Tag: revenge

Hard Home

  By

★★★
“Home not alone”

Mary (Kessell) has a grudge, and probably with good reason, I’d say. Because the serial killer known as Diablo killed her daughter, Kelly, in a particularly brutal manner – finishing his victim off by burning her alive. With the help of information provided by FBI Agent Selena Wall (Adedeji), Mary puts the pieces of the case together, and eventually lures Diablo (Howard) into attacking her, then brings him back to her house. This has been turned into a hi-tech, maze-like warren designed to force Diablo to confront all his crimes, and in particular his murder of Kelly. Naturally, things don’t quite go as intended. Expecting rational, predictable behaviour from a serial killer was probably a mistake by Mary, despite her technological advantages.

This is certainly a novel take on the themes here: part serial-killer film, part vengeful mother flick. The script generally does a good job of dispensing information at a pace that keeps the viewer’s interest, without revealing everything up front. For example, after Mary gets injected with Diablo’s chosen paralytic drug, there’s a flashback which shows her injecting herself with the same stuff, in order to build up her tolerance, and use this to future advantage. It is a bit of a stretch that she has the perfect set of skills necessary for her task: home improvement, dark web knowledge, twelve years of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, etc. The agent funneling information to Mary is also just a little too convenient. 

If you can overlook these speed-bumps though – and I didn’t find them too problematic – there is still a good amount to enjoy. This starts with Kessell, who comes over as a significantly more credible bad-ass than Jessica Alba in Trigger Warning. She has one mission, and is absolutely not going to let anything or anyone (be they Diablo, her husband, a nosy neighbour or the authorities) get in the way of it. In the early stages after capturing Diablo, she becomes somewhat passive, sitting in her control centre and pushing buttons. But once things go off-track, she is forced into more reactive and pro-active behaviour, the film gradually picking up steam until an impressively grim ending (albeit with a rather odd coda, one I don’t quite get).

Bamford showed up here earlier this year with another film, Air Force One Down. Although this is a little lower on the action scale, up until the end where Diablo and Mary go toe-to-toe, it is balanced out by Home Hard working better in terms of plotting. If flashbacks are sometimes used as a crutch for weak writing, here they are well integrated and move the plot forward. Among the cast, in addition to Kessell, praise is also due to Howard. He doesn’t get a single line over the course of the movie, yet still manages to portray a creepy and despicable villain. However, Diablo might not be as frightening as Mary, who feels the very embodiment of irresistible force.

Dir: James Bamford
Star: Simone Kessell, Andrew Howard, Rachel Adedeji, Joseph Millson

Republic Pictures will release the film digitally on June 25. 

BLACKFOX: Age of the Ninja

  By

★★★½
“Fox hunting.”

I’d not heard of this, and we pleased to find it was directed by Sakamoto, a well-respected action choreographer, best known for Power Rangers, but who also worked on 009-1: The End of the Beginning, among others. There’s an interesting back-story here, in that this was created as a live-action spin-off to accompany the anime film BLACKFOX, and was released on the same date. It’s a prequel, with one of the heroines here, Rikka Isurugi (Yajima), a distant ancestor of the heroine in the contemporarily-set anime movie – they have the same name. This, however, takes place back in feudal Japan, and we start with Miya (Yajima), a young girl with an unusual, if uncontrolled, power to manipulate electricity.

Her father was teaching her to use it, until he was killed by the Negoroshu clan, under Lady Hakku (Fujioka) – they are also after Miya. To get revenge on them, Miya seeks out a mercenary gang called the Foxes, run by Hyoe Isurugi (Kurata). They agree to take on the mission, and Miya befriends Hyoe’s grand-daughter, Rikka. However, Hyoe gets a better offer, and hands Miya over to Hakku. This causes a rift between him and Rikka, who feels they should honour a deal once struck. She sets out to rescue Miya, though that’s going to be tougher than ever, since she has now been passed on to the person who hired the Negoroshus in the first place.

While most of the plot unfolds as you would expect, there are enough twists and surprises along the way to sustain interest. In particular, loyalties are not necessarily what they seem, and as well as our saintly heroines, there’s more moral grey on view here than I thought there might be. Never mind the plot though. We are here mostly for the action, and Sakamoto does not disappoint, with Yamamoto doing most of the heavy lifting. There are perhaps too many times when she’s masked – albeit, usually with masks that are necessary to the plot – to give her full credit. But she definitely is executing enough of her own stunts to make me interested in seeing her elsewhere.  And she’s a World Junior Wushu Championship gold medalist, so there’s that.

Fujioka also does well, both in action and acting, making Lady Hakku perhaps the most interesting and well-rounded character in the film.  I will confess to initially suspecting I’d seen this before. But I was clearly confusing it with another film which had ninjas and/or samurai running around in the forest. There are quite a few, to be fair. It is clear that this was not a large-budget production, and the ending is a little too sequel-leaning. Yet the limited resources don’t often distract from the important things: the story, characters and action, which are all decently-handled. My expectations were low going in, until I saw the director’s name, and for something stumbled across by accident in the depths of Tubi, it punches well above its weight. It’s also available on YouTube, and is embedded below for your viewing pleasure.

