Tag: s

Scarlet

  By

Mamoru Hosoda is one of the senior figures in Japanese animation, with thirty-five years of experience since he joined Toei Animation in 1991, after graduating from college. He made his feature debut with One Piece: Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island in 2006, though this came only after he had almost directed Howl’s Moving Castle for Studio Ghibli. He subsequently left Toei, to go freelance, and his works since have met with both critical and commercial success. Mirai was nominated for an Oscar in 2019 as Best Animated Feature – the first non-Ghibli film to be so honoured. 2021’s Belle , loosely inspired by fairy-tale Beauty and the Beast, was the second-biggest movie at the Japanese box-office that year, domestic or foreign.

His latest movie and the follow-up to Belle, Scarlet, was a long production, taking four and a half years to complete. It mixes traditional 2D cel animation with computer-generated animation, and is a take on Shakespeare’s story of Hamlet, with its titular heroine seeking vengeance on the people who murdered her father, the monarch of 16th century Denmark. Her first attempt backfires, when she consumes the poison intended for her uncle Claudius, the leader of the plot. Scarlet wakes to find herself in the purgatory of the underworld. She needs to complete her revenge in order to move on to the Infinite Land; otherwise, her spirit will collapse into nothingness. It turns out that Claudius is in the underworld too…

Both Dieter and Jim watched and reviewed this one independently. Below, you’ll find their respective ratings and thoughts, with Dieter going first. 

★★★★★
“The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns”

On the fourth anniversary of Russia invading the Ukraine a movie like this hits harder, I feel. At the same time, the Berlin Film Festival has ended and while a whole lot of boring message movies got awards, this one was not even in competition. I guess it also won’t win any Oscar awards. For the same reason: it’s just too good. It would blow any competing features out of the water. And yes, this is a strongly subjective review. Watch the movie and judge for yourself, I suggest.

But… I’m already starting with the end. I was honestly blown away by this movie. While neither the idea of a female Hamlet is new (see the 1921 Hamlet: The Drama of Vengeance with Asta Nielsen) nor doing a Shakespeare-inspired anime (there is the anime series Romeo x Juliette from 2007) what director Mamoru Hosoda has done here for Studio Chizu, is fascinating. No idea why he chose the story of Hamlet as an entry point: perhaps because it’s the most universally-known revenge story next to Death Wish? It would have worked just as well with new, fictional characters and other names.

I didn’t mind. It only serves as a basis on which the director discusses the general but often overlooked and therefore more essential questions of humankind: What defines our humanity? What do we live for? What does death mean? What is love? What can be forgiven? What cannot? How much are we shaped by the environment we grow up in? And if we spread a loving and peaceful attitude can we change the world for future generations?

These are big, important ideas which do not normally form a part of “entertainment culture” or political discussions today, as everyone is too much occupied in serving their own self-interest. Actually, I would locate these questions more in the areas of philosophy and religion. At the same time, the animation style itself is impressive: not just the usual 2D cell animation nor CGI animation. I don’t know how to describe it: while most of it seems classically drawn, many of the backgrounds seem photo-realistic as if they are “real”, including the desert, water, ruins and a jungle. Also overwhelming is the sky of this “other land” which looks like waves, over which a giant dragon flies and occasionally erupts in deadly lightning.

While the visual style takes some time to get used to, this is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s different and new and that’s it. I liked it but I can understand if other people might reject this approach. It’s really a matter of individual taste. Putting all these aspects aside, I found the movie really entertaining. It’s an epic, bombastic movie with a passionate heroine, lots of fights (somehow these medieval Danes seem to have quite some knowledge of martial arts) and – surprisingly – beautiful songs. With Scarlet being shown training hard since her early youth, her fighting larger opponents doesn’t seem that much of an overstatement. She also doesn’t always win, which helps to make the fights look more realistic.

If Mamoru Hosoda might not be as famous or successful as Hayao Miyazaki or Makoto Shinkai (Your Name), so far, he has always delivered excellent and interesting movies. Scarlet is his 8th movie (I challenge the uninitiated to discover his other movies, and especially recommend The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars) and was co-produced by Columbia Pictures. I regret that movies like this only ever run for one day here, and occasionally some more in some tiny cinemas as I think they deserve so much more exposure. Here is hoping, I may have contributed to making this excellent movie more well-known, and create some interest in its potential audience watching it, or at least giving it a chance.

