Tag: revenge

The Rhythm Section

  By

★★★
“Not really worth the wait”

The action-heroine genre has seen its share of high-profile flops in the past. But this long-delayed entry, originally due out in February 2019, is among the worst, setting a record for the lowest ever opening at the North American box-office for a wide release. It took in only $2.8 million from 3,049 theaters when it opened in January, and ended with a worldwide gross below $6 million, against a budget of $50 million. While smaller in scale, that’s a Cutthroat Island level of failure. Did it deserve such a fate? Well, it’s not that bad. It ain’t great. But it seems almost defiantly unlikable, going against cinematic norms in a way that’s brave – and, I suspect, ultimately foolish. The result is something whose commercial demise is unsurprising, beginning with a title that makes only tangential sense, even after you’ve seen the film.

It’s the story of Stephanie Patrick (Lively), whose family died in a plane accident, causing her to go into a downward spiral. Three years later, she’s a crack whore, when contacted by journalist Keith Proctor (Jaffrey). He tells her the crash was actually a terrorist attack, basing this claim on information received from a source with intelligence connections known only as “B”. After Proctor is murdered, Stephanie finds B (Law) and convinces him to help her acquire the necessary skills to become an assassin. Stephanie then goes after all those involved in the attack, including the shadowy figure known only as U-17. To do so, she takes on the identity of Petra Reuter, an assassin killed by B, and uses the resources of ex-CIA officer Marc Serra (Brown), now working as an intelligence broker.

I think viewer expectations may have played a part here. Reading the above, and with the film coming from the producers of the 007 franchise, you are likely imagining a slick, Bond-esque slice of escapism. It’s not that. First off, Stephanie is… Well, let’s be honest, a bit shit as an assassin. When she asks B how long it’ll take for her to become good, he replies, “Your menopause will be a distant memory.” They don’t have that much time, and the results are consequently rough around the edges, not least because she almost completely lacks the necessary killer instinct. She has the motive, just not the method.

Frankly, she’s very, very lucky to survive the first couple of missions, and that’s only one of the aspects which strains credibility. The makers get a demerit for using Ireland to fake the North of Scotland, and it appears remarkably easy to track down international terrorists. Perhaps the book on which this was based did a better job? Given the gritty nature of proceedings, I was expecting a greater level of intrigue and deception. For example, despite being officially “unattached”, I was predicting B or Marc to still be working on behalf of their former employers, manipulating Stephanie towards their ends. Maybe I’ve just watched too many episodes of Homeland.

There are some impressive elements. Probably the most outstanding is a car chase, filmed to look like one take, shot entirely from inside Stephanie’s vehicle as she flees the scene. It’s almost as good as the one from Children of Men, the gold standard for such things. I also did like Lively’s performance: she has rather more to do here than she had in The Shallows, and acquits herself well, both dramatically and in the action scenes (she smashed her hand up badly while filming a fight scene with Law). However, on reaching the end, I found myself unmoved, and given the general lack of spectacle present, this isn’t one I’ve much interest in revisiting.

Dir: Reed Morano
Star:  Blake Lively, Jude Law, Sterling K. Brown, Raza Jaffrey 

The Nightingale

  By

★★★
“Pack your bags, we’re going on a guilt trip!”

History is largely filled with people being unpleasant to each other, usually for belonging to a different race, religion, nationality or even species [if you want to go back to the Cro-Magnons pushing out the Neanderthals about 40,000 years ago]. It’s sad and unfortunate, but it’s not something for which I feel personal responsibility – not least because it tends to work in both directions. My ancestors may have been part of the British Empire who, for example, invented the concentration camp in the Boer War. But my ancestors were also subject to the ethnic cleansing of the Highland Clearances, forced out to make way for sheep. Attempts to make me feel guilty for the sins of my forefathers are thus largely doomed to fail.

And what we have here, is a well-crafted exercise in manipulation. It’s set in what is now Tasmania, then a penal colony where the British garrison were trying to maintain control, both of the prisoners and the indigenous population, using savage brutality against both. One of the former is Clare Carroll (Franciosi), an Irish woman convicted of theft who is now married to another prisoner and working in an army garrison. She is at the mercy of Lieutenant Hawkins (Claflin), who wields a letter of recommendation, which would give Clare and her family freedom, as power over her. Circumstances escalate to a night where she is raped and left for dead, while her husband and infant child are murdered. Hawkins leaves for the capital of Launceston, in pursuit of a promotion. Clare follows, intent on revenge, helped on the trail by Billy (Ganambarr), an Aboriginal tracker, who has also borne the brunt of colonial savagery in his past.

