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Wentworth

By Jim McLennan March 1, 2022 December 30, 2021 Review

★★★★
“Sheilas behind bars.”

Back in the eighties, there was an Australian women-in-prison soap opera called Prisoner Cell Block H. [It was called Prisoner on its home turf, but was renamed in the UK and US, to avoid confusion with The Prisoner] It ran for eight seasons, totalling 692 (!) episodes, and achieved a fair bit of cult status, mostly through late-night screenings on TV. Much of its reputation was based on “so bad it’s good” elements, such as the wobbly sets; a review calls it, “one of the most bizarre, violent, lesbian-fetishy-heart-warming dramas ever created.” The show concluded its run in 1986, but was never forgotten.

More than 25 years later, the concept was rebooted in 2013 as Wentworth, and enjoyed a renaissance. While also running for eight seasons, rather than trash (not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you!), this version proved to be remarkably well made. It likely helped that the remake’s production schedule here was rather less frantic, ending at exactly 100 episodes last October. The show is currently ranked by the IMDb in the top 250 TV series of all time, and was sold to over 90 countries, achieving a worldwide audience, thanks in part to its distribution on streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime.

It spawned local remakes in a number of countries. The Dutch was the most successful, running for four seasons, but Belgium, Germany and Turkey also took the show and recreated it. [Here is as good a place as any to mention that back in 1982, there was a male spin-off of the original show called Punishment. Though it lasted only one season, the cast included some guy called Mel Gibson…] Indeed, the Turkish one, known on Netflix as The Yard, was reviewed here in August 2020. That review began, “I really must get round to reviewing Wentworth.” And eighteen months later, here we are…

It’s a show I’ve thought about covering on a number of occasions over its run, but now that it’s finished, I feel I can finally do it justice. I definitely can’t argue with the acclaim it has received. For Wentworth features a slew of extremely strong female characters, including one of the most memorable villainesses in TV history, and maintained a high degree of dramatic quality from beginning to end. That’s rare for a series; even classics like Buffy dropped off after a certain point, with commercial motivations typically surpassing artistic ones. Not so here, with the eighth series virtually as strong as the first.

One element, which it does share with its predecessor, is that the setting is the “star”, rather than any performer. I think this certainly helped contribute to its longevity, and sustained the show’s freshness. If one of the actresses began to feel jaded, and wanted out, their character could be replaced by another. The prison scenario meant there were always new arrivals potentially coming in, and scope for departures too, without excessively disrupting the overall structure. If you look at many of the ultra-long running shows, e.g. Dr Who or the many incarnations of Law and Order, they have a similar ability to rotate their cast seamlessly.

Not to say there weren’t main characters – many of them with the names and/or backgrounds as their “ancestors” in Cell Block H. But they tended to have arcs across three or four years; few lasted the full eight, mostly on the guard side. This timeframes was long enough to allow for fulfilling development, without getting stale. The first such was Bea Smith (Cormack), who arrives at Wentworth after attempting to murder her husband, following years of abuse. She becomes involved in the struggle for “Top Dog” status – the role of the most powerful prisoner – between two existing inmates, only to end up becoming Top Dog herself. However, it’s a lonely position, where you always have to watch your back, and allies can suddenly become enemies.

One such was the character mentioned above: Joan Ferguson (Rabe), known as ‘The Freak’ (left). She joined the show as the new governor of Wentworth in season 2, and was, to be blunt, a clinical psychopath, devoid of empathy and incredibly manipulative. She was also very smart, a lethal combination. However, it’s not enough to save her from ending up a prisoner in the jail herself. The first episode of season 5, where Ferguson is released into the general population was, for me, peak Wentworth, and one of the best 45 minutes of television I’ve seen, in any genre.

Remarkably, she didn’t just survive this reversal of fortune, but thrived. She took over as Top Dog. until an escape plan misfired, ending in her being buried alive by long-serving prison officer Will Jackson (Robbie Magasiva)). But you can’t keep a good villainess down, though it appeared the trauma led to amnesia, with Ferguson subsequently using a different name and with a completely different personality. Was this genuine, or another of her ruses? I couldn’t possibly reveal that. What I will do though, is laud a glorious performance by Rabe, who at six feet tall, has a remarkable physical presence, backed up by ferocious intensity. She’s Cersei Lannister on steroids. And without the incest.

