Tag: revenge

Born of War

  By

★★
“Warn of bore”

While technically solid, and occasionally looking quite good, this may be the laziest scripting I have seen in a movie for a long time. I feel I may have lost actual IQ points through the process of watching it, such is the degree of stupidity which this provides. The heroine is Mina (Black-D’Elia), a college student whose life is upended when she and her little sister narrowly escape a home invasion by Arab terrorists, in which both her parents are killed. She’s rescued by intelligence agent Olivia (Leonard), who tells her she’s the only heir of an Afghani warlord, Khalid (Arditti). Her mother betrayed him, and had to change her identity: he finally caught up with the family, and wants his daughter back.

As protection, Olivia assigns her to private contractor Simon (Frain), who helps teach her certain skills. When further attempts to kidnap her follow, Mina has had enough of running, and agrees to be handed over to Khalid, after having a tracking device implanted. This will allow the military to locate the terrorist leader, and take him out, giving Mina her revenge. Except, things are not at all what they initially appear. There’s a whole hidden agenda, involving an oil company with designs on the region, duelling warlords and members of the intelligence community who appear to be operating without formal sanction from the government. To survive, Mina will need to stab someone with a CD, and carry out impromptu surgery. With a rock.

Yeah, it’s like that. I lost track of the number of times I rolled my eyes, snorted derisively or shook my head in annoyance. Sometimes, more than one of these in combination. I think it began with the home invasion, where a single, completely untrained (at that point) college student was able repeatedly to get the drop on a trio of hard-core fanatics. You just cannot get the quality terrorist minions these days. The same incompetence litters the path of the movie throughout. For instance, if they had once searched their captive, they’d have found the CD she broke and later used as an improvised weapon. Even after Mina finds the truth out and becomes disposable, multiple opportunities to do just that – dispose of her – are wasted.

The same writer-director pairing, of Jewson and husband Rupert Whitaker, was also responsible for Close, which at least had Noomi Rapace in it. This does not, and Black-D’Elia isn’t an adequate replacement. Her broad American accent is another point of pain, with the script’s explanation for it, more of a token gesture, really. The film does look sharp, and if you have this on in the background – say, if you are doing the ironing – it could conceivably pass muster. However, any attention to detail might well peel off the thin gold-plating of competence. A film which relies on two people bumping into each other entirely by coincidence, in a large city, is definitely one with major problems.

Dir: Vicky Jewson
Star: Sofia Black-D’Elia, James Frain, Lydia Leonard, Philip Arditti

The Wrath of Becky

  By

★★½
“Did we learn nothing from John Wick?”

Don’t mess with someone else’s dog. This is a good rule of thumb in most cases, but especially so when the owner is an unhinged teenage psychopath, with the both the talent and desire to inflict carnage in retribution. The last time we saw Becky (Wilson), she had disposed of a gang of neo-Nazis who had invaded her house in search of a key, and killed her father in the process. Now, a couple of years later, she is a waitress in a diner, and renting a room from Elena (Burse). Three more individuals with, um, alternative political opinions enter the diner. This is not going to end well.

In response to their rude behaviour, she pours coffee on the crotch of their leader. The response leaves Elena dead and, worse, they kidnap Becky’s dog. She tracks them to the home of their group’s leader, Darryl (Scott). You know that messy mayhem is going to follow, and will not be disappointed. The film does address the gloomy murkiness which plagued the first one, allowing its gory murders to unfold in the full light of the sun. However, in most ways it falls short of its predecessor: the sequel has seen a new writer-director pair come on board, and the results very much have an air of “second verse, same as the first – just not as good” air to them.

The differences are on both sides. Becky is harder to empathize with, being little more than a teenage psychopath now. Sure, she had issues in the original movie. Yet the trauma she went through meant her reactions were understandable. Here, from the outset she seems a bit of a dick, callously treating foster parents for her own benefit. On the villainous side, it’s a mixed bag. The film repeats the trick from the first film of putting an unexpected actor in the role of the lead villain (there Kevin James) and Scott does well. But the frequent idiocy of his underlings is too convenient. They’re not a credible threat, and Darryl’s failure to secure Becky at a key moment undoes much of the good work that has gone before.