★★★
“Better red than dead.”

Up-front confession: I haven’t seen any of Hosoda’s other work, so am not familiar with the style. Indeed, for a while, I was confusing him with Mamoru Oshii, of Ghost in the Shell and Avalon fame. Which isn’t as much of a stretch as it may seem. Oshii’s work seems to rely a lot on a loose narrative, using the virtual world in Avalon as a convenient loophole through which any plot thread can pass. You could make much the same argument for Scarlet, with the underworld being a realm where stuff simply can happen, because it’s the underworld. I’m not a huge fan of this kind of plot armour, and would likely have been happier if Scarlet had been pursuing her vengeance in the everyday world. 

The early stages will feel rather familiar to any fan of Game of Thrones. Scarlet can only watch as her father, a beloved figure, is executed in the name of political machinations. She then vows revenge, and undergoes a rigorous training program to that end. Very Arya Stark. Fortunately (or perhaps not?), it finds its own way after she consumes poison, and Scarlet finds herself in the afterlife. It’s necessarily a shock, but she has the mental fortitude to adapt. She’s joined there by Hijiri, a paramedic from the present day. In effect, he acts as her conscience, continuing to treat the wounded as he had done in life, and questioning the need for her revenge. This becomes especially pertinent after we hear the message Scarlet’s late father had for her. 

I cannot fault the visual side of things here at all. Dieter encouraged me to see this on the largest screen possible. Unfortunately, it did not last long in cinemas here: two weeks after release, it was down to showing in just twenty-four theatres nationwide. But having seen it in my living-room, I would not have minded a much larger viewing experience, and can only imagine the impact. It’s not seamless, in that you can often tell which sequences were old-school, and which were zeroes and ones. But the overall effect is undeniably impressive, and on that basis alone, I’d say it deserved an Oscar nomination more, say, than Zootopia 2.

However, as the above likely suggests, I was not particularly impressed with the plot. The basic elements were there – you can’t go wrong with revenge of the Shakespearean kind – but there are elements which seem not to serve this. For example, there’s a significant chunk where Scarlet and Hijiri are simply hanging out with elderly souls. It feels like John Wick paused his revenge, to spend an afternoon helping out at the local senior centre. I guess the eventual aim is that Important Lessons™ need to be learned by Scarlet about the value of life. But if you compare this to the works of Hayao Miyazaki, the moral lecturing here comes over as less than subtle. 

I did like the contrast between Hijiri and Scarlet. Interesting that the “caregiver” character here was male and from the present times, while the vengeance seeking warrior was female and out of the middle ages. This subversion of standard tropes is thought-provoking, without needing to deliver any explicit messaging, and the relationship between the pair works well. If you’re familiar with Hamlet, you’ll also get a kick out of some of the references (the versions here of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are particularly memorable). But any film which uses a dragon – another Game of Thrones nod? – as a convenient prop for the story-line, needs to be answering questions about its scripting. It’s this which stopped Scarlet from being more, for me, than just a well-crafted, pretty thing at which to look.

Dir: Mamoru Hosoda
Star (voice): Mana Ashida, Masaki Okada, Koji Yakusho, Kōtarō Yoshida

The Seasoning House

  By

★★★
“Sour and bitter in flavour.”

This is a nasty and grim piece of work, after which you will probably feel like taking a shower. However, I actually mean this in a (grudgingly) complimentary fashion, because it’s clear that director and co-writer Hyett was aiming for exactly that. Well done, I guess. Doesn’t mean I have to like it though, and this is not a film I have any interest in revisiting. It takes place in an unnamed part of the Balkans (though my money is on somewhere in Serbia), during the ethno-religious wars which tore apart the region in the late nineties. All manner of highly unpleasant things went on: here, it’s a brothel in which kidnapped women are forced to service militiamen.

