Tag: p

Police Women of Broward County

  By

★★★½
“Mums with guns.”

Twenty years ago, Cops debuted on Fox, and has become a part of the cultural landscape, leading to an avalanche of spin-offs, ranging from the serious to the complete spoofs (Reno 911 being the most notable). The very first episode took place in Broward County, Florida and, two decades later, the latest in the field returns there. PoBC, as I’m going to refer to it for obvious reasons, follows four women members of the Sheriff’s Department there, both at home and on duty, as they take down the bad guys and deal with the public.

The four present a cross-section, covering three races and a broad range of ages, from 25-year old Deputy Shelunda Cooper, to Detective Julie Bower – almost double Cooper’s age, whose hair appears firmly rooted in the 1980’s. Each episode is a semi-random selection of incidents. If there’s a theme, it’s in the type of crimes with which each deals. Bower is a member of the sex-crimes unit, which covers everything from rape cases to staging prostitution stings [one of which involved her dressing up as a street hooker]. All the cases of Detective Ana Murillo seems to involve drugs, while Cooper is the queen of the “domestic” – if there’s a family squabble, she’ll be there. Detective Andrea Penoyer’s caseload has a little more variety, though she achieved a certain notoriety for her gung-ho quote, “There’s always a good time to use a Taser,” featured prominently in the trailer (below).

Murillo seems to have a little bit of an attitude, shall we say, especially if any of the members of the public with whom she comes into contact do not adopt the appropriate reverential approach – such as the woman who has the temerity to talk on her cellphone. Murillo basically confiscates the phone, and there are numerous other incidents in the show which have a questionable nature as far as constitutional rights go. Her approach to law-enforcement appears to have more in common with Judge Dredd than “To protect and serve,” though one wonders whether TLC’s description of it as a docudrama – emphasis added – has more significance than might immediately be obvious.

“I’m no different fron the guys, I still kick ass and take names – I just do it with nail-polish and lip-gloss.”
— Ana Murillo

Despite Murillo’s unquestioned position as Empress of Lip-gloss, it’s blonde, blue-eyed Penoyer who is the glamour queen of the show – though the illusion is somewhat damaged when she starts yelling commands at suspects in a voice that’s probably the audio equivalent of getting Tazered. Though as she points out, such an attitude is necessary: “When someone walks in a room and you got a cop who is 6’5″ and 300 pounds, he looks intimidating. So we have to act intimidating: we have to be very, very serious and let people know we’re not playing around.” Well, not all the time, anyway. We also get to see Penoyer and her policewomen friends shopping for guns, and relaxing on the beach. In their bikinis.

This illustrates the strange double-standard at the heart of the show: on the one hand, it wants to show that the subjects are “just like the guys”. On the other, it keeps reminding us that three of the women are mothers – two of them single moms – and takes great care to point out how much they care about their kids. That’s the dichotomy that’s at the core of girls with guns: the contrast between the maternal and life-giving aspects and the death-dealer. I suspect, however, that it would be giving the creators of the show more credit than they deserve if I were to say they were conscious of such philosophical concepts.

Oddly, it’s Cooper of whom we grew fondest, even though she seemed condemned to the pettiest of crimes – someone refusing to pay a taxi fare for instance. Yet she seemed the one most genuinely concerned with her role as a member of the community, not just as a law enforcer. In one scene, she was called to an elderly gentleman’s apartment and ended up calling his girlfriend on his behalf; in another, she gave a homeless person the sandwich her husband had bought for her dinner. When she got a ‘proper’ crime – a burglary – and was able to take fingerprints, she was so genuinely delighted, we couldn’t help but cheer – hopefully, she’ll eventually achieve her ambition of getting into the CSI side of things.