In general, it’s perhaps less exploitative than you might expect, with nudity only when genuinely necessary to the plot, rather than for titillation purposes. On the other hand, the show does not soft-pedal the brutality of prison life, with violence and death a common occurrence. Inmates tend to handle their own infractions internally, the Top Dog having the ability to impose punishments for theft, deceit or, perhaps the worst offense of all, “lagging” i.e. talking to prison authorities. It would definitely be rated a hard R, purely for its authentically no-holds barred language. Boy, do the Aussies love themselves a good c-bomb – even more than us Scots!

There were, admittedly, times where the story-lines seemed to get away from the creators. A few threads did appear to be ended, rather than properly resolved. But considering the 70+ hours of television the show represented, such misfires proved remarkably few. The writers definitely had a talent for juggling multiple plot threads and keeping them all moving forward simultaneously. In the end though, it was the actresses (and actors) who made this show what it was, and which kept us coming back for the best part of a decade. If not our favourite show ever on Netflix, it’s definitely up there with the very best.

Creators: Lara Radulovich and David Hannam
Star: Danielle Cormack, Pamela Rabe, Kate Atkinson, Katrina Milosevic

Bruised

By Jim McLennan December 20, 2021 December 6, 2021 Review

★★★★
“Packs a surprising punch.”

Halle Berry was born the same year I was. There is, however, just one of us that is capable of convincingly playing the role of a mixed martial artist. To give you another yardstick, the lead in this was originally going to go to Mrs. Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively (The Shallows and The Rhythm Section), who is more than 20 years younger than Berry. I will admit, Chris did raise one of her sardonic eyebrows at the scene where Halle’s character buys Tampax, and the idea of her having a six-year-old son is perhaps a bit of a stretch. But if you didn’t know the actress has been AARP-eligible for over five years, you’d simply never guess.

This is probably the best movie yet made about women’s combat sports, though that’s not exactly going up against strong competition. The script is probably the only weak element, never escaping the standard clichés; there are very few surprises in its 138 minutes. But just about every other aspect is excellent. The heroine is Jackie Justice (Berry), a former UFC fighter, whose promising career fell apart four years ago. She just lost her job as a cleaner, and is pretty much at rock-bottom. Her boyfriend/”manager” Desi (Canto) takes Jackie to an underground match, where she is provoked into beating her opponent into a pulp. That gets the attention of a local promoter, who gives her one last shot, a bout against undefeated champion, Lucia “Lady Killer” Chavez (Valentina Shevchenko, the current UFC Women’s Flyweight Champion, whose fight face is genuinely scary!).

Of course, even to reach that point, she has to overcome the inevitable slew of obstacles. Desi’s domestic abuse, the doubts of her trainer, Buddhaken (Atim); and in particular, having her son Manny (Boyd) dumped on her, after the death of his father. Naturally, Jackie is able to rise above them all, and get her moment in the sun. Really, there’s only two possible outcomes – she wins or she doesn’t – and neither are exactly novel. Still, it’s all so earnest that you can’t help be pulled in. Berry sells the tropes with the conviction of her performance, and there are particularly good supporting roles from theatre veterans Atim, and Adriane Lenox as Jackie’s mother.

It’s worth pointing out that this is also Berry’s directorial debut, and it’s a very assured first feature. It never feels long, and about the only thread which felt superfluous was the romantic entanglement with her trainer. The resulting lesbisn canoodling seemed a bit gratuitous and out of sync with the gritty, down to earth feel from the rest of the movie. Fortunately, there are more than enough powerful and excellent scenes, and it’s very easy to get behind the heroine in her quest for redemption. Jackie is a character who comes with a lot of baggage, yet it all just makes her struggle seem all the more real. A shame this, Berry’s portrayal in particular, will likely be overlooked come the Oscars.

Dir: Halle Berry
Star: Halle Berry, Sheila Atim, Danny Boyd Jr, Adan Canto

Arcane – League of Legends: Season 1

By Jim McLennan December 6, 2021 December 3, 2024 Review

★★★½
“A tale of two sisters.”

I’ve never played League of Legends, but the good news is, you don’t need to, in order to enjoy Arcane. While that may provide some extra depth, it works perfectly well on its own. There is a degree of over-familiarity with the high-level scenario, which is Generic Fantasy Plot #3. Per Wikipedia’s premise, “Amidst the escalating unrest between the advanced, utopian city of Piltover and the squalid, repressed undercity of Zaun…” Yeah, it’s class war time again, cut from the same basic stamp as Mortal Engines, Alita: Battle Angel and The Hunger Games. To this series’s credit, it does show more nuance than some, with good and bad on both sides of the divide. Perhaps a bit too much though, as there were points where it felt like new characters were being thrown at the viewer, even late into the nine-episode series, when the time might have been better spent developing existing ones.

