Tag: revenge

Viking Siege

  By

★★★
“Tree’s company…”

This has the potential to be truly bad, and you need to be willing to look past ropey production values, a possibly deliberately shaky grasp of period (unless “Daisy” really was a popular girls’ name in early medieval times…) and uncertainty as to whether or not this is intended to be a comedy. Yet, I have to admire its “everything including the kitchen sink” approach: throwing together elements from genres as disparate as Vikings, zombies, aliens, sword ‘n’ sorcery and female vengeance shows… well, ambition, at the very least.

The story starts with a group of women, led by Atheled (McTernan), infiltrating a priory. They seek revenge on the monks, because of a sideline in human trafficking which has cost the women dearly. Their plan for vengeance is somewhat derailed by a local lord turning up, and entirely derailed by the arrival of a horde of Vikings, in turn hotly pursued by what can only be described as demonic shrubbery – not for nothing are they referred to and credited as “tree bastards.” To survive through the night is going to take an unholy alliance between the various parties, as well as some captives in the basement – fortunately, those include someone who can speak Viking (McNab). Given their radically different goals, this will present problems of its own.

Wisely, for budgetary reasons, action is largely constrained to the main hall of the priory, with occasional forays outside. This set-up is very Night of the Living Dead, and the tree bastards are also infectious, albeit not quite in the traditional zombie sense. However, it’s in the creatures that the film’s limited resources are most painfully obvious, with them being little more than obviously blokes in masks. Although the boss shrub does occasionally look impressive, when shot from the right angle, it feels a bit much, and is a case where less might well have been more. Just make them nameless berserkers, you’d have much the same impact and save yourself a lot of time, money and effort.

The chief saving grace are the performances. McTernan has the inner steel to go with her crossbow bolts; her colleagues, Seren (Hoult) and Rosalind (Schnitzler) in particular, are very easy to root for; and the nameless translator has perhaps the most interesting character. It’s these that kept me watching, such as in the atmospheric scene when the backstory of the tree bastards is explained. Though told rather than shown, it’s delivered with enough energy to prove more effective than some other elements (martial arts? gunpowder?), which had me sighing in irritation.

To be perfectly clear, it’s a case where you need to go in with your expectations suitably managed, i.e. keep ’em on the low-down. Based on the blandly generic DVD sleeve and title, I probably wouldn’t have even bothered, and certainly would not have expected any action heroines. As such, this was a pleasant surprise, and it kept me more entertained than I feared it might. My advice is, treat it as a loving tribute to a whole slew of B-movie genres, no more and no less.

Dir: Jack Burton
Star: Michelle McTernan, Rosanna Hoult, Samantha Schnitzler, Adam McNab

The Pact Series Omnibus One, by Alex Villavasso

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

This got off to a frankly rocky start, to the point that a few pages in, this felt like it might become a very rare DNF (Did Not Finish) book. It’s an incredibly clumsy and stilted opening, depicting the internal conversation between Sailor Ray and the demon who inhabits her. Literally, “Why am I reading this?” bad. Still, I persisted: and in the end, the story redeemed itself, though the final third was considerably weaker overall.

Sailor comes from a family of hunters, and after an incident where her father was killed and she was mortally wounded, she made a deal with the demon Vartal. He would save her, and let her take vengeance on those responsible for the death of her parents; in return, once she has had her revenge, he can have her soul. The best thing you can say about that agreement is: well, it made sense at the time. She’s now suffering a hardcore case of buyer’s remorse, and while trying to track down the perpetrators, is also attempting to figure out some way she can renege on the deal.

This omnibus collects the first three volumes in one: Sailor Ray and the Darkest Night, Sailor Ray and the Dark Descent and Sailor Ray and the Beautiful Lie. Though at a total length of around four hundred pages, this is basically not much more than regular novel length. Key to salvaging the book is Sailor, and in particular her savage approach to the demons, with little thought for their human vessels, who are deemed unsalvageable more often than not. She likes to blame this brutality on the insidious effects of Vartal; I think the nasty truth is, it’s as much her own inclinations as “the devil made me do it.”

The first two parts concern her investigation into a drug called Sphinx, which makes the user more susceptible to possession, though the connection to her parents’ deaths is vague. It’s being sold out of a nightclub in her base of Chicago, and her attempt to infiltrate the club leads to multiple deaths of friends and enemies – both on the night and thereafter. The highlight, however, is likely the flashback sequence where she relives the death of her father. This took place during a particularly ferocious battle against devil worshippers and hellspawn called sweepers – described as “a huge, demonized praying mantis/earthworm hybrid.” Damn. It’s very solid action-horror, and feels like you’re reading about the final boss in a particularly malevolent Resident Evil game.

The third volume takes a severely unexpected right turn, with Sailor and her gal-pal Val going on a road-trip. Their car breaks down at a diner; fortunately, the owners take care of them and invite them to stay until the vehicle is fixed. While it’s highly obvious something bad is going to happen, it takes far too long to do so, with the pair sitting around watching television in the meantime. It’s about as interesting as that sounds. Again, Villavasso redeems himself at the end with some crunchy ultra-violence. The overall impact is remarkably uneven, with the very final section almost red-herringing much of what has happened to that point. Yet Sailor is such an abrasively fiery character, I might still want to check in on her progress down the line – at least in a further omnibus.

Author: Alex Villavasso
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, as an e-book only.
Books 1-3 of the Pact series.