I do have some serious qualms about the philosophy of policing shown here. While there’s no denying the awful effects of drug addiction [some of those arrested are a stark, poignant reminder of that], the efforts here seem almost entirely directed at street-level pushers – who, curiously, all seem to be black. What are the odds of that? Busting them is a pointless endeavour, since it simply creates a temporary gap in the marketplace, into which someone else will stop. Even more dubious are the prostitution stings: disturbing amounts of police resources are devoted to something which is basically a massive waste of time. Want to control prostitution? Legalize it, license it and tax it.

Once again, however, the creators have little no interest in addressing such things. This is about the telegenic end of policing, where no bad guy gets away and questions about rights and the ethics of entrapment operations are not considered. It’s entertainment, pure and simple – and even as people who have a very low tolerance for “reality entertainment” [since we usually find it neither realistic nor entertaining], this is curiously habit-forming.

Shown: TLC, Thursdays, 9pm
Star: Ana Murillo, Shelunda Cooper, Julie Bower, Andrea Penoyer

Police Women of Maricopa County

  By

★★★★
“More Mums with Guns.”

The second series of TLC’s “mommy cops” reality series struck close to home, centered as it was on Phoenix. It didn’t come as much surprise as our local sheriff, Joe Arpaio, is infamous locally as a media whore, who wastes no opportunity for self-promotion, and is a sharply-divisive figure locally, adored and loathed by about equal parts of the population. We wondered how long it would take before Joe slimed his way onto the screen: six minutes into the first episode, we had our answer. Fortunately, this was more of a blip, and our fears of an Arpaio-centered show proved largely unfounded [see the execrable Smile… You’re Under Arrest for how bad this could have been].

The series was an improvement on its predecessor, and not only because of the thrill of seeing local places [though we soon realized the editors played fast and loose with geography, consecutive shots often being miles apart]. The Florida show was actually quite depressing in many ways; seemed like the majority of crimes were a) drug-related, and b) ethnic. Here, there’s a good deal more variety: it seems like the sheriff’s office spent as much time serving warrants to deadbeat dads as anything [this is one of Sheriff Joe’s tactics to pad his crime numbers and make him look good, because those are piss-easy warrants to serve, compared to those involving real criminals. Again, see S…YUA]

As notable as what is shown, is what was not included. The MCSO are notorious for “crime sweeps,” which are much about illegal immigration, a massive hot-button political issue in Arizona, as any other offense. However, these have come in for criticism from civil liberties groups, and there was not a mention of these high-profile activities on the show. The only real coverage of the topic was in chasing down “coyotes”, those who smuggle illegals across the border. On the other hand, whiny, liberal media outlets such as the Phoenix New Times bleat “Can’t The Tourism Board Shut This Show Down?” Actually, I like the New Times in general, and we’re good friends with one of their reporters, but the paper’s politics are a different issue entirely.

But outside of the the “Ooh! Been there!” local interest, I think the characters here were generally a slightly more personable bunch. As before, it centres on four women – again, mostly single moms, which makes me wonder whether the job attracts them, or leads to marital stress. There’s Deputy Amie Duong, who is the “Shelunda” of the series – when you see her arrive, you know a domestic dispute isn’t far behind. There’s Deputy Kelly Bocardo, the token minority representative, whose three brothers (among her 14 siblings, apparently!) also work for the department. And there’s Detective Lindsey Smith, whose accemt appears to drift, chameleon-like, depending on to whom she’s speaking.

Finally, there’s Detective Deborah Moyer (right), who is completely marvellous, and the main reason to watch the show. A 19-year veteran, we’d be entirely happy if the show was 100% about her. While the other women occasionally seem very scripted when they are talking to the camera, that isn’t the case with Moyer: there’s a definite sense that what you see is what you get with her. While her policing style may not be “by the book” – in one episode, she basically arrests a teenage girl for failing to hug her father – her reactions are entirely natural and certainly had us nodding in approval more often than not. She just comes across as being very normal: when she encounters a young perpetrator, she tends to think about her own kids of the same age.