Dir: Koichi Sakamoto
Star: Maimi Yajima, Chihiro Yamamoto, Yasuaki Kurata, Mami Fujioka 

Blood Orgy of the Leather Girls

  By

½
“Amateur hour and a quarter.”

Incompetent on every level, this proves there’s a section of cult fandom which would praise a dog turd to the heavens, if told it had a “feminist” message. The title is probably – scratch that, certainly – the best thing about this, suggesting a throwback to the JD films of the fifties, filtered through the lens of Russ Meyer. “Suggesting” is the keyword here, since the reality is more like the finger-paintings of a developmentally challenged three-year-old. I guess the title is actually inspired by Blood Orgy of the She Devils, a film made in 1973 by Ted V. Mikels, one of the most inept directors ever to pick up a camera. This movie is poor enough Mikels would likely require his film’s name be taken off it.

The plot, such as it is, concerns four girls, who set about taking revenge for one of their number when she’s sorta-kinda-not-actually raped. Though any concepts of justice are fairly loose, since they were already gleefully committing crimes, including murder. Meanwhile, the least convincing detective in film history, Inspector Morton (Silverstein) narrates, offering a moral context with lines like, “When the maternal and creative forces of women become corrupted by the brutality of the every day world, a force of incredible violence is unleashed.” The women are similarly implausible as disaffected schoolgirls, with the gang’s leader, Sarah (Gingold), a Jew who has a shrine to Hitler in her bedroom, and goes to Catholic school. I’m very confused.

No, wait: not confused, just staggeringly bored. For Lucas doesn’t have the barest idea of film-making, such as basic framing. So we get violence that is completely unconvincing, utterly unsexy nudity, and what I can only presume are comedic moments landing like lead balloons. It’s all accompanied by Z-grade surf punk and other flatulent noises, likely provided by the director’s equally talentless mates. There’s one moment where self-awareness is almost achieved. The women go to a drive-in, hunting their last victim. An even worse film is playing, and the narrator – who no longer seems to be Morton, for unclear reasons – declares, “The movie dragged on. And on. And on.” So close to getting it.

Legend has it the director, unable to get her work distributed, committed suicide, only for her brother to take up the movie in her honour. Except she never existed, Michael Lucas making his sister up, in the belief it’d improve the odds of his film being taken seriously. That’s the level of artistic honesty we are dealing with here, and if there weren’t already a myriad of reasons to hate this, I want no part of it. I did sit through to the finish, mostly out of a stoic refusal to let myself be beaten by this piece of pretentious garbage. Trust me, when I say this isn’t even “so bad it’s good,” it’s closer to being so bad it’s unwatchable. Near the end, someone is sodomized with an electric drill. I can’t think of a more appropriate metaphor for the viewing experience.

Dir: “Meredith Lucas” (Michael A. Lucas)
Star: Phillip Silverstein, Robin Gingold, Simoone Margolis, Melissa Lawrence

Blue Eye Samurai

  By

Jim: ★★★
Dieter: ★★★★
“You can’t die. You don’t know how.”

Plot. Mizu (Erskine) has a grudge. She’s a mixed-race young woman living in 17th-century Japan, a position which leaves her at the bottom of society. But she has dragged herself up to become an onna-musha, a warrior with ferocious sword skills, courtesy of Master Eiji (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), the blind swordsmith who raised her. Now, she’s on the hunt to take revenge on the man she believes is her father, Abijah Fowler (Branagh). He’s an Irish smuggler, who is upsetting the delicate balance of Japanese society, closed to foreigners, by importing firearms. He’s involved in planning a coup to overthrow the current shogun.

[Editor’s note: the original plan was for Dieter and I to review it independently, then combine the two pieces. But Dieter went into rather more detail! So most of what follows is his opinion, with my thoughts sprinkled as garnish, in italics]

I have to admit my opinion on this show has changed a couple of times while watching it. First, there was the enthusiasm of a Japan-based-action series with a female main character. After that I thought about the “wokeness” of the show (after all, it’s Netflix), something that hardly can be overlooked. And finally, I recognized the strong effort that went into the storytelling, the visual beauty, and small details of the show and realized that while definitely a “woke” story, these elements are neither too strong nor too dominant to destroy the genuine pleasure I had when watching it.

I liked this, but it’s probably fair to say I didn’t love it. I tend to have a blind-spot with regard to animated action. Personally, I find it’s a medium that dilutes the intensity of fight scenes, because it applies a distancing effect to it. I’m always aware that I’m watching drawings or pixels beating the heck out of each other, which is intrinsically going to be less impressive than people “really” doing so. If this had been live-action, and equally gory, it could have been awesome. There’s also a weird visual choice here in that Mizu’s nose is typically shadowed. This has the unfortunate effect of making her look to me either as if she has a bad head cold, or if she is a habitual alcoholic.

But first things first: despite its title and the location (Japan in 1657 in the Edo era) Blue Eye Samurai is – an American product, so certain allowances have to be made. While I do love a story of female persistence, this 8-part show pushes the limits of believability. We have to accept that, at a time when foreigners are forbidden to be in Japan, not only there is such a person living there, but also this man fathered a daughter. This means she is half-Caucasian, half-Japanese and therefore considered a “demon”, harassed by pure-blood Japanese who have never seen such a stranger in their country. She will then become a trained “samurai” – quotes used advisedly, as we’ll see – with the appropriate sword skills.