Working for the man who runs it, Viktor (Howarth), is a deaf-mute girl, whom he has named Angel (Day). She was also abducted, and could only watch as Goran (Pertwee) and his men killed the rest of her family. In some small amount of good fortune, Viktor has taken a shine to Angel, and so her duties are of the housekeeping kind, rather than being raped on a daily basis. But the things she sees, as she scurries around the air-ducts of the decrepit building, are the stuff of nightmares. Things come to a head after a platoon show up, assaulting the closest thing to a friend she has, Violeta (Walton), who already had her pelvis broken during a previous session. For the soldiers’ commanding officer is Goran…

This is where, mercifully, the worm turns, with Angel using her secret passages to avoid capture, as she takes out Goran’s men. The first, in particular, is a spectacularly brutal death by pointy object, which feels extremely cathartic. Thereafter, it does a decent job of not having her go toe-to-toe with larger and stronger opponents. The cramped spaces of the air ducts act as a great leveller in this regard, right up until the end. Well, almost the end. Because the final act has her trying to get help from the locals, and is a fraught endeavour in itself. I was reminded in this aspect of a certain other horror movie, though I don’t want to be any more specific there. 

The first hour in particular is a little too close to torture porn for my taste. It’s not necessarily especially graphic, though not pulling its punches. However, it still makes for uncomfortable viewing, and the abuse seemed, to me, to go on beyond what was necessary to make its point. A lot of credit to the production designer, who created sets which feel like you can taste the dirt and the sweat. Effective stuff, without question. Again: not to my particular taste, and I would have preferred it if more time had been spent on Angel making Viktor, Goran and the other bastards get their extremely well-deserved just deserts. Instead, I’ll be over in the corner, turning on this fire-hose.

Dir: Paul Hyett
Star: Rosie Day, Sean Pertwee, Kevin Howarth, Anna Walton

SWAT Angels in Mission

  By

★★
“Mission: Fairly possible.”

Despite an impressive poster, this is a fairly humdrum action film. If it had been a Western production in the nineties, I would have described it as “straight to video.” I imagine the appropriate comparison here would be “straight to iQIYI”, the streaming service through which I saw this. It’s technically competent, make no mistake. However, there’s not very much to stick in the mind, and it feels like both the script and performances have been carried out with the bare minimum of effort. It’s the kind of thing you could have on in the background, while carrying out light household chores, and it would not impact the level of entertainment value obtained very much.

Mei Jing (Wei) is a cop, who is part of the Thunderbolt Strike Team in Donghai, under Wang Jianing (He). Her all-woman group are often passed over for the most exciting jobs, but they are key in foiling an attempt to free a captive, San Lin Jie, during a prison transfer. The attempt was made by his brother, who goes by the name of Hummingbird (Zhou). However, this helps puts Mei and her father, who was instrumental in the capture of San, on the radar for revenge by Hummingbird and his female sidekick, Nightingale. However, Hummingbird’s dedication to his cause does not sit too well with the other members of his own gang, who would rather just get on with their nefarious activities. 

The first effort he makes is to interrupt a stakeout Mei and her colleagues are carrying out downtown. This involves a sniper and some thugs at street level, though quite how this is going to force the authorities to release San is a bit unclear. I also wondered how he know the team were going to be there: I kept expecting there to be a mole in the department or something. Never did turn up. This fails, mostly because the women do fight back, in what’s probably the best bit of action heroine stuff the film has to offer. The opening attack on the transfer convoy isn’t too bad, generating a fair bit of tension while moving the story on. It’s not particularly GWG-ish though. 

He then ups the ante, by storming a nursing home and taking the residents hostage. Which at least seems like a semblance of a plan, and might also let him take his vengeance against Mei and her father. However, instead of building to a climax, it feels like the film kinda peters out in a generally disappointing way. While I could see the male lead going up against Hummingbird, surely we would get a nice, long fight between Mei and Nightingale? Sadly, no – this film, thy name is disappointment. Although to be disappointed, I would first need to have had some level of emotional involvement, and I can’t honestly say I did. On the other hand, I did get the washing-up done, so there’s that. 