But all the police here are more interested in “justice” rather than the letter of the law. That’s in contrast to the Broward County show, where there was far too much entrapment going on: I don’t think the police should be involved in creating crime. It was also notable that the cops in Arizona seemed to have much more discretion. If you were respectful and polite (the New Times would no doubt say “subservient”), you stood a much better chance of getting off with a warning than if you gave them attitude. I’ll file that away for the next time I encounter law-enforcement here, though one speeding ticket in a decade hardly makes me a habitual offender. Still, if we got to meet Detective Moyer as a result, we might considar a life of crime!

What the show did best of all was make us appreciate that, behind the grandstanding, publicity-seeking nonsense of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, are a number of dedicated, hard-working officers who have a very difficult job to handle. They’re not Robocops, and so are both imperfect and fallible, but law-enforcement personnel are human, just like you and me. Being reminded of this fact is something that is never a bad thing.

Princess Aurora

  By

★★★★
“Hell hath no fury like a woman… Well, let’s just leave it at that, shall we?”

After inflicting Forbidden Warrior on Chris, my stock with her had slumped like Morgan Stanley. Fortunately, this Korean serial-killer flick provided a good measure of redemption. It stars in a department store, where Sun-Jung (Uhm) sees a mother abusing her young daughter, before leaving her and going into a stall. Sun-Jung shepherds the girl outside, breaks into the stall and stabs the mother repeatedly. The case is investigated by Detective Oh (Mun), who spots his ex-wife in the store security video. When bodies keep turning up, though killed in different ways, the police link the cases due to the cartoon stickers found on each scene. Oh gradually comes to suspect his wife is taking revenge on those holds she responsible – directly, or otherwise – for the death of their child, killed in a brutal kidnapping previously. Is that really the case, and if so, does he have the moral fortitude to turn in a woman he still loves as a murderer?

At first it seems that Sun-Jung is simply a psychopath, albeit one who only takes out those who (more or less) deserve it, such as the mistress she sees being unsufferably rude to a food-delivery woman. However, the truth that emerges makes her different from just being Hannibal Lecteress (which makes sense, since female psychopaths are different from their male counterparts), and director Bang brings her own female sensibility to the portrayal. There’s no doubt where the focus of the film or its sympathies lie. However, not until the final reel, after you think everything is over, is everything unfolded: it makes perfect sense, and is as chilling a denouement as you can possibly hope to imagine, with Sun-Jung not the deranged killer she appears to be.

It’s Uhm’s movie as much as Bang’s, with her performance entirely convincing: she doesn’t look like a dedicated, cruel and ruthless killer, which is exactly the best way to be [and reminds me, I’m heading off to watch Dexter in a few minutes]. Her character is absolutely sure that she is doing the right thing, leaving the audience in an interesting predicament: do they go along with this moral certainty, and effectively become an accomplice to her crimes? Usually, in the female vigilante genre, there is some scope for distancing oneself, since the victim is usually the vigilante herself. Here, the perceived moral is more altruistic, and that makes things muddier. I’d love to say more, but can’t, without serious spoilerage, but there hasn’t been a more poignant story of love for a lost child in some time. It seems no-one does revenge quite like the Koreans.

Dir: Bang Eun-jin
Star: Uhm Jung-hwa, Mun Sung-kyun

Princess of Thieves

  By

★★
“The Middle Ages – sanitized, for your protection.”

Back before Pirates of the Caribbean made Knightley a household name, and even before Bend It Like Beckham made her an obscure name, as a fifteen-year old she shot this Disney TVM, which rewrites history wholesale from the very start. It begins in 1184, claiming this is the reign of Richard the Lionheart – this must come as a surprise to Henry II, since he didn’t die until 1189. It also introduces Philip, Richard’s supposed illegitimate son, out to replace the evil King John; in reality, Philip may not have existed and certainly left no mark on history. However, the film needs a romantic lead, so there you go. Of course, the whole Robin Hood mythology is more a block of clay, that writers and film-makers have seen fit to mould as they wish.

