Tag: revenge

Asking for It (2020)

  By

★★
“A Net loss.”

Not to be confused with the 2022 rape-revenge film of the same name (which I’ll get round to reviewing down the pipe), this is somewhat lighter in tone, though there’s a case to be made that this clashes terribly with the subject matter. Jenny (Hsu) is a journalist, working under Cheryl (Garofalo),and her work has brought her to the attention of an online stalker, who sends her increasingly disturbed and disturbing emails. When the harassment begins to move from the cyberworld into the real one, and the authorities fail even to reach the level of disinterest, Jenny teams up with room-mate Lisa (Morales), to hunt down the perpetrator and bring him to justice themselves.

In case the above is not clear, this is a comedy.

Yeah, I’m a bit uncomfortable about this. Not necessarily about the subject matter, as I tend to think any topic can be seen through the lens of humour. However, the more problematic your target, the less room for error. If you want to joke about, say, the Holocaust, you’d better bring your A game. This isn’t anywhere in the same league as a subject; however, nor is the comedy here anything close to an A game. There are a few amusing moments involving veteran Garofalo, who has the timing to hit home, with her depiction of a jaded and cynical writer. Yet otherwise, it’s mostly a weirdly toothless kind of satire, possessing too many “Is that supposed to be a joke?” moments, e.g. the blanking out of all the F-bombs.

I did enjoy the performances, with Hsu an appealing lead, and Morales doing some heavy lifting as the weirdo housemate from hell, whose special skills are indispensable to the plot. Though her “hacking” scene is another of those “Is that supposed to be a joke?” moments. The best scene probably has the pair heading to utterly deadpan teenage gun dealer, Lisa’s step-daughter, Missy. She delights in speeches like, “You left your G-string, by the way… I wore it. And then I sold it. On a website for perverts. And then I donated that money. To an elephant. Charity,” or “I don’t know how any of them work… I’m not a school shooter. Jeez, I’m sorry I can’t tell you the science behind riflery.”

Outside of those five minutes, the rest does not consistently work, either as a comedy or a thriller. I think it’s mostly a scripting problem, not least because the identity of her stalker is painfully obvious from the moment he first appears. You have to wait about an hour for Jenny and Lisa to catch up, and the pickings in that time – save Missy, who deserves her own movie – are slim. I was left mostly wondering why anyone would want to a) live in New York, and b) work as an online writer – fortunately, this is not my day job. I suspect this was not exactly the intended take-away. 

Dir: Amanda Lundquist, Becky Scott
Star: Stephanie Hsu, Irene Morales, Colin Burgess, Janeane Garofalo

Chess Game

  By

★★★½
“Queen takes king.”

I had to work quite hard to see this: while it is on Tubi, the subtitles there were only in Spanish, and so not much help (I’m still at the “Donde esta la biblioteca?” level). Fortunately, it then turned up on Vudu, and I bravely made my way through their crappy interface and frequent adverts to bring you this review. It was worth it. This is a solid slice of women-in-prison action/drama from Brazil, though perhaps less exploitative than I expected (especially given the country’s history in the sub-genre!) . I mean, Marins is a former model in Brazillian Playboy, so you’ll understand I had… certain expectations. Fortunately, the rest of the movie proved more than adequate to hold my attention. 

After a welfare fraud is discovered, Guilhermina Dos Santos (Fantin) takes the fall and gets a 16-year prison sentence, while the real mastermind, Senator Franco (Calloni) escapes consequences. Three years into her sentence, Mina has become top dog in the facility. After her parole request is turned down, the Senator decides it’s best if she ceases to be a problem. He pays the warden (Andrada), who bribes an inmate to shank Mina. The attempt fails, thanks partly to the intervention of new inmate, Beth (Marins), and Mina decides she needs to escape. With the help of a friendly guard, this is accomplished, with Mina, Beth and Mina’s lieutenant Martona now on the outside, where her sister, Juliet, offers her assistance. Mina kidnaps the Senator’s son, to force him to pay her share of the fraud profits. Yet not everything is quite as it seems, as things escalate towards a confrontation in a hospital.

