Tag: revenge

I’ll Never Die Alone

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★★½
“Will cross rural Argentina off the list of holiday destinations, in much the same way that Deliverance did for North Georgia.”

I have no problem with rape/revenge movies, providing the balance is skewed more towards the revenge than the rape. Ms. 45, for example, has about five minutes of rape and 60 of revenge. This is fine by me. I am all about the revenge, which should be nasty and brutal, exactly what sexual predators deserve. Actually, so should the rape be, because portraying it any other way is very, very questionable. But that’s something which hardly needs depicting: I’m quite happy taking it as read, thank you very much. Here, the depicted brutalization of four young women goes on far longer than necessary to serve any point.

They appear to be heading home from college – it’s a bit vague – when they see a girl lying beside her bike, injured at the side of the road, and some men with guns nearby, who might just be hunters…or might not be. The women load her into the car, only for the victim to die before they reach the next time. They report it to the two-man police force, who seem less that enthusiastic about investigating. As they leave town, they find themselves being chased by the hunters’ truck, and it’s soon very apparent that their intentions are very, very unpleasant.

To be honest, I largely tuned out the middle portion of this, for reasons explained earlier. That said, when the tables are finally turned, it is certainly satisfying, especially in the final moments of vengeance. Bogliano takes his time in all aspects, which is a double-edged sword: some scenes benefit from the unflinching approach, such as the filling in of a grave, which unfolds in real time and is chilling viewing. However, others are simply dull and pointless, for example, the one where one of the girls goes into a bathroom, smokes a cigarette, changes her shirt and leaves. Really. That’s it. There’s a serious lack of characterization as well, to the point that it’s hard to care too much about the victims, as you’ve been given no reason to do so, or insight into their characters.

The film does improve markedly in the final reel, though this may be as much due to my personal prejudices as any actual change in the direction. But the revenge is certainly memorable, in particular the use of a strand of barbed-wire, in another sequence where Bogliano’s unblinking camera lens comes out as a positive. Much credit is due to all the actresses involved, for going to hell and back in the name of their cinematic art, and the overall impact is certainly better than some of the entries in the genre, as linked below. However, it may simply be too brutal, and the tuning-out mentioned above is something likely to be experienced in an even greater degree by viewers that are more sensitive than I.

Dir: Adrián García Bogliano
Star: Gimena Blesa, Magdalena De Santo, Andrea Duarte, Andres Aramburu
a.k.a. No Morire Sola

Bandit Queen (1994)

  By

★★★
“Not quite Bollywood.”

If you’ve seen Bollywood films, you might expect the same here – a light, breezy romp, interspersed with gratuitous musical numbers. Wrong, on every conceivable level. It’s an almost unrelentingly grim portrayal of the life of Phoolan Devi (Biswas), sold off by her family at the age of 11, abused by her husband (Shrivastava) as well others in the higher-ranked Thakur caste, and basically treated worse than an animal. She’s eventually abducted by a gang of bandits, whose lieutenant Vikram (Pandey) is sympathetic to her: when the leader tries to rape her, Vikram shoots him in the head, and takes over, making Phoolan his co-chief. However, after the group’s true leader is released from prison, he’s none too happy, and sets out to teach Phoolan a lesson than will make her earlier misfortunes seem like paradise.

How much of this is true, is open to debate. Devi was supposedly so upset by the film, she threatened to set herself on fire outside a cinema if the film weren’t withdrawn, but the depth of her anger can be questioned, since she ended up being paid off by the producers. The basics do seem true, and it’s a remarkable story, centred on a performance from Biswas that leaves nothing in the locker. It’s also entirely unlike any other Indian movie I’ve ever seen, being foul-mouthed, brutal, and even contains some full-frontal nudity – though that is far more unsettling than anything else. However, in depicting the hellish life of low-caste women, it goes beyond the eye-opening to the stage where you almost find yourself thinking, “Oh, look: she’s being raped again.” Less would be substantially more, in terms of impact.

It’s definitely more drama than action, with her gang’s raid on a village the main set-piece in this area. Another thing that doesn’t quite work is Biswas being a full decade older than the character she’s playing. In reality, Devi’s rise to bandit infamy and eventual surrender to authorities was all over, while she was still a teenager, which is quite stunning. The movie certainly exposes a side of Indian life unlike one you’ll have seen, even if probably not one you’ll want to see again. But it certainly shows that someone is pushed far enough, they will push back.

