even a man – in order to get close to them. Having done so, eventually, she strikes, rendering them helpless, most typically with a sedative injection. She makes them record an apology to Peung, before finally dispatching them – albeit only after removing their genitals. Their deaths are never quick or easy, and are depicted at quite some length, as well as with a brutality which I found surprising. Thai TV may have severe limitations on sexual content, but violence is clearly seen as much less of a problem.

As the body count increases, the remaining gang members grow increasingly suspicious, and harder to track. Inspector Patorn is also beginning to put two and two together, and Maturos’s psychiatrist, Dr. Nattha, discovers her patient’s split personality, meeting Roong. Even after Patorn realizes her involvement in the murders, he agrees to let her act as bait to lure in the three remaining gang members, who have escaped from prison and, having reached the same conclusion, are coming for their own revenge.

But Maturos is playing a longer game, and it all builds to a final confrontation on the same rooftop where it began. As the image on the left suggests, she ends up going full Silence of the Lambs, wearing the face of one of her targets as a mask, and her final “disguise”. Though we still have to wait for the court’s verdict on her fate, with the case triggering a national debate regarding the death penalty, in addition to the question of Maturos’s culpability.

As on screen, so in real life, with the series proving a word of mouth hit in Thailand, and sparking similar discussions on the criminal justice system. The show’s ratings improved from as low as 1.3 in the early going, partly due to a late-night slot resulting from its content, reaching 3.7 for the finale. Deservedly so, because it was very effective: a real page-turner in televisual form. It certainly doesn’t pull any punches, and seems to be radically different from the typical “lakorn”, as the popular soap operas in Thailand are known. Though a 2014 study discovered that 80% of them depicted rape or sexual violence, I suspect few did so in such an uncompromising way as here.

It may, indeed, perhaps go too far occasionally. Chris largely lost her sympathy for Maturos, after watching her bring Peung along on one of her murders – even I have to admit, that is fairly questionable parenting, split personality or not. And watching the heroine don blackface in her prostitute character was perhaps something which didn’t transfer well, culturally. However, given the length of the series (24 x 50-minute episodes), such mis-steps are infrequent, and more than balanced out by a great performance from Panyopas. That’s especially so when she’s acting opposite her malevolent self, in a way which feels almost like a maternal version of Gollum.

It’s her portrayal which glues the series together; outside of sensei Yuki, the supporting cast of characters feel more functional than memorable, on both sides of the law. How successful you find the show as a whole is thus likely heavily dependent on how convincing you find her performance. Personally, I was more than satisfied with it, and while this may be optimistic, hope to find similar quality elsewhere in the lakorn genre.

Dir: Sant Srikaewlaw
Star: Lalita Panyopas, Pornsroung Ruayruen, Saksit Tangtong, Rudklao Amratisha
a.k.a. Lah (The Hunt)

The Odds

  By

★★
“Odds against.”

A woman (Butler) agrees to take part in a contest. live-streamed for betting purposes, where 20 players are put through a series of tests, designed to push them to the physical and mental breaking point, with the (literally) last person standing getting a million dollars. Her only associate is the Game Master (Fuertes), who oversees the challenges and relays the results from the other location to her. Initially, it seems like he is on her side, cheerleading and encouraging her. But the further into the event she proceeds, the more questionable his actions become, to the point where she begins to doubt everything he tells her.

It’s a not-exactly subtle metaphor for abusive relationships: once you’ve realized this, the impact is like being repeatedly whacked across the nose with a newspaper. I get it. I GET IT. I GET IT!!! Which is why it starts off with the man being super-nice and friendly, only to become completely controlling, and potentially “gaslighting” the woman with false information, playing his own game of manipulation in an effort to keep her obeying him. All far too obvious: a pity, since a straightforward rendition without the undertones, could have been perfectly fine. The unnamed woman is apparently taking part to make up for past transgressions involving her child, which is plenty to have driven the story, yet this aspect is largely forgotten as we move on.

The structure of the game doesn’t make sense either. After the five preliminary rounds (involving fire, rats, drilling, drowning and de-digitification, should you want to know), it turns into a game of Russian Roulette. Whose outcome is entirely determined by luck, rather than being any particular measure of endurance. Might as well have watched the heroine playing a slot-machine for a bit. Even the film eventually seems to realize the limited interest of repeatedly watching someone pulling a trigger and it going click. For it opts to skip through the rounds with increasing speed, in order to reach the final denouement, where everything you’ve learned might or might not be wrong.