The central pair are sisters Vi (Steinfeld) and Powder (Purnell), orphaned after a failed rebellion. They’re brought up by the leader of the rebellion, and subsequently get entangled in the web of crime, politics, magic and science which powers both sides of the divide. There’s a lot going on here: simply summarizing it would fill the rest of the article. But there are a couple of key points. Powder becomes estranged from her sister, changes her name to Jinx, and goes to work for crime lord Silco (Spisak). Scientist Jayce Talis (Alejandro) creates a technology called Hextech: this (Generic Fantasy Plot #7…) allows for the control of magical energy, which can used for good or evil. It also does… well, whatever the plot needs, from curing illness to blowing things up. Intrigue ensues. A great deal of intrigue.

I did appreciate the script’s complexity, which stands in contrast to most video-game adaptations. I think the greater length (9 x 40-ish minutes) than a movie, gives the writers time to explore things in more depth, and I can’t complain at all about the overall world-building, either in story or artwork. Its French origins perhaps explain the look, which sometimes resembles a bande dessinee. Indeed, the show does almost all the big things right, from animation that’s top-notch, through good voice-acting, and some very well-constructed fight scenes. Vi does not mess around, and proves more than capable of going toe-to-toe with the biggest and baddest both Piltover and Zaun have to offer. Animated combat often lacks the impact of live-action – it’s an almost inevitable result of the medium – but that is not the case here. Blows pack a real punch, if you see what I mean.

However, there were a number of elements which did hamper the show, and for me, left it short of Seal of Approval level. I mentioned above the reliance on over-familiar tropes. This extends to dialogue which sometimes topples over into clichés, e.g. Vi telling Powder, “What makes you different makes you strong.” Pardon me if I roll my eyes and quote Chuck Pahluniak in response, “You’re not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else.” I also didn’t like the use of indie rock and rap music, finding it too distracting and not a good fit for the environment. I like Imagine Dragons as much as the next person, but… This felt too much like a soundtrack CD in search of a film. Contrast the fight at the end of episode 7 (I think?), accompanied instead by orchestral music, which is perhaps the best in the entire show.

Still, there are absolutely no shortage of strong female characters, even past the sisters. For example, Caitlyn Kiramman, the daughter of a noble family who taken on the difficult job of policing the streets, or Mel Medarda and her mother. While the society portrayed in the show has its issues, gender (and race) don’t appear to be among them, rarely even cropping up. I’ve tended to skip a lot of the Netflix animated shows, for one reason or another, but this definitely was not a waste of time. The way it finishes though… I can’t discuss it in depth for spoiler reasons. But if they hadn’t already announced a second series is coming, I would be severely peeved. I hate that kind of ending in books, and it works no better in a TV show. Do better next time, please.

Dir: Pascal Charrue, Arnaud Delord
Star (voice): Hailee Steinfeld, Ella Purnell, Kevin Alejandro, Jason Spisak

My Name

By Jim McLennan November 15, 2021 November 13, 2021 Review

★★★★
“Squid Games? They’re over-rated.”

What is it with Koreans and revenge? From Lady Vengeance through Princess Aurora to The Five, it seems an integral part of about half of their cinematic canon. This goes down the same line, but despite that familiarity, delivers an intensity that’s hard to resist, and provides an excellent action heroine. Indeed, in terms of Netflix series from Korea, I’d say this was more worthy of worldwide acclaim than Squid Game. But I guess there’s no accounting for taste.

The central character here is Yoon Ji-woo (Han), a teenager whose father is part of the Dongcheon, a major criminal syndicate. She’s somewhat estranged from him, but when he is gunned down, literally on her doorstep, she wants vengeance on those responsible. The cops seem largely disinterested in solving the case of a dead mobster, and the only person who wants to help is her late father’s boss, Choi Mu-jin (Park), the head of the Dongcheon. He tells Yoon her father was killed with a police revolver and sets her up as his undercover operative in the force, in order to identify the murderer and take her revenge.

It’s a long process, taking several years. It begins with her training in martial arts in the Dongcheon gym, then adopting a new identity of Oh Hye-jin, joining the police and working her way to the department run by the man suspected of her father’s killing, Cha Gi-ho (Kim). There, she bonds with another detective, Jeon Pil-do (Ahn), but the moral landscape gets increasingly murky. It turns out that there may be more to her circumstances than she has been told, with one revelation in particular upending everything she had believed since her father’s death.

