Tag: p

Perfect

  By

★★★½
“All in, all out!”

When I reviewed Russian fencing film On the Edge, I said, “I just need to find a synchronized swimming movie.” While this is a documentary, with all the positives and negatives of that genre, this fits the bill until Hollywood produces something more narrative. It follows the efforts of the Canadian team to get into the 2016 Rio Olympics. While normally, they’d be in as Pan-American champions, hosts Brazil got the spot reserved for the Americas. This forces Canada to go through the qualification tournament, battling their nemeses, Spain and Italy. The doc covers the arrival of new Chinese coach Meng Chen, efforts to get the most from her swimmers, and when this initially falls short, a radical re-invention of the team’s routine. 

You may be wondering what one of the most mocked Olympic sports is doing on the site. But beneath the fixed grins, penguin walks and stripper make-up, lies one of the most intense, demanding and gruelling sports, for men or women. To quote one team member, it’s like “running an Olympic-level 400-metre sprint while holding your breath”. She’s not wrong. The most memorable sequence here is when a series of team members list the injuries suffered for their sport. Broken bones. Torn muscles. And concussions. So many concussions, an inevitable result of rapidly-moving limbs in close proximity to skulls. I wrote elsewhere about the sport, now called “artistic swimming”; read that if you want the full case for why it belongs here.

Alternatively, just watch the film, because you’ll likely leave giving the athletes the respect they deserve. It’s the result of throwaway lines like one saying she spends 7-12 hours a day in the pool. Or the relentless pressure of Chen, pushing to unlock their potential. Or team captain Morin succumbing to an eating disorder, this sport being as much about how you look as how you perform. However, I’d have liked to have seen more technical background, rather than another scene of Chen yelling at the team. Even simple things, like explaining they aren’t allowed to touch the bottom of the pool, would have enhanced the footage of them throwing team-mates into the air. Though there are still some staggeringly beautiful shots, using reflections, tilted cameras, etc. it is a shame they couldn’t use the performance music – presumably for rights reasons. 

Interestingly, and perhaps pointedly, the team realizes its greatest results, after Chen adopts a more collaborative approach with them, and brings in external help. They even get an acting coach, to help improve their ability to convey emotions through movement. It’s nice too, to get a bit of insight into the aspiring Olympians, such as Holzner, for whom this has been an ambition since she was eight. We see the scrapbook she made when she was young (to help cope with a concussion!), and it helps foster an understanding of why people are willing to put themselves through this kind of ordeal. It all ends a bit messily: we don’t even see their final routine. But the journey is the thing here, not the destination, and you should be left with a new appreciation for the sport and its participants. 

Dir: Jérémie Battaglia
Star: Claudia Holzner, Marie-Lou Morin, Meng Chen, Karine Thomas

President and Kung-Fu Girl

  By

★★½
“Lifestyles of the Rich and Communist.”

On a trip to Thailand, businessman’s daughter Wen Wan manages to cause trouble with some rather unpleasant people, causing her father, Wen Ruhu to fear a revenge attack. He hires security consultant Liang Shan to protect Wan, but his business partner Li Kaishi, also sends his daughter, Xin You, as another bodyguard. Shan and You initially see each other as rivals, but as they get to know each other (and stop me if you’ve perhaps heard this before), eventually realize that they both want the same thing, to protect Wan. The sparks become more of the romantic kind, although it turns out that the situation in which they are involved is not as advertised, with envious eyes being cast at Liang’s company and its assets.

Firstly, I apologize for the lack of information on the participants. While in both Chinese and English, the opening credits list only the crew, not the cast, and the end credits (presumably listing the players) are only in Chinese. I found the names of two actors online, but absolutely no info about the characters they played. Nor is there an IMDb page for the movie: I’ve been watching a lot of Chinese films lately, and that often seems to be the case, especially with straight-to-streaming entries like this. Even the images I found for it, such as the one above, manage to mis-spell the movie’s own title. I get they really don’t care much about finding a Western audience, so I am just grateful the print has subtitles.