Here, when Robin is arrested trying to link up with Philip (Moyer), it’s his daughter, Gwyn (Knightley), who puts together her own band of merry men, with the aim of both rescuing her father and putting Philip in his rightful place on the throne. Archery contests and the Sheriff of Nottingham (McDowell) ensue, until Philip, under an assumed name, joins her posse, and the inevitable romantic attraction begins. This is much to the chagrin of Froderick (Synnott), Gwyn’s longtime companion from when she grew up in a monastery [her dad being off crusading with Dick]. However, since he has a crap haircut, it’s clear Frodork doesn’t have a chance with the perfectly-complexioned Gywn and her immaculate teeth.

It is largely bland, unthreatening and unsatisfying, yet not entirely unwatchable. Knightley – only 15 when she made it – clearly has star potential, and her archery experience must have come in handy for her later role in King Arthur. Early on, there is an almost Mulan-like feel, with Gwyn defying her father and dressing as a boy. However, the more the film proceeds, the more she is shuffled off to the side in favor of Philip, who is much less interesting a character, especially from this site’s point of view. McDowell is as reliably evil as ever, while Jonathan Hyde does his best Alan Rickman impression as King John, yet, inevitably, comes off as a poor imitation. If this isn’t worth paying money for, as a Saturday afternoon diversion on TV, it’s tolerable.

Dir: Peter Hewitt
Star: Keira Knightley, Stephen Moyer, Malcolm McDowell, Del Synnott

Pistol Opera

  By

★½
“Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?”

I don’t think I have ever been quite so flummoxed by a girls-with-guns film. To say it’s not quite what I expected is an understatement, but it’s also my first experience of Seijun Suzuki, who is one of the icons of Japanese cinema. The basic plot centers around Stray Cat (Esumi), the current #3-ranked assassin; there’s a guild who decide such things, but they are on the edge of anarchy and Cat gets the assignment from her manager (Yamaguchi) to target the #1, Hundred Eyes. However, there are a lot of people with their own agendas, not least Sayoko (Han), a young girl who wants Cat to teach her the ways of murder.

On the basis of this, I’d file Suzuki somewhere between David Lynch and Guy Maddin, for large chunks of this make no sense. Characters deliver long, rambling monologues of no real significance to the camera [one particularly vague one involves flags], in front of a surreal landscape that is as much self-consciously artificial as it is realistic. It is apparently a reworking of the director’s own Branded to Kill, except with a female protagonist. More than 30 years – plus, it would appear, a truckload of drugs and a severe case of Alzheimer’s – passed in the meantime, and it’s clear Suzuki did not spend it working on the plot.

Sure, it looks lovely, but the girls-with-guns experience is not founded upon Art with a capital A. It’s something that should head directly for the lizard-brain, to deliver a heady payload of taboo-breaking violence. I have no objection to the artistically surreal in cinema generally [Peter Greenaway is a personal favourite]. However, there still needs to be something coherent and interesting behind it, otherwise you might as well just eat a large pizza and go to sleep – the imagery will be just as good, and it’s a better use of your time. In 1968, Suzuki got fired by major studio Nikkatsu, who said that they “could not afford to cultivate a reputation for making films understood only by an exclusive audience,” and that his “incomprehensible and thus bad films would disgrace the company.” Frankly, I’m in full agreement with the studio.

Dir: Seijun Suzuki
Star: Makiko Esumi, Sayoko Yamaguchi, Mikijiro Hira, Yeong-he Han

Project Eden

  By

★★★★

If you’re going to start with Kei and Yuri, this is as good a spot as any; it may not be the first entry in the series, but requires no prior knowledge at all. Even complete novices will be up to speed by the pre-credit sequence, which sees them – oops! – destroying an entire space-station after they decide to pursue the bad guy, rather than handling the explosive suitcase with which he has tried to distract them. They’re then sent to investigate some strange happenings on a mining planet, which is being plagued by attacks from monsters. They discover that the creatures are the results of failed experiments by Dr. Wattsman, who has plans to force nature’s hand, by making the next evolutionary step beyond mankind. Meanwhile, gentlemen thief Carson D. Carson is there, for his own reasons.