Dir: Xue Wenhua
Star: Wei Xiaoxuan, He Meixuan, Zhou Zhiwen, Shen Tai

She Goes to War

  By

★★★
“S_e _o_s t_ W_r”

If the above doesn’t make much sense, there’s good reason for that. Things tend not to, when half of them are removed. Albeit for reasons that are largely not the makers’ fault, because this film only partially survives. Originally released in 1929 with a running-time of 87 minutes, the only version that remains is one re-released about a decade later, which has been chopped down to under fifty minutes, including new opening captions which comment on the looming second global conflict. What remains still packs quite the wallop, as an anti-war movie which doesn’t shy from the brutal nature of World War I. It’s a part-talkie, with sounds for some of the music and dialogue, and it’s very effective when used.

For example, we hear Rosie (Rubens, in one of her last roles before dying tragically young) sing a jaunty little number called “There is a Happy Place (Far, Far Away)” to cheer up the troops. A few minutes later, she sings it again to a dying soldier, as heroine Joan Morant (Boardman) watches from the shadows, and it’s utterly heart-breaking. Joan is there for reasons which have largely been lost in the edit down to the shorter version. But they seem to be related to her boyfriend, Reggie (Burns), who has gone off to war – he has a drinking problem, though whether this is a result of the conflict is similarly hard to determine. She disguises herself as a man in order to replace him after his drinking renders him unfit for active duty. This exposes her to the true horrors of trench battles, which go far beyond what she could possible have imagined.

It’s an area where the poor quality of the surviving print work for the film, because the battle re-enactments (including some impressive model work for the nineteen twenties) almost look like grainy newsreel footage. Of course, Boardman is as convincing a man as most cross-dressing soldiers are i.e. not very. You have to accept that conceit as a given, and not ask awkward questions about things like bathroom facilities. After about the half-way point, the dialogue all but stops, and things unfold thereafter accompanied only by music and some sound effects. Some sections are truly the stuff of nightmares, such as when the soldiers have to advance, only to be driven back by the enemy unleashing a tidal wave of liquid fire against them.

Seeing the men trudging back, as the entire skyline burns behind them, or (the then newly-invented) tanks driving into the same fiery hell, are images which feels like they could easily come out of 1917, or any modern war movie. The chaos of warfare is reflected in the way it’s almost impossible to tell friend from foe, in the flames and the smoke and the near-darkness. The troops advance again, coming under withering fire from a German machine-gunner. Joan shoots him in the head, after running away from a would-be rapist (!). But it’s all too much for the poor girl, and she has to be carried back to safety by the truly heroic (and non-alcoholic) Sergeant Pike (Holland), whose entire back story was another victim of the editing. It’s all frustrating, and makes it very difficult to judge, because I’m basically watching half a movie. What there is, however, packs considerably more of a punch than I expected.

Dir: Henry King
Star: Eleanor Boardman, John Holland, Edmund Burns, Alma Rubens

The Sundance Revenge, by Mike Pace

  By

Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆½

This takes place in the ski resort of Park City, during the event it’s best known for: the Sundance Film Festival. Beginning with a plummet from a chair lift, the town is plagued by a series of “accidents” – quotes used advisedly. For they are actually the work of a female vigilante calling herself the Sword of Justice, and dedicated to punishing men for their crimes against her gender. On the other side is Belle Bannon, a former Marine, who had anger issues even before going into the military. Now a hunting guide and member of the ski patrol, she is determined to find and stop the killer. 

However, it’s complicated by the fact that the Sword of Justice has close ties to some very unpleasant and dangerous people, involved in the local drug trade, led by Danny Pagano. He does not take kindly to Belle’s investigation, and the closer she gets to the target, the more he feels threatened. It all leads to a plan for a mass chemical attack on the town’s water supply, with the aim of targeting a law-enforcement officer investigating the gang. Belle, along with help from a descendant of The Sundance Kid who now works for the DEA, needs to find a way to stop this, end the Sword of Justice’s vigilante campaign, and survive a final face-off deep underground, in a disused silver mine. 

