Tag: revenge

Cassidy Red

  By

★★½
“Better red than dead. Albeit, only just.”

Josephine “Joe” Cassidy (Eiland) is promised in marriage to Tom (Jenkins), the son of the area’s richest rancher, but her heart actually belongs to Jakob (Grasl), the Indian who is Tom’s adopted brother. The two lovers consummate their relationship when Tom is away, but  the spurned fiancee hatches a long-term plan to get revenge. Years later, after becoming the local sheriff, he uses these connections to frame and execute Jakob for murder. Word of this reaches Joe, who conveniently for the plot is handy with a firearm, because her father (Cramer) was a renowned bounty-hunter, and passed on the necessary skills to her. Dying her hair red – hence the title – she sets out to take revenge on Tom, only for him to reveal that Jakob is not dead… Not yet, anyway.

The structure here is quite convoluted – rather needlessly, I’d say. Not only does it unfold in several different eras, the entire thing is enclosed in wraparound sections, where the story of Cassidy Red is being told, for inspirational purposes, by a piano-player in a brothel to one of the working girls. It’s definitely a case where less feels like it would have been more, with a straightforward chronological timeline working to the film’s benefit, instead of characters dropping in and out. Perhaps the director felt that might have been too simple, for once you peel away the trapping, this is indeed a very straightforward tale of revenge. Is that necessarily a bad thing, though?

This was submitted for Knudsen’s thesis at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film, and Television, which perhaps explains some of the issues here: on occasion, it certainly does feels as if it was an academic requirement with an earnest Message (capital M used deliberately), rather than wanting to tell its story. The best section is likely the one where Joe is being taught the mechanics of gun-fighting by her father, which is very well written, performed and edited. The result is a sequence that sheds genuine light into the mindset of someone who, for survival, has to be permanently ready to shoot to kill. Given the limited budget here, credit is due for production values which are generally good. It was filmed largely on location at Old Tucson Studios, and that adds authenticity to the 19th-century Arizona setting, which some films wouldn’t have bothered with. 

Other parts, unfortunately, fall short of that, and some are flat-out unconvincing – the scene where Jakob is taken on board as a foster son, for example, seems entirely inexplicable, and they just shouldn’t have bothered, since it’s not something the audience needs to see. It’s a shame, since the central performance is good: however, the two male leads both struggle to be more than forgettable, and that leaves the end result feeling unbalanced on the dramatic level. This sporadic quality is perhaps the biggest problem: there seems a general unevenness of tone and approach, resulting in a film which takes two steps forward, then one back.

Dir: Matt Knudsen
Star: Abigail Eiland, David Thomas Jenkins, Jason Grasl, Rick Cramer

In The Fade

  By

★★★
“Death wish, too.”

I spent most of the movie going back and forth as to whether or not this qualified for inclusion here. Was its lead, perhaps, just too subdued and reactive to be called an “action heroine”? It wasn’t until after the very final scene that I finally was able to decide it does merit a spot. Though make no mistake, this is a long, slow-burning fuse before it goes off.

The life of Katja Şekerci (Kruger) is torn apart when a bomb is left outside her husband’s office, killing both him and their young son. Initially, the cops suspect his past has caught up with him – he did time in prison for dealing hashish. While Katja believes otherwise, matters are not helped by Katja’s relapse into drug-use to deal with the pain. Eventually, she is proven right, and the police arrest a husband and wife pair of neo-Nazis (Hilsdorf and Brandhoff). They are tried, but the law fails to deliver the justice Katja wants, and she is forced to take matters into her own hands, despite the pleas of her lawyer (Moschitto) to trust the system.

As vigilante movies go… this one probably doesn’t. It’s instead divided into three acts: the first covers the explosion and its immediate impact; the second the trial; and the third what ensues thereafter, as Katja tracks down the perpetrators. In a more traditional genre entry, the first two would be disposed of in about 15 minutes, but here, they’re much more the focus. In particular, we see, in almost painful detail, Katja’s progress through the stages of grief – though it’s less a passage through them, and more a downward spiral towards a pitch-black version of acceptance. Indeed, she’s in the middle of a suicide attempt, filmed in disturbingly chill passivity, when she gets news of the terrorists’ arrests.