Dir: Shekhar Kapur
Star: Seema Biswas, Nirmal Pandey, Aditya Shrivastava, Saurabh Shukla

War Cat

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½
“Time to put this cat out, permanently. “

There aren’t many times I agree with censorship, but the British Board of Film Classification rejected this movie entirely when it was submitted in 1987. I’d like to thank them for saving the public from this appalling piece of dreck for 25 years, even if I think they were probably confusing it with Abel Ferrara’s Ms. 45, which was also known as Angel of Vengeance in the UK. I can’t believe they actually watched this, as it’s so entirely harmless, the only threat it could have posed to the public at large would have been from the wholesale gnawing off of limbs, by viewers desperate to escape the ordeal.

I’ve seen a few Mikels movies now, in and out of our genre here: none have been great, few have even reached acceptable, but this was truly the bottom of the cinematic barrel. In Mikels’ defense, it was a troubled production, to say the least, with original director Ray Dennis Steckler being fired two days into shooting. Producer Jeff Hogue “came up with new ideas almost every day,” according to Mikels, and the cast included Poynter, who had been a cocktail waitress at a Las Vegas casino wuth no acting experience at all. It’s remarkable anything ended up getting released at all.

The story, such as it is by the time all this was endured, focuses on a militia group out in the desert, under Major Hargrove (O’Hara), and to a significantly lesser degree, on Tina Davenport (Poynter), who is writing a book on her deceased father, who just happened to be a soldier. This attracts the attention of some of the more brutish members of Hargrove’s survivalists, who end up kidnapping Tina and taking her out to the camp. Hargrove is annoyed by this, having recently spent a significant chunk of the running-time killing a biker gang, but agrees to Tina’s proposal to give her a chance. Rather than killing her outright, he lets her go, to provide a training exercise for his men, by hunting her down. Of course, her military background means they’re in for a nasty surprise.

It’s nowhere near as interesting at that may sound, not least because the hunt only takes place in the last 30 minutes or less of the movie, and is so badly put-together and executed as to suck any life out of the concept. Up until then, you’ve got to endure an endless stream of scenes that redefine “turgid,” and don’t develop storyline or character. Not even entertainingly bad, just incredibly boring: avoid, at all costs.

Dir: Ted V. Mikels
Star: David O’Hara, Jannina Poynter, Macka Foley, Carl Irwin
a.k.a. Angel of Vengeance

Colombiana

  By

★★★
“The revenge and hit-woman genres could cross-pollinate each other. Just not here.”

There are moments where this seems to have the potential to break out beyond its story, but once you get past the strong central core, the script has very little to offer. Cataleya (Saldana) narrowly escapes death when her parents are killed on the orders of their gangster employer, Don Luis. She flees from Colombia to Chicago and is raised by a family friend, but never forgets where she came from, and has revenge on her mind. Grown-up, she becomes a hit-woman, but has a side-project of payback. She has an occasional boyfriend (Vartan) who knows little about her, and a dogged FBI agent (James), intent on tracking down the mysterious, elusive killer. Y’know: all the usual baggage that goes along with being an assassin.

The action, however, is what rescues this, and when the heroine is in motion, it’s generally fluid and effective. There are two sequences in particular that stand out: Cataleya’s hit of a gangster in prison, and the final showdown where she goes to Don Luis’s headquarters, and takes on… Well, to borrow a famous line from another Besson script, “Everyone!” They are well-staged, with Saldana showing flexibility and athleticism of an impressive degree (Besson’s fondness for parkour also shows up). However, between these two, there isn’t much to speak of; a third sequence, involving a swimming-pool filled with sharks(!) fails, mostly because you’re wondering why the hell Cataleya opted to swim across said pool rather than – oh, I dunno – walking around it?

The background stuff doesn’t work either, particularly the efforts to give her a normal life, which seem both perfunctory and contrived, and Vartan’s role is entirely pointless in emotional terms. I suspect, going by past history, Besson would have been better off directing this himself, not giving it to the man who handled the eminently forgettable Red Siren and Transporter 3. This might be as close to a Leon sequel as we’ll ever get. However, a while back, probably nearly 15 years ago now, I came up with an idea for a film about a woman who witnessed her family being killed, and a decade later, came back for her revenge. I even got as far as starting on a script. While I’m probably biased, I’m pretty sure it was better than Colombiana.