It’s a stretch, though still in the reign of possibility, since there have been, real swordswomen in Japan. That woman then going on a rampage, hell-bent on revenge for… well… her own creation? This does not make much sense to me. After all, should we not all be happy we exist? But then, my own life, like most, has been peaceful and harmonious. In contrast, the main character, Mizu, has led a life of misery, constantly been harassed, pursued with hatred, endangered and betrayed. It’s not difficult to imagine, if you grew up that way, you would sooner or later start to hate the man responsible for your very existence. Though strangely, she doesn’t seem to hold a similar grudge against the mother who gave birth to her,

Mizu’s path leads her to Ringo, the son of a innkeeper, who has no hands (remember, this is Netflix!). After being saved by her, he becomes her servant. There’s also Taigen, a samurai-in-training, who once lived in the same town as Mizu and almost succeeded in killing her as a child. After she beat him in battle, he feels his honour is insulted and follows Mizu to challenge her to a rematch. But his revenge has to wait. A further complication arises in Japanese noblewoman Akemi, who is in love with Taigen and would like to marry him. Though her father has other marriage plans and Taigen is not ready to marry her until he has regained his honor. None of them know (yet) that Mizu is a woman. And as Mizu mercilessly pursues her path of revenge, Ringo and Taigen become her allies, with some indication of a mutual attraction between Mizu and Taigen.

Blue Eye Samurai is a French-American animated show by Blue Spirit for Netflix, created by Michael Green (the screenwriter for Logan and Blade Runner 2049) and Amber Noizumi. They were inspired by their daughter, who was born 15 years ago with blue eyes. Noizumi spoke about how she, herself biracial, wondered what it would have been like to lived as a biracial person in 17th-century Japan, when Japan’s borders were closed to the outside world and strangers from abroad would have no chance to be accepted in society. Another, unconfirmed inspiration might be British navigator William Adams who travelled to Japan in 1600, and was called “the blue-eyed samurai”. He also inspired the ever-popular series Shogun, which Netflix just remade. What a coincidence.

Other influences, according to Noizumi, were movies such as Kill Bill, Lady Snowblood, and… Yentl, Barbara Streisand’s musical about a Jewish woman who wants to study and has to take on a male identity. It has been confirmed by Noizumi that Mizu was inspired by Clint Eastwood’s break-out Man with No Name role in the famous Dollars trilogy by Sergio Leone, This fits, because the show often reminded me less of a typical Japanese jidaigeki (historical drama) or chanbara (sword-fighting movie with a historical background), but more a Western in disguise. If the mix between East and West was intended, whether this makes it “the best of two worlds” or a travesty is up to you. But it’s not really the first of its kind, considering Tom Cruise’s The Last Samurai.

I personally don’t like it when words like “emancipation” or “discrimination” are thrown around in relation to a show mainly meant to entertain. But in this case, they are justified given the very basis of the show, in medieval Japan. This setting is different to current Western countries, being one with a mostly homogeneous population, traditional conservative values and what feminists nowadays like to call “patriarchal”, as a background for a story of female emancipation and racist discrimination. You may question what “woke propaganda” Netflix is tossing at an innocent viewer this time. But it’s a relief that any messaging comes, not in heavy-handed preaching, as is typical for many Netflix shows, but mostly carefully integrated into the show, rather than feeling like they were bolted on.

The show certainly ticks all the diversity check-boxes with its characters. We have a biracial female who taught herself everything, a repressed (though in the context of the era “spoiled” might be more accurate?) lord’s daughter, a helpful assistant born with no hands, a blind sword-maker, while an old white man is the perverse, cruel villain, and women have no say in society, serving as servants or prostitutes. Did I forget anything? Despite it all, this feels acceptable given the time and place in which the story occurs.

As noted, in choosing this kind of story, time and place, the creators often stretch the limits of believability. In particular, with Akemi, the daughter of a powerful lord who wants to marry her to the son of the shogun. She is in love with Taigen, so absolutely resists that idea. Akemi comes across the entire series as enormously stubborn, resisting advice and always wanting to get her way. I have to shake my head in disbelief, knowing that the idea of “marriage for love” was in those times rare both in Japan and Europe (Historians say the idea of what we call today “romantic love” was born around 1850). People married due to sharing social class, to keep property within a circle of families, or because their business-partnered parents decided so, sometimes even before they were born.

Even more unbelievable for the time, is the idea a Japanese woman would have been allowed to voice her wishes or opinion in the blunt manner depicted here. Quite honestly, I think if any woman would have behaved so disrespectfully to an older man, giving strong, vocal objections or even slapping the shogun’s son, she would have immediately been beheaded or drowned in the nearest pond. The wish of the creators to have another strong female character in the show backfires here. Akemi is what you would expect a modern, Western young woman to be, not a Japanese woman from the Edo era. This is fan-fiction at best, bad research at worst.

Probably my least favourite aspect was this significant side-plot involving noble samurai Taigen (Barnet), and his true love, the Princess Akemi (Branda Song), who is about to be married off against her will. Neither of those characters seemed significant, and it felt like this sometimes became an excuse for male-bashing. Brothel madam Kaji (Ming-Na Wen) was the worst for that: look, nobody is keeping you a prostitute. Get out of the profession or quit complaining about your customers. Oh, and if men are bad, white men as embodied by Fowler are the absolute worst.