I have some issues with certain aspects of the plot. For instance, her conviction this was a terrorist attack, while eventually right, seems to come out of thin air. I’m also less than certain it’s quite as easy to make a bomb as is suggested [I’m pretty sure  – and certainly hope – that even looking up instructions on Google would quickly get you watched, especially given the circumstances here] However, her single-minded dedication to punish those she holds responsible, regardless of the personal cost, is striking, and there’s no arguments about the strength of Kruger’s portrayal either, which is excellent. You truly feel her grief, and this makes everything she does subsequently, a natural product of it.

Confucius supposedly said, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” This is a feature adaptation of that concept, with Katja more or less fatally wounded – at least, inside – along with her husband and child. This is not an uplifting film by any means. Indeed, it manages to become more depressing the longer it goes on, and considering the real starting point is a six-year-old being literally blown into pieces, that’s quite a feat. Not necessarily a bad thing, of course; although the net result is a film of merit, yet one I’m unlikely to watch again.

Dir: Fatih Akin
Star: Diane Kruger, Denis Moschitto, Hanna Hilsdorf, Ulrich Brandhoff
a.k.a. Aus dem Nichts

Peppermint

  By

★★★
“A case of Miss-Taken identity.”

I’m tempted to award this an extra half-star, simply for pissing off liberal film critics, upset by the fact that most of the film is devoted to a white woman killing Latino drug dealers. Of course, they completely miss all the points, instead complaining – and these are direct quotes – there is “not a word about corporate complicity in the opioid crisis” and that the heroine’s “true enemy is a system of income inequality driven by hyper-capitalism.” Because, of course, if was hyper-capitalism which gunned down the husband and daughter of Riley North (Garner) in the parking lot of a fun-fair. Oh, my mistake: it was Latino drug dealers.

The main complaint though, is it “bought into the political rhetoric that conflates gang members with law-abiding immigrants.” Uh, speaking as a thoroughly law-abiding immigrant: no, it doesn’t. I never felt at all conflated. But then, I never regarded Trainspotting as any kind of indication that all Scottish people are heroin addicts. For that’s the mistake critics like this keep making, going all the way back those who claimed Basic Instinct was homophobic: taking characters in a film as statements about that group as a whole. As one defense of the film wrote, “all too many members of the Left have reacted to Trump allegedly making gang members represent immigrants by, yes, making gang members represent immigrants.”

Enough politics. The important question here is, is this revenge-driven vigilante pic any good? To which the answer is… somewhat. There’s certainly nothing much new or innovative in the story. After the shooting described above, the scumbags responsible get off, and Riley goes on her mission of vengeance, killing not only those directly responsible, but those on both sides of law she feels were culpable. That involves going all the way up the food chain to Diego Garcia (Raba), the drug boss who ordered the hit, though Riley takes no small pleasure in destroying his organization on the way, not least the piñata factory which operates as a distribution hub.

The film seems to leave a slew of opportunities on the table. For example, the five years before Riley’s mission got under way, when she was living off the grid and acquiring the “very particular set of skills” [director Morel also helmed Taken] necessary for the task. Or the way she operates as an “angel” for the homeless inhabitants of Skid Row. Or the social media debate, mentioned in passing, which her vigilante actions against Garcia and his gang has kick-started. Or Riley’s eventual payback against another mother for a long-ago wrong. Expanding on any of these might have offered more interesting ways to go, rather than being mostly a clone of this year’s Bruce Willis vehicle, Death Wish, in itself a remake that added little to the 1974 original.

Instead, we are left with little more than a competent exercise in Garner returning to her Alias roots, though as such it’s entertaining enough. The fights here are crisply handled, reaching a peak on the piñata warehouse assault, I’d say – an environment which offers a great deal of opportunity for innovative carnage. It’s the bits in between which are the problem, setting up interesting angles, then failing miserably to take advantage of them, instead offering almost as much footage of the cops chasing Riley (Ortiz and Gallagher). And at least it’s not Elektra, the film effectively responsible for killing off comic-book action heroines for a decade, as well as putting Garner’s career in big-budget movies on life-support. We can be grateful for that, I suppose.

Dir: Pierre Morel
Star: Jennifer Garner, Juan Pablo Raba, John Ortiz, John Gallagher Jr.