A Daughter’s Vengeance

  By

★★
“S’no good.”

Look, I tried. I really did. When I found my attention had drifted away from watching the film, in good faith, I rewound the film to the point where I’d lost interest, and took up the movie again the following day. After all, maybe it was me. But when I still could barely bring myself to finish this leaden lump of poorly-crafted revenge-fu… No, having gone above and beyond the required effort, it’s really not me. This is lacklustre stuff, to put it mildly, even by the generally low standards of Taiwan.

The heroine (Chen), seems only to be referred to as the Snow Maiden,  and is an orphan, brought up in the mountains by the Snow Woman (Tiu); I kept wanting to call her Mrs. Narwhal, due to her striking snaggletooth, which is remarkably distracting. When the Snow Maiden discovers the truth about her orphanness – namely, that her pregnant mother was betrayed and abandoned by her father – she vows vengeance on the man responsible. While she’s looking, she adopts a “Robin Hood” like persona, rescuing the oppressed and making the oppressors pay for their crimes, in a range of (usually) non-lethal ways.

She eventually finds the family responsible: in about the film’s only interesting twist, her father is old, feeble, and largely filled with regret about having abandoned Maiden’s mom, which does present her with a bit of an ethical dilemma. Complicating matters further, his son (Wu) falls for Ms. Maiden; despite trying to keep herself emotionally distant, so that she can carry out her mission, she begins to have feelings for him too. So, will love triumph over vengeance? And, more importantly, will anyone care? At the risk of spoiling this for anyone, I can reveal the answer to the second question is a fairly conclusive “No”.

Chen isn’t a bad heroine, with a reasonable degree of screen presence – at least when standing still and glowering at people. And she does this a lot – about the only thing there’s more of in this movie is probably maniacal laughter, which appears to sit just behind Mandarin as the preferred method of communication. However, the novelty of this wears off rapidly, and the feeble excuse for martial arts this offers is a long way short of an adequate replacement. Neither the ability nor the quantity of action is acceptable, and any quality there may have been in the performances is destroyed by terrible dubbing, including atrocities such as the son being given a posh British accent. I would have been better off to cut my losses and not bother, after my first attempt to watch this failed.

[Worth noting, there was a movie released the following year, Vengeance of a Snowgirl – a very similar title to the alternate here. Don’t confuse them: while both are about orphans seeking revenge, the other was the last movie Lo Wei directed for Shaw Brothers, and has a crippled heroine who can’t use her legs. Not that this stops her, naturally…]

Dir: Chou Hsu-Chiang
Star: Chen Chen, Wu Chia Chi, Tiu Shut,
a.k.a. Vengeance of Snow Maid

A Reckoning

  By

★★★
“Much calm before the storm.”

Considering how little actually happens here, I enjoyed this considerably more than expected. It kicks off with 19th-century settler Mary O’Malley (Dietrich) being informed her husband has been brutally slain. Despite the warnings of fellow settler Henry Breck (a small role for Lance Henriksen), Mary heads out on the trail through Oregon for revenge, looking for the serial killer responsible. He’s known as “Marrow” (Makely), for reasons which eventually become clear. She encounters Jebediah (Robinson), a bounty-hunter after Marrow who doesn’t appreciate the competition, and Barley (Crow), a trader who offers and receives temporary companionship.

That’s pretty much it, up until the final, inevitable confrontation between Mary and Marrow, where we are reminded again of firearms’ role as a great equalizer. [Dietrich resembles a middle-aged version of Noomi Rapace, all slightly-built and cheekbones; Makely looks like he might have wandered out of a WWE ring] Read the reviews eviscerating this on the IMDb, and you’ll see a lot of people who appear very disappointed with the pacing and lack of action. For once, I wasn’t one of them. I was somewhat forewarned, wasn’t expecting non-stop gun battles or whatever, and was happy for this to proceed at its own, leisurely pace. I will say, it is probably not something you want to watch late at night, admittedly, as it could prove to be a little… too soothing. This likely worked much better in the Saturday afternoon slot where I viewed it, and could appreciate the landscapes as they unrolled.

It helps that the performances are mostly good to very good, with Dietrich’s performance the epitome of “speak softly and carry a big stick”. The film does a particularly solid job of setting up her character, both by her early interaction with Breck, and a subsequent conversation with Diana Maple (Meg Foster, an equally brief role as Henriksen’s), another settler who encourages and supplies Mary on her quest. However, some characters come off as slightly bland, or in Marrow’s case, over-the-top, and whenever the film is not exploring the countryside, the limited resources are painfully apparent. The “town meeting” at the start, for example, appears to take place in front of a bed-sheet, presumably intended to simulate a large tent of some kind. Given this, the amount of wilderness wandering makes considerable sense.

Lee seems to be a one-man film industry out of the Pacific North-west, with two other movies released in 2018 and two more in post-production. [Not sure I’ll exactly be chasing down Bigfoot pic Big Legend though] This one runs a relatively short 80 minutes, and is probably wise to do so. The film may not even be one to which you need to devote your full attention. The scenery is pretty, the cinematography does it justice, and the music fits in with the whole “chill out in the background” vibe. Pop your head up whenever you hear the sound of gunshots, and you’ll be fine.

Dir: Justin Lee
Star: June Dietrich, Kevin Makely, Todd A. Robinson, Kevin Crow

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