Pop-culture nods go to everything from James Bond through Star Wars to Aliens, though the female leads helps give familiar scenarios a fresh air. It’s clearly not to be taken in total seriousness, for example, Kei and Yuri pausing mid-mission to take baths (though like everything else in the show, it’s no more than PG-13 rated). The action is frequent, particularly towards the end, with some monumental battles between the girls and Wattsman’s monsters, accompanied, as is the entire film, by a smooth jazz-funk soundtrack [not normally my cup of tea, I’m still whistling Over the Top, days later]. There’s also some surprisingly touching stuff between Carson and Yuri, though he is always firmly in the back seat. Naturally, it’s Kei who has an eye for him, a constant factor through almost every version.

Technically, it’s as nice as you’d expect from a theatrical feature – it was originally part of a double-bill at cinemas with Bat and Terry, an animated film about baseball players which is all but forgotten now. Project Eden (a title used solely in the West: I’m looking at the Japanese LD, which just says Dirty Pair: The Movie) does look somewhat dated, and to be honest, the plot wouldn’t really stand up to serious inspection [Wattsman apparently runs his massive industial-scientific complex with the help of one guy, his butler, Bruno]. But as a semi-spoof, say along the lines of Our Man Flint, it works very nicely and is solidly entertaining, with slick production values and a good sense of fun. It is also a fine demonstration of one of anime’s strengths, the ability to give full rein to unfettered imagination, and create a world where anything can happen.

Dir: Kôichi Mashimo
Star (voice): Kyôko Tongu, Saeko Shimazu, Katsuji Mori, Chikao Ôtsuka

Project A-ko

  By

★★★½

“Raises some interesting questions regarding the Japanese educational system.”

Project A-ko is one of those odd films that probably could only be done as anime, though as live-action goes, something like Kung Fu Hustle comes close. It centers on three schoolgirls, A-ko, B-ko and C-ko: the first two are rivals for the third’s attention…but despite the lesbian subtext, it’s really not that kind of story. [Though the film was originally intended to be part of the Cream Lemon series, which definitely are those kind of stories] No, it’s far more concerned with A-ko’s superpowers, to which she’s largely oblivious, the gadgetry cooked up by B-ko, thanks to her apparently limitless finances, and C-ko’s ancestry, which turns out to be not of this Earth – and that explains a lot, it has to be said.

This is as much parody as anything else, and what you get from it will, to some extend, depend on what you bring; for example, knowing that Mari, part of B-ko’s gang, is a pig-tailed dead-ringer for Ken from Fist of the North Star, with a squeaky voice. The rest is tongue-in-cheek SF, that revels in excess, particularly in the second-half. This is markedly less successful than the simple love-triangle, culminating in a marvellously destructive brawl between A-ko and B-ko, that starts off in school, then moves into the nearby city, where the pair end up facing an alien invasion. In the words of Monty Python, it’s just “too silly”, toppling over into ludicrous explosions for far too long, that proves rather less entertaining than the more understated irony from before.

The voice-acting (at least in the Japanese version; as usual, I couldn’t bring myself to listen to the dub) is solid; B-ko is one of the most tremendously irritating characters you can imagine, but that’s entirely deliberate. Of particular note is the soundtrack, largely by American session musicians, Richie Zito and Joey Carbone, which thereby avoids the usual J-Pop cliches. Okay, largely by replacing them with American cliches, but the result is still pretty cool, in a Giorgio Moroder kinda way; hey, it was made in 1986. The result is solid, if entirely brainless, fun – and how can you not like a film which borrows its title from one of Jackie Chan’s best?