However, don’t take the above criticism as an indication there’s no fun to be had here. You just need to be aware this is a considerably more mean-spirited affair, and it’s probably only the kills that will stick around in your mind. I did laugh out loud more than once, for example when one of the gang reveals his son’s name to Becky, sealing his own fate [though again: why not just lie, dude? It isn’t hard…] The ending sees the CIA recruit Becky, because they are now apparently responsible for domestic counter-terrorism. Wait, what? Oh, well. If they’re going the Nikita route for further sequels, I suspect the authorities have bitten off more than they can chew. Maybe next time Becky can go after Antifa.

Dir: Matt Angel, Suzanne Coote
Star: Lulu Wilson, Seann William Scott, Denise Burse, Jill Larson

Phoenix

  By

★½
“Tubi or not Tubi? NOT Tubi…”

Much though I love the streaming service, even I have to admit that “Tubi Originals” are a bit of a mixed bag, to put it mildly. For every Mercy Falls, an entertaining enough B-movie that punches above its weight, there is also… Well, things like this, which is filled wall-to-wall with non-actors trying to act, among a plethora of other, poor choices. Both heroine and villain are former WWE employees, being known there respectively at Eva Marie and Vladimir Kozlov. The latter comes off better, largely because he doesn’t have to do much more than be a menacing thug in his role as Maxim Vasiliiv, head of a Russian crime syndicate in Miami.

He’s involved in the death of Everett Grant (Couture), which is a bad move, since the corpse’s daughter, Fiona “Phoenix” Grant (Marie), is a combat trainer in the US Army, and does not believe her father killed himself. You can probably figure out the rest of the story without me needing to explain it. To be honest, my notes on the topic would not trouble a cigarette paper, such is the shallowness of the plot. The acting is no great shakes either. A lot of the supporting cast is filled out by people who are clearly more familiar with the inside of a gym, rather than the Actor’s Studio. Consequently, they look the part (even if it’s “Menacing Thug #4”), only for the illusion to be shattered when they deliver lines.

There are a couple of minor exceptions, though the real actors only show up the deficiencies elsewhere. Neal McDonough plays Fiona’s commanding officer, and the always welcome Bai Ling appears as a rather weird role, missing from her IMDb entry, most notable for lipstick and make-up which leaves her looking as if she came right from a booking as a kid’s party clown. All of which would be acceptable, if the film delivered copious amounts of over-the-top mayhem – as you’d expect given the two leads’ histories. The reality is, it’s almost forty minutes before you get Phoenix doing anything of significance. We do first get a shopping montage with her Aunt Grace (Camacho – a former cop who appeared on Survivor, apparently). So there’s that.

Things perk up somewhat thereafter, at least when those involved are kicking and punching each others. These sequences may not make a lot of – read, any – sense, yet they’re preferable to the makers’ feeble efforts in other departments. The scene where Fiona and Maxim have dinner and trade lscklustre barbs, may be the low-water point in this department, though any flashback involving Everett (“It’s Christmas Eve and Dad still hasn’t shown up – or called!”) is probably going to be ranked. When I saw the trailer for this, I was surprised by how little action it seemed to have. Turns out, the answer is definitely “not enough,” and the final ten minutes are not enough to rescue the situation.

Dir: Daniel Zirilli
Star: Natalie Eva Marie, Oleg Prudius, Jessie Camacho, Randy Couture

Panther of the Border

  By

★½
“A load of panths.”

There are times when I can look at a failure of a movie, and kinda see how the various elements could have been arranged to better effect. That’s the case here, where a poverty-row, Spanish-language (but made in Texas) production about rape, revenge and narcos, could potentially have worked. Except, it absolutely doesn’t. It’s the story of Carla Mendoza (Verastegui), who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, working for her boss, Pedro Camargo (Palomo), blissfully unaware he is a cartel leader. As a result, she’s arrested, and ends up spending seven years in prison, while daughter Nina is taken care by her grandmother.

On getting out, Carla vows to take revenge on everyone she considers responsible, which is not a short list. Beyond Camargo, who tried to have her put away for life, it also includes her previous boss (Soberón), who raped and then fired her; Camargo’s rival, La Cobra (played, according to the IMDb, by “La Cobra de Tamaulipas”, though my Internet sleuthing suggests she’s actually called Caty Gutiérrez); Camargo’s wife, who dissed Carla just before the arrest; and, quite probably, the doctor who doesn’t quite exhibit a top-tier beside manner, after Nina is shot when Camargo tries to take Carla out. Our heroine holds grudges like an elephant with a Rolodex (Kids! Ask your parents!), and has taken lessons in the necessary skills to exact payback from those on her list.