This begins brightly enough, though after the opening scene, I was a bit confused as to why Wan needs a bodyguard, since she seems quite capable of taking care of herself. [I must also say, for a supposedly Communist country, the luxurious lifestyle she enjoys looks much more like an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous!] However, it’s clear that You is no slouch in the martial-arts department, though the editing here seems more intended to conceal than show off her physical abilities. Still, she looks the part and it seemed to have potential, with her and her male colleague fending off wave after wave of attempts at revenge.

Except it doesn’t happen. The film grinds to an abrupt halt in the middle, heading firmly for something closer to relationship driven soap-opera, complete with a soppy soundtrack. This sucks all life and promise out of the film, even if the two characters are rather more engaging than the whiny Wan. They’re trying, bless their hearts, it’s just not the kind of scenes I wanted to see: I generally prefer my kung-fu uncluttered with romantic tension (except for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, of course). There’s a brief burst of energy at the end, when all is revealed.  and did regain my interest, though even here You takes a bit of a back seat. It’s very much harmless fluff – I suspect it is the Chinese equivalent of a Netflix Original.

Dir: Feng Zhe
Star: Zhang Yigui, Xie Mingyu.

Prey

  By

★★★
“Prey to win.”

The latest entry in the Predator franchise has resulted in sharply divided opinions, partly for reasons that I’m not even going to get into. And, for roughly the 11th millionth time, the reality lies somewhere in the middle. It is probably the best entry in the franchise since Predator 2. However, let’s be clear: Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf would also satisfy that criteria. So, let’s dig in. The year is 1719, and the Northern Plains see a new arrival, in the form of an extraterrestrial visitor, looking to test its mettle against any species unlucky enough to cross its path. They could be animal, or human – the latter include both French trappers and the local Comanches.

The heroine is Naru (Midthunder), a young woman who wants to join her brother, Taabe (Beavers), on the tribe’s hunting parties. He and the rest of the tribe are reluctant to let her, preferring to make use of her skills as a healer. However, after they encounter the Predator while hunting a mountain-lion, Naru sneaks off to hunt it on her own, seeking to prove her skills. It’s not long before it becomes clear she has her hands full, simply trying to survive in the treacherous wilderness, and avoid the trappers. Never mind taking on a vicious creature from another planet, in possession of technology far in advance of what’s available to Earthlings, and with a fondness for ripping spines clean out of their owners’ backs.

It’s certainly a fresh and original setting,  especially for a SF/action movie, and I’d say the makers deserve credit for using native actors across the board. I will admit to rolling my eyes at some of the early attempts to position Naru as a rebel, which felt severely like the imposition of modern traits onto a historical setting. “Why do you like to hunt?” “Because they think I can’t!” Yeah, you almost get killed. Twice. They have a point. However, once she leaves the camp and sets out on her own journey, the movie hits its stride. By the time the trappers find they are no longer the hunters, but the hunted, it’s clear Naru will need to think outside the box of standard tactics in order to win. You’ll probably have figured out the key, as soon as she mentions that a certain medicinal herb “cools the blood”…

I can kinda see why it went direct to streaming, since some of the CGI effects are of the low-rent variety, and I suspect it was a lot cheaper than the $88 million cost of its predecessor, The Predator. On the other hand, it doesn’t skimp on the old ultraviolence, and that’s the way a Predator movie needs to be. It has to be said, this seems a particularly dumb example of the alien species – fortunately for Naru. It never seems to see her as a threat until it’s too late, clearly being sexist as well as extraterrestrial. Maybe a future installment could feature a female Predator… With all of history now officially in play, the possibilities are almost endless. While still imperfect, credit is due to the makers, for taking a franchise that seemed potentially on its last legs, and giving it new life. 

Dir: Dan Trachtenberg
Star: Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers, Michelle Thrush, Stormee Kipp

The Princess

  By

★★★★
“Die Hard in a castle.”

Well, this was a surprise. I was not expecting too much, this being a movie released straight to Hulu or Disney+ (depending on your territory), and starring someone best known for rom-com franchise, The Kissing Booth. Actually, scratch the “too” from that sentence. I went in on the basis that I was contractually obliged to watch it, as the guy running this site. I say this, so you’ll understand how unexpected it is to be writing this: it’s the best action-heroine film of the year so far. This is just thoroughly entertaining, and as the tag-line above suggests, is as close as I’ve ever seen to a genuine, female version of the greatest action movie of all-time. 