Fantin, in particular, makes for an excellent heroine, especially when establishing her bad-ass credentials. There were points where this felt like an entry in the Female Prisoner Scorpion series from Japan – albeit less in terms of style, than Fantin’s attitude mirroring that of Meiko Kaji, and in its fairly cynical view of society in general. The plot is nicely handled as well, with the title proving quite appropriate, as Mina and Franco seek to gain the upper hand on each other. [I’ve also read that “chess” is a slang term for prison in Brazil, adding another layer of meaning] These twists continue until the film’s final shot, literally. However, the film does suffer from some pacing problems, e.g. a lengthy sequence where the escaped women shoot pool, drink and harass a man, brings things to a halt, just when it should be accelerating. I also have some questions, such as in regard to security in Brazillian jails, where it seems remarkably easy for multiple prisoners to waltz on out of there, with the help of just one guard. It’s not the only example of slipshod plotting, and it’s likely these flaws which stopped it from achieving a seal of approval, as it still does a lot in its eighty minutes. 

Dir:  Luis Antonio Pereira
Star: Priscila Fantin, Carla Marins, Antonio Calloni, Tuca Andrada 
a.k.a. Jogo de Xadrez

Mad Heidi

  By

★★★
“Pure cheese.”

I’d been aware of this movie for some time, through its innovative crowd-funding approach, which raised $3 million to cover the cost of production. After COVID hit, there were doubts it’d ever see the light of day, but here it is: the first “Swissploitation” film [If not quite the case, it’s certainly the first one with a seven-figure budget, as well as the first Swiss movie covered on this site] And it’s not bad: if you’re familiar with similarly crowd-funded spoof, Iron Sky, this is along similar lines of broad parody. It covers almost every genre of cult from kung-fu films through Starship Troopers to women-in-prison films, e.g. there’s an Asian prisoner sporting inmate number #701. It doesn’t all hit, yet safe to say, the more you’re a fan of B movies, the more you’ll get out of it.

The film takes place in s dystopian version of Switzerland, where the authoritarian government are the only ones allowed to produce cheese, under “very Swiss leader” President Meili (Van Dien, making the Troopers spoof propaganda film which opens proceedings, all the more amusing). They crack down harshly on black-market cheese dealers, and this includes shooting dead the boyfriend of Heidi (Lucy) in spectacularly gory fashion, blowing up her grandfather (Schofield) and imprisoning Heidi, under the tender care of warden Fraulein Rottweiler. The heroine eventually escapes, learns martial arts from two nuns and Helvetia, which I am guessing is the spirit of Switzerland. She then takes revenge, Gladiator style, on Meili’s second-in-command, Kommandant Knorr (Rüdlinger), and finally the big cheese himself.

There is a standard by which all nostalgic attempts at recreating grindhouse cinema are measured, and that is the near-perfection of Hobo With a Shotgun. I think the main area in which this falls short is the lead actress. While it’s almost unfair to compare anyone to Rutger Hauer, Lucy simply doesn’t make the same impression as the likes of the original #701, Meiko Kaji, Tura Satana, or even Dyanne Thorne. Although I cannot fault her effort, I was never fully convinced Heidi was the bad-ass necessary to the plot. However, the supporting cast are solid, led by Van Dien hamming it up to thoroughly entertaining effect.

It looks slick, with every cent squeezed out of the budget, and some startling bits of violence. Could have used more nudity, I’d say: the main source is Swiss performance artist Milo Moiré, who has quite the resume. I think I was hoping for it to be more outrageous. Operating entirely outside the confines of the studio system, it feels rather too safe. Yet I will admit to genuinely laughing out loud on occasion, and some of the sequences are fabulously deranged. For example, a prisoner is tortured with cheeseboarding – it’s like waterboarding, except with melted cheese – then finished off by being impaled through the head with a Toblerone, sorry, for trademark purposes, a generic, triangular bar of Swiss chocolate. Whether that concept has you appalled or intrigued, is likely a good guide as to whether or not you should watch this.

Dir: Johannes Hartmann, Sandro Klopfstein
Star: Alice Lucy, Max Rüdlinger, Casper Van Dien, David Schofield

Terror on the Prairie

  By

★★★
“Prairie dog pest control.”

I keep hoping Carano will deliver an action film reaching the quality of her debut, Haywire. Results since then have been… well, let’s be charitable and call them uneven. The reasons for her departure from “traditional” Hollywood aren’t something I want to get into: but this, produced by conservative outlet The Daily Wire, does show the book isn’t closed on her yet. The Wire have put out a few films we’ve covered here, though again, the quality has been mixed: the last, Shut In, was not good. This is a similarly simple story, yet does a bit more with it. The pacing is too languid for my tastes, yet there were sufficient quirks to keep me adequately interested.