A word of warning to the uninitiated. The show does not hold back in the depiction of violence. The slicing-off of extremities sometimes made me wonder if the victims’ bodies were made out of styrofoam, and I also found a bit excessive, the arterial blood spray. How many litres does the human body contain? The same goes for sexuality, though less often. I personally have seen more extreme things, but this is Western animation, and the audience may not be quite prepared for the graphic content. But I guess anyone going to watch the show would probably know beforehand it is not a show for children. You wouldn’t expect kid-friendly content from an Akira Kurosawa samurai movie, wouldn’t you?

This was not a problem for me. Indeed, I would have been disappointed had it been any other way! The “garden hose” approach to blood has long been a mainstay of Japanese cinema, certainly back as far as the early seventies and the Lone Wolf & Cub films – a staple of Western VHS stores under the title of Shogun Assassin. Realism isn’t a factor, and this is an area where animation can really push the pedal to the metal, being unconstrained by the limits of latex and Karo syrup.

Ah, yes… samurai, that’s a key word: after all, it’s in the title and is mentioned several times. I should stress here, Mizu definitely is no samurai by the traditional definition. He would usually act in service of a daimo, a feudal landlord serving the shogun. This usually comes with certain obligations and behaviour that would be seen as a code of honor. Mizu quite definitely doesn’t fit the description. However, many of Kurosawa’s “samurai” don’t either, including The Seven Samurai or the character Toshiro Mifune plays in Yojimbo and Sanjuro (which, cycling back, served as inspiration for Eastwood’s Man with No Name). But the writers of the show were really smart, and address it within the story. When Ringo complains she doesn’t act like a samurai would, she turns and angrily shouts: “I never said I am one.” It’s a sign of well thought-out screenwriting, and I like it very much. Kudos to the storytellers: now, will they make the show eventually deliver what the title promises?

I was less impressed with the music. More than once the people responsible seemed to think, “As long as it’s cool, everything is fine” – an attitude I personally don’t agree with at all. For example, in a training montage of Mizu, the famous “Battle Without Honor Or Humanity” by Tomoyasu Hotei plays. Sure, a cool tune from a Japanese composer. But it’s modern music and – though first used somewhere else – so closely associated with Kill Bill, it really felt like a misstep. Other popular pieces, e.g. by the Black Cats or Metallica, have even less justification. You tell a story in 17th century Japan, please apply music that fits the time period. And partly the show feels like a check-list of everything you ever heard or saw in the West about classic Japanese culture, from bunraku (classical puppet theatre) through geishas, samurai, Zen-like philosophy, sword-making, kimonos, calligraphy and so on and on. You name it, they have it.

With regard to the cultural depictions, I wasn’t happy with the fact these obviously Japanese characters were speaking in English, to the point I even checked for a Japanese dub option (no luck). It felt like the creators sent out a casting call for any Hollywood voice talent with somewhat Asian origins, e.g. Song, born in California to Thai parents, and having Kenneth Branagh putting on a dodgy Irish accent doesn’t help. Were all genuinely Celtic actors unavailable? 

Episode 6 really knocked my socks off. It played virtually like a computer game: think Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft going through different levels of the game, plus elements from Resident Evil for good measure. I’m not saying it was bad. so much as unexpected. It’s also a point when it became harder to suspend my disbelief concerning Mizu’s abilities. I mean, how many people can you still fight, after one of your feet gets perforated? Or fighting a dozen-plus armed men without a weapon? Or carrying a man on her back, hanging from her sword on a stone wall, then climbing with said sword in her mouth (!) to safety on higher ground? Are we really sure she is not the child of a supernatural monster? I’m willing to believe this woman is exceptional, but this was a bit much. Mizu gets dangerously close to the superheroes of popular comic-book movies who can do anything, and usually do.

Part 6 was my favourite of the entire show, because it removed all the extraneous elements (hello, Taigen, Ringo and Akemi!), leaving it a blow-dart episode – all it had was point, simply Mizu fighting her way inexorably towards her goal. Which was what I came here to see, frankly.

What saves the character’s depiction again and again, is the makers never make it easy for her. She bleeds a lot over the course of the story. Mizu is shown making mistakes, and is not a hero since, as much as you sympathize with her goal, it is in the end selfish. I attribute the fact she survives this season to her remarkable physical skills, absolute die-hard dedication to her self-set cause, the help of her (very often smarter) allies and an enormous portion of luck. Which… works for me, though I’d have wished for a bit more realism in a show that explicitly is not fantasy. What is impressive is the visual style. A lot of work went into the landscapes, the backgrounds, and probably researching how ancient Japanese houses, buildings and temples looked. There are a lot of little details that you may overlook when watching the show for the first time. Also, as expected, the voice performances by actors such as Erskine, Takei, Branagh, Tagawa and many others are excellent.

I agree, the animation was great, especially in the action scenes, which were probably as good as anything I’ve seen this side of a Miyazaki movie. Fluid, and assembled in a way that certainly seemed cinematic. It was often easy to forget you were watching animation, and that’s close to the highest praise I can give the medium. Plot-wise, the main storyline was also excellent. I loved the fact that Mizu is single-mindedly focused on her revenge. That it might help avoid the Shogun being overthrown is utterly irrelevant to her.