It’s effective, in the same way that a 2×4 across the head will get your attention. It’s not exactly subtle in the parallels being drawn between Clare and Billy, who have both suffered at the hands of the evil Brits, and who subsequently bond over their victimhood. Hawkins is such an evil swine, he might as well spend the entire film twirling his mustache. But despite being such an obvious attempt at generating outrage, it’s not without its merits. Franciosi delivers a fierce and intense performance, as someone who has lost everything, and so is prepared to go to any lengths to take revenge on those who destroyed her life.

Perhaps the most chilling sequence has her hunting down a soldier, already wounded in an encounter with the local population (which seems to have strayed in from an 80’s Italian cannibal film!). The savage way in which she takes him down and then beats his head to a pulp with her rifle-butt… Yeah, she is clearly highly motivated. However, the simplistic way in which white men are, almost without exception, portrayed as stereotypical villains undoes much of the good work put in by the actors, and dampens its overall effectiveness.

Dir: Jennifer Kent
Star: Aisling Franciosi, Baykali Ganambarr, Sam Claflin, Damon Herriman

Black Lagoon: Roberta’s Blood Trail

  By

★★★½
“When you go on a journey of revenge, dig two, uh, MULTIPLE graves…”

Almost four years after Black Lagoon, this five-episode mini-sequel was released, re-uniting us with Revy (Toyoguchi), Rock (Namikawa) and the other members of the Lagoon Company. They remain, as before, a somewhat shady outfit, operating out of the South-East Asian wretched hive of scum and villainy, which is the entirely shady city of Roanapur. This arc is also a reunion of sorts with Roberta (Tomizawa, who has been doing voice work since back when I was a “real” anime fan, in the days of Bubblegum Crisis!) She’s the lethal Colombian maid who guards the Lovelace family, with whom Revy and crew crossed swords in one of the Black Lagoon arcs, before Roberta returned to South America.

A politically-motivate bomb explosion there took out her master, and set Roberta off on a trans-continental mission of vengeance, beginning in her country, before crossing the globe to Roanapur. That’s because the people responsible are a black ops group affiliated with one wing of the US government. They are now in town, preparing to go up into the Golden Triangle on their next mission, capturing a Laotian drug-lord. Following her are the Lovelace heir, Garcia (Ikura) and back-up killer maid Fabiola. But quite a few others are also interested in the outcome, including another wing of the US government (CIA vs. NSA), and the various factions of organized crime who run the city.

If there’s an overall theme here, it’s perhaps “redemption for past sins.” Rock, in particular, is seeking to atone for his failure to save a young girl, in the events that ended Black Lagoon. But it sometimes seems that everyone has history, of one kind or another, which has left them carrying baggage: even the NSA assassins have issues. Rock may be the central character here and, disappointingly, Revy spends much of the show on the disabled list. But despite her being sidelined, there are no shortage of strong female characters who take no crap from anyone: Roberta, Fabiola, Miss Balalaika, Eda. Say what you like, Roanapur is clearly an equal-opportunity hive of scum and villainy.

If anything, this is perhaps even more hyper-violent than its predecessor; going from cable TV to video seems to have taken off some of the restraints. Parts #3 and #4 in particular seem almost like an extended exercise in carnage around the streets of the city – amusingly, neither the authorities nor the other inhabitants appear too fazed by these happenings! It’s all a little confusing, with so many players in the game, but things settle down a bit for a solid finale, upstream in the jungles of Laos. All told, if you liked Black Lagoon, then this is almost certainly going to be appreciated in the same way. One review called this a cross between the works of John Woo and Takashi Miike, and it’s hard to argue with that an an overall assessment.