The first half structure though, plays more like The Raid in reverse, the heroine having to fight her way down, floor by floor, from the top of a high tower. It opens with the Princess (King) ‐ and that’s her credited name – waking to find herself in a bed-chamber. She’s being prepared for a marriage she very much does not want to happen. Her father, lacking a son and heir, intended to wed her to Julian (Cooper) for diplomatic purposes. She jilted him at the altar, and he then staged a coup, seizing her family and planning a union by force. What he doesn’t know, is that the Princess had been quietly trained by family retainer Linh (Ngo) in fighting skills, and begins working her way down, to rescue her family and stop Julian. Guess he is going to have to “altar” his wedding plans, hohoho.

It’s the kind of film which will stand or fall on its action sequences, and the good news is, these are the movie’s strongest suit. Kiet had previously worked with Ngo on Furie: that was solid, yet it now appears his imagination was bigger than the resources available to him there. Right from the start, when the Princess takes out the two attendants sent to her chamber, the fight scenes are all inventive, well-executed and assembled in a coherent manner. Now, King is no MMA fighter. However, they’ve constructed a fighting style for her character based on speed and agility, rather than strength and power. Her holding her own against bigger (sometimes, far bigger) opponents feels credible as a result. 

This reaches its height in a glorious, extended sequence, with the Princess battling her way down the tower’s staircase. It feels as if it’s 20 minutes long, such is the energy contained in it. There’s even a beautiful moment of tension releasing humour, part of a running gag involving one of Julian’s minions who is too fat for all the stairs he’s ordered to climb. Nothing thereafter, including the inevitable fight against her wannabe husband, quite reaches the same heights. Glover is good value as Julian, staying just this side of a pantomime villain. As Die Hard shows, having a memorable antagonist is an important element. He’s not quite Alan Rickman – though who is? And I do have to question some of Julian’s decisions. 

I mean, if ever I become an Evil Lord, I will choose a more definitive method of execution for my nemesis than defenestration. And if I did chuck them out a high window, it would be on the side of the building over the cobblestone courtyard, rather than the one facing the water. Though I must give credit where it’s due, for his selection of a sidekick, in whip-wielding bad girl, Moira. Kurylenko has a track record of her own on this site, most recently in Sentinelle, and builds further on that here. On the other hand, the Princess’s father is a totally ineffectual pussy, when faced with the brutality of Julian and his crew. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though. It makes his daughter’s rebellion feel organic and legitimate, rather than some kind of obvious third-wave feminist statement. I’d rebel in her shoes too.

Speaking of which, my concerns this would end up being some kind of Statement Movie, largely proved unfounded. Indeed, some reviews criticized it for not being progressive enough. [Insert eye-roll] This is largely traditional fairy-story territory, except with a female lead who is capable of rescuing herself, rather than needing a prince to come to her aid. I would say some of the flashback scenes were superfluous, breaking into rather than enhancing the narrative progression. For instance, we know Linh trained the Princess; do we really then need to see it taking place as well? The R-rating, while welcome, seems a little at odds with the atmosphere too, which does feel quite Disney+. If you’re going R, embrace it in all its forms, I’d say. However, these are minor gripes, and this is one Disney princess I’m certainly happy to endorse. 

Dir: Le-Van Kiet
Star: Joey King, Dominic Cooper, Olga Kurylenko, Veronica Ngo

Panther Girl of the Kongo

  By

★★½
“The (serial) end is nigh.”

This was the second-to-last of Republic’s sixty-six serials and, to be honest, it shows. Having watched Jungle Girl recently, the recycling here of its action footage – particularly, of the heroine swinging through trees – felt embarrassingly obvious. In the studio’s defense, the contemporary audience might well have forgotten, the source having originally come out fourteen years earlier. However, that doesn’t excuse the fairly threadbare plot, which is laid out inside the first ten minutes of the opening episode, then goes almost nowhere for the rest of the serial. The only point of note is the use of giant crayfish. Yes, coming out the year after classic giant insect movie, Them!, Republic opted to go there.