Unfortunately, the execution is terrible. The script is a complete mess, at one point repeating the entire sequence of events leading up to Carla’s arrest, which simply confused the hell out of me. Motivations for most characters are unclear, with things happening for no reason, out of thin air, or not at all, being simply described to us. For instance, Nina mounts an assault on La Cobra’s men, which we only hear about third-hand, through a report given to Camargo. This isn’t surprising, since the production values are woeful, with the “police station” and “hospital” battling it out, for the title of Least Convincing Facility. They’re still not as bad as Carla’s combat skills: my grandmother could do better, and she’s been dead for 40 years.

It feels as if the makers ran out of money or script pages, the film ending with Nina miraculously going from coma to 100% well again, followed by Verastegui giving a rousing karaoke rendition of the film’s theme song in a nightclub, before a crowd charitably numbering in double-digits. Even by the low standards of the Mexploitation films we’ve seen previously, this is bad. Yet as mentioned, arranged differently… I actually liked La Cobra, who genuinely acts like I feel a cartel leader would. If the whole film had been her against Carla, for some reason, it would have been on considerably stronger ground. Indeed, the performances in general are okay: most would not feel out of place in my narconovelas. Every other element though, ranges from poor to flat-out terrible.

Dir: Martin Palomo, Luis Antonio Rodriguez
Star: Carla Verastegui, Martin Palomo, La Cobra de Tamaulipas, Héctor Soberón
a.k.a. La Pantera de la Frontera

Injun

  By

★½
“I Spit on Your Movie.”

I never thought I’d find a film which would leave me yearning for the subtle and understated pleasures of the original I Spit on Your Grave, but here we are. 35 years on, and this cringeworthy copy was made, transplanting events to the old West. A further decade later: with a couple of re-titlings which jostle each other for inappropriateness, it’s out on a number of free movie streaming platforms. I’m here to tell you, not to bother. Even in the low-rent neighbourhood which is rape-revenge movies, you could close your eyes, pick a random entry, and be almost guaranteed to find something with a better script and general execution.

It begins on a bizarrely integrated farm, I’m guessing at some point after the end of the Civil War. Comanche adopted white girl Ana (Sawyer) lives there with her native American husband and their son, plus a Hispanic woman, a black guy and a geezer in glasses. Their names are not important. For onto the ranch ride six escaped convicts, led by former Confederate officer Jeb (Herrick). After some ominous banter with geezer in glasses, they kill everyone – told you their names weren’t important – except for Ana who is merely gang-raped, staked out and left for dead. Fortunately for her, she’s rescued by a conveniently passing man called Barfly (Neff). Nursed back to health over what must be a period of several hours, she sets out for revenge against the six escapees, who inexplicably decided to hang around the ranch.

You know me: I’m not exactly one to complain about questionable stereotypes. But even I had to wince on a number of occasions. It might have been Jeb’s Mexican sidekick, Chico (Venture), who sports an F-sized sombrero and droopy mustache. It might have been Ana’s squaw cosplay and whooping war-dance. It might have been the original title, with its even more dubious poster and tagline: “Payback’s an Indian bitch!” I’m all in favour of political incorrectness in order to make a point, or even simply to trigger certain folk. I get the feeling though, that everything here was done out of sheer ignorance. As such, this is no fun at all.

If you’re going to knock off I Spit on Your Grave so blatantly (down to there being a mentally-challenged member among the rapists), then you really need to put more effort into it. The rape here is a scoop of vanilla ice-cream compared to the intensity of the original. The revenge has almost no impact either, with third-rate special effects: the “scalping” is particularly unimpressive. Oh, hey: rather than cutting someone’s genitals off, she sets fire to them. That’s what passes for imagination and innovation here. The performances just about pass muster: indeed, there’s likely too much of them, especially with the gang sitting around the farmhouse and jawing, as their numbers steadily shrink. Your interest and attention will likely suffer a similar fate.