This is clearly one of those films which were written to be cheap, with two speaking roles and a single location. I don’t fault it for that: it’s wise for any film-maker to build something which fits the available resources, and the main thing is that both leads here are decent. Butler, in particular, has an intensity about her which goes a long way to making you understand why someone might sign on for something like this. But my level of interest was far from consistent. It started off high enough, lured in by the interesting concept. However, it dropped off due to the unimaginative nature of the challenges. Things perked up for a bit when I realized the metaphor aspect. At least until I realized it was going to grind the whole thing into the ground, which also made it too easy to predict what would happen next. That’s where enthusiasm settled, and I’m willing to bet you can find more effective uses for your viewing time.

Dir: Bob Giordano
Star: Abbi Butler, James J. Fuertes

High-Rise Rescue

  By

★★½
“All fired up.”

Architect Beth Davis (Bell) is just about to leave Chicago for a business meeting in Miami, when she hears there has been an explosion at the high-rise apartment building downtown, where she lives with husband Jack (Davis) and son Charlie (Arnold). Rushing back home, she finds the situation increasingly perilous, and the fire department unwilling to enter the unstable structure. Having been the person who designed the building, Beth is able to sneak in, with the aid of a sympathetic fireman, Ray Steele (Holmes, looking like a low-rent Tony Todd) on the outside, and begin the perilous climb to the 55th floor where Jack and Charlie are trapped in the bathroom.

When this sticks to the basic, Towering Inferno-like concept of Davis vs. fire, and the heroine making her way up through the burning building, this isn’t bad. There is some decent practical effects work, and although CGI is also used, it’s clear that someone is getting quite close to the flames – even if it’s unlikely to be Bell. The film switches focus frequently between her and her family, as the latter find themselves in increasing peril, despite the helpful advice offered over the phone by Ray. This is quite educational, and if ever I find myself trapped, six hundred feet above the ground and awaiting rescue, I feel I will be reasonably well-informed as to the best tactics for survival.

The problems are much more when the film attempts to build character through the backstory and dialogue, such as the subplot involving Beth and Jack’s shaky marriage, or their differences of opinion as to whether or not to have a second child (though in an admirable shift from what you’d expect, it’s Beth who is less than enthusiastic about the prospect). Watching them swapping dialogue which is so soapy, you could wash the floor with it, is painful – though likely still less cringeworthy than the scene where Ray reveals the personal life experience which resulted in him becoming a fireman. It’s ironic, since an early scene deliberately establishes that, “Fire doesn’t care who or what you are.” The same can probably be said for this viewer.

It’s all rather too implausible, from the moment live TV has a report on the explosion, within literally ten seconds of it taking place. I’m not sure the actions of the fire-brigade quite stand up to scrutiny either: the chief seems far too unconcerned about the civilians that are still present in the conflagration. I’d like to have seen them make more use of Beth’s position as the building’s architect, putting her specialist knowledge to good use, instead of all but forgetting about it, as soon as she enters the basement. The results just about skate by as a way to pass 90 minutes, mostly thanks to a decent performance from Bell. But it’s a long way short of being even disaster soft-porn, and will barely leave even a scorch mark on most surfaces.

Dir: Robert Vaughn
Star: Catherine Bell, Adrian Holmes, Greg Bryk, Sam Ashe Arnold

A Good Woman is Hard to Find

  By

★★★★
“Hammer time!”

2020’s first seal of approval goes to this uber-gritty Irish film, starring Sarah Bolger, whose most familiar to us from Into the Badlands. While her GWG creds there are overshadowed by the likes oE Emily Beecham, safe to say Bolger makes up for lost time here. She plays single mother Sarah Collins, who is struggling to come to terms with the recent, unsolved murder of her husband. Barely managing to make ends meet, her life is upended when entry-level criminal Tito (Simpson) breaks in, seeking sanctuary. He has stolen some drugs belonging to top boss Leo (Hogg), and offers Sarah a cut of the proceeds if she’ll act as his safe-house. Very reluctantly, she agrees. Needless to say, it doesn’t go as they plan.