This is a very strong effort, particularly at the beginning and end. Yoon’s status as a “take no shit” type is quickly established with a classroom brawl against bullies, and her tenacity and persistence in the search for her father’s killer is absolutely relentless. You can knock her down – and many times, that’s exactly what happens – but she keeps on getting back up. The action scenes here are extremely well-staged, and Han is clearly doing almost everything herself, rather than a stunt double. I did feel the show lagged somewhat in the middle, with the focus moving to Choi and his struggle for control of the syndicate. In particular, there’s a thoroughly unpleasant rival whom he kicked out, but who returns, with venom, for a take-over bid. Yoon ended up rather backgrounded in parts 3-5 of the eight episode show.

But the ending of part 6 is the revelation mentioned above, yanking the carpet out from under the viewer, every bit as much as Yoon, and gets the show firmly back on track. It’s not the final shocking moment, though I do have some questions about the motivation of certain characters for their actions. Still, it builds to a climax which, in hindsight, should have been almost inevitable from the start. It ties up everything nicely, and in an emotionally satisfying way. Where are the Western shows that offer such a solid combination of action and drama?

Dir: Kim Jin-min
Star: Han So-hee, Park Hee-soon, Ahn Bo-hyun, Kim Sang-ho

The Trip

By Jim McLennan October 27, 2021 October 25, 2021 Review

★★★½
“One bad trip – but in a good way.”

This is a nasty, mean-spirited piece of work. But I mean that as a compliment, for it’s clearly intended as such. The European Queen of Action Heroines Rapace (I must get round to giving her, her own tag!) stars as soap actress Lisa, whose marriage to her director there, Lars (Hennie), is on severely shaky ground. So shaky, in fact, that Lars plans to use their upcoming weekend getaway to his father’s cabin to kill Lisa, cut up the body and dispose of it in a nearby lake, while saying she vanished on a solo hike. Except, just as he’s about to enact the plan, it turns out Lisa also intends to kill him in a “hunting accident”, and she gets the jump on her spouse. But before she can enact her plan, an accomplice of his shows up. Then three escaped convicts (literally) drop in to the cottage, with bad intentions of their own.

In some ways, it’s reminiscent of a hyperviolent version of seventies theatrical farce, something with a title like Run For Your Wife. Plot twist is piled upon twist, the characters furiously reacting to every additional complication and new arrival as best they can, in the hope of finding a way out of the mess. The original Norwegian title translates as “For worse” – as in “For better or…”, and that’s probably a better one than the highly-generic name Netflix tacked on. You will need a strong stomach, to be sure. Wirkola’s previous work has often been in the horror genre, such as Nazi zombie movie Dead Snow and it’s sequal, and that informs a lot of the brutality here. But he also directed What Happened to Monday, also starring Rapace, and this re-union is another good effort. Not all the shots land as they should – there’s what feels like a painfully extended sequence of one of the prisoners going to the toilet on the attic floor, which frankly, I could have done without.

However, the bulk of it works well, if you’re in the mood for brutal black comedy. Having a couple who genuinely want to kill each other, and forcing them to team up against a greater, external threat, is a concept full of potential, and it’s mined with energy and enthusiasm. I particularly loved Lars’s geriatric father, who leaves his nursing home and turns up with a zero-tolerance approach to everyone. But Rapace’s character is the focus, cutting and stabbing her way through proceedings with the best (or worst) of them, while taking no small amount of damage – as the picture (top) suggests. This may not be the sort of film I want to re-visit on a regular basis; not knowing what was coming up certainly felt a significant part of the fun. However, as a bloody good time, with the emphasis on “bloody,” it delivered everything I was hoping, and a little more.

Dir: Tommy Wirkola
Star: Noomi Rapace, Aksel Hennie, Atle Antonsen, Christian Rubeck
a.k.a. I onde dager

Till Death

By Jim McLennan October 6, 2021 October 4, 2021 Review

★★½
“Women don’t sweat, they glisten.”

I kinda agonized, for far longer than I should have, over whether this was a 3-star or 2½-star film. It’s probably 2¾. Or perhaps 2 5/8. No, 2 11/16. In the end though, it doesn’t matter. It’s just another in Megan Fox’s attempts to become the next Angelina Jolie, following in the footsteps of the similarly okay but not exactly memorable Rogue. Indeed, I initially thought this was by the same director, but turns out it’s a different director who uses initials in lieu of a first name. Anyway, with this one now available on Netflix, it will likely raise Fox’s action-actress profile. In terms of current rankings, she probably moves ahead of Ruby Rose in the rankings. Though that’s not exactly difficult.

