Tag: revenge

Tornado

  By

★★½
“That’s my father’s sword. Put it down.”

It’s a samurai film. Except, it’s a Western. Only, it’s one which takes place in Scotland. I trust that’s cleared up any confusion here. However, you will still need to manage your expectations, because based on both the poster and the trailer, it would be easy to go in expecting something action-packed. It is not. At all. That element is heavily back-loaded, to the final fifteen minutes. It does include one of the more imaginative and splattery kills I’ve seen this year. Probably a bonus half-star for that alone. However, it’s more a movie about mood, atmosphere and scenery than arterial spray. But I lived in Scotland. I already know it’s pretty.

This unfolds at almost the very end of the 18th century, when Fujin (Hira) and his daughter Tornado (Kōki) are taking their samurai puppet show around the Scottish lowlands. She comes into possession of some gold, which has been stolen from a church by a gang, led by Sugarman (Roth) and his son, Little Sugar (Lowden). They’re not happy, and pursue the caravan in which she’s travelling with her father. This leads to a confrontation in which Fujin is killed, albeit not before badly wounding Sugarman. Tornado flees into the forest, to regroup, and eventually plot her revenge against the robber and his pals, using the skills taught to her, to pick them off one by one on her way to the inevitable final confrontation with Sugarman. 

I respect what this is trying to do, and it’s certainly a combination of genres and settings which I had not seen before. Unfortunately, the execution is plagued with a number of missteps, which hamper the end results and negate many of the positive elements. Right from the start, we are thrown into the middle of things, with Tornado running from Sugarman and his henchmen. The film is curiously reluctant to tell us what is going on – or, more importantly, why we should care – being too leisurely to fill in the blanks. There’s also a cut-out between the gang and Tornado, in the shape of a kid who actually carried out the initial theft. Beyond giving the heroine ‘clean hands’, it’s an unnecessary complication. 

On the performance side, Roth is good value as ever in a villainous role: I was inevitably reminded of Rob Roy, where he previously played the bad guy in 18th-century Scotland. Kōki has rather more experience as a model than an actress, and director MacLean wisely keeps the need for actual dramatics to a minimum, opting to make her the stoic samurai type, so she’s good enough. It all looks quite lovely, so while you are waiting around for something much to happen – which will be the majority of the hour and a half – you can admire the cinematography and picturesque Scottish landscapes. It wasn’t quite enough for me. While possible to admire the intent, this is likely a case of “It’s not you, it’s me.” 

Dir: John Maclean
Star: Kōki, Tim Roth, Takehiro Hira, Jack Lowden

Bandit Queen (1950)

  By

★★★
“Whip it good.”

There can’t be many Westerns of the fifties where the Yankees are the bad guys. Yet here we are. In mid-19th century California, to be precise, just after it became part of the US. The new owners enthusiastically threw the existing, Mexican inhabitants off their lands, in the search for gold, using harsh taxation as a weapon against them. And worse, if this is to be believed. For it begins with the callous murder of the Montalvo family, but the legalized thugs responsible don’t realize daughter Zara (Britton) has survived. She takes on two false identities out of necessity: white girl Lola Belmont for Detroit, but also Zara, masked, whip-wieldiing outlaw. As the latter, she seeks justice for her parents, and also “Robin Hoods” the stolen gold back to its rightful owners.

There’s another outlaw, Carlos del Rio, a.k.a. Joaquin Murietta (Reed), also operating along similar lines. But also complicating matters is the local tycoon for whom “Lola” falls, Dan Hinsdale (Parker). Because it turns out his wealth largely stems from being the acceptable face of these legalized thugs. When Murietta is captured, it’s Zara who has to break him out, and the pair them team up, both romantically and in their causes. Their predations have caused enough problems to merit the army getting called in, but there’s also a movement to repeal the tax laws at the heart of the land grabs: which will succeed in their goal first?