It takes place on the Montana plains, some years after the end of the Civil War, where Hattie McAllister (Carano) and her husband, Jeb (Cerrone), are trying to make a life for themselves and their two kids. Hattie has just about had enough, and wants to head back to her home-town of St. Louis. Before any decision can be made, life is interrupted by the arrival of a former Confederate officer, the Captain (Searcy), and his band of men. While he initially seems charming, the scalps tied to his saddle tell another story, and it’s quickly clear he has a specific agenda, rather than randomly passing through. With Jeb away in town, it’s up to Hattie to fend off the ensuing siege until her husband can return. Considering she is depicted as unable to kill a rattlesnake that entered their cabin, she’s going to need new-found resilience.

It’s a straightforward tale, brought down by too many unnecessary pauses: we really do not care what Jen is getting up to, for example. These derail the film’s reasonable efforts to build tension, bolstered by some surprisingly graphic gore (one throat-slitting in particular), and Searcy’s good performance as a thoroughly villainous antagonist, whose word can’t be trusted, despite his quoting of scripture. It might have made more sense to have Hattie depicted as competent and brave from the get-go. Instead, it leaves the Captain and his men seeming incompetent, although some of this is their initial reluctance to take her seriously, e.g. he addresses her 9-year-old son as the “man of the house.” 

A novel wrinkle is the director’s decision not to accompany the action with a musical score of any kind. It certainly keeps you in the moment, yet there is also reason why Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack is so key to Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns being undisputed classics. The action, if generally restrained, is competent, and it’s probably for the best the film did not try to turn Hattie into some kind of Western MMA goddess. I did worry the return of Jeb was going to push his spouse off to the sidelines in the final reel; while it teetered on the edge for a while, the film pulled back. If not breaking any boundaries, this is worth a look, especially if you’re a fan of the genre.

Dir: Michael Polish
Star: Gina Carano, Nick Searcy, Donald Cerrone. Tyler Fischer

The Flood

  By

★★★
“Destroy me? They made me…”

The first eighty or so minutes of this are really good: powerful, committed and extremely angry film-making. And justifiably so, I would say. Unfortunately, the film runs for a hundred and seventeen minutes, and definitely goes off the rails towards the end. The gritty realism which was perhaps the movie’s strongest suit is replaced by odd fantasy sequences, such as the fugitive couple suddenly dressed, in the middle of a forest, as if they were attending a Victorian embassy ball. I’m not certain what the point of these elements, or the anachronistic pop songs were. I am certain that they didn’t enhance my appreciation of the film in any way, and that’s a shame, considering how assured it had been in the early going.

There’s no doubt aboriginal Australians received a really bad deal from their government, up until very recent times. As this film documents, they were forced off their lands, and their children frequently taken away as wards of the state. Even those who served their country honourably in World War II, like Waru Banganha  (Cook), were denied basic civil on their return to civilian life. Hard to blame Waru for going berserk, and killing some of the Mackay family who had sexually abused his wife, Jarah (Lane), and their daughter, Maggie (Williams), while he was fighting in the jungle. Worse is then to follow, as Jarah is gang-raped while in custody, in an attempt to get her husband’s location. “Don’t let what they did you destroy you,” a friend tells her. Jarah responds with the chilling line at the top of the review. She’s not wrong, as she takes revenge on the Mackays and their cronies, first rescuing and then alongside Waru.

What’s interesting is that, despite his military training, it’s largely Jarah – no mean shot with a gun herself – who takes the lead, and shows little or no mercy. She has decided that they must pay, even those who were only tangentially involved in ripping her family apart, and does so with a clear-headed intensity and ferocity which is wonderful to behold. This kind of story can easily feel like pandering, playing on liberal white guilt, yet McIntyre avoids that. The closest cousin to the body of this picture might be the blaxploitation flicks of the seventies, where the hero or heroine was pushed too far, and eventually stuck it to “the man”. Abosploitation? Though if we’re making up words, it also feels like a “Vegemite Western”, despite the post-war time-frame.

Throughout this, there have been flashbacks and memories that could be dreams. However, these have generally been restrained, and if not maybe adding too much to the film, don’t feel like they hurt it. That changed in the final third, with the pace dropping close to zero, just when it should be ramping up to a climax with all guns blazing. I will admit in particular to rolling my eyes at the redemptive fate of the main antagonist, who deserved considerably worse than he received. The energy and momentum this possessed, just about carries the film over the finish line. Yet I can’t help feeling. it should have been a great deal more effective.