Dir: Bob Cook
Star: Amanda Elizabeth Sawyer, Robert Herrick, Tony Venture, Greg Neff
a.k.a. Scalped! or I Spit on Your Tombstone

Hit and Run, by Andy Maslen

  By

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

Detective Inspector Stella Cole has her life turned upside down when her lawyer husband is killed in a hit-and-run accident, leaving her to bring up daughter Lola on her own, and struggling with an addiction to both booze and painkillers – anything to numb the pain of everyday existence. Though the driver in question is arrested, he receives a paltry sentence of only three years, and Stella begins to plot taking her own revenge. This is brought up short when the perpetrator is killed in prison, and evidence begins to accumulate that her husband’s death may not have been accidental.

The more DI Cole investigates, the murkier things get, as she discovers evidence of a vigilante group, Pro Patria Mori, operating at the highest levels. They’re not exactly happy to have Cole circling them, and decide she needs to be dealt with. However, Stella has been preparing to deliver the most brutal payback she can imagine, when she finds the man responsible, and is no longer a soft target, but prepared for whatever – and whoever – PPM might throw at her. Despite Britain’s strict gun-controls, her job helps her obtain access to everything she needs, before she sets off to the Highlands of Scotland to carry out her vengeance, with absolutely no regard for what the personal cost might be.

Looking back on this, what will stick in my mind is probably a fairly mind-blowing twist at about the one-third point, which quite upends everything I’d believed, and was something I definitely did not see coming. Well played, Mr. Maslen. Well played. I also liked the nicely-detailed way in which Stella obtained her weaponry. Not being au fait with the finer details of police firearms procedure, I can’t comment on its practicality; however, it sounds like it could work, and that’s good enough for me. The action is fairly low-key for the most part, though ends in a rousing finale, with Stella’s assault on her target, who knows she’s coming and has made defensive preparations. Just not nearly enough of them.

There were some other plot aspects that didn’t convince. In the end, the person directly responsible for her husband’s death – as in, actually driving the car – is one of PPM’s top officials, which doesn’t seem to make sense. It’d be more logical to use the person who was actually sent to jail, and they clearly have no issues with throwing low-lives at problems, or access to the same. Similarly, it’d be more logical to have had her work up the chain of command. It still makes for a satisfying and vigorous tale of justice emphatically served, though I’m not certain how there can be six more books in the series. It feels as if Cole has burned an awful lot of bridges, with a return to her job seeming highly problematic. It’s certainly not a light read, yet perhaps is the better for unashamedly embracing the darkness in its topic and heroine.

Author: Andy Maslen
Publisher: Tyton Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 7 in the DI Stella Cole Thrillers series.

One Foot Crane

  By

★★½
“As the crane flies.”

We begin with the murder of a family, with the sole (apparent) survivor being a small child, Fung Lin-yi (Li), who is able to escape. Rescued by – and stop me if you’ve heard this one before – a kung-fu master, she is rigourously trained in the titular style of martial arts. It’s fairly nifty, not least for the dagger hidden in the tip of her shoe which she uses to administer the coup de grace, Rosa Klebb style. Fifteen years later, she’s ready to seek revenge on the quartet of outlaws responsible for killing her family, who unlike our heroine, appear not to have aged a day over the decade and a half since they participated in the slaughter. Matters are complicated by a few factors. Her first victim is the father of one of the outlaws, who then starts tracking down the mysterious “One Foot Crane” responsible. There’s also a police official investigating the situation (Sze), and it turns out Lin-yi may not be the only survivor after all (Wei).

Plenty going on here, for sure, though not much of it is particularly of interest. Indeed, from an action heroine point of view, it leads to a dilution of focus, with the movie’s attention being pulled in too many different directions. It ends up doing none of them justice and sidelining Lin-yi, just as things should be getting going. Li isn’t bad, either in performance or with her fists and feet; there’s just nothing particularly special about either facet of her character. It does form an interesting contrast to the recently reviewed Eight Strikes of the Wildcat in one area. That had the heroine taking on three villains for the film’s climax, and this approach makes for a much stronger and more impressive finale than the one here, where she needs the help of two others (using eagle and mantis techniques) in order to take on the final boss. You never saw Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan requiring assistance.