Fair Game (1986)

  By

★★★
“Time to back out of the outback…”

First off, this is not to be confused with the other Australian film of the eighties by the same name, made four years previously. This is considerably more sparse, and likely the better for it. Jessica (Delaney, who went on to marry John Denver, and have a highly acrimonious divorce from him) runs an animal sanctuary in the outback, but discovers someone has been hunting the local fauna on it. Suspicion falls on three local yahoos: Sunny (Ford, reminiscent of a young Sam Neill), Ringo (Sandford, doing some impressive stunts) and Sparks (Who – no, really, that’s his name), a trio of hunters targeting kangaroos – regarded as vermin by the farmers – for their meat. They don’t take kindly to being confronted, and begin an escalating campaign of terror against Jessica. But even a peaceful animal-lover can only be pushed so far before she breaks. Turns out that line is likely being strapped to the hood of their Jeep and driven topless across the countryside. Or thereabouts.

While I doubt the maker of Revenge saw this fairly obscure film, it does seem somewhat similar, with three men pursuing a lone woman through a desert wilderness, before the tables are turned on them. Quentin Tarantino has also spoken glowingly aout this piece of Ozploitation, and you have to wonder if the scene described above was perhaps one of the inspirations for Death Proof, in which the similarly Antipodean Zoë Bell spends a good bit of time on the bonnet of a speeding car – albeit more clothed and of her own volition [Though amusingly, one of the video covers for the film opts to depict a rather more chaste version of the scene] If so, I can see why he opted to lift only that sequence, as the film as a whole is rather… jerky, for want of a better word. By which I mean, the narrative feels like it consists of a series of unconnected sequences, rather than ones which flow into each other.

There is still a certain sense of escalation, and for once, there isn’t actually a sexual assault. The thugs’ actions begin with petty bullying, and escalates through stalkerish activities, like taking a Polaroid of Jessica while she sleeps, but bypass the obvious rape, which is refreshing. However, it still takes a bit too long to get to the meat of proceedings, with Jessica turning her farmstead into a series of home-made, yet increasingly lethal, traps with which she can defend herself. I’d like to have seen this stretched out, rather than compressed into a frantic final 15 minutes. She’s the hunted rather than the hunter for the majority of the time, and as usual, the former is the less interesting part of the equation. Cinematographer Andrew Lesnie went on to become Peter Jackson’s favorite cameraman until his death in 2015, and does a nice job of capturing the wild beauty of the Australian wilderness.

Dir: Mario Andreacchio
Star: Cassandra Delaney, Peter Ford, David Sandford, Garry Who

Avenge the Crows: The Legend of Loca

  By

★★★½
“Though I’m still not sure what the title means…”

This feels like a low-budget project in many ways, but manages to punch above its weight, in part due to an impressive supporting cast. While Lou Diamond Phillips, Danny Trejo and Steven Bauer are nowhere near as important as their names on the cover might suggest, their presence provide a solid foundation on which the less well-known members of the cast can build. In particular, Danay García as Loca; having bailed on Fear the Walking Dead after about two episodes, I wasn’t aware of her, but on the basis of this, she’s a name on whom we’ll be keeping an eye.

Gabaeff, as well, has some interesting shots in his directorial locker. At times, this almost reminded me of Memento in the structure: it’s only at the end that you are given the necessary knowledge to  understand all that has happened. Even on a smaller scale, the layout is often fractured. More than once, a character gets a phone-call, and the film then jumps back in time, and over to the person on the other end of the line, to show what led up to them making that call. As such, it takes a bit of getting your brain around – yet the payoff, in the “Aha!” moment where you realize how it connects, is gratifying.

An interesting twist is that Loca is not the executor of the revenge, as is usually the case – she’s the target for it. Casper (Phillips) is in prison, but a henchman there, Joker (the genuinely scary-looking Flores), is about to be released. Joker is told to “send a message” to Loca, through her niece, Cammy (Rivera). But he goes further than Casper intended, and rapes Cammy. That starts Loca on a search for protection, but the gun-dealer she visits to acquire weapons turns out to be targeted for some retribution of his own, and Loca is dragged into that as well. Handling all this will require her to navigate dangerous waters, and bring together enemies to face a common foe.