And that’s putting it very mildly. I won’t spoiler it, but there’s a reason she ends up visiting a hardware store, and weighing up whether an axe or a hack-saw is better suited for her “project” [the correct answer, it appears, is both…]. Yet, the character arc from mild-mannered mother who basically won’t say “Boo!” to a goose, into someone capable of going about with a bowling-bag of highly unpleasant content, is remarkably plausible. Because it’s almost all driven by fierce maternal love for her two children, one of whom has been traumatized into muteness by witnessing his father’s murder. Sarah will do anything to protect and provide for them, and as motivation for taking up a criminal lifestyle, it’s a far sight better than we got in the similarly themed Widows or The Kitchen.

It also does not soft-pedal its violence. The extended sequence where Sarah goes over the edge and becomes a killer for the first time, at one point almost teeters into farce with her first choice of weapon. But the further it goes on – to the point of death and beyond, the grimmer it gets. I was reminded of the line spoken by Macbeth: “I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” This is made clear from the opening scene, which sees a gore-drenched heroine taking to the shower, setting the scene for its subsequent savage tone. We only find out the source of the blood later, and it won’t be the last time it gets spilled.

It’s a spectacular performance from Bolger, portraying a woman who is ground down to almost nothing, before finding fate presenting her with an opportunity – albeit one which comes with a frightening cost in terms of her humanity. Yet her portrayal manages to take the audience along with the character on that journey. The rest of the cast pales in comparison, though it probably doesn’t help that non-British audiences may need subtitles for some of the dialogue; even I was going “What?” at some points, particularly for Tito’s lines. Still, neither that nor some suspiciously convenient skill with a firearm (likely a necessary contrivance) are sufficient to derail a thoroughly successful slab of Irish noir.

Dir: Abner Pastoll
Star: Sarah Bolger, Edward Hogg, Andrew Simpson, Jane Brennan

Daughter of the Wolf

  By

★★
“Bit of a bad dog.”

The cinematic goodwill Carano accumulated as the result of her electric debut in Haywire, is rapidly evaporating. I understand that you can’t expect to work with Steven Soderbergh every time, but the returns have been diminishing with a relentless steadiness since for her. This is certainly the worst one yet, though in her defense, the problem are less to do with her performance. They are more the results of a script which takes several, widely disparate ideas, and doesn’t just fail to connect them into a coherent whole, it also manages to screw them up on an individual level, to the point where most of them become little more than silly garbage.

We join a kidnapping already in progress, as Charlie (Gillis-Adelman), the son of Clair Hamilton (Carano), having been abducted by “Father” (Dreyfuss), a cult-like leader who has long held a grudge against Clair’s dad. Quite why he bothered waiting until after the target was dead to take his vengeance, is one of the many things this film fails to explain adequately. At the supposed handover of cash for Charlie, a fire-fight breaks out, which is right in the wheel-house of Clair, a former soldier. Two of the three kidnappers end up dead, the third, Larsen (Fehr), is not such a bad guy, and ends up saving her life after she falls through the ice. Still, she makes him take her to Father, and matters are complicated by the presence of a pack of wolves, who appear to have their own agenda.

About the only thing which saves this are the amazing Canadian landscapes, lushly photographed by Mark Dobrescu. There’s one location in particular, an ice waterfall, which is jaw-droppingly beautiful to an almost implausible degree, forming the backdrop to one of the movie’s less than impressive action sequences. Of course, someone goes over the edge, plummeting to their doom. Oh, wait. My mistake: they subsequently show up again later, with little evidence of damage beyond a somewhat annoyed expression on their face, as if mildly inconvenienced by an out of service elevator. This implausible approach reaches its nadir in Father three-ironing a canine off a precipice with his rifle butt, a moment which genuinely made me laugh out loud. And not with the movie.

Indeed, the wolves are set up as if they’re going to be important, only to vanish from the film, before inexplicably returning for  a tacked-on coda which had me rolling my eyes. While I did like the concept of leaping right into the action, the resulting attempts to fill in the backstory are painfully clunky and add little if anything. It’s definitely a case where less would have been more: simply making it Clair vs. the kidnappers should have been sufficient. We certainly don’t need a distaff cross between two Liam Neeson films, Taken and The Grey. Carano still does have a physical presence that possesses potential. But she really needs to be making better choices.