It’s obviously a feminine knock-off of Zorro, to the extent in Germany it was released as Zorro’s Daughter. Given the obviously Hispanic leanings, it’s a shame the players involved are so thoroughly and obviously non-Hispanic. The honourable exception is Garralaga as local priest Father Antonio, who for much of the film is the only person to know the truth about both Zara and Joaquin. I wouldn’t expect too much from the heroine here: riding a horse and cracking a whip is about the limit of the on-screen action. Though she is responsible for the (off-screen) deaths of those present when her parents were killed, and does shoot the big villain in the final showdown. If unconvincing as a Mexican, Britton has a righteous intensity about the situation that is effective, and held my interest throughout. 

She is certainly more interesting than Parker or Reed, who are blandly handsome in the way leading men of the time typically were. Making a bigger impression in the supporting cast is little person actor Angelo Rossitto, whose career spanned sixty years, including both cult classic Freaks and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Running barely over an hour long, this is probably a case where less is more: the narrative is generally slight, but good enough. I particularly enjoyed the heroine switching from Lola to Zara, then back again, in order to free Joaquin without causing suspicion. Despite the obviously low budget, this was not a chore to watch, and is as good as some of the other Zorro-related entries we’ve covered here, such as Zorro’s Black Whip.

Dir: William Berke
Star: Barbara Britton, Willard Parker, Phillip Reed, Martin Garralaga

Bikini Nuns

  By

★½
“Nunacceptable.”

On seeing the title and poster (which looks suspiciously AI-generated, and I know AI-generated warrior nun imagery) for this, I immediately knew two things. Firstly, I had to review it for the site. And secondly, it was going to suck like an Electrolux. And, verily, the prophecies did come to pass. Here is the review, and it is, indeed, pretty terrible. Chris’s sarcasm did flow mightily, and I’m going to have watch a large number of episodes of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations with her, to make up for this abomination. Not that there isn’t scope for an interesting story, involving a cadre of warrior nuns, seeking revenge for a long-past atrocity. It’s just that this is not that movie. Indeed, it’s barely a movie at all. 

The three Sisters of No Mercy here (have I used that joke before? It feels vaguely familiar) are Mary (Wunna), Sarah (Rakhvalova) and Eva (Legallais-Moha), operating under the guidance of a priest (Kouros), and seeking to find those responsible for the 1992 massacre of an orphanage. Quite why they have waited so long before embarking on this mission is unclear, as is why they insist on questioning people far too young to have been in any way involved. Except possibly as orphans. They gradually work their way up the chain, in scenes which are excruciating only in their lack of pacing to find the man supposedly at the top, Victor Vargas. Only to find – gasp! – there’s one final twist as to who was behind the incident, and its purpose.

There’s about enough material in this for a quarter-hour short. It actually runs ninety-eight glacial minutes. The difference is filled with scenes in which one of the nuns walks into a room in her underwear and puts on her nun attire, with no sense of urgency at all. Seriously, if there’s one of these scenes, there’s at least six of them. They are seen lounging by the pool in bikinis once, so I’m not going to claim the title is entirely inaccurate. But I feel that Nunderwear would have been more appropriate. I will defer to the experts over at Nunsploitation.Net to pick apart the film’s accuracy, for things like nun accessories worn inside out, etc. I wasn’t expecting accuracy, or even anything convincing.

But, if I may be forgiven an appropriately religious appeal: Christ, this is dull. Witness the strip poker scene which had us wondering if we had misunderstood the whole purpose of the game. I mean, why do you need poker chips? Don’t you bet with your clothes? Isn’t that the point? If the makes had actually bought wholesale into the premise, and had fun with it, this could have worked. There is a tension between Old Testament vengeance, and New Testament forgiveness, which could have been fertile ground for exploitatative exploration. Instead, this would have had more energy if performed by a troupe of sloths. Blasphemy has never been so dull. 

Dir: Sushank Kini
Star: Chrissie Wunna, Clara Legallais-Moha, Christopher Kouros, Anna Rakhvalova

The Zwickys

  By

★★½
“Half-baked”

This is distinctly a film of two halves. The first is undeniably more impressive, taking the revenge motif and going in an interesting, and at least somewhat novel, direction. However, not long after the half-way point, the script decides to change direction radically. This leaves behind the grounded entity which we’ve had so far, in favour of something with distinct supernatural tendencies. I’m not averse to these per se. Yet they’re an ill fit with what has gone before, and need to be integrated considerably better. Then, things derail completely for the finale, pulling things out of nowhere to achieve a solution, in a gobbet of exposition that completely lost my interest. So, probably 3½ stars for the first half, 1½ for the second. 