There’s a strong scent of grim reality here: I don’t know if the tattoos everyone is sporting were “real” or not (likely a mix), but I don’t think I’ve seen a more inked-up feature. You get the feeling the people involved are largely familiar with the environment in question – not least, of course, Trejo, whose background as a felon-turned-star actor deserves to become a movie of its own. Here, he plays the owner of the bar where Loca hangs out, and is as gloriously gruff and down to earth as ever. The rest of the cast all fit their roles well. If the eventual resolution (where Bauer eventually turns up, after we had virtually abandoned hope!) feels a little unlikely and convenient, given the complexities of what had gone before, this doesn’t undo the generally solid work here. It’s better than I expected going in.

Dir: Nathan Gabaeff
Star: Danay García, Emilio Rivera, Michael Flores, Angelique Rivera

I, Olga Hepnarova

  By

★★★
“Czech, please…”

I am a loner. A destroyed woman. A woman destroyed by people… I have a choice – to kill myself or to kill others. I choose TO PAY BACK MY HATERS. It would be too easy to leave this world as an unknown suicide victim. Society is too indifferent, rightly so. My verdict is: I, Olga Hepnarová, the victim of your bestiality, sentence you to death.

Women who kill are rare. Women who kill multiple victims at once, without male associates, are rarer still. Among the few who have been recorded as such was Olga Hepnarová, a 22-year-old Czech, who in 1973 deliberately drove a truck into a group of people waiting for a tram in Prague. Eight were killed, and a dozen injured. The day before she had sent a “manifesto” explaining her actions to two local newspapers. As the extract above suggests, she saw herself as a victim, inflicting punishment on the society which she blamed for bullying her. Hepnarová showed absolutely no remorse, and became the last woman executed in Czechoslovakia, being hung in December 1975.

This is all historical and documented fact, but helps lend this feature version of Hepnarová’s life a bleak relentlessness. Presuming you’re aware of the story (and one imagines most of the Czech audience would be, if not necessarily those in other countries), you know exactly where it’s going to end up – with a short drop, though the film takes the specifics of that as read. So there’s no suspense to be had, and to be fair, that isn’t the point at all. It’s more about trying to get inside the mind of Hepnarová: how does someone get to the stage where committing an act of mass murder becomes not only plausible, it also becomes inevitable?

It was clearly a combination of factors. Olga displayed signs of mental illness from a young age, including a suicide attempt by overdose in her early teens, and as depicted here, has severe difficulty forming any kind of relationship – though the lack of effort she puts into them from her side is notable. She seems to stand outside the human race, at one point saying, “I can’t talk to anybody. I’m alone everywhere. People just talk and gather and laugh even at things I don’t find funny at all,” and later bluntly stating “The world has no value.” I’m not sure if her comments come from court transcripts, medical documents or were invented for the purpose of the film, but according to the makers, “We didn’t write anything that we didn’t know to be true – if we didn’t know it for sure, we removed it from our script.”

There’s no denying it sometimes packs a wallop – not least given events subsequent to filming, in Nice and elsewhere, with terrorists taking enthusiastically to vehicular mayhem for their own causes – and the blank nihilism in Olszanska‘s performance is chilling. But I can’t say any real insight into the psychology of her psychopathy feels like it was obtained. It’s clear she was bullied, and that was a factor, but what is offered feels like a facile simplification: hell, I had more than my share of being bullied at school, and didn’t kill anyone. There is eloquence to her own words, and I wish there had been more of this. For despite black-and-white cinematography which makes it feel like a contemporary retelling, rather than four decades later, the rest feels flat and largely uninteresting.

Dir: Petr Kazda and Tomás Weinreb
Star: Michalina Olszanska, Martin Pechlát, Klára Melísková, Marika Soposká

The Five

  By

★★★½
“Live organ donor.”

A chance encounter in a convenience store destroys the life of Go Eun-ah (Kim). For her young daughter accidentally sees serial killer Oh Jae-wook (On) abducting his next victim. Realizing he has been spotted, Jae-wook carries out a brutal home invasion, killing both the daughter and Eun-ah’s husband, and leaving her permanently paralyzed. But he has reckoned without Eun-ah’s fortitude. She devotes the rest of her life to tracking down her attacker, and puts together a team of four to help her. All need transplants, for them or their family. So Eun-ah has promised that once Jae-wook has been captured, delivered to her and killed, she will give them her organs. Damn. That’s what I call “fully committed”… But when Jae-Wook realizes he is being hunted, he turns his attentions on the hunters.