Dir: Katsuhiko Nishijima
Stars (voice): Miki Itoh, Michie Tomizawa, Emi Shinohara, Tessho Genada

Public Enemies

  By

★★★
“Historical accuracy? It’s vastly over-rated…”

The story of Ma Barker, legendary leader of a bank-robbing gang consisting mainly of her sons, has inspired multiple movies, from relatively well-known (Roger Corman’s Bloody Mama) to obscurist (Ma Barker’s Killer Brood from 1960). They all play extremely fast and loose with the facts, upping Ma’s role from a travelling companion for her sons, who rarely if ever got involved in their crimes, to the undisputed leader, who wielded a mean tommy-gun. The FBI at the time leaned towards the latter, but that was perhaps because they ended up gunning down Ma and some of her sons. [Hey, I don’t regard historical fact as meriting a spoiler warning. At the end of Titanic, the ship sinks.]

This is a cheery enough romp, making up for in blood squibs what it lacks in historical accuracy, depth or significant character development. Russell holds the film together well at the center, but it’s all shallow – hints (totally unjustified, as far as I know) of an abusive childhood are about the closest we get to psychological insights. There’s also creepy hints of incest between Ma and her sons – which reminds me that, contrary to her prominent cover position, Alyssa Milano’s role is minor, as a “gang whore”. If the dramatic side is half-baked, the action is good, with a real sense of the FBI being out-gunned. They actually were in their early days, though the level of ineptness shown here, with regards to stakeouts and ambushes, is difficult to swallow.

Especially towards the start, the narrative is lumpen and certainly doesn’t grab you immediately. Once the main thread becomes apparent – agent Melvin Purvis (Cortese) tries, but fails, to capture Barker and her gang – the film can devote energy towards this, and becomes more successful. It’d have been interesting had the connection between Purvis and Barker been made more significant; there’s an interesting scene where a drunk Barker rails against her hunter on the telephone, hinting at the potential here. However, I doubt the director of Commando was really interested much in subtle underpinnings, and on the whole it’s probably for the best he doesn’t even try.

Dir: Mark L. Lester
Stars: Theresa Russell, Dan Cortese, James Marsden, Frank Stallone

Painkiller Jane (pilot)

  By

★★
“It’ll probably be the audience who need the painkillers to get through this tedious tale.”

This SciFi Channel original movie is based on a comic-book series, but makes some radical changes to the storyline, though the basic idea is intact: a woman becomes immune to injury after the usual mysterious something happens to her [radioactive spider bite, barrel of toxic waste – the usual graphic novel contrivances, in other words]. In the comic, she was an undercover cop; here, she is a Special Forces soldier in Chechnya who is exposed to an experimental biological agent. Naturally, she subsequently finds herself much sought after, by both good and bad factions, since she’s the first to survive the treatment.

And initially, this isn’t so bad, as she escapes from the military, encounters a gentlemen thief and his posse of sidekicks, and tries to get all her mental ducks in a row, so she knows who to trust. As a set-up, it’s fine, with its share of paranoia. However, the longer this goes on, the less interesting it gets: you’d think having a heroine who is virtually immortal, would lead to almost non-stop mayhem. Not here. The action here is very limited and when it does appear, is simply boring – unfortunately, there’s no other word for it.

Now, I know this was intended as much as a pilot for a project TV series as anything, and they have to keep their powder dry for future episodes. But unlike, say, Chameleon, there’s precious little here to make me want to watch, should they decide to bring it back. Indeed, I fell asleep as the “gripping” scene at a shopping mall unfolded. For any action film, that’s about the kiss of death, and while the performances aren’t bad – Vaugier as our heroine has a nice attitude that reminded me of Yancy Butler in Witchblade – there wasn’t nearly enough meat on these bones to satisfy me…

Dir: Sanford Bookstaver
Star: Emmanuelle Vaugier, Tate Donovan, Richard Roundtree, Eric Dane

Perra Maldita (Damned Bitch)

  By

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

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

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

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

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