Dir: Sunao Katabuchi et al.
Star (voice): Megumi Toyoguchi, Daisuke Namikawa, Michie Tomizawa, Kazue Ikura

Girl with a Gun

  By

★★★
“Taiwanese knock-off, unsurprisingly, proves not as good as the original”

Make no mistake, Ms. 45 is one of the absolute classics of the girls-with-guns genre. So, if you’re going to remake it – officially or, as in this case, not – you had better bring your A-game. It’s possible that Chen did indeed bring his A-game, as did Yin in the role of Liang Pi-Ho, the mute garment worker assaulted twice in one day, who kills her second attacker and begins an escalating spree of misandrist revenge. I haven’t seen enough of their work to be able to judge. But Chen is not Abel Ferrara, and Yin is definitely not Zoe Tamerlis. All of which renders this largely pointless. Although it still gets to ride the power of the original, and is sometimes interesting, when going its own route rather than being a shot-for-shot copy of its inspiration.

Mostly, it’s the latter, with the same nosy land-lady (Wong), and the victims including a guy who picks up Liang’s bag on the street, a sleazy photographer, and a gang of street thugs. The middle of these, for example, crashes back onto the backdrop in his studio in an almost identical way to the Ferrara version. Despite this Xerox approach, there just isn’t the same level of intensity in the central performance, and nor do you get the scuzzy, unwashed depiction of New York. It is worth noting that this Taiwanese production is set in Hong Kong – it has been suggested for censorship reasons? That would explain why the shots of Liang dismembering her first victim are shot in solarized negative. This version does also include a nightclub scene while an instrumental version of The Human League’s Love Action plays in the background, which was… unexpected.

Let’s discuss the other differences. It opens with news stories about attacks by the mentally ill, and there are wraparound segments which have our heroine receiving treatment in an asylum. This, along with her muteness being explained as a psychological reaction to the death of her parents in an accident, provides more “justification” for her actions in comparison to Ferrara’s version. The film includes coverage from the police side too, of the investigation into the trail of bodies she has left around the city. Interestingly, we don’t see the heroine dress up as a nun for the party at the end [perhaps because it’s not a Halloween event]. However, the female cop who is on the case does go undercover as a nun for one sequence.

Many of the changes are relatively small – tweaks, rather than significant changes. For instance, rather than the landlady having a dog, Liang herself has a cat. Though in a morbid twist, she feeds her kitty some of the remnants of her victim. The gang attack is preceded by a battle between two different groups, both of whom have tracked Liang to a deserted Hong Kong park: the winners get… Well, gunned down by her. There is, apparently, a more radical reworking “that spliced in new scenes featuring Caucasian actors and an inexplicable satanic cult,” and was sold in the West, for no good reason, as American Commando 5: Fury in Red, a.k.a. Crackdown Mission. Iconic exploito-schlock master Godfrey Ho allegedly had a hand in that cut-up, and it sounds loopy enough to make me want to see it.

There is one scene which is both genuinely new, and memorable. In her wanderings, Liang stumbles into a group doing a rendition of He’s Got the Whole World in his Hands, partially in sign-language, and is deeply affected by the mournful performance. [Really, it’s an upbeat tune, but this version sounds like it was done by Joy Division, such is the gloomy nature] I’m not sure quite why it’s there. Perhaps to demonstrate that Liang still possesses her humanity, and just needs it to be touched somehow? It’s a weird little scene, yet one that works, and shows that the film-makers here are not devoid of their own imagination. It’s a shame they didn’t choose to employ a bit more of it, taking their unauthorized remake down some other original directions.

Dir: Yao-Chi Chen
Star: Hsia Yin, Pauline Yuk-Wan Wong, Alan Tam, Lun Hua
a.k.a. Fury in Red

Stiletto, by Caddy Rowland

  By

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

Revenge, as the saying goes, is a dish best served cold. Or, from another saying, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Illustrating both are the story told here. Jasmine Albertson had already gone through the lows and highs of life, before meeting and getting married to Stu. But when Stu’s business partner John Mickelson makes him take the fall for John’s embezzlement, leading to Stu’s suicide, Jasmine vanishes off the grid in Los Angeles. She moves to New York and sets her sights on a long-term plan to make John pay. And not financially: as she tells her gay best friend Tory, “I want him to know he fucked with the wrong people when he fucked over Stu and then me. I want him to suffer. And then I want to send him to hell.”

To this end, she creates an alter ego who will be able to ensnare the notoriously lecherous Mickelson. That’s Grace Huntington, a woman who cares not one whit for John’s (ill-gotten) gains or power, is all the more desirable as a result, and makes him willing to give her complete control. Three years after departing, “Grace” returns to LA, slowly reeling her prey in, and bringing him inexorably towards a bloody rendezvous in a 20th-floor hotel room. The weapon of choice? The high-heels shown on the cover, dating from her time as an exotic dancer; for one of them conceals a switchblade.