Veteran Hong Kong star Lo Lieh shows up, though despite his high presence in the movie’s opening credits, his contribution should probably be more in the “with…” or “and…” categories, if the makers were being honest. He appears only briefly as a villain, swinging a blade on a chain around. I did appreciate the way the film didn’t subject us to the almost contractually required training montage: one second, Lin-yi is a little girl doing kung-fu, and a cut later, she’s all grown-up and doing kung-fu. However, there is almost nothing else which sticks in my mind, and I finished watching it a scant few hours ago. Still, Li clearly must have had some skills, enjoying a long career in both film and television, appearing as recently as 2020. She was the lead in a 1978 TV series of The Bride with White Hair, and received a “Long-term Service and Outstanding Employee Honour Award” from TVB for thirty years’ service in 2018. This, however, doesn’t merit any further discussion.

Dir: Wu Min-hsiung
Star: Lily Li, Wei Tzu-Yun, Tsai Hung, Sze Ma Lung

Scavenger

  By

★½
“Not even worth it as scrap.”

This should be right up my alley. For it’s a grungy, post-apocalyptic story of revenge, which is heavy both on the carnage and the nudity. Throw in disapproving reviews containing lines like, “Downright nasty movie that takes all the worst bits of exploitation cinema and proudly puts it on display,” or “Scavenger is truly appalling,” and you’ll understand why it was fast-tracked for viewing. However, the weird thing is… those reviews aren’t wrong – it is a bad movie, just not for the reasons they espouse. The bigger problem is simply poor execution, in a way that manages to take the sex ‘n’ violence, and make it all painfully dull. Of all the cinematic sins, that’s one I find hard to forgive.

It takes place some years after a non-specific apocalypse, which has left cannibalism as the sole source of meat. Muscle cars, lingerie and cassette tapes are, apparently, still plentiful. Roaming this wilderness is Tisha (Churruarin), part bounty-hunter, part nomadic butcher. She accepts a commission from an old woman, to hunt down the scumbags who made her a whore and ruined her life – the usual. Tisha accepts, even waiving her normal fee. However, on arrival at the house of ill repute run by Luna (Lanaro), she quickly finds herself on the staff. She’s going to need to find a way out before she can complete her mission. It’s also going to get considerably more personal before all is said and done. 

I suspect the above sounds more fun than it really is. Part of this may be the dubbing, which appears to be both written and performed by people for whom English is a very distant second language at best. However, the main issue is simply far too many periods when zero of interest happens. Basically, after Tisha arrives at Luna’s, absolutely nothing of importance happens for a good half hour. Unless you consider the heroine being subjected to various indignities, up to and including being peed on, as “important”. In a film which runs only 71 minutes including credits, it’s a criminal waste of time, and the film has little or no chance to recover thereafter.

Its death nerve twitches feebly down the stretch, with some enthusiastic gore, Tisha wielding a bizarre weapon like a giant mixer to disembowel people. Yet it could do no more than provoke a slightly raised eyebrow. There are a couple of elements I did like: the heroine is not your typical post-apocalyptic babe; Churruarin has a rough edge to her presence that works in this setting. Generally, the set design is good too, selling the scenario effectively. These both need to be in the service of a considerably better script – one apparently less dedicated to enacting the bizarre sexual domination fetishes of the film-makers, which I do not share. ‘Truly appalling”? I probably wouldn’t give it that much credit, to be frank. 

Dir: Eric Fleitas, Luciana Garraza
Star: Nayla Churruarin, Eric Fleitas, Sofia Lanaro, Jose Manuel Solis Vargas
a.k.a. Carroña

Ditched

  By

★★
“No-one is innocent”

Paramedic Melina (Sila) regains consciousness to find herself in the back of her ambulance, along with her patient, Franson (Loranger), and the rest of the crew in various states of health. The vehicle had gone off the road and fallen into a ravine, along with the accompanying police car. It turns out they were transporting Franson and another prisoner to hospital when the crash took place – and it quickly becomes apparent that what happened was far from an accident. A posse of camo-clad hunters close in on them, led by Caine (Gray). Their mission to make all the vehicle’s occupants, both criminal and otherwise, pay for the sins of their pasts. They’ve brought with them the wronged parties in question, to exact bloody revenge.