To get the bad out of the way first, this desperately needs an editor to tidy this up. It feels as if, in the first draft, it was originally written in the first person, but was then changed to the third person. However, the update seems to have been executed sloppily, meaning there are still multiple sentences where the perspective is inconsistent, changing in the same sentence, e.g. “they had the place to ourselves.” Elsewhere, exact sentences get repeated a page or two apart, or we learn Pagano is from Denver, but shortly after that, Belle tells him to head “back to Phoenix.” Normally, I’m oblivious to this kind of thing; this is the first time I’ve felt compelled to mention it, which should give you some idea how prevalent it is.

On the other hand, that I still not only finished it, I was adequately entertained, is a clear positive. You get a good sense of place, and the silver mine is an excellent, spooky location, used more than once. It’s an interesting twist to have an ex-military heroine whose mental problems are not the result of PTSD, and Belle is someone you’ll find it easy to cheer on. I’m not entirely convinced about the logic of poisoning a whole town to nail one person, even if you do try and blame it on an industrial accident. But it does certainly up the stakes, and things are fairly non-stop thereafter. Falls an earnest bit of proof-reading short of a solid recommendation. 

Author: Mike Pace
Publisher: Foundations Book Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 3 in the Belle Bannon series.

Stone Cold Fox

  By

★★
“For Fox’s sake…”

I think, if you’re going to try and recreate the eighties, it might help if you were there. I was. Co-writer/director Tabet? Not so much. She seems repeatedly to confuse the look and feel of the decade with the seventies. The repeated needle-drop of Sweet song “Fox on the Run” – actually released in 1974 – is the most blatant example. It explains why the results are a bit of a mess. A well-intentioned mess, to be fair, and you can usually see what they are aiming for. However, throwing a character in solely so they can refer to eighties films like Commando and Cobra, is painfully clunky, and is a more accurate reflection of the approach in which this indulges.

It takes place, as noted, in some vaguely historical period, where troubled teenager Fox (Shipka) runs away from junkie single mother, and younger sister Spooky. She’s taken under the wing and becomes the lover of Goldie (Ritter), a criminal entrepreneur. But after she catches an apparent glimpse of Spooky, Fox feels guilty at abandoning her sibling. She lifts a large duffel-bag of drugs, stolen by Goldie in association with her corrupt cop partner, Billy Breaker (Sutherland) and goes on the lam, looking for Spooky. Naturally, neither Goldie nor Breaker are pleased by this development, and set out to recover their ill-gotten gains. However, Fox has allies on her side too, including ex-combat medic Frankie, who has a Lebanese almost but not quite brother (the film fan mentioned).

While in pre-production on this, Tabet said, “I plan on genre-bending: gut-punching, pulpy, queer stories told with a habibi flare.” Well, apart from having to look up what “habibi” means – and I’m still confused what was intended there, in relation to movies – I guess this kinda works? It’s not very genre-bending, with a random, one-off breaking of the fourth wall at the start the closest we get. And I didn’t feel like it provided any punches to the gut, beyond a gentle tap regarding something regarding Spooky. Pulpy and queer? More so: indeed, it does seem at times like the script is more intent on ticking diversity boxes – not something exactly common in the eighties – than telling a story. This is my unsurprised face, that the film ended up on Netflix. 

It was a little ironic watching Sutherland playing a lawman, the day after his arrest for allegedly assaulting an Uber driver. Such things aside, there are some positives. Ritter makes for a decent villainess, and Mishel Prada is so much fun as Frankie, I’d perhaps have preferred the film to have focused on her story (the synchronised nunchaking was my personal highlight). But for every step forward, there are two back: Chung’s newly-transferred cop character serves no real purpose, and is just a cliché on legs; the same goes for Goldie’s henchwomen. There was more to the eighties (and to eighties action movies as well) than training montages. I should know.

Dir: Sophie Tabet
Star: Kiernan Shipka, Krysten Ritter, Kiefer Sutherland, Jamie Chung

The Stolen Valley

  By

★★½
“Topples over into earnestness”

This feels like a modern Western. I think it was shot up on the borders of Utah and Arizona, since I recognized scenes shot at the Buckskin Tavern, in that area. While contemporary, with relatively minor tweaks, it could easily take place a century or more ago, back when robber land barons were a thing in the Old West. Lupe (Covarrubias) is in desperate straits, with her mother Adamina (Miranda) in need of money to pay for medical treatment she can’t afford. There’s another shock: the father, Carl (Fitzgerald), who Lupe long believed dead, is actually alive, and might be the last chance of getting the necessary funds. So she decides to make the journey to see him.