The problems here are mostly pacing, with the movie being too slow to get to the main course. Emma (Fox) is unhappily married to Mark (Macken), an over-controlling lawyer, and is having an affair with one of Mark’s colleagues. After an excess of scenes belabouring these points, e.g. Mark orders her dessert after she has declined it (what a bastard!), on their 10th anniversary, Mark takes her out to a remote lakehouse. She wakes the next morning to find herself handcuffed to him, and Mark then blows his brains out. Turns out, his life was about to fall apart, but he has a plan to wreck Emma’s life from beyond the grave. This involves sending two thugs (Mulvey and Roth) to the house, one of whom has a beef with her, due to Emma having cost him his eye.

Our heroine, therefore, has to elude the home invaders while chained to a 180-lb (literal) dead weight, in a house from which all sharp objects have been carefully removed. This is kinda distracting, as I found myself figuring out alternative methods of separation, such as slamming the corpse’s wrist repeatedly in a car-door. But that’s perhaps for the best, as a distraction from too many shots of Emma dragging Mark’s body around the house, using her wedding-dress as a tarp (I’ll take “Over-obvious symbolism” for $400, please, Alex). Naturally, this unwanted connection lasts only until the plot decides it needs to be discarded, when it becomes a more standard home-invasion thriller.

It does perk up on the arrival of the villains, and there are some reasonably clever twists thereafter. To be honest, Mark’s warped imagination was almost impressive. Though if I was going to such lengths to extract revenge, I’d probably want to be there to see it. Where’s the fun otherwise? Fox does put in the effort, even if as Chris noted, Emma remains remarkably shevelled (as opposed to dishevelled) over the course of proceedings. Her hair and lipstick remain almost pristine despite crawling across grubby floors and snowy landscapes. I’m reminded of the old line quoted at the top; if you can still look hawt when drenched in blood and brains, your make-up artist deserves some kind of award.

Dir: S.K. Dale
Star: Megan Fox, Callan Mulvey, Jack Roth, Eoin Macken

Kate

By Jim McLennan October 1, 2021 September 13, 2021 Review

★★★
“Dying to kill you.”

The action heroine plotline of a woman defending a child – sometimes her own, but more often an acquired kid – is a common one. The “Mama Bear”, as TV Tropes called it, was most famously used in Aliens, but shows up with some regularity in our genre. See also Ultraviolet, Furie and The Long Kiss Goodnight (have I really never reviewed that?), while Gunpowder Milkshake was the most recent example. Of course, it’s not just heroines to whom it can apply; indeed there’s another page on TV Tropes called “Badass and Child“, covering the likes of Leon: The Professional. But the pairing of an action heroine with a (usually female) child has particular resonances, that perhaps merit general discussion, before we get into the specifics of Kate.

Firstly, it offers an easy justification for any and all subsequent violence. In Western society, women are not supposed to be aggressive. They are seen as the caring, nurturing gender, but protecting their offspring is one of the few times when they are “allowed” to engage their inner monsters. Again, it’s not limited to the female sex (think Taken), but male characters tend to have a wider range of potential motivations e.g. patriotism, personal power, so you don’t see paternal protection as often. [And that’s quite enough P’s.] In most cases – Ripley being an exception – the mother figure is already something of a bad-ass, so has that “very particular set of skills” necessary. It’s just the specific direction of her targets which is a result of the threat to her offspring.

There is also, quite often, some kind of emotional resonance, in the cases where the child is not biologically related [when that is the case, you don’t typically need or get any more explanation, blood being thicker than water]. Maybe the kid acts as a surrogate, a replacement for one previously lost (Alien), or the heroine could never have. Or if a girl, the protagonist can perhaps see a younger version of herself. The other common theme is the use of the child as a key, to unlock the adult. Often, the latter has lost her humanity, typically through harsh circumstances, becoming largely a lone figure, with her emotions suppressed. The “childlike innocence” of the young person, to use a cliché, can be used as a psychological crowbar, pricing open the hard shell of the grown-up, allowing them to reconnect with their humanity. The more emotionally-driven immaturity also stands in contrast to the adult’s stoicism, often to an extreme degree.