It’s the story of the two titular sisters, Kayden (Arias) and Julie (Bennett) – Americans, but now living in Honduras. So if nothing else here, that’s another country crossed off the action heroine map, with the story unfolding in a mix of Spanish and English. Kayden is married (though I guess, hasn’t changed her surname). Or, rather: she was, until her husband is shot and killed by an intruder, when Kayden is out. The local police are useless, whether through incompetence, laziness or corruption, it’s hard to tell. Kayden decides she’s going to take revenge. There are some problems with this. Firstly, she doesn’t have a gun. Secondly, she doesn’t know who to take revenge against.

It’s here where the film is interesting, because a complete lack of experience isn’t something you see often in the vengeance subgenre. It’s quite striking, along with Julie being the voice of reason, and the film’s strongest scene is probably when the sisters are negotiating for a gun with a local dealer. They’re utterly out of their depth, and I was looking forward to seeing how this might all play out. How would they find the target? The answer? A seance with local shaman Miguel (Lagos). Betcha didn’t see that coming. He’s not even particularly helpful, beyond suggesting that Kayden might actually still be in danger. It takes the instigator – and it’s someone I think we’d barely seen, if at all – to show up at Kayden’s house and explain everything.

While the occult stuff was certainly unexpected, and doesn’t really serve a significant purpose, it was at least entertaining, and Lagos makes for a creepy psychic. Admittedly, digging up the corpse of her dead husband to retrieve his wedding ring was… a bit of a stretch. Still, it’s the final section which truly sinks the film, triggering one of the biggest cases of, “Is that it? Really?” I’ve suffered over the past couple of years. None of it made sense, especially in the light of Kayden’s earlier and unchallenged proclamation that nobody knew her late spouse better than her. When a film has to lie to the viewer like that, it loses almost all credibility. Turn this off after a hour, trust me on that.

Dir: The Valle Brothers
Star: Silvana Arias, Melany Bennett, Edwin Lagos, Sheyla Downing

Red Sonja (2025)

  By

★★★
“Better red than dead?”

It has been forty years since the first crack at adapting the Marvel comic series, in turn inspired by Robert E. Howard’s character, Red Sonya of Rogatino. The first stab, released in the wake of Conan, starred Brigitte Nielsen, and was pretty bad. There have been rumblings of further attempts over the years, with a Robert Rodriguez version, starring Rose Macgowan, gaining traction in the late 2000’s. Though given the dreck in which Macgowan has appeared, it’s probably for the best this never came to fruition. Instead, we have a lower profile – read, smaller budget – version from director Bassett, who previously gave us mercenary Megan Fox, and lead Lutz, who was totally awesome taking her Revenge. 

Indeed, that would make a fine “Matilda Lutz overcomes impalement to take vengeance” double-bill with this. The reboot isn’t bad at all. It certainly is miles better than the eighties version, mostly because of Lutz. She may not be quite as muscular or buxom as the comic-book version. But she does bring the required intensity, and that goes a decent way to making this watchable. The supporting cast are good too, although I was less convinced by the plot in general, which is little more than a grab-bag of clichés. We begin with the quick slaughter of Sonja’s village, then see the adult Sonja (Lutz) roaming the forests of Hyrkania. These are under threat from Emperor Dragan (Sheehan) and his psycho sidekick, Annisia (Day). 

After being captured, Sonja is made to fight in gladiatorial combat. She helps the other captives escape, and they fight a guerilla war to prevent Drakan from obtaining the other half of a mystical tome which has great power. Sonja is almost killed by Annisia – the impalement mentioned above! – but brought back by Ashera, the forest goddess, to face her enemies again. Pretty rote fantasy stuff, in other words. It’s the stuff around the edges that is more fun and, beyond the lead actress, is where the improvement is biggest over the Nielsen version. 