Dir: David Hackl
Star: Gina Carano, Brendan Fehr, Richard Dreyfuss, Anton Gillis-Adelman

I am Mother

  By

★★★½
“Lies, damned lies and motherhood.”

After an extinction-event has turned Earth uninhabitable, an underground “ark” holds thousands of human embryos, overseen by a robotic Mother (voiced by Byrne, performed by Hawker). One embryo is brought to fruition, becoming Daughter (Rugaard, resembling a young Jennifer Garner), who grows up into a young woman, educated by Mother to believe she’s alone on the planet. But she begins to doubt what Mother tells her, and these doubts are confirmed when another, older woman (Swank) shows up. Let in by Daughter, she tells tales of humanity outside struggling for survival against robot killers. Everything Daughter has been told is a lie. Or is the new arrival telling the whole truth either?

The film’s main strength is the way it manages expertly the shifting sands of audience perception. Initially, we’re led to believe that Mother is potentially the saviour of humanity. However, it soon becomes clear that the robot is not being entirely honest with her charge, and our sympathies move towards the Woman, who wants to rescue Daughter from her enforced isolation. Yet, in the end, there’s another agenda there as well, and right until the credits roll, you’re kept watching to see beyond the next bend in the story-line. While there are clues dropped, almost from the beginning, you may not notice them until everything comes together. Or perhaps even past that point; I’ll confess, I did have to do some light post-viewing Googling in order to grasp all the consequences.

It’s rare, especially in the SF genre, to see a film without a male speaking part [bar some archive footage from The Tonight Show, anyway!]. Though one senses any money saved on the small cast was simply diverted to an impressive set of production values, depicting not just the facility, but also the devastated outside world after… well, whatever the extinction event was, since it’s never described. That’s not really the focus of the film, yet I felt it was a bit of a shame, The story of the Woman’s survival, up until she came banging on the door, would have been equally interesting as the Daughter’s. I do have… let’s just say, some questions about the coincidence of them arriving at the air-lock at the same time, and also the Woman’s plot-convenient amnesia.

At 113 minutes, it does run somewhat long, and is a little light on action for my tastes. The film is definitely on the more cerebral side of science fiction cinema, something not apparent from the trailer. Rather than explosions, the script prefers to pose awkward questions about the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few, or the moral implications of ripping it all up to start again. However, it never sinks to boring, with decent performances which help guide the film through the occasional doldrums. Hat-tip to Rob for steering me in the direction of a film which I’d otherwise likely have skipped past, in the never-ending and ongoing stream of Netflix original movies.

Dir: Grant Sputore
Star: Clara Rugaard, Rose Byrne, Hilary Swank, Luke Hawker

Rattlesnake

  By

★★★
“A tale without enough to rattle you”

This occupies a rather odd middle-ground between a meditation on what it means to take a life, and a violent thriller. I’m not sure it manages to pull either off entirely successfully, yet some striking imagery helped sustain our interest. Katrina (Ejogo) is driving from Phoenix to Oklahoma City, with her young daughter, Clara (Pratt), to start a new life: it’s hinted that there may be an abusive partner in the rear-view mirror. The route takes her across the Texas Panhandle, and in an effort to avoid a traffic jam, she hits the back roads. This turns out to be mistake, as she first gets a flat, then Clara is bitten by a rattlesnake.

Fortunately, there’s a trailer nearby, where Katrina is able to get help; by the time mother and daughter reach the nearby hospital in Tulia, there’s no indication of any snakebite. But a stranger turns up in their room, demanding payment for the emergency assistance, and not the kind covered by their health insurance: a “soul for a soul”. If Katrina doesn’t kill someone by sundown, Clara’s life will be forfeit. After the validity of the threat is confirmed, Katrina seeks a victim, and seems to find one in another abusive man, Billy (Rossi), whom she encounters in a local bar, taking out his anger on his wife, Abbie (Greenwell). But even when her own daughter’s life is at risk, can Katrina find it in herself to go against all her morality, and take another person’s life?

It does pose an interesting question: how far would a mother (or anyone, I guess) be prepared to go in defense of their child? As we learn, Katrina is prepared to sacrifice whatever might be necessary, but it’s a bit of a process to get there. For example, she spends rather too much time hanging around the hospital, hoping for a chance to smother an already-dying patient, conveniently nearby. And Billy is similarly convenient, a character so unpleasant, the resulting moral dilemma becomes massively diluted. It would have made for greater drama if there hadn’t been an easy candidate, and Katrina was forced to choose between her child and someone decent.