Rather than radiation, these are the product of mad “differently sane” scientist, Dr Morgan (Space), who has developed a growth hormone which causes the creatures that consume it to achieve massive, rapid growth, and apparently renders them impervious to the inverse-square law too. You’d think that kind of thing would be a fast ticket to fame, fortune and Nobel prizes. But it turn out, Morgan is instead embedded deep in the African jungle, using his creatures to try and scare off the local tribe, so he and his minions can get unhindered access to a diamond mine on their lands. Caught in the middle is wildlife photographer Jean Evans (Coates). When she catches the monster on film, she sends for help from big game hunter Larry Sanders (Healey), and they have to fend off both hormone-enraged crustaceans and Morgan’s thuggish henchmen.

It might have worked better as an 80-minute B flick. I have to say the miniature work by the Lydecker brothers, does a good job of making the crayfish look gigantic. However, there’s no need to have them roar, and the interaction with the human characters is basically limited to a single claw grabbing an appendage from out of shot. Morgan’s tactics appear to be limited to getting his minions to shepherd the creatures towards the locals, with a small side-dish of preventing word of the beasts getting out. Rinse and repeat: you’ll likely get bored and drift off before the end, despite another case of dynamite being carelessly left around.

Jean is certainly the most firearm happy heroine, blazing away almost as soon as we see her. Though it’s never explained why she is also so adept at swinging through the jungle, etc. She gets her titular name as an honorific, after saving the villagers from a rogue black leopard, and I guess she is isn’t a cat person. For at another point, Jean engages in hand-to-hand (or paw?) combat with a lion, in order to prove her “magic” is good, and not responsible for the monsters. Obvious stunt doubling is obvious here, even if admittedly someone is still getting closer to the lion’s jaws than I’d want to. But this certainly does not live up to the poster proclaiming it “The most exciting serial ever filmed!”

Dir: Franklin Adreon
Star: Phyllis Coates, Myron Healey, Arthur Space, John Daheim

Perils of Nyoka

  By

★★★½
“Serial thriller.”

After the success of Jungle Girl, Republic looked to repeat the process the following year. However, despite bringing back the heroine, they were able to avoid paying Edgar Rice Burroughs again, because Nyoka was not a character who appeared in the original novel. It may also be why she has a different surname here, and her father is missing, rather than killed. Republic used a different actress too: Kay Aldridge replaced Frances Gifford, who was unavailable. Aldridge had recently seen her contract with 20th Century Fox expire, though had some qualms: “I did it with the attitude we had in that day that to make a B-western or a serial was a comedown for a featured player at Fox. It was a comedown in one way, but it was a comeup in another way because I was the lead. They paid me about $650 a week, which was pretty good money at the time.” Still, it proved her most popular role, though she retired from acting just four years later, to get married.

With a title clearly nodding to 1914’s The Perils of Pauline, this operates at a particularly breathless rush, even by serial standards, over its 15 episodes. The main plot has Nyoka Gordon in search of the Tablets of Hippocrates, both because they offer a cure for cancer, but in order to help find her father, who vanished mysteriously in the African wilderness years previously. Well, I say “African”. There’s really no effort at all made to make Southern California look like anything other than Southern California. Anyway, she’s joined in her quest by Dr. Larry Grayson (Moore, best known as TV’s Lone Ranger) and other scientists, but opposed by the evil Vultura (Gray) and her native minions, who wants the tablets for herself. Actually, from a modern perspective, Vultura probably has more of a claim to the artifacts than the tomb-raiding Westerners, Nyoka’s protestations about them belonging to “humanity” notwithstanding.

This was the first serial I had watched since Zorro’s Black Whip, and I really appreciated the relentless pace with which things moved forward. There’s literally never a dull moment, despite the usual overlap: opening of each episode recaps the previous cliffhanger, then details how (usually) Nyoka gets out of the peril in question. These escapes were a bit varying in quality: some of them were clever, others were more or less cheats, e.g. falling from a great height into a pool of water that wasn’t there previously.