I enjoyed the arena scenes, which felt like Spartacus with monsters. Always nice to see Rhona Mitra (Doomsday), though her role is briefer than I’d like. I also liked Day, whose portrayal of Annisia is entertainingly unhinged, like a psycho version of Lady Gaga. Her relationship with Dragan doesn’t play out as I thought, and I would have preferred more places where the script confounded expectations in this way. I was a little disappointed by the fights, which aren’t as hard-hitting as I expected. Although they feel workmanlike and competent, the hits only seem to have much impact on a couple of occasions. Some editing might have helped: 110 minutes feels longer than necessary.

On the other hand, for a reported $17 million budget, it looks decent, and Bulgaria offers some impressive backdrops on which to paint things like the largely-CGI arena. There are occasional moments of self-effacing humour which help, such as the scene where Sonja gets her battle bikini. The end clearly wants a sequel: however, the very token cinema release (one midweek screening in theatres!) suggests the studio had little faith in it. A pity. I’ve definitely seen much worse, and would welcome further tales of Hyrkania. 

Dir: MJ Bassett
Star: Matilda Lutz, Robert Sheehan, Wallis Day, Luca Pasqualino

Robbin

  By

★½
“Robbed of two hours of my life.”

I’ve seen worse films, to be quite clear. Technically, this is perfectly acceptable, with an apparently reasonable budget, put to decent use. But I don’t think I’ve seen one which has been more annoying. It manages to hit that sweep spot of being both incredibly stupid, while also congratulating itself for being very smart in its attempts at social commentary. But the annoyance extends beyond that, to purely instinctive reactions like really bad hairstyles sported by some players. I can’t explain these responses, and am not interested in analyzing or defending them. But they certainly played their part in my steadily increasing irritation at the plot, characters and execution, over an excessively long running-time of one hundred and sixteen minutes.

The heroine is Robbin (Serayah) – and, yes, there are two b’s there. She is a former bank employee, who was falsely accused of stealing two million dollars. With the evidence stacked against her, she took a plea agreement rather than risk a long jail sentence. When she gets out, she decides the best way to respond is… by actually stealing from the bank. Yeah. Let that morality and wisdom sink in. She assembles her old crew from the South Central ‘hood where she grew up, and they begin planning their heist. But one theft is deemed insufficient payback, and another, even bigger robbery is planned. This is despite the increasing attentions of the police, including a detective (Lee), who has known Robbin and her friends since they were kids.

Far and away the worst thing here is the script, also by Stokes. It demonstrates a repeated, startling level of ignorance about how banks work, how computers work [authority check: I spent over a decade in IT with HSBC], and how the police work. For example, in the world of this movie, a detective under announced and active investigation by Internal Affairs for corruption, is not only allowed to keep working on the case concerned, she then gets to lead a raid on the suspects’ base of operations. #NotHowCopsOperate Hell, you could possibly also throw how criminals work onto this heaping pile of no-knowledge, since at one point a robber clearly asks a bank cashier for “No unmarked bills.” Um… shouldn’t that be “No marked bills”? 

Then there’s the whole clunky parallels to Robin Hood, beginning with the heroine’s first name. All her team – fresh off robbing a convenience store, I note – suddenly acquire altruistic reasons for their move into big-ticket crime. Add on a nasty racial strand, where just about everyone black is good, and everyone white is malicious and evil, to an almost tiresome degree, and you will perhaps begin to see from where my irritation stems. “Tubi Originals” are well-known for setting a low bar, to put it kindly. This falls short of reaching that bar.  If it weren’t for the fact that Tubi is a free service, I would seriously be contemplating cancelling my subscription.

Dir: Chris Stokes
Star: Serayah, Erica Pinkett, Jadah Blue, Robinne Lee

Get My Gun

  By

★★★½
“Inside out.”