Revenge seems to have been a strong theme in the Korean cinema we’ve covered here – Lady Vengeance, Princess Aurora and perhaps most closely, Monster. This perhaps falls a little short of the best of those, but is by no means a bad movie: it’s executed with plenty of style, and the twists and turns keep coming from beginning to end. This was Jeong’s first feature, not that you’d know it, and is based on his own web-comic. This has a very strong concept, and though it may seem implausible, the set-up is done with great care, putting together the elements in a way that it all seems credible. And even though confined to a wheel-chair, Eyn-Ah’s place here is secure, from the scene where she believes she spots Jae-Wook in the street, and wheels herself after him frantically, a long knife in her hand.

The first half is particularly good, explaining why Eyn-Ah came to such a desperate place, and how she linked up with others who are equally desperate in a different direction. It’s certainly consistent in tone, and if you’re looking for some frothy entertainment, you should stay well away: there isn’t much light to be found in this darkness [though I did laugh at the guy Eyn-Ah captures during her investigation who protests, dead-pan, “Madame, two Tasers in one day!” Ok, you probably had to be there…]. This is especially true of the ending, which I must admit, I found the weakest part of the film. It could have been considerably more satisfying, both in the consummation of Eyn-Ah’s revenge and her eventual fate.  At one point it feels as if her old skills – early on, we see her creating a wonderful Rube Goldberg machine for her daughter’s birthday – are going to prove gloriously relevant, and it’s a shame they aren’t.

However, perhaps this is the point. As Eyn-Ah is told by the (very Christian) caregiver, who initially takes care of her on release from hospital, “Revenge may feel sweet before you do it, but he’ll haunt you forever.” Maybe Eyn-Ah’s entire scheme is a way of avoiding this guilt. If so, I can’t deny its ultimate success.

Dir: Jeong Yeon-shik
Star: Kim Sun-ah, On Joo-wan, Ma Dong-seok, Shin Jung-geun

Revenge

  By

★★★★½
“Women always have to put up a fucking fight.”

This French rape-revenge movie is the most blood-drenched GWG film I’ve seen since Kill Bill, Volume 1, and is not for the faint of heart. However, the good news is, it’s not the rape part of the equation which is hard to watch: this is depicted with admirable restraint, occurring mostly off-camera. The director has stressed that the story isn’t about the rape, and I’m delighted with that: it has always struck me as the least interesting element. It’s a plot device, to kick-off what matters. Focusing on it, as some films have done, seems to me like focusing on turning the ignition key, instead of driving the car. This, instead, offers a road-trip to remember.

The victim is Jen (Lutz), a young girl having a weekend in the Moroccan desert with her rich, married boyfriend, Richard (Janssens). He’s also there to do a spot of hunting with his pals, Stan and Dimitri (Colombe and Bouchède). They four have a night drinking and dancing, but the next morning, when Richard heads off to make travel arrangements, Stan rapes Jen. On Richard’s return, he tries to smooth things over. Jen is having none of it, and storms off. Knowing that any legal complaint would destroy his marriage, Richard fakes calling for transport out, then pushes Jen off a cliff. Her landing is… not a soft one. Convinced the problem is solved, the men leave disposing of the body until later. Except, Jen isn’t dead, and when the trio go back, she’s not there. Helped by some impressively strong peyote – in this case, the drugs clearly do work – she patches herself up, and turns the hunters into the hunted.

First, let me address the improbably-resilient elephant in the room. Yes, her survival and pursuit is implausible, with a couple of large holes. Literally: one of the film’s two highly cringe-inducing pieces of self-surgery shows Jen patching up a hole in her stomach. Yet there must, of necessity, be an even larger one in her back. What happened to that? To be honest, they didn’t need this aspect at all: simply surviving the fall would have been hardcore enough. She also goes barefoot through the entire film, without a whimper. In the Arizona summer, I can’t take the garbage out barefoot without leaving singed skin on the drive. One shot of her pulling the shoes off her first victim would have fixed that.