But the show never gives pause to consider such things, moving on to the next treachery, chase or fight sequence. Of particular note is the antagonist also being a woman, and Vultura is every bit as smart, driven and hands-on as Nyoka. There’s potentially an alternative version of this where she is the heroine. It’s definitely an improvement on the “ignorant savages” portrayed in Jungle Girl. Indeed, Nyoka v2.0 is also a clear upgrade on the original, being much more self-reliant, certainly the equal of the men.

Admittedly, the pace is maintained at the expense of just about everything else. When you have perhaps 15 minutes in which to cram a recap, escape, move the plot forward and then set up the next cliffhanger… there’s never going to be much chance to get in a lot of character development. Everybody here is more or less what they appear in episode one, and there’s hardly anything in the way of an arc for anyone across the four hours. Hard to complain though, since it is for understandable reasons. What matters here is not any backstory, it’s a simple matter of hooking the audience into coming back the following Saturday for the next episode. Having shotgunned as many as five episodes back-to-back, I can’t argue with its success on that front.

I also feel I should mention the animals. Fang, Nyoka’s dog, is perhaps the smartest canine I’ve ever seen on a show: to be honest, he’s more intelligent than some of the human characters, and does a remarkable amount, especially considering his lack of opposable thumbs. There’s also a little monkey, belonging to one of her sidekicks, who chips in, while Vultura keeps a pet gorilla. That, however, is a guy in a not particularly convincing suit. Though considering it gets into fisticuffs with Dr. Grayson, I can understand why they didn’t want to use a real primate for that! Their cute presence do make me wonder if this was aimed as much as kids as adults. Though given the amount of violence – there are corpses everywhere, albeit bloodless ones – it feels a little inappropriate for children by modern standards.

The show proved popular enough to be re-released a decade later, under the rather confusing title, Nyoka and the Tigermen. A few years further down the road, it was converted into a 100-minute TV movie, Nyoka and the Lost Secrets of Hippocrates. Normally, hacking out such a large amount of content would render any cinematic product incoherent. But I can see how it would be possible here, though I dread to think how adrenaline-crazed that end product might be!

Dir: Bill Witney
Star: Kay Aldridge, Clayton Moore, Lorna Gray, Charles Middleton

Pablo’s Apprentice: Where Romance Meets Revenge, by Richard DeVall

  By

Literary rating: ★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½

The author said “I became disillusioned with thrillers that used a formula… and wanted something fresh.” The concept here is certainly a novel one. It begins with a robbery carried out by two women, Rose Alvaro and Little Bee, in California, which leads to the death of a police officer. The cop’s fiancée, Brandy Bednarz, is destroyed by his death, and moves across country, eventually beginning to rebuild her life over the following years. But in one of those “nobody would believe it if it was a novel – oh, wait it is” coincidences, when Rose and Little Bee pull of their next heist, it’s right in Brandy’s neck of the woods.

Only, this time, she is instrumental in the death of Little Bee. Rose knows it, too, and vows to go after Brandy, making her pay by killing everyone associated with her. Brandy, however, is not going to sit idly by, and by the end, takes the fight to Rose, in her hiding place on the other side of the world. The subtitle on the book (as opposed to the cover), is “Where insane meets intellect”, and that may be more accurate. As noted, it is an original concept, even if plausibility is stretched thin, almost from the get-go.

The main problem is execution that is flat out painful, to the point where it overwhelms the positives. First off, there are an embarrassing number of typos and other errors here. The very first sentence refers to the helicopter manufacturer “McDonald Douglas”. D’you want fries with that ‘copter? I also suppressed a derisive snort at someone “shooting heroine”, “marring Brandy” (instead of marrYing), “a celestial seen of a galaxy” and “a social click”. But where typos and bad research finally had to give way to a poor grasp of English, was when somebody was described as “Hiding in plane site.” Really? I would have been embarrassed to write that at age 11.

To a large extent, the same goes for the characterization, particularly of Rose. Now I am not a minority woman: as far from it as imaginable, in fact. However, even to me, it was highly obvious that neither was the author, to the extent it felt as if he may never have met one. I was thoroughly unconvinced that Rose’s thoughts, actions or dialogues had any degree of authenticity to them. Brandy was a little better in this area, and her reaction to the multiple traumas did feel credible. Though even here, the author throws a brutal sexual assault at her, which doesn’t seem to serve any purpose except for being another unpleasant experience for her to go through.