Dir: Victoria Wharfe McIntyre
Star: Alexis Lane, Shaka Cook, Dean Kyrwood, Dalara Williams

Rendez-vous

  By

★★★★
“There’s so many crazy people out there…”

I did not originally expect to be reviewing this here. I watched it because of the technical elements, which I’ll get to in a bit. However, by the end, it does qualify – though you certainly wouldn’t think so from how things begin. It gets underway with Lili (Puig) waiting for a date arranged over the Internet with Eduardo (Alcantara). He shows up late, very apologetic after having been mugged, and having had his phone taken, but is utterly charming, and the chemistry with Lili is immediate. They end up back at his place for dinner. But as he’s cooking on the kitchen, the tone of the evening changes, when she hears his supposedly stolen phone going off in his jacket…

That’s the beginning of a shift in content from warm romance into something considerably darker, and in which the dynamic changes several times before the final credits roll. As the above indicates, it initially seems that Eduardo is the problem. However, it’s considerably more complex, with Lili also having her own secrets. Quite how it’ll play out remains in doubt until the final scene, with the best-laid plans going astray along the route. I will say this though: if I ever engage in a kidnapping scheme, I won’t be answering the door to visitors. This does deliver some black comedy, when a drunk pal of Eduardo swings by, and wildly misinterprets the situation unfolding in front of his booze-filled eyes.

I mentioned the technical side. The hook here is the movie unfolds in a single, 100+ minute shot. Even more startling is what director Arrayales said: “We couldn’t afford another chance to shoot the movie again, so the movie is the only take we did. We really prepared hard, for three weeks with the actors, and a week with the DP just to plan the whole movie. That was about it: four or five weeks of rehearsals and one chance to make it.” Hard not to be impressed. While certainly not the first to use a single shot, most either fake it or, at least, get to use multiple takes. It’s a tribute to the makers that, after initially being the focus, you largely forget about the gimmick, with the story and characters taking over.

A good portion of the proceedings are more mental than physical. Eduardo pushes Lili for what he believes to be the truth, while she is resolute in stating he has got the situation very, very wrong. However, it eventually becomes more direct in its action, with a hunt unfolding around the two levels of Eduardo’s house (complete with make-up and effects artists sneaking around to apply their art out of shot!). You may well figure out the final direction before it happens, yet I’d be impressed if you accurately predict the specifics of the resolution. Though it’s not especially important if you do. Between the technical execution and the other elements, there’s more than sufficient elsewhere to justify the experience. 

Dir: Pablo Olmos Arrayales
Star: Helena Puig, Antonio Alcantara

Badland Doves

  By

★★
“When doves cry.”

I am contractually obliged to appreciate at least somewhat, any film made here in Arizona. This certainly fits the bill, having been shot at places like the Pioneer Living History Museum, Sitgreaves National Forest and Winters Film Group Studio. However, it is a fairly basic tale of two-pronged revenge, with significant pacing issues. The proceedings only come to life in the last 20 minutes – and barely that. Initially, matters are more than a tad confusing, as we jump about in time and space without apparent notification. But the basic principal is eventually established.

Revenger #1 is Regina Silva (Martin), whose family were killed by masked intruders. Following that, she got shooting lessons from a conveniently passing gunslinger, and set out to find those responsible, working as a saloon prostitute because it was apparently the best way to find them. Yeah. About that… Anyway, Revenger #2 is Victoria Bonham (Penny), who just so happens to be the madam of a brothel, also seeking justice after one of her girls was murdered. Coincidentally, Regina shows up, and they eventually discover they are both looking for the same person, Pete Chalmers (Johnston). However, his father (Greenfield) wields so much power in the town, his son is basically untouchable. Victoria wants to leverage legal means against Pete, while Regina prefers more direct action, and isn’t willing to wait around forever, while the wheels of the law grind slowly away.

If you were to summarize my reactions to this, the first ten minutes would be “What is going on?”. The next twenty would likely be, “Ah, ok. I know where this is heading.” After that, we get about half an hour of, “Is anything else of significance going to happen?”, then twenty of moderate satisfaction, as Chalmers and his forces go to battle with Regina and her allies. However, the action here is underwhelming, not least because it appears the bad guys have all the shooting skills of Star Wars stormtroopers, unable to hit stationary targets from about ten paces, in broad daylight (as shown, top). Pete is an underwhelming villain too: beyond “alcohol’s to blame,” it’s never particularly established why he attacked Regina’s family or killed Victoria’s employee. Motivation: it’s vastly over-rated, apparently.