This isn’t suspenseful, except in the sense that you’re not certain what will happen in that hotel room. Right from the start, before we flash back to the events which led to Stu’s death, we know Jazz is planning to kill John. As a result, you’re left wondering less what will happen, than how it will unfold, and is almost Shakespearean in the inevitability of it all. Though on the other hand, it’s an unrepentantly shallow potboiler, with more than its share of foul language and a sprinkling of graphic sex. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. However, the fact you know the destination doesn’t hurt too much, since it gives Rowland time to bring you along with Jazz on her journey towards murder.

Make no mistake, this is more or less revenge porn, with the heroine going up against a truly repulsive man in the shape of Mickelson, who has close to no redeeming features. It’s certainly simplistic, with no much in the way of setbacks for Jazz, or problems to overcome, and Tory serves no real purpose, except as a sounding-board for her emotions. As a one-off, I still must admit to being (somewhat guiltily) entertained, even if this isn’t exactly literary haute cuisine. I’m not certain how this can be spun into a multi-book series, though I suspect it’s as much about the shoes as anything – and that’s actually quite an interesting idea. High-heels of death, anyone?

Author: Caddy Rowland
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in the Avengement series.

Maatr

  By

★★½
“Made first, seen second, and second-rate.”

I was clued into this when researching my review of Mom, and found a number of articles which mentioned its similarities to a previously-released film Maatr. Which turned out to be available on Amazon Prime, so here we are. Turns out it in turn was inspired by a Korean movie, Don’t Cry Mommy. Guess you should expect a review of that in due course, as I head further down the rabbit-hole. Anyway, this is acceptable rather than memorable. If definitely falls short of Mom,mostly due to the relatively bland and forgettable lead performance of Tandon as Vidya Chauhan.

She and her daughter are heading home from a school function when their car is run off the road. The injured women are taken to a remote farmhouse, and brutally raped. Dumped by the roadside, the mother survives. The daughter does not. Vidya has the help and support of her best friend, Ritu (Jagdale), who takes her in after the subsequent implosion of her marriage. The authorities? Not so much. For they fail to take action, when they discover one of the men Vidya identifies is the son (Mittal) of a powerful politician. If she wants justice, she is forced to take matters into her own hands.

It’s all handled competently enough, though there are plenty of plot elements which had me raising a quizzical eyebrow. In the middle, we have a montage including the heroine working out, but that implies a physicality that is never fully exploited. For example, she kills the first victim by loosening the wheel of his motor-cycle, and the second by doctoring his cocaine, neither exactly requiring strength or fitness. As an aside, amused to see the film: a) blur out the search-engine results when she’s researching drugs, b) asterisk out bad words in the subtitles, and c) put “Smoking Kills” in the bottom right of the screen, every time someone lights up. Such social responsibility can only be admired.

That the mother was a direct victim does give it a different feel to Mom, though I’m not sure it’s better. This feels more a personal vendetta than a quest for justice on behalf of a wronged innocent. But I’m also uncertain how much of the lesser impact is due to Tandon simply not being anywhere near as good an actress as Sridevi. However, there are some decent moments, such as the casual way her husband declares the end of the marriage, finishing with a request to pass the ketchup. The actual attack is also well-handled; savage without being explicit. However, in contrast to its terseness, the aftermath is drawn out too long, with an excess of moping about, before the heroine gets her butt in gear. The trope of politicians and their relatives being above the law is one which is quickly becoming a cliche, even in my limited experience of Bollywood film. While perhaps a victim of being seen second, there’s just not very much reason to watch this rather than Mom.

Dir: Ashter Syed
Star: Raveena Tandon, Madhur Mittal, Anurag Arora, Divya Jagdale

Revenge

  By

★★★★
“The mother of all vengeance stories.”