It’s a shame, albeit a minor one, because virtually everything else is perfect. The transition of Jen, from the stuff of Richard’s fantasies, to that of his nightmares – he’s the one who delivers the tagline above – is impeccably handled. Even her good looks transform. At the beginning, it’s a shallow and utterly conventional prettiness – which she has exploited into a weekend getaway to a luxury location. By the end, she has paid a terrible price for this. Yet even as she’s missing minor body parts, disfigured, drenched in blood (both hers and others) and covered in desert grime… she’s glowing. Her inner beauty shines through, increasingly illuminating the bad-ass bitch she has become over the course of proceedings.

For a film lauded for its supposed up-ending of the male gaze, this feels a bit odd, since it could be read as the sexual assault triggering Jen’s blossoming: rape as psychological therapy. She should thank her attackers! [The image of a rising phoenix branded into her skin, due to her impromptu first-aid, is not exactly subtle in its imagery. Then again, the entire film is not exactly subtle, and proudly defiant as such] If that reading is on shaky ground, it’s also amusing to note Revenge utterly fails the dreaded Bechdel Test, despite being brutally empowering, to a degree rarely seen. More evidence – as if it were really needed – of how shitty the Bechdel Test is at evaluating films.

The good thing is that the feature’s entertainment value in no way relies on any kind of Identity Politics 1.0.1. to work. It functions perfectly well as a stripped-down pursuit, which neither asks for, no offers, any kind of quarter on behalf of the participants – for their genders or any other reason. There’s a steady, relentless escalation to proceedings from the moment Jen takes flight, to a final confrontation which redefines “paint the walls blood-red”. That’s a jaw-dropping pursuit round the house where things began, and includes proof that cling film, like duct tape, has a thousand and one uses.

The director says the only previous example of the rape-revenge genre she watched was Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left. Though if true, the proximity of names for the heroine here and in the genre’s most infamous entry, I Spit On Your Grave, is a striking coincidence. That aside, it’s interesting to note that the only other female-directed entry, Baise-moi, was also from France. And in tone, this has almost as much in common with À l’interieur (Inside), which was just as blood-drenched, and similarly gave absolutely no fucks. Much credit to Fargeat for this “take no prisoners” attitude, and delivering a thoroughly uncompromising piece of cinema; kudos for all of her cast as well, in particular Lutz, who go all-in to no less a degree.

I’ve been watching extreme films for thirty years or so, and let’s be honest, you get a bit desensitized to it all. We went to see this one at a local art cinema, and from their reactions, it was clear that most of the audience were, let’s say, not as “experienced” in the ways of savage cinema as Chris and I. Their responses merely added to the fun: I’d kinda forgotten how audience reaction can enhance a film (their goddamn rustling of snacks… not so much, but let’s move rapidly on). At the end, after all was said and done, one of the other attendees blurted out loud, “Best ten bucks I’ve ever spent.” I’m not inclined to disagree. Despite its flaws – which I acknowledge and embrace – if 2018 offers a film which packs a bigger punch, I can’t wait to see it.

Dir: Coralie Fargeat
Star: Matilda Lutz, Kevin Janssens, Vincent Colombe, Guillaume Bouchède

Hate Story

  By

★★★
“Hate trumps love.”

After exposing construction company Cementec as involved in corruption, journalist Kavya Krishna (Dam) is surprised to get a call from Siddharth Dhanrajgir (Devaiya), son of the company’s owner. He ends up offering her a job at far above her previous salary, and the two eventually grow into a relationship. However, it’s all a ruse: Siddharth dumps and firing Kayva, saying, “I fuck those who fuck with me.” When she tries to strike back by telling him she’s pregnant, he has her kidnapped and forced to have an abortion, which leaves Kavya permanently unable to have children. She vows to destroy Siddharth and his company, by any means necessary, using her investigative skills – and no shortage of feminine wiles – to get the information required.