The last five minutes do offer at least something unexpected, in terms of the mechanism by which revenge is achieved. It’s about the only novel angle the film has to offer, and you sense this is one of those cases where having the same person writing, editing and directing proved problematic. I’m not convinced the story can handle the two-pronged approach, with the script leaving both threads feeling in need of development.The dual female leads aren’t bad, though I was distracted by Penny’s accent, which sounds more Antipodean than Arizona. To be fair, it’s really not any worse than Bad Girls, the far larger budgeted “whores out for revenge” film. However, that is not exactly a high bar to clear. For passion projects like this, I have no problem forgiving budgetary restrictions, and to be fair, this looks and sounds decent. The plodding and meandering script, however, is much harder to see past.

Dir: Paul Winters
Star: Sandy Penny, Jessica Y. Martin, Manny Greenfield, Daniel Johnston
A version of this review originally appeared on my other review site, Film Blitz.

Shark Huntress

  By

★½
“Eco-garbage.”

I’ve previously talked about – OK, “ranted” may not be inappropriate – the perils of message movies. But I did wonder whether it was the specific content to which I objected. Would I dislike a film so much, if I was on board with its strident message? On the evidence here, I can confidently state: hell, yes. For this is painfully earnest and hard to watch, much though I agree with the environmental topic, that humanity’s use of plastics are threatening the oceans. An alternative needs to be found. By which I mean, I strongly suggest you find an alternative to watching this movie. The poster has clearly strayed in from a far more entertaining offering, and bears little resemblance to what this provides. 

The heroine is Sheila (Grey), who heads out to a Pacific island, after the disappearance of her mother. The body turns up, showing marks indicating she was eaten by a great white shark. Which is odd, since they’re not found within a thousand miles of the place. Sheila comes increasingly to believe the attack was not a natural occurrence, but engineered by “the plastic people” in response to her mother’s research, which threatened their business. She wants to kill the shark in question, but also expose the truth behind it, and make those responsible pay for their actions. To that end, she teams up with a group of like-minded ecowarriors, to investigate the company. Naturally, the target isn’t just sitting back and letting their nefarious machinations be exposed. 

There is the germ of an interesting idea here, along the lines of Moby Dick, only for it to be ruthlessly strangled in incompetent execution. Far too much time is spent pounding home the message about waste, which should have been used to develop the plot. There is no real antagonist, just an all but faceless corporation, whose actions make little or no sense. I mean, if you want to get rid of somebody, your plan is flying a shark thousands of miles, letting it go and… hoping it eats the target? Later, they’re quite happy to take someone out by more conventional means. Meanwhile, rather than being any kind of shark huntress, it takes Sheila over 65 minutes before she goes past her ankles, anywhere except a hotel swimming-pool for lessons in Diving 1.0.1.

I didn’t mind Grey, despite English not being her first language: there are occasional moments of effective emoting, such as her mother’s funeral. The photography is occasionally good, though the film desperately needs better colour matching. The problems are… everywhere else, such as a supporting character who literally says things like “thumbs-down emoji”. Or an ending of staggering abruptness, which involves a stabbing with a pen and a conveniently passing shark, while low-key elevator music plays in the background. I must admit, long before we reached that point, I was hoping the shark would bring in some of its mates, and consume everyone involved with this, in one giant feeding frenzy. Spoiler alert: no such luck.

Dir: John Riggins
Star: Katrina Grey, Dean Alexandrou, John Flano, Russell Geoffrey Banks

Stressed to Death

  By

★½
“Definitely a stress test.”

The concept here is intriguing. It’s just the execution – and the script in particular – which is bad. A robbery at a convenience store ends in the death of David, the husband to Victoria Garrett (Aldrich). She blames the paramedic on the scene, former soldier Maggie Hart (Holden), for the loss of her spouse, though the incident hits Maggie equally hard. She quits her job, raising daughter Jane (Blackwell) with her husband, commercial real-estate agent, Jason (Gerhardt). But Victoria hasn’t moved on – in probably the film’s most memorably loopy elements, she feeds her husband’s ashes to a pot-plant she calls David, to which she chats. She’s also clearly a believer in that saying about revenge being served cold.