Given that, it would have been nice if the book had finished with her being able to obtain closure, in the form of Brandy personally delivering her revenge to Rose. No such luck. She gets eaten by a crocodile. Whoops, I’ve spoiled it. What a shame.

Author: Richard DeVall
Publisher: Independently published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Stand-alone novel.

Planet Dune

  By

★★★
“Tremors in Space.”

On the one hand, this is obviously The Asylum’s mockbuster version of Dune, and that carries with it weightily low expectations. But, dammit if I didn’t actually enjoy this more than Denis Villeneuve’s ponderous epic. This is about seventy minutes shorter, for a start, with considerably better pacing and rather more of what we wanted to see: sandworms. Admittedly, the sandworms here are sometimes very poorly-animated – the sandworm riding scene… yeah, they should probably not have bothered. But it has energy, and the characters appear to care considerably more than Paul Atreides, for whom simply getting out of bed seemed like a chore.

The heroine here is Astrid (Killian), a pilot in the Space Force who gets cashiered after disobeying orders, and rescuing a Russian astronaut. As punishment, she’s assigned a crappy ship, with a crappier crew, and sent on a crappy mission to a crappy planet to pick up a craft with which contact has been lost. Of course, it turns out to have been preyed upon by sandworms, making Astrid’s mission considerably trickier, as these worms feed on iron, can smell your blood and are hungry as all get out. Fortunately – and this is just the first of many similarities to Tremors – they can’t get you if you’re on rocky terrain. You’ll certainly be forgiven, when Astrid starts making home-made explosives, for muttering “A few household chemicals in the proper proportions…”

If this is Dune, it has had all the political and religious overtones removed, and stripped down to a pure slice of action SF. I can’t say I mind too much, since what’s gone was probably my least favourite aspect of the bigger movie. I also have to respect the great way in which nobody makes a fuss about how, including Astrid, three-quarter of her new crew are women, along with her commanding officer (Young, looking a bit puffier than when she appeared in David Lynch’s Dune. Mind you, that was 37 years ago. I’m a bit puffier myself than I was in 1984). This is the way gender equality should be in the future: completely unremarkable. Again, an improvement over Dune which is as archetypal a example of male saviour complex as you could want.

There’s certainly an extraordinary amount of running about (Sean Young excepted…), to the level of a particularly energetic Doctor Who episode, and I liked Killian as a heroine: she’s very tenacious, and doesn’t let bureaucracy get in the way of doing the right thing. While the worms may not have been all that, some of the space effects were actually perfectly serviceable – likely as good as anything The Asylum have ever produced. If you are expecting Dune, you are clearly going to be massively disappointed. Hell, even if you are expecting Tremors, you’ll be underwhelmed. But as a cheap, B-movie slice of pulp SF, I found this perfectly fine. I just wish Astrid had yelled after taking care of one of the worms, “Broke into the wrong goddamn space-ship, didn’t you, ya bastard!”

Dir: Glenn Campbell, Tammy Klein
Star: Emily Killian, Anna Telfer, Manny Zaldivar, Sean Young

Perilous Waif, by E. William Brown

  By

Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

In the future, humanity has spread across much of the universe, but has also adopted all manner of enhancements, with androids and other artificial creations likely outnumbering the people. This section of the galaxy has become a vast cosmic melting pot of cultures with worlds occupied by everything from religious cults to yakuza gangs. Alice Long is an orphan on the strait-laced planet Felicity, but clearly doesn’t fit in, possessing an unusual range of those enhancements, to go with her leaning towards delinquency. Running away from the orphanage, she rescues a woman from attack, and in exchange for her help, becomes one of the crew of the slightly grey-market Square Deal, under Captain Sokol. However, as Alice blossoms, it becomes clear her obscure heritage has blessed her with artificial talents far outstripping Alice’s new colleagues. 