Dir: Olivier Megaton
Star: Zoe Saldana, Lennie James, Michael Vartan, Jordi Molla

Sweet Karma

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★★★½
“Hang on: I thought revenge was sweet, not karma? Oh, well: never mind.”

After she gets word, back in their native Russia, that her sister has been killed in Toronto, Karma (Bechard) vows revenge on those responsible. This pulls her in to a seedy, dangerous world of sex trafficking, with women being lured from Eastern Europe to the West, with the promise of legitimate jobs, only to forced on arrival into working as strippers or worse, by the criminal elements who organize and run the business, with a fist of iron. As Karma stabs, shoots and bludgeons her way up the chain of command, those at the top grow increasingly restless. Initially, they think a rival gang is responsible, but the evidence eventually convinces them Karma is, indeed, a bitch,

This was better than I expected, with the obviously low budget working more for the film than against it, enhancing the ‘grindhouse’ feel that you have here – Karma is mute, which adds a definite resonance of Ms. 45 or Thriller: A Cruel Picture, though little more than that. It’s certainly not short on nudity and violence, but rarely topples over the edge into gratuitous, being largely necessary to bring out exactly how callous those are, treating the women as nothing more than slabs of meat, as in the scene where the girls “learn” pole-dancing.

After the initial death – an assault using office supplies, whose aftermath has Karma puking her guts out into a waste-paper basket – it does take a little while to get back to the nitty-gritty. There’s also a mis-step towards the end, where attention is diverted from the heroine, to an undercover cop (Tokatlidis) who is none too pleased to have his case threatened by an avenging angel. And some of the dialogue is a little too Tarantino-esque, e.g. burbling on about hockey. Well, it is Canadian, I guess.

However, the pluses generally outnumber the minutes, with some imaginative deaths, not least the pimp lured into a bathroom and offered “cocaine” by Karma. Bechard, despite her lack of dialogue, does a good job of putting across the determination she feels in pursuing her goal, and I liked the throbbing techno soundtrack which underscores proceedings. I’m also pleased to see it avoid the faux trappings of some recent genre entries, such as Machete. I was expecting something a good deal shinier, shallower and, well, shittier; instead, it’s a grubby and fairly serious look into a world which we probably would rather ignore.

Dir: Andrew Thomas Hunt
Star: Shera Bechard, John Tokatlidis, Frank J. Zupancic, Christian Bako

Lethal Angels

  By

★★
“I preferred this the first time, when it was called Naked Killer.”

Winnie (Lee) has a grudge: against gang boss Bowen (Yuan) in particular, but also against just about any man who abuses women. She puts together a team of four underlings, such as Yoyo (Sum), whose family was killed by thugs, and uses them to take out anyone whose lustful desires overwhelm their common sense. Now, it’s time for the big one: Bowen. Winnie sends Yoyo in as an undercover nanny, to scope things out and obtain evidence of Bowen’s illegal dealings. However, once in, she finds out that Bowen is now largely reformed, and Yoyo also objects to Winnie’s plan to wipe out all of Bowen’s family, including his six-year old daughter. Meanwhile, she’s also being investigated by Jet (On), a cop who knew and almost dated her at college, and is on the case of the mysterious deaths of mob bosses at the hands of beautiful ladies.

This is just too restrained to work. There’s a striptease routine by one of the minor underlings at the start, but after that, it conspicuously fails to live up to its alternate title, of Naked Avengers. Lee is good value as the overlord, but if you think you’ve seen it all before, you probably have. Even the scene where one of the girls has to take on a chained pervert for training purposes is lifted, wholesale, from Naked Killer – except, rather than in a dungeon, it appears here to take part in a car-park or something. [There’s a prominent “keep left” sign in the background, whose looming presence reminded me of nothing more than the ending to a Monty Python sketch]

The action occasionally has its moments, but rarely gets above competent, and it’s only in the final battle, where the schisms in the group fracture and send it on a path of self-destruction, that things become somewhat interesting, and it’s a case of too little, too late. Instead, there’s too much time spent on Jet, who is a waste of space and screen-time, and his lacks of charisma means his relationship with Yoyo has as much chemistry as…as… a thing that doesn’t contain any chemistry. Man, I hate it when a simile falls apart, half-way through. Or is it a metaphor? That I was pondering such grammatical issues during the viewing, probably tells you more about the film than anything else. If there’s a single way in which Naked Killer isn’t clearly better, I think I missed it.