For she waits a whole ten years after the incident, before putting into motion a plan for revenge, hiring a pair of thugs to kill Maggie’s family in front of her. Fortunately for her target, they’re two blithering incompetents – or maybe the script just makes it seem like they were acquired through the ‘Help Wanted’ section of Facebook Marketplace. Adding spice to the situation, she has hired Jason as her subordinate, and Jane turns out to have a crush on Victoria’s son. Complicating matters further is Maggie’s PTSD, which is naturally the movie-friendly version, only kicking in when required by the plot. It can also apparently be cured by violent trauma: specifically, someone hiring a pair of thugs to kill your family in front of you. What are the odds?

Even by the low standards of Lifetime movies, this is bad. It’s not just the script that is sloppy, the production includes a bike helmet suddenly appearing on Jane’s head, and a knife that teleports from the floor into Maggie’s hands. But let’s not kid ourselves: it’s mostly the script. I lost count of the points at which I sighed heavily. Probably peak sigh was achieved at the sequence where Maggie and Jane have been captured. The thug doesn’t just leave them alone, he falls asleep in the next room, allowing them to escape. Guess that whole thugging thing really takes it out of you. Worse, after the mother and daughter get away, they show no urgency at all, wandering around while chatting casually about Jane’s crush. Oh, look: they get caught. Again.

This all builds to a ridiculous excuse for a climax in a motel room, which ends with the police describing what happened to the chief thug. The only things that saves this from total disaster are performances generally better than the story deserves. Holden, in particular, does a decent job with her character, and actually, the chief thug is surprisingly sympathetic, when telling Maggie about his abused childhood. Or something. I expected better from Brian Skiba, an Arizona native who co-wrote this, and whose films Chokehold and .357: Six Bullets for Revenge have previously been reviewed here. While they weren’t great, they look like Oscar-winners beside Stressed to Death. I think I’m the one coming down with a case of PTSD after sitting through this.

Dir: Jared Cohn
Star: Gina Holden, Taylor Blackwell, Sarah Aldrich, Jason Gerhardt

The Girl and the Gun

  By

★★★
“The equalizer”

The protagonist is a young woman (Gutierrez), who works in a department store in Quezon City, the largest city in the Philippines. Her life is one of constant drudgery, with what income not spent on her tiny, shared apartment, being sent home to her mother in the countryside. She can’t afford to buy new stockings to replace her torn ones – a fact which brings her into conflict with her manager – or even go out with colleagues for drinks after work. She has a lecherous landlord, and is treated by everyone as the perpetual doormat she is.

Then she finds a gun.

She initially does nothing with the weapon, discarded in the alley by her apartment building. But after being sexually assaulted, she picks it up, and everything changes – it gives her a voice, both literally and psychologically. The key trigger (pun intentionally) is using it to rescue her flat-mate from being assaulted by her boyfriend. She then suddenly realizes she doesn’t need to take it anymore: whether “it” is her boss harassing her about the stockings, or simply a shop worker being rude to her. Having the weapon gives her the confidence to stand up for herself, a surprisingly radical concept. Perhaps a variant of “An armed society is a polite society,” as Robert A. Heinlein once said.

Then she offers to help her flat-mate handle the abusive boyfriend permanently… But will she take the final step and go through with it? Hold that thought though, because the film then takes a left turn, diverting to tell the story of the weapon, and how it ended up in the alley. This is, unfortunately, a misstep in cinematic terms, with a segment which does not travel anywhere nearly as well as the first half. It’s a rather impenetrable story of death squads, corrupt cops, drug dealers and familes, which I can only presume, reflects life in the underbelly of urban life in the Philippines. It seemed, to me, like a pointless diversion that didn’t say much of interest about anything, and when the film eventually returns to the “girl” part of the equation, any forward momentum had been lost.

That’s a pity, as there were points when it seemed like an Asian take on Ms. 45, with its heroine almost mute until the point at which she powers up with a fire-arm. This heroine is considerably more sympathetic, in part because she shows considerably more restraint. While she fantasizes about killing her rapist, for example. she doesn’t actually pull the trigger on him. However, as well as the unwanted diversion into the history of her weapon, the ending is less polished. It’s one of those open ones, where the audience has to decide what happens. These tend to feel like a cop-out, as if the writer couldn’t come up with a proper way to finish the film. Still, the first fifty minutes do enough, to make this worth a watch.

Dir: Rae Red
Star: Janine Gutierrez, Felix Roco, JC Santos, Elijah Canlas
a.k.a. Babae at baril