Initially, I really liked this, appreciating the enormous amount of thought which has gone into the universe here. That’s clear from the multiple appendices, explaining technical aspects of how everything from interstellar travel to artificial intelligence works in this setting. I was greatly looking forward to seeing Alice rising from a lowly cabin girl to… well, wherever her skills might take her. Except, it didn’t quire work that way. Her rise is, in fact, super easy, with any impediments barely an inconvenience. For example, this is a universe in which fabricators can be used to make anything for which there’s a recipe, and Alice becomes increasingly over-powered due to all her enhancements. No matter what the situation, it seems she has an app for that. She’s certainly the smartest person in the book, and may well be the strongest, fastest and most lethal as well. Then there’s her heritage, best described as unique. And even if she were to be killed, it’s established that people can get restored from backups into a new body. Death, where is thy sting?

It’s an issue of which the author does seem to be aware, with a mention in one of the appendices of “post-scarcity society”. That seems to be the situation which we have here. Brown spent so much time on the dazzling infrastructure, he forgot to come up with the equally dazzling threats necessary, in a world whose inhabitants calmly discuss the possibility of them surviving a multi-gigaton nuclear blast. There’s absolutely no shortage of action, in particular a final third where Alice has to fight her way off a massive, derelict starship after betrayal by the people they are supposed to be helping. But, while this is currently a stand-alone book, it also has too many loose strands left dangling at the end. My overall feeling is that, while this is a fascinating universe that could serve as the basis for many great stories, Alice Long’s just isn’t one of them. Or, at least, she needs an antagonist of comparable ability and power.

Author: E. William Brown
Publisher: Independently published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book.

The Protégé

  By

★★★
“Q’s the boss?”

It’s nice to see Maggie Q get back into the action genre again. It’s where she achieved renown – most obviously in the second Nikita TV series, but we were already aware of her, thanks to Q’s work in Hong Kong, such as Naked Weapon [let’s just not talk about Model From Hell…]. Of late though, she has worked mostly in other fields; while still genre-friendly, such as Death of Me or Fantasy Island, they’re just not our genre. So, when I heard she was playing an assassin, out for revenge after someone kills her mentor (a role originally given to Gong Li), this immediately got moved to the head of the list, since it seemed like a throwback to why we love her.

While I wanted to really like this, I can only say it’s… okay. This is mostly due to a serious mistep in the second half of the film. I can’t talk about it specifically, for spoiler reasons. But it effectively renders everything which had happened up to that point as irrelevant, and sidelines Q’s character in what had been, to that point, her story. The motivation for the character behaving the way they did seems murky at best. I trust this is all adequately vague. Anyway. Q plays Anna, a Vietnamese orphan rescued during a mission by hitman Moody Dutton, and brought up as his daughter and apprentice. Thirty years later, they have formed a close-knit pairing, until Moody is killed after making inquiries into a long-disappeared person.

Anna vows to find and punish whoever is responsible, and soon finds herself under attack as a result, after persisting despite being warned by the mysterious Michael Rembrandt (Keaton). Their relationship subsequently develops, and these events put Rembrandt’s loyalties under pressure. Unfortunately, this is where the script implodes, in part due to the lightly outlined reason above. But it’s also due to other missteps like an extended flashback to Anna’s time in Vietnam, which do not add anything of significance, and instead divert proceedings, just when things should be accelerating towards a grandstand finale – one that never happens.

If I have major qualms about Richard Wenk’s script, I’ve no real problem with Campbell’s direction. The veteran has a good pedigree, including one of the best Bonds ever in Goldeneye and the two recent Zorro film, and knows where to point a camera. Q doesn’t seem to have lost much speed either, though there is a terseness to some of the killings here. It’s not inappropriate – she’s a professional, after all – but I’d have liked the fights to go longer. As is, the first such scene, where she takes out a mob boss and his bodyguards in about ten seconds, is a good indicator of what to expect. Still, in this area it’s solid stuff, with some moments of intense hyper-violence, such as an opponent going face-first through a sink. That helps lift this to the point where it’s still worthwhile. Yet I can’t help feeling it’s just not as good as it should have been.

Dir: Martin Campbell
Star: Maggie Q, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton, David Rintoul