Dir: Steve Cheng
Star: Tin Sum, Andy On, Jewel Lee, Yuan Yuan

The Sexy Killer

  By

★★½
“Cheap Chinese knock-offs aren’t limited to toys and electronics.”

Not to be confused, in any way with SexyKiller, this 1976 Shaw Brothers film is more of an unofficial remake of Coffy. Wanfei (Ping), a nurse by day, decides to go vigilante by night, after her sister falls victim to druglords and ends up brain-damaged and drooling. With most of the police force in the pockets of the dealers, Wanfei opts to go undercover as a drug-addict of loose morals, so she can make her way up the chain of command, to deliver justice on behalf of her sister to the sinister Boss (Hsia). This finds her an ally in Weipin (Hua), a childhood friend and honest cop whose hands are tied by pesky bureaucratic niceties, like “needing a search warrant”; she’s also encouraged by her pundit boyfriend (Wei), who has long taken a strong anti-drug stance.

This has its moments, and I’m likely remembering those more fondly than the movie overall, which grinds to a halt in the middle, and diverts far too much running time over to Weipin. Action-wise, this is from the Dark Ages of Hong Kong movies, after the death of Bruce Lee and before Jackie Chan resurrected the genre. The fights here are pedestrian and poorly-staged, with Ping’s credentials particularly limited, though male viewers may be distracted by her alternative assets [another review described her as spending most of her career lying on her back, and there’s plenty of that to go around here too]. The problem with remakes, is you inevitably compare them to the original, and while the heroine here is easy on the eye, there’s a reason Pam Grier is a genre icon, and Chen Ping isn’t.

Onto those “moments” mention above, which are the film’s saving grace. They start with Wanfei’s showing off her topless kung-fu, and build up to her crashing a car into the Boss’s mansion and letting loose on his minions with her shot-gun, apparently made by Perpetually Loaded Armaments, Inc. The film’s highlight probably comes when we discover what happens when you fire said weapon at a water-bed, which is something the Time Warp crew really should be looking into. However, between the opening and the finale, this comes over mostly as a pale (literally) imitation of Pam Grier’s journey down the same path, from three years previously.

Dir: Chung Sun
Star: Chen Ping, Yueh Hua, Wang Hsia, Szu Wei
a.k.a. The Drug Connection

Dirty Weekend

  By

★★★
“This is the story of Bella, who woke up one morning and decided she’d had enough.”

So opens this rare example of British grindhouse. We don’t generally do that genre – it’s just not us, all that violence. But there are odd exceptions, and this would be one. It’s the story of Bella (Williams), who relocates from London to the genteel seaside town of Brighton after splitting up with her boyfriend. However, her flat is overlooked by a window belonging to Tim (Sewell); he begins a series of increasingly-vile phone-calls to Bella, who is terrified at what might happen. A chance encounter with an Iranian clairvoyant (Ian Richardson – yeah, about that…) changes her ‘from a lamb to a butcher’, and she visits Tim in the middle of the night, smashing his head in with a hammer. Galvanized by this, Bella moves on to further “sanitation”, cleaning the not-so mean Brighton streets of other male scum. Meanwhile, a serial killer who preys on young women is gradually moving towards her location.

From the director of the controversial Death Wish, it’s as if Winner said, “Hah! You though that was bad? I’m going to make the heroine female and turn it into a war of the sexes, with every man a sleazy caricature. And it’ll include the Man from UNCLE as a perverted dentist!” It certainly turns your typical British film conceits upside-down, yet still retains that undeniable character: when Bella first sees Tim spying on her, she simply draws the curtains. Her transformation from mouse into avenging angel is impressively put-together, and no doubt Winner was influenced by Ms. 45, with Bella pulling on her stockings and acting out a gun-battle.

But the problem in this case is, Bella’s transformation doesn’t make a difference. In Ms. 45, the interesting moral dilemma was, that our initial sympathy for the central character proved misplaced, as she moved towards killing innocent men. Here, it’s just an ongoing series of repugnant, shallow stereotypes, and attempts to give them depth e.g. with McCallum, are a miserable failure. [Amusingly, one of the thugs she takes out in an alley would go on to greater things: Sean Pertwee has become a genre mainstay, in the likes of Dog Soldiers and Doomsday. Another, Christopher Ryan, was Mike in The Young Ones and has since carved a niche playing Sontarans in Doctor Who!] The subplot with the approaching serial-killer is a complete mis-fire too, and after achieving potential cult-classic level in the middle, it falls short. Still, it’s better than you might think, and is certainly one of a kind.