Hilditch has a good eye, however, and there are some striking scenes where the heroine experiences visions, reminding her of her task, and that time is running out. A priest spontaneously combusts; a little kid engages in equally self-destructive acts. These help create an unsettling atmosphere, which keep the film’s head above water, when the plot struggles to do so. Ejogo is also decent in the central role, making it relatively easy to put yourself in her shoes. But I’d have like to have seen more of the background filled in here. Katrina does some light Googling, which suggests she is far from the first person to have found themselves in debt. Yet this angle is severely under-explored, and the net result is something which almost feels more like a series pilot.

Dir: Zak Hilditch
Star: Carmen Ejogo, Theo Rossi, Emma Greenwell, Apollonia Pratt

Furie

  By

★★★
“Hell hath no furie…”

We’ve seen Ngo, the star here, previously on this site in Clash and The Rebel, though in both of those, she was the film’s co-star, along with Johnny Nguyen. [What I hadn’t realised, is she was also in The Last Jedi, albeit briefly, playing the sister of Rose Tico, as well as Netflix movie Bright] Here, she’s the focus of the film, which makes for an improvement from the action-heroine point of view, even if the story is rather generic.

She plays Hai Phuong, a former gangster, who had to leave Saigon after an unfortunate arson incident, and is now working as a debt-collector for a rural loan-shark. Her little daughter, Mai (Vy), dreams of them going legit, running a fish-farm, and Hai is about to pawn her precious ear-rings to realize this ambition, when Mai is snatched from a local market and taken back to Saigon. Hai naturally follows, and discovers her daughter was taken by an organ-trafficking ring. The cops have been investigating, but lead officer Luong (Nhien) hasn’t been able to get enough evidence to act against them. He’s more than happy to let Hai bust the gang wide open, along with its brutal female leader, Thanh Soi (Hoa).

It’s probably a little slicker than her previous Vietnamese vehicles, and I’m not sure that’s necessarily a good thing. The fight choreography, cinematography and editing teeter dangerously near to the Hollywood style, rather than the more “old-school” approach taken before. I prefer the latter, being more amazed by physical talent, than cinematic sleight of hand. Not that Ngo is entirely deficient in skills, it’s just a lot harder to be sure here. To be honest, Hoa probably comes over as more impressive in that area, though we don’t really see enough in terms of performance to be able to assess her skills in the acting department. But it’s interesting to see a martial arts film where the both the protagonist and lead antagonist are both women: you don’t see that often.

Despite the familiarity of the plot – virtually every review compares it to Taken, except with a mother instead of a father – the movie keeps things moving at a brisk pace, although the cop character is almost entirely superfluous, at least until the end. That’s an aspect which I felt could have been handled better, with the heroine suddenly getting a bit white-knighted, after surviving through everything to that point on her own abilities. However, it’s overall a good character arc, with Hai simply trying to do the best for her daughter, only to find that life is reluctant to allow that, and keeps putting obstacles in her way. A solid and effective enough slice of action, I just wish it had possessed more local flavour; if there was ever a case where a film can perhaps be said to be too polished, this might be it.

Dir: Lê Văn Kiệt
Star: Veronica Ngo, Cát Vy, Phan Thanh Nhiên, Trần Thanh Hoa

Two Graves

  By

★★★½
“Two? Half a dozen seems more likely.”

This wasn’t quite what we expected. In fact, replace “quite” with “at all”. It starts off as looking like some kind of revenge porn, with pathologist Margaret Powers (Tyson) kidnapping Finnbar (Ward), the man she’s certain murdered her son. Finnbar was apparently able to get away with it, because he was the son of a notorious local criminal, Tommy O’Neil (Hayman). She wants Finnbar to confess to his crime, and recruits her son’s ex-girlfriend, Zoe (Jarvis) to help in getting her vengeance. Initially, the capture goes well, with the two women then holing up in an abandoned warehouse by the docks, to begin the interrogation. However, this is where the film starts to diverge from the expected, as it turns out Zoe’s intentions are not in line with Margaret’s, as they initially appeared.