An enjoyable pot-boiler, this has some of the traditional aspects of Bollywood cinema, not least a lengthy running-time of 139 minutes. It is, likely fortunately, light on the musical numbers; though the songs clearly play a significant part, there’s only one scene in a night-club which comes close to what you’d expect from Indian cinema. It’s also an odd mix, which I can best describe as “chaste raunchiness”. This is a film, after all, about a woman prepared to go to absolutely any length for vengeance, crammed chock full of sexual situations… Yet the movie contains no nudity beyond the PG-13 level, and not so much as a kiss. Even Siddharth’s trademark line, frequently repeated in English, is far more politely (and inaccurately!) rendered in the subtitles as “I ruin the people who mess with me.”

I largely tracked this down, because I saw that Hate Story 2 was on Netflix at the time, and not the original.  I feel it’s perhaps the kind of story which would be better served by a Western remake, which wouldn’t have to abide by the strict censorship rules of India. [I’m reminded there is apparently a Bollywood version of Basic Instinct, which I can only imagine!] There may not be anything quite like the poster present in the film, and some of the plot contrivances are, frankly, incredible. For instance, Kayva ends up on the board of Cementec, a position obtained almost solely by making doe-eyes at a cabinet minister for an extended period.

However, it’s still a thoroughly satisfying tale of a woman, abused by a powerful man, turning to strike back at him; a tale of sexual harassment and its reversal like has more resonance now, than when released in 2012. Dam cuts a striking figure, and I thoroughly enjoyed the scheming interplay between Kayva and Siddharth. For example, he sends his investigator to bug her house, only for her to find the audio-visual devices and use them to send disinformation back at him. Then he releases the steamy tapes to the media, framing her for the murder of her lover. I was impressed with the ending, too – it’s moral and grim at the same time. Despite the extended duration, the time sped by: while the sequel is no longer on Netflix, you should still expect a review, sooner rather than later.

Dir: Vivek Agnihotri
Star: Paoli Dam, Gulshan Devaiya, Nikhil Dwivedi, Joy Sengupta

Gia in the City of the Dead, by Kristi Belcamino

  By

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

Gia Valentina Santella is the daughter of a rich Italian family in California. She doesn’t seem to do much with the bountiful hand fate has dealt her: drinking, casual sex and designer labels appear to be her main interests. But her easy life is rudely disrupted after her parents die in a fire at their estate in Switzerland (!). In the aftermath, she is sent a letter from the man who carried out their autopsies, confessing that he was paid off to conceal the real, much less accidental cause of death. As Gia starts to dig into the past, seeking the truth, it soon becomes apparent that it was a good deal murkier than initially appears. And also, that someone has a strong, vested interest in ensuring it stays covered.

Goddamn, this is bland: I finished it only a couple of days ago, and am struggling to recall much more than the basic details. I do recall being rather annoyed, however, that the heroine endlessly quotes gobbets of Budo philosophy… but appears largely clueless when it comes to putting any of her allegedly extensive training into practice. She seems to have endless resources, for example, funding a rather convoluted scheme to make her adversaries believe she has left the company. But these are not matched by her resourcefulness – she then blows the gaff by a ridiculously ill-advised trip to a funeral home. [And don’t even get me started on that particular corpse, which also meets a highly-suspicious end, yet is all but ignored by Gia, at least in this volume]

It just feels as if so many of the incidents here were thrown in without sufficient thought. For example, at one point, someone sets the apartment building where Gia is hiding out on fire, when she’s not in it. Even at the end of the book, when the truth is finally revealed, there’s no logical motivation for this. If it was to get rid of a bit of evidence, then breaking in and taking it would have made more sense. The heroine… Well, she seems to have a good heart in there, somewhere, but this felt more like reading about the misadventures of one of the Hilton sisters: not exactly the smartest knife in the kitchen-block, shall we say.

According to the author, “Gia Santella is my alter ego, the woman I might have been in a different life.” And that apparently unrestrained wish-fulfillment is perhaps a good part of the problem here. For example, there is absolutely no reason why she needs to drive a red Ferrari, yet she does. We get sentences such as, “I spotted five Ferraris, including one Ferrari 458 Italia Spider, three Lamborghinis Gallardo LP 560-4 Bicolores, and even a McLaren MP4-12C.” If I wanted to amuse myself with an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, I would do so. At least The Grand Tour has Jeremy Clarkson being snarky about the sports cars.

Author: Kristi Belcamino
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon as an e-book only.
Book 1 of 4 in the Gia Santella Crime Thriller series.