Which brings us to Kate, since the film demonstrates most of the above, to a certain degree. It is, to some extent, an unfortunate victim of its own timing. Probably safe to say, I would have enjoyed this more, had it not come out almost immediately on the heels of both Gunpowder Milkshake and The Protégé – films with which it has rather too much in common. All three movies are about female assassins, who find themselves at a crossroads in their professional and personal lives. In Kate and Milkshake, the protagonists find themselves, more or less unwillingly, in charge of a young girl. In Kate and The Protégé, they operate under the guidance of an older, male veteran killer, who trained them since childhood, but may or may not have their best interests at heart. Throw in to this, the “investigating your own murder” plot-line from classic film noir D.O.A., and you’ll understand why this seemed over familiar.

It begins in Osaka, where Kate (Winstead) takes out a yakuza boss, despite qualms over the presence of his daughter. She tells her mentor, Varrick (Harrelson), she will do one last mission before she retires – yeah, that cliché. But before it happens, she’s poisoned with radioactive polonium, which will kill her in a few hours. Intent on extracting vengeance, she finds it was apparently ordered by Kijima, brother of her previous victim. To try and lure him out, Kate abduct his niece, Ani (Martineau), the girl who was there when Kate killed her father. But Ani becomes a target as well, due to a power struggle within the criminal syndicate, and Kate her unwilling protector. This makes the whole “I killed your father, actually” thing more than a bit awkward, especially as Kate needs Anu’s help if she’s to discover the truth about her own assassination. For that is even more disturbing than she expects.

As you can probably tell, there’s nothing new in the story. This doesn’t mean it’s devoid of merit, for the execution is solid. Nicolas-Troyan, previously here for The Huntsman: Winter’s War, brings a perpetual neon sheen to Japanese urban life, leaving half the film feeling like cut scenes from Blade Runner. While lovely to look at, this is very much a foreigner’s view of Japan, which makes Kate’s familiarity with the culture a bit jarring; she speaks Japanese, and is obsessed with ‘Boom Boom Lemon’, a (fictional) local soft-drink. The heroine could have done with more of this kind of humanizing quirk; for much of the movie, she seems more like a machine for revenge, rather than a woman clinging to her last hours of life, as the perfectly-machined tool of her body increasingly betrays its owner.

The other positive is the action, which is well-handled, and occasionally savage to an almost extreme degree. The peak is likely an early battle between Kate and a large number of gang members, culminating in Kate stabbing an opponent up under the chin, the blade coming out through his nose. I have not seen that before. However, the keyword there is “early”. The film probably needs a better sense of escalation, and the lack here stands in contrast to the likes of the John Wick franchise. I can’t say I was ever bored here. However, I didn’t feel there was enough to make it stand out from the (recently very sizable) crowd. I suspect this will likely vanish into the crowd of Netflix originals, and quickly be forgotten.

Dir: Cedric Nicolas-Troyan
Star: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Miku Martineau, Woody Harrelson, Tadanobu Asano

Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl

By Jim McLennan September 29, 2021 May 10, 2021 Review

★★½
“In plane sight.”

This is the story of Gunjan Saxena (Kapoor), one of the first women to be admitted into the Indian Air Force as a pilot. Near the beginning is a rather effective scene in which she’s taken up to the cockpit of the jet on which she is flying with her father (Tripathi). The look of wonder on the young girl’s face as she sees the flight deck does a better job of putting over the sheer joy of flying than all the many montages that will be crammed in over the next 110 minutes. It’s a “Miyazaki moment”, if you are familiar with the work of Hayao Miyazaki, which often features sequences that capture the same joy.

She wants initially to be a commercial pilot, against the wishes in particular of her older brother Anshuman (Bedi) and her mother. But her father is encouraging and sympathetic, even when her career diverts Gunjan into the Air Force, part of the first batch of female recruits. The rest of the film is notable most for its well-crafted and polished predictability. She has to overcome barriers, both physical (she’s too short to become a helicopter pilot – fortunately, she has long arms. No, really: that’s literally the get out) and those of a military culture which is not yet prepared to treat women as equals. Inevitably, there’s a commanding officer who takes the recruit under his wing, and Gunjan overcomes her own self-doubt, with the help of her father’s encouragement.

She is sent into battle as part of the Kargil war in 1999 (more of a spat, really, lasting a couple of months on the border between India and Pakistan), but public concern over her possible fate as a POW forces her removal from the front lines. It all ends up looping back to the scene at the beginning where, equally inevitably, an emergency gives her the chance to redeem herself, on a mercy mission to rescue injured colleagues who are under enemy fire. Apparently, disobeying orders in the Indian military gets you feted for your initiative, which would seem to be something more likely to happen in movies about the military, than the actual armed forces.