It’s probably best if I don’t say too much more, but things gradually and relentlessly spiral out of control from there. Others gradually become involved in what was intended to be a private party, including nearby security guards, Tommy and his wife, and the local cops (of dubious morality themselves), while the truth about the murder which started it all is eventually revealed. Not that there will be many people alive to hear it. For the title – based off the proverb, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves” (mis-attributed here to Confucius) – severely underestimates the body-count resulting from this particular quest for vengeance.

Director Young was previously the writer of another vigilante pic, Harry Brown starring Michael Cain, and like that the two things which largely drive this are the performances and the script. No different from any movie, but they seem particularly outstanding here. Tyson was something of a star back in the eighties, in things like Mona Lisa, but I can’t say I heard much of her since. She’s great here though, and gets particularly good support from Jarvis and Hayman. Even the not very nice characters (which, to be honest, are probably the majority here) generally have a humanity to their portrayal, that helps you understand their action. The script does a great job of pacing, delivering twists with the accuracy of an eye-dropper, and has no qualms about disposing of apparently important characters when necessary.

There are a couple of issues though. Quite why Margaret and Zoe opt to choose this location is questionable. Surely a well-soundproofed cellar would have worked better than some bits of plastic hung up in the middle of a very echo-y dilapidated building. The noise, such as the screams of your victim resulting from your amputation of a finger, seem highly likely to draw attention. That’s a rare mis-step though, and overall this was a pleasant surprise to find on Netflix, with little or no promotion. The low budget was no detriment, with the production knowing its limits and working well within them. It’s the kind of thing more film-makers should be doing, when they don’t have a lot of resources.

Dir: Gary Young
Star: Cathy Tyson, Katie Jarvis, Neal Ward, David Hayman

Relentless

  By

★★
“Hell Salvador…”

From just about all I’ve read, the director seems entirely earnest in his desire to make a serious film about a serious problem, human trafficking in Central America. That the end result falls almost entirely wide of the mark is a bit of a double-edged sword. In terms of making its intended point, that it feels more like a B-movie from the fifties is a bad thing. But on the other hand, the serious film about the serious problem would likely be considerably less amusing.

Holly Drew (Shaw) runs a coffee shop in what I’m guessing is Portland, carrying on a family tradition of working with farmers in El Salvador: fair trade, ethical production, etc. Her daughter, Ally (Sweeney), is visiting the coffee farm there, somewhat reluctantly: some kind of college credit seems involved. Her stay is rudely interrupted when she and a local friend are kidnapped by Los Discipulos, a local gang. With the local cops worse than useless, Holly goes down there herself, and plunges into the underworld with the help of slightly sleazy but good-hearted Fern (Castro), on the trail of Ally before she can be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

A major problem here, is that Tracy clearly wants to be sympathetic to the locals. It opens with stuff about the civil war there causing a cycle of poverty and violence, etc. Yet in the light of subsequent cinematic events, this comes over more excuse than rational explanation. Because for the purposes of the film, modern-day El Salvador has to be depicted as a “shithole country” (to quote the current American President). Otherwise, where’s the threat to Holly and Ally? So for example: the local police are depicted as being thoroughly corrupt or entirely useless, and no-one beyond Fern seems willing to help Holly in the slightest. If you come away at the end doing anything except agreeing with Trump, you haven’t been paying attention.

The other big problem is character motivation, especially for Fern. He abandons Holly, right at her moment of greatest need… except he subsequently doesn’t. Neither his departure, nor his return, make sense, except that both are necessary for a film in which he’s a supporting character to the “relentless” mother. Similarly, the actions of Los Discipulos often left me scratching my head. They didn’t fit the likely behaviour patterns of the hardened criminals they are supposed to be – again, save for being required by the plot.

We’ve seen almost exactly this kind of “lost daughter” scenario before, in the decent Never Let Go and slightly less-decent Taken Heart. Whether due to the sense of (literal) deja vu, or just because the components aren’t as effective, this falls below the standard of either. Shaw’s performance is likely the only half-decent aspect, and it needs to be in the service of a more considered script. If I’d been making this, I’d have had Fern part of the notorious El Salvadorean anti-gang death squad, La Sombra Negra, and taken Holly down a darker path of vengeance. Sadly, what we have here is considerably more lightweight and predictable, and almost entirely forgettable.

Dir: Lance Tracy
Star: Lauren Shaw, David Castro, Sydney Sweeney, Peter Holden