An interesting idea, undone by a script which never manages to address basic questions, and which relies too much on ridiculous coincidence, necessary so that the film can happen. I mean, what are the odds of every person taking part in the convoy having a lethal secret hidden in their past, for which they escaped justice? I also am impressed with the organizational skills shown by the ghillie-suit wearing vigilantes. We can’t even get half our family to commit to a birthday party venue, never mind everyone trekking out to the middle of nowhere to take vengeance. Then there’s Melina’s concussion, which appears to have no impact at all five minutes later. On the other hand, she miraculously goes from needing to have explained to her, that a gun will stop someone “doing bad things,” to being a thoroughly competent operator of firearms.

The enemy outside are, initially somewhat menacing, at least when they are in stealth mode. Probably inevitably, given the nature of the plot, they eventually switch into unnecessarily verbose, with Caine the biggest culprit in the category of verbal oversharing. [I’m still trying to work out what the “quick and painful” death he orders at one point would be like: surely it’s one or the other?] I did enjoy some messy and vindictive violence, executed in gratifyingly practical ways. For example meted out by a chainsaw, or a shotgun, first to the groin, then to the face. The ending is admirably bleak, if not unexpected – and, again, relies on remarkable happenstance.

Sila does show some promise, and I liked how nothing much is particularly made about her character’s native American heritage. Such normality is exactly how it should be. Melina has a personable nature, and operates in a common-sense way, refusing to panic despite the increasingly bizarre and threatening situation in which she finds herself. There’s hints that unleashing Franson might be the only way to counter their attackers; this might have merited further discussion, though from this site’s point of view, we are happier to let Melina be her own saviour. We would also have been happier to have seen her part of a totally different script:  oh, well, maybe next time.

Dir: Christopher Donaldson
Star: Marika Sila, Kris Loranger, Mackenzie Gray, Lee Lopez

Agent Girls

  By

★
“Badly broken China”

I have seen bad movies before. I have seen Chinese movies before. But I have never before seen such a bad Chinese movie. Really, their action films are usually at least somewhat competent: even the dreadful work of the notorious Godfrey Ho usually had something of… well, interest, if not perhaps quality to offer. This, however? Utterly appalling, with close to no redeeming features. One anecdote should give you some idea of what I mean. When our daughter was 12, she and her little friend borrowed the camcorder and made a 10-minute action movie, mostly taking place in the garage. I am 100% serious when I say it had significantly better fight choreography than this, and the other elements which go into the film are of little if any higher standard.

The heroines are a group who have apparently just graduated from college. Though before we get to that, there’s a prologue involving a (stock footage) war between China and Vietnam, which somehow led to the establishment of “an International Evil Eye Organization”. One of the members was Xiao Lishan, who went off and did AIDS research. Pause for the first of many poorly-conceived scenes, of the girls wondering what to do with their lives, which is neither interesting nor informative. This is mercifully interrupted by Xiao Fei (Ling) getting a phone-call from Mom, telling Fei her father has committed suicide. It won’t be long before viewers will be considering similar action, as a means of escape from this viewing experience.

Fei can’t believe he’d take his own life, and the suspicious actions of a delivery driver increase her doubts. So after the police close the case, she and her group of gal pals begin their own investigation, seeking the culprits and to make them pay. This will eventually take them back to Hanoi – I’m assuming that’s the “H city” referred to. Though the budget extends to nothing more jet-setting than a random shot of a plane taking off, without even any of the usual “exterior shots” used in low-budget cinema to establish an exotic location. This is just one of the many technical flaws, also apparent in quite terrible audio work, ranging from the tinny and echoey, to the basically inaudible. Even though this was subtitled, it remained an annoyance.

But this is positively Oscar-calibre compared to the action. It builds to an assault in search of a USB drive, where they are supposedly going up against “commandos”. All I can say is, the Chinese Army is vastly over-rated, though I was amused by the way they wear ski-masks for no apparent reasons. It is painfully clear nobody here has had any kind of martial arts training at all, or is remotely familiar with the business end of a firearm. Combine this with the woeful ineptness present in almost every other level, from the writing through the performances to the direction, and you’ve got something that is a couple of credible drone shots away from being a contender for the worst action heroine film of all time.

Dir: Xiao Ju-Shi
Star: Ling Yu, Zhang Mu-Qing, Pang Cheng-Yu, Maidina Paluk