There have been significant complaints about this being an unfair depiction, with the Air Force writing to the Indian censors objecting to the way it was portrayed. That may explain the lengthy pre-film disclaimer, including this odd paragraph:

The producers, directors, artists or others associated with this film are all law-abiding citizens and have not created this film to incite any disorder or lawlessness.

Saxena herself said she never experienced discrimination at the organization level, only from individuals. Obviously, I can’t speak to that, and my concerns are more about the very obvious and cliched nature of the script. There is a good point to be made, about the importance of chasing your dreams, in the face of adversity, and Kapoor’s depiction is winning and likable enough. I certainly can’t complain about the technical aspects, especially in the flying sequences, which are also well constructed. It’s just that the “woman overcomes the adversity of being a woman” story is a cinematic dead horse, and this has little or nothing new to add to it.

Dir: Sharan Sharma
Star: Janhvi Kapoor, Pankaj Tripathi, Manav Vij, Angad Bedi

Blood Red Sky

By Jim McLennan August 4, 2021 August 1, 2021 Review

★★★
“Vampires on a Plane”

Or, maybe, “Die Hard with vampires”? It’s a bit of both. Mother and son pairing, Nadja (Baumeister) and Elias (Koch), are on their way from Germany to New York, so that Nadja can receive treatment for her rare blood disorder. However, the plane is barely over the Atlantic before it gets hijacked by a group of terrorists. They intend to turn back and crash the plane into London – after parachuting off it – blaming Islamic fundamentalists, because… Well, various theories are suggested, but it’s not really important. What matters, is Nadja ends up getting shot repeatedly. But she doesn’t die. Remember that “rare blood disorder” from earlier in the paragraph? As you’ve probably worked out already (especially if you’ve seen the trailer, so it’s not a spoiler), she’s a vampire, and so is faster, stronger and more lethal than the hijackers now threatening her son’s future.

Excepts, it’s not quite as simple. For the most lunatic and deranged of the terrorists, Eightball (Scheer), figures out what’s going on and decides to fight fire with fire. Injecting himself with Nadja’s blood, he also turns a bit bitey, and it becomes good vampire + passengers versus bad vampire and terrorists. Nadja needs to ensure, not only that the latter don’t prevail, but the cover of darkness does not allow Eightball and any others like him to escape into the world at large. Complicating matters further, the change in course back towards Europe means dawn is approaching, and these are your old school, burst into flames when exposed to direct sunlight vampires.

There’s plenty going on here, and even at over two hours long, it doesn’t feel like the film drags. Director Thorwarth knows his way around escalating tension, and does a solid job. However, it feels as if he left a good deal of potential on the table, mostly due to the structure. This is painfully flashback heavy. It opens with the plane landing on a remote Scottish landing strip, with apparently just two survivor Elias and a Muslim physicist (Setti). It then skips back to mother and son’s arrival at the airport, playing forward from there, except with further flashbacks, detailing how Nadja got infected. These do definitely defuse the tension of the hijack situation; the details of how she became a vampire don’t really matter much.

What I liked was the notion that vampirism doesn’t change you. If you’re a good mother, you’re still a good mother; if you’re a psycho, you’re still a psycho. Just, in both cases, better equipped to defend yourself. The look is, appropriate enough for a German film, Nosferatu-like, with Nadja losing her hair; oddly, Eightball doesn’t, perhaps to assist in identification. Must be a later stage. :) 30 Days of Night is another touchstone, though in the “Unexpected Vampire” subgenre, this definitely falls well short of From Dusk Till Dawn. It did remain entertaining enough, and offers enough new twists on the established mythology to stand on its own.

Dir: Peter Thorwarth
Star: Peri Baumeister, Carl Anton Koch, Alexander Scheer, Kais Setti

Gunpowder Milkshake

By Jim McLennan August 1, 2021 July 19, 2021 Review

★★★★
“Jane Wick.”

Yeah, it’s kinda like that. As in John Wick, the hero(ine) is an assassin for hire, in a world where there exists a significant infrastructure of support for hitmen and hitwomen. After they fall foul of the wrong people, our hero(ine) becomes the target, but has more than enough skills to be able to fend for themselves, and takes the fight to their aggressors. Oh, yeah, and it also borrows significantly from Leon: The Professional, in that the assassin becomes the protector of a young girl. Hmm. But this leverages those two with very large injections of style. Not quite to the level of Sucker Punch, but heading that way. Thiscand enough original ideas, made it work for me, despite the familiar elements.