This is the first Thai TV series I’ve seen, and while I suspect it’s not exactly par for the course, I found it undeniably impressive. Behind a generic title, it’s easily the most intense of the telenovelas I’ve seen, regardless of location. [Note: various sources have different names for the characters: for consistency, I’m giving the ones used by Netflix] It’s a long, extended rampage of vengeance, in which the heroine, Maturos (Panyopas), goes after the perpetrators of a particularly vicious group-rape. The assailants are a local gang, who extract revenge on both Maturos and her daughter, Peung (Ruayruen), following their co-operation with the police. It’s an assault which leaves Matukron almost catatonic, and when half the gang are found not guilty in the subsequent trial, Maturos opts to find her own justice, adopting a variety of characters to get close to them. But the killing comes at the cost of her own sanity, which splits her personality into two: a caring and compassionate half, and an alternative persona which demands ever-more savage vengeance.

The story is told in the context of Maturos’s trial, so we know there’s no question of her getting away with it [that would probably have been a step too far!]. But will she get the death penalty, life imprisonment, or be found not guilty by reason of insanity? The show unfolds in flashback, occasionally interrupted with moments from the trial, telling the story of how she came to be facing multiple charges of murder. It begins with mother and daughter leaving their abusive husband and father. It’s the resulting precarious financial situation, moving them into a flat in a less than desirable neighbourhood, and bringing them into contact with the gang. They accidentally come into possession of a drug stash belonging to the posse, and hand it over to the authorities.

This triggers the brutal punishment on them both, on top of a building during a storm. It’s a lengthy ordeal, which occupies much of episode #4, with Maturos and Peung left lying on the roof. Though the police are able to arrest the suspects, the rain washes away much useful forensic evidence; only three of the seven are convicted, despite the best efforts of Inspector Patorn (Tangtong). He feels responsible for what happened, and had been somewhat involved in a relationship with Maturos before the attack. Afterward, however, that quickly proves to be impossible.

Indeed, it’s not long before Maturos’s alter ego, Roong, starts to show up. At first, she is subservient, appearing only in mirrors, but gradually becomes to dominate, taking control for much of the time. Not helping matters – though it is one of the most interesting angles – is the encouragement of Yuki Fukushida (Amratisha), who rescues Maturos from an abduction attempt by her ex-husband. Yuki runs a “victim’s support group”, for those abandoned by justice. It’s really more to do with helping them acquire the necessary set of skills to punish those who did them wrong. Needless to say, her encouragement doesn’t do much for our heroine’s sanity, instead letting her tap into her inner psychopath. The ex-husband is the first to experience that.

For the four unconvicted perpetrators, the pattern in the following episodes is similar. As shown on the poster (above, right), Maturos adopts a range of disguises – old woman, porn distributor, bar girl, human trafficker, or even a man – in order to get close to them. Having done so, eventually, she strikes, rendering them helpless, most typically with a sedative injection. She makes them record an apology to Peung, before finally dispatching them – albeit only after removing their genitals. Their deaths are never quick or easy, and are depicted at quite some length, as well as with a brutality which I found surprising. Thai TV may have severe limitations on sexual content, but violence is clearly seen as much less of a problem.

As the body count increases, the remaining gang members grow increasingly suspicious, and harder to track. Inspector Patorn is also beginning to put two and two together, and Maturos’s psychiatrist, Dr. Nattha, discovers her patient’s split personality, meeting Roong. Even after Patorn realizes her involvement in the murders, he agrees to let her act as bait to lure in the three remaining gang members, who have escaped from prison and, having reached the same conclusion, are coming for their own revenge.

But Maturos is playing a longer game, and it all builds to a final confrontation on the same rooftop where it began. As the image on the left suggests, she ends up going full Silence of the Lambs, wearing the face of one of her targets as a mask, and her final “disguise”. Though we still have to wait for the court’s verdict on her fate, with the case triggering a national debate regarding the death penalty, in addition to the question of Maturos’s culpability.

As on screen, so in real life, with the series proving a word of mouth hit in Thailand, and sparking similar discussions on the criminal justice system. The show’s ratings improved from as low as 1.3 in the early going, partly due to a late-night slot resulting from its content, reaching 3.7 for the finale. Deservedly so, because it was very effective: a real page-turner in televisual form. It certainly doesn’t pull any punches, and seems to be radically different from the typical “lakorn”, as the popular soap operas in Thailand are known. Though a 2014 study discovered that 80% of them depicted rape or sexual violence, I suspect few did so in such an uncompromising way as here.