It must be said that Mizu herself is a character ‘work in progress’. As mentioned, less a hero, than driven by years of abuse, mistreatment, non-acceptance, anxiety and sheer hatred. I guess any little boy with red hair and glasses who was harassed in class can understand her. The feeling of not being part of society or a group, of being rejected due to just being how you are, is something many people will identify with. Though again: does it justify a violent rampage on a merciless one-woman war against the person that fathered you? Hardly. The feeling is softened by the fact Abijah Fowler, who may be her biological father, is a real piece of abhorrent trash. He is a disgusting, almost inhuman, pervert, who deserves his just deserts.

Interestingly, the final fight between Mizu and Fowler is the catalyst for the fire of 1657 which devastated Edo (today’s Tokyo). Perhaps the message here is, if you follow only your own egotistic trail – Mizu’s wish for revenge and Fowler’s to take over Japan – you risk turning into a destructive force that causes more harm than good. I hope Mizu might realize her thirst for revenge is not the best motive, but rather acting to prevent the mayhem Fowler and his people would bring to the world if allowed to run it. This would make Mizu a real heroine and earn her my respect. Perhaps indicators for such a development can be spotted when Mizu decides to save her “frenemy” Taigen from death. If the show is willing to follow this developing character trait, it could evolve into something very beautiful and extra-ordinary. We will see.

It ends on something of a cliff-hanger, without much resolved. Yet where it’s going has me genuinely interested, and it’s quite possible the (already announced) second season may end up addressing most of the issues. In particular, some of the more annoying characters look likely to be left behind!

In a time where female protagonists get everything they need or want on a platter, without having to do the hard work, make difficult decisions or sacrifices, a character like Mizu feels different. She has character flaws, feels pain and has to become a better person, not just to achieve her own goals, but better the world around her. That is what popular fiction needs right now, and Hollywood screenwriters should take notice. That’s how you should write a character: flawed, not perfect. If your character can already do everything and is perfect you end up with boring, bland characters like Rey or Captain Marvel. So, while still a bit too superwoman and “Xena-ish” for me, Mizu is a big step in the right direction. Despite some complaints, the show as a whole exceeds the large majority of current female-centered TV and films. I hope it might inspire other producers to learn from its example. This is how you do female empowerment right, without hitting both sexes of your audience on the head with messages or propaganda.

Creators: Amber Noizumi and Michael Green
Star (voice): Maya Erskine, Masi Oka, Kenneth Branagh, Darren Barnet

Undefeatable

  By

★★★
“Keep an eye out for you, Stingray.”

The traditional rule of thumb is, Cynthia Rothrock’s Hong Kong movies are good, but her American ones are bad. The question is, what category should this one be placed? On the one hand, it’s a Hong Kong production. On the other, it’s filmed in America, with an American cast. On the third hand, it’s directed by notorious schlockmeister Ho, as “Godfrey Hall”. I’m painfully aware how much his work can vary in quality, though I’ll confess, I am generally adequately amused. The results here are a real grab-bad of the good, the bad and the laughable. Put it this way: Cynthia is probably close to the best actor. That’s not something you’ll hear often.

She plays former gang member Kristi Jones, now trying to go straight. But in order to put her sister through medical school, Kristi raises money by taking part in street fights, arranged through her former colleagues in the Red Dragons. Meanwhile, Paul (Niam), a.k.a. “Stingray”, another fighter on the underground circuit, goes mad after his wife leaves him. He begins kidnapping, torturing and killing any woman who resembled his departed spouse. Unfortunately, his victims include Kristi’s sister, and she’s not happy about it. With the help of police detective Nick DiMarco (Miller) and psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Simmons (Jason), Kristi makes her way through various opponents who might be involved, before focusing on Paul, and the warehouse from which he operates.

This is all, quite obviously, total nonsense. It’s the kind of film where everyone is adept at martial arts – even Dr. Simmons throws a few punches when she gets a visit from Stingray. It’s also the kind of film where a police officer will let the sister of a murder victim tag along on his investigation, because reasons. One wonders how much direction Ho was actually giving the cast. In particular, Niam, whose entire performance seems to revolve around making veins pop in his forehead. There is one (1) decent scene, where Dr. Simmons tries to figure out Stingray’s traumas and issues (his Mommy was bad to him or someting), in order to use them against him and escape. It’s the only moment this rises above the utterly basic.

On the other hand, we’re not here for the psychology. We’re here for the ass-kicking, and the film has no shortage of this, with Ms. Rothrock in decent form, both with her fists and some weapons. There’s a nice – if entirely pointless – scene of her doing forms on the lawn outside her house. But it’s mostly reasonably well-staged hand-to-hand fights, and there’s no question Rothrock acquits herself well. The end fight is slightly disappointing, in that Kristi has been hurt in a previous encounter with Stingray, so has one arm in a sling, and needs help from DiMarco. However, there are not one but two groanworthy eighties action one-liners there: the one in the tag-line above is perhaps only second worst. I couldn’t call this good, yet was I not entertained? Yes. Yes, I was.