You could accuse this film of pulling a bait-and-switch. The first thirty minutes are set up to point emphatically towards one scenario. It then goes off in a completely different direction for much of the final hour – one very clearly inspired by French New Wave of Horror masterpiece, À l’interieur (Inside). Then it circles back around to kinda-sorta tie up the loose ends. Fortunately, I came into this one with almost no preconceptions. A poster of a nun wielding a shotgun? That’s all it took to add this one to my watch-list, and whatever happened thereafter was alright with me. Providing it delivered on the promise of a heavily-armed Sister of No Mercy on the advertising, at least.

It does, somewhat – though I have reason to doubt her nun authenticity. It’s Amanda (Hoffman), whom we first see forcing a man into the trunk of her car at the point of her boomstick. We then flashback to her working as a hotel maid, alongside BFF Rebecca (Casey). One day, Amanda is raped by a hotel guest (Jousset), whom we recognize as the man getting trunked, and ends up getting pregnant. She decides to keep it – that’s a discussion in itself – but to offer the baby up for adoption, and the selected parent is Dr. Catherine Gilden (Rubino), who initially appears perfect. Key word there: initially. Because Catherine becomes too stalkery for Amanda’s tastes, so she breaks off the arrangement. Which is where the film makes a sharp right.

Admittedly, in the annals of poor decisions, Amanda escaping her stalker by going to a remote cabin owned by Rebecca’s dad, is probably not the best idea. Anyone who has ever seen a horror movie can predict how well this works, i.e. not at all. After a brief homage to The Shining, we’re off to the races, with Catherine and Amanda engaged in a no-holds barred battle over the unborn child. Well, some holds barred: Inside, now that was truly no-holds barred, most memorably when Beatrice Dalle tried to excavate the disputed foetus with scissors from its mother. Nothing so extreme here, although this does have its moments. For good reason does Amanda proclaim, “Why won’t you fucking die?”

I would probably have to admit, this is rather more fun than the early going, though the relationship between Amanda and Rebecca feels genuine. You will probably learn more about the process of cleaning hotel rooms than you wanted to know, and it feels as if the makers suddenly realized the movie they originally set out to make wasn’t very interesting. I feel the second half makes up for it, and it’s clear by the end, when we circle round to her assailant, that Amanda has been changed by her experience. I certainly have questions, not least about Rebecca’s fate, and its definitely not as grindhouse as it thinks it is. But as a nasty slice of female empowerment, I reckon this certainly has its moments.

Dir: Brian Darwas
Star: Kate Hoffman, Rosanne Rubino, Christy Casey, William Jousset

The Ballerina

  By

★★
“Not particularly on point.”

Here’s a real obscurity. 18 years old, and yet still with a mere seven votes on the IMDb. There, I had to find it by going through the director’s name, as the title brought up nothing. To be fair, it’s not even the best-known film of the year, because some guy called David Lynch made a short called Ballerina in 2007. But it turns out to be an early work from Mauser, whose Lady Outlaw we covered earlier in January. That was certainly better – as it should be, coming almost two decades later, the director having made a good forty (!) features since. It doesn’t look like his budgets have increased much, but Outlaw does a better job of working within it.

Here, the ballerina is Tara, a ten-year-old girl who sees her parents ruthlessly gunned down because of their connection to the Capello crime family. She vows to find and kill whoever was responsible, and is brought up by her big brother Angelo (Jasso). He trains her in the ways of his own profession, as a hitman for the Capellos. Eight years later, Tara (Nutting) still has not been able to take her revenge, and is studying dance at college, while working alongside Angelo. She gets a visit from the mysterious Ruby (Young), a near-legendary figure in the underworld, who offers to tell Tara who killed her parents, if she helps fix things to his advantage. But she may not like what she is told. 

Mauser clearly subscribes to the notion that talk is cheap, for it is very chatty. Sometimes, this is ok: Young has a presence which commands the listener’s attention. But too often it comes off as a bad Tarantino wannabe – and even a good Tarantino wannabe would be on thin ice. Witness the lengthy early discussion about smoking, which had me wishing I had a knitting needle to jab into my ears. Fortunately, nothing thereafter is quite as terrible. However, it’s a film more interested in telling, rather than showing. There’s a corrupt female cop (Posas) in the mix, and I liked the way all the police station scenes were shot in shadow. Clearly to hide that they couldn’t afford a set, yet it works well enough. 