It may, indeed, perhaps go too far occasionally. Chris largely lost her sympathy for Maturos, after watching her bring Peung along on one of her murders – even I have to admit, that is fairly questionable parenting, split personality or not. And watching the heroine don blackface in her prostitute character was perhaps something which didn’t transfer well, culturally. However, given the length of the series (24 x 50-minute episodes), such mis-steps are infrequent, and more than balanced out by a great performance from Panyopas. That’s especially so when she’s acting opposite her malevolent self, in a way which feels almost like a maternal version of Gollum.

It’s her portrayal which glues the series together; outside of sensei Yuki, the supporting cast of characters feel more functional than memorable, on both sides of the law. How successful you find the show as a whole is thus likely heavily dependent on how convincing you find her performance. Personally, I was more than satisfied with it, and while this may be optimistic, hope to find similar quality elsewhere in the lakorn genre.

Dir: Sant Srikaewlaw
Star: Lalita Panyopas, Pornsroung Ruayruen, Saksit Tangtong, Rudklao Amratisha
a.k.a. Lah (The Hunt)

Pussy Kills

  By

★★
“Coughs up a hairball.”

Despite a startling cover, this isn’t as sleazy as it seems. Indeed, even the title appears to be erring on the side of restraint, having apparently avoided the more obvious (and arguably, accurate) one of Killer Pussy. While the heroine certainly has an… interesting choice of costume, that’s as far as the film wants to go. It’s an odd approach: a sleeve like that sets up certain sets of expectations, which the movie has no apparent interest in matching. It’s not as if anyone of a sensitive nature is going to have got past the cover, so it seems odd to exercise such self-discipline when it comes to the content.

Anyway, it’s the story of Susie (Maya), whose parents were killed in a gang-related incident. Although both she and the cops know who was responsible, there isn’t enough evidence for the police to do anything. As a result, Susie begins her own surveillance operation, just before Halloween, only for the subjects to spot her. She is captured and raped by the gang, causing her already fragile sanity to crack. She manages to escape, and takes on the alternate persona of Pussy, her “sexy pussycat” Halloween costume. Wearing it, she tracks down the members of the gang who raped her, as well as their associates, and offs them in a variety of ways. She begins with some enthusiastic axe-work, then graduates to strangulation with a shoe-lace, and so on. But neither the gang nor the cops are enthusiastic about the corpses left in Pussy’s wake.

If only Catwoman had been like this. Well, if only this had had the budget of Catwoman, then it might have helped. At least, it might not have been a case where all the violence seems to occur just off-screen, accompanied by sprays of digital blood. You want to see vengeful savagery done properly? I Spit on Your Grave 3. There’s precious little sense of escalation or progress here, so for a good 45 minutes, it’s just one uninteresting kill after another. It may have started life as a web series, which may explain this over-episodic approach.

Still,  you’re clearly doing something wrong, when even Maya’s undeniably appealing butt begins to lose its charms… [Eventually… Probably after murder seven or so] Things do get slightly more interesting down the stretch, with the gang kidnapping Susie’s husband (Jia). There’s actually some drive to the narrative, rather than it being not much more than a loosely connected series of murders, intercut with shots of its leading lady’s booty. But even to reach that point, you also have to sit through the garish early going, where Black appears to be swapping lens filters on almost every shot, turning those scenes into a lurid, kaleidoscopic nightmare. When a director has to apply so much style, that’s usually an indication they have little or no confidence in the substance of their work. In this case, such concerns are largely justified.

Dir: Gabriel Black
Star: Lina Maya, Izzy Martinez, Kraig Million, Dave Jia

Ghost Squad

  By

★★★½
“The real female Ghostbusters…”

I’ll confess, the headline above is a bit click-baity. This is perhaps closer to a female version of The Frighteners, the early Peter Jackson film in which Michael J. Fox could see dead people, and had to learn to work with them. The conduit in this case is Rika (Yanagi), a young woman who has been able to see ghosts since a young age. But an encounter with a trio of ghosts, all murder victims who are seeking revenge on their killers, opens a whole new realm. For, it turns out, whenever Rika is in a life-threatening situation, the spirits can take physical form. They can also draw energy from her, which can be used to create weapons, which range from the merely strange (the “meat hammer”) to the bat-shit insane. None more so there, than that of Akari (Mikado). She has a tendency to go into puppy mode when stressed, which involves her becoming… a bit licky. So inevitably her weapon transforms Akari’s hand into Grudge Dog, capable of ripping the face off her opponent.