Dir: Godfrey Ho
Star: Cynthia Rothrock, John Miller, Don Niam, Donna Jason

God is a Bullet

  By

★★★★
“God, faith, mayhem and a lot of blood”

To be honest, I never read Boston Teran’s novel. I wasn’t aware of the story until this movie came out here on DVD – but then the book was also never released in my country. I’ve every intention to read it and have already ordered it in English. However, I can’t make any comparisons between the book and the movie adaptation, directed by Nick Cassavetes, son of John Cassavetes.

It seems that when Teran’s novel came out in 1999, it caused quite a stir in Americas crime literature circles. Most agreed about the literary quality of the book: it won several crime novel awards and was nominated for even more. At the same time, its dark outlook on life, as well as the strong violence, were criticized. Teran’s style has been compared to that of Hunter S. Thompson, Jim Thompson and Cormac McCarthy. The author himself, who writes many different sorts of novels, is seen as some kind of mystery: few people seem to know him personally and he doesn’t give many interviews. But maybe he is just not interested in being a public personality (and why should he?), constantly standing in the limelight as some “star authors” do.  The movie rights were quickly bought by Hollywood and Nick Cassavetes planned an adaptation.

It seems to have been a passion project for him. But for whatever reason, it needed a quarter of a century until the movie, filmed in 2021 in Mexico City and New Mexico, would see the light of day. The main character is Bob Hightower (Coster-Waldau, best known as Jamie Lannister in Game of Thrones), a police officer searching for his daughter. She was abducted by a violent sect who also killed his ex-wife and her husband. A former member of the sect, Case Hardin (Monroe) declares herself ready to help him. According to her, he would never have a chance to find the gang by official means, without his daughter getting killed immediately. Bob accepts her assistance, though doesn’t know how trustworthy Case is. Does she really just want to help him rescue his daughter, from the fate that Case herself experienced 12 years ago? Or does she have other motives?

That’s the story in a nutshell. But it’s much more complicated than that, and you also shouldn’t expect this to be a non-stop action movie: it isn’t. I think you could maybe call it a road movie. The search for the young girl, while actually leading there in the end, is more a “McGuffin”, in that it moves the main protagonists forward – but under the surface, a different story is being told. There is an evaluation or discussion about faith, belief, God and values between Bob and Case. He is a believer in God and Christian convictions, while she is essentially atheist. Inevitably, they clash in the beginning until they develop an understanding. They come from two different sides of the spectrum. It’s the cruel descent into a man-made hell, where there is hardly any law except what you make for yourself, like an old-time Western, which makes them partners who rely on and save each other again and again.

It’s the most fulfilling part of the movie. In a way, Case is Bob’s guarding angel; she knows about those people, how they behave, how to deal with them, also the danger that they embody as human life has hardly any value for them. Bob goes “undercover” to find his daughter which also means he has to look and appear like these people, so gets a full-body tattoo by “The Ferryman” (Foxx in a larger supporting role). The aim is to contact the sect, whose cult leader Cyrus (Glusman) is a specific piece of human scum, and deal with him. All of what has happened ties back to Bob’s father in law and his superior at the police office, though he doesn’t know this.

It’s an exciting and I’d even say great piece of film work, though regrettably, will probably never get the attention it deserves. As far as I can see the film never ran in German cinemas, and only I was barely aware of the movie coming out on DVD and Blu-Ray. As the movie wasn’t produced by one of the big studios, the money for marketing might not have been quite there, I assume. The film was criticized for the amount and intensity of violence and so-called misogyny, due to the fact that the movie doesn’t hold back. But bad things happen to everyone in this story, regardless if you are male or female, black or white. In that respect the film is truly democratic, mistreating everyone equally. There are no safe spaces for anyone here.

While I personally have seen worse, a little word of warning. The movie includes rapes, vicious murders, child prostitution, drug addiction, poisonous snakes, slashed throats, head-shots, and people getting killed with flame throwers or suffocated with a plastic bag. You name it, the movie has it. That said, the depiction of all the carnage listed is not gratuitous. I never had the feeling that Cassavetes indulged in violence for violence’s sake. However, if you belong to the more squeamish, this might maybe not be the movie for you.

That said, the movie feels honest in showing a different side of America: the ugly, dark side you usually don’t see in all these feel-good Hollywood movies anymore. You get the sense this is about real people experiencing real pain. Despite the violence, that is stretched over two and a half hours, giving the movie a certain kind of calmness and tranquility. Cassavetes gives his characters time to develop and it pays off handsomely. Scenes can breathe, and unlike a lot of movies today, it’s not all cut-to-the-chase. In the end, Bob and Case are just two lonely people who find each other, during their journey through backwoods towns and the desert, a trip that has something of a cathartic quality.

In the end – and that’s why it’s here – it’s in the main Case’s story. Yes, Bob hopes to find his daughter but he always appears a bit bland compared to her fascinating, broken character. The movie begins and ends with her. There are flashbacks and you start to realize that she is not just lost, she has been robbed of her childhood, that no one really cares for her. She may be on a journey to her own death as Case has no real place that she can call home. The whole depiction reminds me of characters like Revy from Black Lagoon or Lisbeth Salander. Or maybe it’s just my imagination running wild.

In any case, I was highly impressed by Maika Monroe’s performance and the movie as a whole. I personally had no problem with the depicted violence, and think this movie deserves more exposure. All told, if you want to see something different from the typical Hollywood entertainment, this might be of interest.