The action is no great shakes, with Nutting being slow and having a limited set of moves. Certainly, there’s little or no indication of the expected balletic grace. She seems about as much a dancer as I am: I won’t see fifty again, and my knees aren’t what they used to be. Jasso comes off like you ordered Joe Mantegna on Temu, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, It all builds to an ending which strongly suggests Mauser is a big fan of The Usual Suspects in addition to Tarantino. As a pastiche of better film-makers, it’s just about okay, though the ten-year-old version of the heroine may be the most disturbingly intense thing this has to offer. 

Dir: Brett William Mauser
Star: :Amanda Nutting, Matthew Jasso, DeMarcus Young, Valerie Posas

Ballerina (2025)

  By

★★★★½
“If the ballet slipper fits…”

When I reviewed Furiosa, I discussed how action heroine films have been having a tough time at the box-office since before COVID-19. Add another data point to that decline, with the underwhelming performance of Ballerina. Or, to give it its clunky and excessive full title (for the first and only time), From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. Which – much like Furiosa – is a real shame, because it’s top-tier stuff. The critics liked it (76% on Rotten Tomatoes) and those who saw it, liked it too (93% audience score there). But it just did not seem to connect in a large-scale way with the cinema-going public, and will struggle to cover its $90 million budget, not excessive by today’s standards. 

Admittedly, it was a rather troubled production. Filming began all the way back in November 2022, and it was in post-production the following February. But a year later, word came out that additional shooting under John Wick director Chad Stahelski was taking place. There’s uncertainty how significant those were. Suggestions that much of the film was redone have been denied by both Stahelski and Wiseman, who said they were actually due to the studio providing them with additional resources. This allowed them to add scenes, such as the opening depicting the death of the heroine’s father. But regardless, the extra work was certainly a factor in the film being pushed back a full twelve months from its original release date of June 2024.

To be honest though, I really couldn’t tell based on the end product. I have read a lot of criticism suggesting, in brief, “Nobody asked for this.” While that’s dumb – nobody asked for John Wick either – there is an element of truth in it. If they wanted a spin-off, they might have been better using Sofia Al-Azwar, the existing character played by Halle Berry, who was key to one of the best scenes in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum. It’s worth noting, the script by Shay Hatten, written back in 2017, was not originally part of the Wick universe (although Hatten was inspired by the trailer for John Wick 2), and subsequently got tooled into it. But I wonder, how often are spin-off movies ever successful? Ok, except the Minions franchise. 

It’s not the first effort to expand the Wick-iverse which has fallen short either. In 2023, they made a TV mini-series The Continental, which… Um, well… We watched the first episode? You’re certainly left to wonder what might happen about the other spin-off film, focused on Caine, the blind swordman played by Donnie Yen in John Wick 4. We love Yen, and have since the days of In the Line of Duty IV, over 35 years ago. But he has a much lower profile in the West than Ana de Armas, and the appetite for films “from the world of John Wick” which do not have Wick front and center, certainly appears to be muted. Enough about such coarse, commercial considerations. How is Ballerina as a movie?

In this world, there are two specific tribes of assassins. The Ruska Roma, who are structured and orderly, and another group, known as the Cult, who are anarchic and savage. Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Evil, for those who know their D&D alignments. The two groups don’t get along, but generally tolerate each other, basically agreeing to go their separate ways and not interfere, under the current leadership of the Director (Huston) and the Chancellor (Byrne) respectively. A decade or so ago, there was Romeo and Juliet-style romance across the divided houses, resulting in the birth of Eve. When her parents tries to leave their factions, both are killed, her father dying in front of her after being killed by the Cult. She is then brought up in the Ruska Roma.

Eve (de Armas) is trained both as an assassin and a ballerina, although the latter is never of any real significance. On one of her missions, she encounters a Cult member and realizes they are responsible for killing her father. Against the express wishes of the Director, she goes in search of them, finding their headquarters in the remote (and very lovely) Austrian town of Hallstatt, and chewing her way through the Cult towards the Chancellor. But when the Director hears about Eve’s quest for vengeance, posing a threat to the uneasy truce between the Ruska Roma and the Cult, she sends a certain J. Wick (Reeves) after her, to restore the balance and keep the peace. 