For I didn’t yet mention, the director is also responsible for some of the finest examples in Japanese splatter, perhaps peaking with The Machine Girl (which may well have informed one of the weapons here, as shown in the trailer). But also including a hand in Mutant Girl Squad and Robogeisha. This is relatively restrained, though the key-word there is “relatively.” There’s certainly the same degree of lunatic inventiveness at work, although the arterial spurting is considerably lower pressure than you’d expect: the comparison above to early Peter Jackson is entirely deliberate.  For the most part it’s goofily endearing rather than outrageously offensive, and quite well thought out. Even if Rika is more a pipeline for vengeance, she tries to act as the group’s moral compass, for example refusing to let the ghosts take vengeance on the daughter of one culprit.

There are still a few scenes which seem a bit sleazy. Not least, that the energy transfer mentioned above is lip-to-lip. Basically, it’s a shallow excuse for some lesbo makeout sessions, which feels at odds with an approach which sometimes seems closer to Disney than extreme gore. And there’s some dancing in underwear which made me feel mildly uncomfortable; it seemed gratuitous, even by Iguchi’s standads. I was also surprised by the way the vengeance largely ended up compacted into a single battle; if this had been paced throughout the film (like Kill Bill), it might have been more effective and enjoyable. However, I still watched the vast bulk of this with a grin on my face, and laughed out loud more than once. It perhaps helped that, going in, I didn’t know who the director was; indeed, the poster above was about all I had to go on. My expectations were closer to a light comedy with action elements, and the imagination here definitely came as a pleasant surprise.

Dir: Noboru Iguchi
Star: Anna Yanagi, Sumire Ueno, Minori Mikado, Yuni Hong

A Good Woman is Hard to Find

  By

★★★★
“Hammer time!”

2020’s first seal of approval goes to this uber-gritty Irish film, starring Sarah Bolger, whose most familiar to us from Into the Badlands. While her GWG creds there are overshadowed by the likes oE Emily Beecham, safe to say Bolger makes up for lost time here. She plays single mother Sarah Collins, who is struggling to come to terms with the recent, unsolved murder of her husband. Barely managing to make ends meet, her life is upended when entry-level criminal Tito (Simpson) breaks in, seeking sanctuary. He has stolen some drugs belonging to top boss Leo (Hogg), and offers Sarah a cut of the proceeds if she’ll act as his safe-house. Very reluctantly, she agrees. Needless to say, it doesn’t go as they plan.

And that’s putting it very mildly. I won’t spoiler it, but there’s a reason she ends up visiting a hardware store, and weighing up whether an axe or a hack-saw is better suited for her “project” [the correct answer, it appears, is both…]. Yet, the character arc from mild-mannered mother who basically won’t say “Boo!” to a goose, into someone capable of going about with a bowling-bag of highly unpleasant content, is remarkably plausible. Because it’s almost all driven by fierce maternal love for her two children, one of whom has been traumatized into muteness by witnessing his father’s murder. Sarah will do anything to protect and provide for them, and as motivation for taking up a criminal lifestyle, it’s a far sight better than we got in the similarly themed Widows or The Kitchen.

It also does not soft-pedal its violence. The extended sequence where Sarah goes over the edge and becomes a killer for the first time, at one point almost teeters into farce with her first choice of weapon. But the further it goes on – to the point of death and beyond, the grimmer it gets. I was reminded of the line spoken by Macbeth: “I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” This is made clear from the opening scene, which sees a gore-drenched heroine taking to the shower, setting the scene for its subsequent savage tone. We only find out the source of the blood later, and it won’t be the last time it gets spilled.

It’s a spectacular performance from Bolger, portraying a woman who is ground down to almost nothing, before finding fate presenting her with an opportunity – albeit one which comes with a frightening cost in terms of her humanity. Yet her portrayal manages to take the audience along with the character on that journey. The rest of the cast pales in comparison, though it probably doesn’t help that non-British audiences may need subtitles for some of the dialogue; even I was going “What?” at some points, particularly for Tito’s lines. Still, neither that nor some suspiciously convenient skill with a firearm (likely a necessary contrivance) are sufficient to derail a thoroughly successful slab of Irish noir.

Dir: Abner Pastoll
Star: Sarah Bolger, Edward Hogg, Andrew Simpson, Jane Brennan