Dir: Nick Cassavetes
Star: Maika Monroe, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Jamie Foxx, Karl Glusman 

 

Taken: The Search for Sophie Parker

  By

★★½
“Taken-ish.”

For a Lifetime Original Movie, this is actually close to the best of its kind I’ve seen., but it is surely docked points for being a thoroughly shameless knock-off of a certain Liam Neeson movie, all the way down to the title. As there, we have an American abroad, searching for a teenage daughter who has been kidnapped by even more foreign sex-traffickers. They will stop at nothing – nothing, I tell ya! – to recover their child, be that personal danger or interference from local corrupt police. The main difference is it’s a heroine, NYPD detective Stevie Parker (Benz), with the location being shifted from Paris to Moscow – though under current circumstances, the location has not aged well.

Certainly, letting your daughter Sophie (Battrick) now go by herself to Russia, even if she is friends with the ambassador’s daughter,  would feel like utterly irresponsible parenting. Even a decade ago when this was made, it seems questionable, and concerns prove justified. Despite the presence of lurking CIA minder Nadia (Bailey), it’s not long before Sophie and her pal have snuck out, gone to a nightclub, been roofied, and are on their way to becoming the playthings for some rich tycoon, courtesy of the Chechen mafia. Mama Parker is not happy. She’s on the first plane to Moscow, where she teams with Nadia and reluctant local cop Mikhail (Byron, who’s English, though his IMDb credits are littered with Eastern Europeans!) to work her way up the chain and rescue the girls.

It’s never less than glaringly obvious, and the first thirty minutes are especially excruciating in this department, not least due to a shoehorned romance for Stevie: it is Lifetime, after all. Once she arrives in Russia – actually, Bulgaria standing in for it – while things don’t get any less predictable, the energy level ramps up several degrees, and this becomes considerably more watchable. Benz has the necessary intensity to be the unstoppable force she needs to be, and pairing her with another woman is an additional wrinkle that works nicely. The action is a bit limited, with the only real sequence of note at the end, when the pair storm the hotel where Sophie is being held before her departure, followed by a chase back to US sovereign territory at the embassy.

There’s no denying a major case of American saviour complex here, with the locals being portrayed as useless or actively evil, and needing the help of the USA in order for any action to be taken. Chris noted the presence of a large Stars and Stripes in the film’s final shot, and it seems entirely deliberate, reminding viewers that they are now back on safe, i.e. American soil. Yet there is surprising darkness, not least in the  uncompromising fate meted out to the corrupt official. After a start where this struggled to hold my attention, by the end I was being just about adequately entertained. Given the source, that’s high praise indeed. 

Dir: Don Michael Paul
Star: Julie Benz, Amy Bailey, Andrew Byron, Naomi Battrick

Zulm Ka Badla

  By

★★★
“The family that slays together…”

In recent years, the gap in cinema between Bollywood and Hollywood has closed dramatically. The likes of Indian blockbusters such as RRR (technically Tollywood rather than Bollywood) can stand, in terms of technical competence, beside their American equivalents. It’s mostly due to a dramatic improvement from Asia, because it wasn’t always the case, as we see when we go back to the mid-eighties for this slice of vengeance served cold. It looks pretty rough if you compare it to what Hollywood was making at the time, and in many ways feels like it’s about twenty years older than it is. I still found it more watchable than I expected, but then, I’m somewhat used to the style of Indian cinema. Newcomers might find this a bumpy ride.

It begin with an attack on military official Colonel Rajesh, in which he and his wife are killed by JK (Kapoor) and his men. Their son is missing, presumed dead, leaving young daughter Geeta (Raj) the only survivor. She is adopted by Rajesh’s friend, Inspector Verma, and grows up in his house, eventually marrying the cop’s son, Anil (Rakesh), who has followed his father into the police force. Geeta has learned to take care of herself, as we see when she handily disposes of some ruffians on the beach. But it’s only when she accidentally sees a photograph given to her husband, that her long-repressed memories of the attack surface, and an insatiable thirst for revenge is born.

On the action level, let’s be honest, this is a bit crap, with Geeta doing little more than semi-competent kicking, but being made to look like she is flying through the air, in a way a cheap seventies chop-socky movie would reject as poorly executed. [It seems Geeta is actually pregnant at this point too!] However, this is made up for by some quite intense drama, not least that her brother survived, albeit with amnesia and is now one of JK’s lieutenants. He feels a bond to Geeta, though can’t quite figure out why. There are the inevitable musical numbers, too; most are at least semi-integrated into the plot, Geeta using her seductive skills to get close to her targets. Though might I suggest that, when a woman sings a song at you whose lyrics include the lines. “Now I’ve decided either to kill you or die myself,” that caution might be the best approach.

There are some moments which definitely stretch disbelief. After Geeta is forced on the run, she disguises herself as a nun, and it appears that slapping a wimple on your head and wearing glasses is an impenetrable disguise, which neither her foster father nor husband can penetrate. However, at least they don’t try and pass the thoroughly attractive Raj off as a man (I’m talking to certain Hong Kong films here!). Her brother helps, by breaking the final target out of prison, so they can unite and take revenge together. Which is nice. Naturally, they’re not allowed to get away with it in eighties Bollywood movies, making for a rather bittersweet ending. If it’s all more than a little shaky around the edges, its heart is both large and in the right place.