It has been interesting to read the reviews, which seem sharply divisive. Critics appear either to like it or hate it, with not much “It was alright.” I think this is one of those films where you need to buy into the approach as much as the concept. For example, it seems to take place in a world inhabited solely by people in the film. There are few if any bystanders. The location is deliberately vague (it was filmed in Berlin), with a deliberate attention paid to the colour palette used. According to the director, for example, yellow represents death – such as the large, yellow duffel-bag with “I ♥ Kittens” on the side, in which the protagonist totes her weapons. If you’re not down with this approach, I can see how this could annoy rather than amuse.

Said protagonist is Sam (Gillan), a killer with abandonment issues ever since her mom (Lena Headey) walked out on her, fifteen years earlier. Sam is tasked by her employer, Nathan (Giamatti), with recovering a haul of stolen cash. But she finds the thief was coerced into action, after his eight-year-old daughter (“8¾!”, as we are reminded on several occasions), Emily, was kidnapped. Likely reminded of her younger self, Sam takes custody of Emily, though the cash is destroyed in the process. This, and a previous job where she killed the son of a very important person, makes her persona non grata, and the hunter becomes the hunted.

Fortunately, she’s not without allies. In particular, there are the Librarians, three women who run the armoury available to all assassins [like the Sommelier in John Wick]. This trio, played by Yeoh, Angela Bassett and Carla Gugino, have a lot of previous history with Sam and her mother, and opt to take her side in the impendng war. Of course – and the development is so obvious, it doesn’t count as a spoiler – Mum also returns. The 5½ women (counting Emily as the fraction), have to stand their ground, first at the library, then in a final battle at the diner, the neutral ground (coughContinentalcough) where Sam’s mother left her, all those years ago.

The action is good, rather than great. It is, at least, not over-edited and is definitely helped by Papushado’s dedication to style – it all looks striking, which makes it (literally) punch above its weight. Nowhere is this clearer than an amazing slow-motion pan down the length of the diner towards the end, which is the kind of shot you’ll want to rewatch several times, in order to see everything that’s going on. It does feel as if Yeoh was somewhat underused, though I should probably give up expecting anything Crouching Tiger-like these days. That was over twenty years ago, and Yeoh turns 59 in less than a week. That said, she still holds her own with the less mature actresses admirably – says the man, younger than her, who needs a stunt double to change the batteries in the ceiling smoke detector.

Despite the shot mentioned above, the fight in the library is definitely the film’s highlight and in terms of pacing feels like it should have been the climax. With the women defending their turf, it has the feel of an Alamo-like final stand. Instead, things potter on for a further 20 minutes thereafter, with the makers feeling like they have chosen to coast over the finish line, rather than engaging in a final sprint. I felt another area of criticism was the use of music, which often seemed to reach Baby Driver levels of over-emphasis. I once described that film as “like I was trapped inside Edgar Wright’s iPod, while he hummed along to his own mix-tape,” and if this isn’t quite as bad, there’s even less reason for the songs here. They’re a grab-bag that don’t offer a sense of time or place. I blame Quentin Tarantino.

It is notable that the film is split firmly along gender lines. with every one of the protagonists being women, and every one of the antagonists being men. However, it’s fortunate that seem largely to be about the extent of the messaging, and nobody particularly pays attention to this. Everyone is kept quite busy trying to kill each other. It’s also a bit less of an ensemble piece than I expected from the trailer. Especially in the first half, it’s Sam vs. the World, with the Librarians introduced, and then shuffled off to one side until Sam is ultimately forced to turn to them for help. That’s not particularly a criticism. I like Gillan, who was born about 25 miles from where I was, so is likely the nearest I have to a local action heroine. She can carry a film perfectly well, even if I’d rather have heard her natural Scots accent.

Comparing this to Black Widow from a few weeks ago, both films got four stars, but only Milkshake merited our seal of approval. I think it’s because the latter’s strong sense of visual style does give a rewatchability that the relative pedestrian approach of Widow didn’t achieve. You’ll see things here which you have likely never seen before, and while that originality definitely does not apply to all the plot elements, it does at least have the grace to take those things from some very, very good movies.

Dir: Navot Papushado
Star: Karen Gillian, Chloe Coleman, Paul Giamatti, Michelle Yeoh