Dir: Michael Winner
Star: Lia Williams, Rufus Sewell, David McCallum, Michael Cule

Virgins From Hell

  By

★★★
“Not as good as the trailer. Then again, how could it be?”

Let’s start with that trailer, shall we?

Like I said: no way it could live up to that, and I must confess, my consciousness was being sorely troubled by the end. It’s about two sisters (Beatrice and Farida), who watch the gang of the evil, if nattily-dressed Mr. Tiger (Zulkarnaen) kill their parents and vow to take revenge, recruiting a bunch of like-hotpanted colleague to assist. Unfortunately, the attempt goes badly, and they end up in Tiger’s dungeon, subjected to various indignities, such as being stuffed into a sack with a peeved mongoose, or tied to a spit and roasted. They eventually bust out, with the help of their captor’s pet chemist, Larry (Capri), who has been tasked with producing large volumes of an aphrodisiac, from which Tiger can profit. It all climaxes in a massive battle between the gang and…the other gang.

Let’s be clear: most of the entertainment to be found in this, is strictly of the “so bad it’s fun” variety. For instance, we perpetually found ourselves in Evil Overlord mode, i.e. “If ever I become an evil overlord, I will ensure my compound is not dotted with large, explosive barrels, clearly marked DANGER.” The lameness of this is often amusing, such as the complete aversion to nudity, an obvious product of its origins – the heroines even take baths with their clothes on. Other elements are just bizarre, if educational: it appears, if you get shot, you can jam a live snake into the wound and it will come out holding the bullet in its teeth.

Great as this may sound, the novelty and appeal do evaporate steadily, with the cheapjack production values, non-existent characterization and idiotic plotlines eventually more outstaying their welcome, even for a fan of badfilm like me. The highpoint is likely the gratuitous appearance of a musak cover of Nights in White Satin. It will have Justin Heyward on speed-dial to his agent, and you’re likely better off watching the trailer again.

Dir: Ackyl Anwari
Star: Enny Beatrice, Yenny Farida, Harry Capri, Dicky Zulkarnaen

Hora (The Whore)

  By

★★
“Grindhouse, Norwegian style.”

Crime-writer Rikke (Vibe) heads out to her former home in the country for a quiet few days catching up on her work. There she bumps into a guy whom she hasn’t seen since she was eight, but who still seems to have the hots for her. She declines his advances, telling him of her husband back in the city, but he persists in his efforts, along with his policeman friend, and the backward clerk in a local convenience-store. A dead animal is left on her doorstep, and that’s only a precursor to a long, brutal assault on Rikke that leaves her battered and bruised, almost beyond recognition. However, barely have the rapists left, before she is already planning her revenge on each one of them, and it will be every bit as unpleasant.

Yes, it’s basically I Spit on Your Grave with a Scandinavian accent, and I’m not sure this is quite what the world needs. While I’ve no problem per se with rape-revenge movies, I am far more interested in the revenge part of the equation. See, for instance, Ms. 45, which gets to that side of things inside about 15 minutes, and is all the better for it. Here, once you get past the opening scene, the first 45 minutes are largely Rikke lounging around the cabin in her dressing-gown. She pecks away on the computer, occasionally chats to her husband (who seems more than a bit of a jerk, especially when drunk), and has uncomfortable interactions with her admirers. Then there’s the attack itself, which is vicious and unpleasant – exactly how cinematic rape should be, of course, but this doesn’t make it any more pleasant to watch, especially at the length depicted here.

Finally, we get to the revenge, and it’s pretty much as you’d expect. Indeed, the entire thing is more or less what you would imagine from the synopsis, and that’s perhaps the main issue. There’s only a couple of moments where Kiil shows flair and while Vibe (a stripper and porn star) is decent enough in the role, you don’t get much sense of Rikke’s character or personality. That’s where the impact – both from the rape, and the subsequent revenge – originates, and as a result, this left me feeling a bit like a poorly-made martini, neither shaken nor stirred.

Dir: Reinert Kiil
Star: Isabel Vibe, Jørgen Langhelle, Kenneth Falkenberg, Gaute Næsheim