Dir: Chand and K. Prasad
Star: Anita Raj, Danny Denzongpa, Rakesh Roshan, Shakti Kapoor

Vengeance Served Cold

  By

★½
“More like undercooked. “

At the age of fifteen, Madison Michaels saw her prostitute mother beaten and killed by Renegade (Cross), a vicious local pimp. His homicide goes unpunished. Ten years later, Madison (Linton) is a counsellor, trying to help drug addicts and hookers get off the streets. She discovers that Renegade is still abusing women, and gets no help from the police, with Detective Straker (Williams) saying he can do nothing based on her hearsay. Against the advice of her friends and sister Lydia (Jeffries), Madison hatches a plan to take the pimp down, and clean the streets of thus piece of scum. Naturally, it doesn’t initially go quite as planned, with the trap set for Renegade backfiring, followed by betrayal from an unexpected direction. 

Even at seventy-five minutes long, this somehow manages to outstay its welcome in short order. On a shallow level, I eventually understood why Renegade may not have been prosecuted, yet the explanation falls far short of being fully convincing. It is still more than we get, in terms of a reason why Madison waited ten years before deciding to take any action. It’s not like she or Renegade went anywhere. Sure, she’s learning martial arts from her (not particularly awe-inspiring) sensei. Yet the level which she has reached doesn’t seem, for example, to reach any kind of critical threshold, such as the one necessary to take down a sadistic street thug with no moral qualms. In two minutes, I came up with a better plot: Madison went away, joined the army, and is now back, armed with the skills she needs to take on Renegade.

The poverty of the production too often gets in the way. Witness, for example, the penultimate scene, which was clearly filmed on a windy street, resulting in the dialogue being inaudible over the breeze rattling across the mics. Walmart sells a variety of wind covers for microphones at a cost of less than ten dollars. That this was, apparently, beyond the movie’s resources, tells you all you need to know. Similarly, the supposedly “brutal” death of the heroine’s mother consists of not much more than the actress lying on the floor with her eyes open. As a result, this rarely manages to approach a convincing depiction of life on the streets.

Some slight credit is due to Davis for exercising restraint on the soundtrack. It actually feels like it belongs to a proper film, rather than the director’s Spotify on random, as is usually the case in these films. This is not enough to overcome a script that simply does not have enough going on, even at the short duration present. There’s no particular sense of escalation, and what should have been the climactic face-off between Madison and – let’s remember, since the movie seems all but to forget this – the man who killed her mother in front of her, falls flatter than a day-old crepe. To continue the culinary metaphor of the title, I’m sending this one back to the kitchen.

Dir: Shaan Davis
Star: Kameka Linton, Aviator Cross, Chyrod Williams, Brandy Jeffries

Grotesque

  By

★★
“Plastic surgery disaster.”

Mildred Moyer (Chamberlain) has a problem, and it’s as plain as the nose on her face. Actually, it is the nose on her face, which would not look out of place – as one callous workmate points out – on a certain wooden boy of fairy-tale renown. Needless to say, her life has been made unpleasant by cruel comments from strangers and acquaintances. Finally, she has had enough and goes to a shady plastic surgeon to get it fixed. Unsurprisingly, this goes wrong – the fact her appointment is at 11 pm in the basement of a strip-club might have been a clue – and she is left horribly disfigured as a result. This drives her over the edge, and she vows savage revenge on all those who had wronged her.

There’s a really weird tone to this. You would think, given the subject matter, that it would be a dark movie, but Rhiness seems to be aiming more for humour as the over-arching atmosphere. Now, there’s obviously an overlap for horror and comedy, but it’s a cross-pollination of genres which is hard to pull off. The likes of Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson and Stuart Gordon can do it. Rhiness… not so much. Indeed, if you told me you didn’t find this either horrific or funny, that would feel like fair comment. Occasional moments do briefly achieve a solid foot in either camp, in my opinion. But not for long, and none manage to combine them effectively.

It is clear that the director is going for parodic excess in many elements: Mildred’s nose is so extreme as to be a clear indicator of that, and a lot of the performances go down similarly broad lines. Her ultimate nemesis, Blanche (Whelan), could not be a more broad depiction of a “mean girl” if she tried, and I strongly suspect she was, indeed, trying for that. But I felt the switch in Mildred from meek and milquetoast to mass-murdering psychopath felt sudden and forced. Perhaps it was having watched Joker the previous night, which took its time to bring the audience along on that transition, rather than just going “Hey, it’s time for her to go berserk.”

The killings are a mixed bag, and that’s being kind. Even allowing for the low-budget some of the effects are simply not good enough. Again, the deaths don’t generate much of anything on the viewer, only occasionally going sufficiently over the top to be amusing. However, Rhiness and team do deserve credit for keeping things simple: the goals here are not exactly lofty, and the lack of ambition and pretension is likely for the best. Chamberlain also helps to keep the project’s head above water, and even when the story isn’t doing enough to sustain your attention, her performance is quirky and engaging. But I can’t help thinking the whole project would have been better off deciding to be either a horror film or a comedy, and sticking with one or the other.

Dir: Brandon Rhiness
Star: Elizabeth Chamberlain, Julie Whelan, Hudsynn Grace Kennedy, Jaime Hill