It’s borderline awesome, and on occasion, there’s no “borderline” about it. Let’s just say, I will now be looking into acquiring a flamethrower for home defense. Ok, I should explain. There’s a scene where Eve and one of the Cult members have a – bold font, capital letters, please – DUEL WITH FLAMETHROWERS. It’s every bit as epic and wonderful as that sounds, and it escapes me how they could possibly have achieved it, without reducing the entire stunt team to charcoal briquettes. That’s just the action highlight in a film which has a number of them. I was also impressed with the nightclub sequence – is this obligatory for every film in the Wick-iverse? – of Eve’s first mission, as much for the thumping techno tunes, as for the high-quality fisticuffs. 

I do say, some elements feel under-developed, and I wonder if they were a result of the adjustments made during production. The character of Daniel Pine (Norman Reedus), seems particularly an afterthought, not least the fact he’s supposed to be the Chancellor’s son. Adding John Wick in does feel like an unnecessary afterthought and, to be honest, smells a little of desperation. It’s just not necessary, because de Armas is capable of carrying things. This is likely, not just to be the best action heroine film of the year, it’s quite possibly – admittedly, I haven’t seen the last Mission Impossible film yet – going to end up as the best action film of 2025. Such a pity it appears likely to be one and done for this tiny dancer. 

Dir: Len Wiseman
Star: Ana de Armas, Gabriel Byrne, Anjelica Huston, Keanu Reeves

Sira

  By

★★
“Just deserts.”

Sira (Cissé) is a young African woman, travelling through the fringes of the Sahara Desert in Burkina Faso, on the way to get married to Jean-Sidi (Barry). However, their caravan gets involved in an incident with Islamic terrorists, which escalates into murder, with Sira being abducted by the terrorist leader, Yéré (Minoungou). He changes his mind, raping Sira and leaving her in the desert, because she is “not worthy” to die by his weapon. She survives, and stumbles across the terrorist camp, and takes shelter nearby, sneaking in to obtain food and water. After a group of other kidnapped women show up, to be used as sex slaves, Sira begins to put a plan in motion, with help from an unexpected ally.

Lured in by the poster, I was hoping for something along the lines of Revenge, especially in the wake of early dialogue about how the heroine had been trained to take care of herself by her brothers. But this is a very different kettle of fish. I have a bunch of questions, not least over the time frame involved. Sira is living in the rocks beside the camp for the better part of a year. It’s long enough, to go from not being aware of a pregnancy, to giving birth in the same rocks. While it’s certainly a memorable image to have her blazing away with an automatic weapon, her child strapped across her back… It doesn’t make a great deal of sense.

Yéré’s terrorists don’t appear to do anything much for the great bulk of the time either, except sitting around. They do eventually go out on an attack in the final twenty minutes, but the amount of terror they generate is minimal. Indeed, everyone does their share of sitting around since nobody seems particularly bothered by Sira’s long-term absence. The police, and the authorities in general, are notable by their absence until the very end. Though this may be an accurate assessment of the local situation; I can’t say. Jean-Sidi makes a half-hearted effort to join up with Yéré’s forces. The fact he’s a Christian proves a bit of an instant red flag there, and Yéré does not take kindly to the attempt. 

It’s only at the very end things crack open, with the terrorist camp proving to be unexpectedly flammable. It does offer a glimpse into a culture of which I had little experience or knowledge, and Sira is an interesting character, one whose resilience is remarkable, given the circumstances under which she has to operate. This was the first time Burkina Faso submitted a movie to the Oscars (it was filmed in Mauritania for safety reasons), and is technically decent. But for a film over two hours long, it’s in need of significantly greater narrative impetus. It has the shape of a thriller, yet definitely wants to be a drama. At least I get to cross another country off my map of world cinema.

Dir: Apolline Traoré
Star: Nafissatou Cissé, Lazare Minoungou, Abdramane Barry, Nathalie Vairac