Barely is she under way – she’s seeking to pawn jewellery to raise a little cash – when she encounters Maddie (Hethcoat). And when I say “encounters”, she comes out of the back of the pawn-shop, guns blazing. For Maddie has a sizable debt too, to some unpleasant people, and now they perceive Lupe as her accomplice. The two young women decide Carl could solve both of their problems, only to find him engaged in a dubious scheme to sell off land, which actually belongs to Adamina, to an oil company, having convinced them Adamina is dead. It’s a move which will result in the indigenous people being thrown off the property, and Lupe’s unexpected presence clearly represents a threat to  the deal. 

This does a lot of things right. Most obviously, it takes place in some gorgeous locations, and the photography does them justice. The performances are generally effective as well, with Hethcoat in particular a lot of fun to watch. She cuts a striking figure with her blonde hair, cowboy hat, and a take no prisoners attitude. Maddie is in sharp contrast to Lupe, who has been brought up “the right way”, and they make for an amusing pairing as they play off each other. Although scenes like the gratuitous flamenco dancing may not move the plot forward, they are still amusing to watch, and they build the character. Indeed, they might be fun precisely because they are separate from the plot. 

Because that’s the film’s problem. It’s a script where far too much happens because the story needs it. Why did Adamina leave without taking the property deed, clearly her most precious asset? Why did Carl hang on, not just to the deed, but also the letter Adamina wrote to her own mother, for over twenty years? And don’t even start me on the remarkable coincidence of Maddie’s background. Add in a not-so subtle subtext of “Men are bad, and white men – they’re the worst“, and it all begins to topple over under the weight of its own moral superiority. I’ve no doubt Edwards’ heart is in the right place. However, the message here too often gets in the way of the movie. 

Dir: Jesse Edwards
Star: Briza Covarrubias, Allee Sutton Hethcoat, Micah Fitzgerald, Paula Miranda

Sheriff Bride: Rob’s Story, by Joi Copeland

  By

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

This is the last (and at 120 pages, slightly the longest) book in the Sheriff Bride series, each installment written by a different author, which my wife Barb and I read together. (She appreciates these books much more than I do.) Here, our focus is on the youngest Hardin sister, Rob (Roberta); and three years have passed since the opening of the first book, so she’s now very close to 18, and probably is 18 by the end of this installment. (In western Texas in the late 1870s or early 80s, she would be viewed as of legitimately marriageable age –and the series title is a clue that this might be a relevant consideration.) While I don’t go so far as to recommend the series to most readers, if you do read it, I recommend doing so in order; you need the understanding of the situation and the characters as these have developed over time in the earlier books in order to properly experience this one.

Joi Copeland is a more prolific author than any of the other three in this tetralogy, and stylistically a somewhat more polished writer, with less of an aversion to pronouns than her colleagues (though there are still places where she under-uses them). This book is also free of editorial issues. Otherwise, its general flavor is pretty consistent with the previous books; plot-wise, it’s distinct from them in two ways. One of these would involve a major spoiler (though the reader learns it fairly early on). The other is that it’s the only one of the four to feature a sustained, multiple-combatant gunfight, with – for this series – a high body count. (It has the highest kick-butt quotient of any of the four books.) However, it has to be said that the author doesn’t handle action scenes very well. With this one, we actually come in on the action only when it’s almost over; then the part we missed is later recounted by a participant, in no great detail. So a lot of the dramatic potential here is simply thrown away. And although the neon lamp wasn’t invented until 1902, when I read the reactions of two characters to each other’s looks in the first chapter, I commented to Barb that we have a flashing neon sign that they’re a couple-to-be. :-)

For me, the main factor that pulled down my rating was the marked implausibility of the plotting, all through the book. Yes, I can see why it’s necessary for Rob to have a new deputy, given that the one in the third book (where we were never even told his name; here we learn that it’s Pedro) had to move to take care of his “ailing” parents. But the misunderstanding surrounding that hire would never have been allowed to occur in real life. Copeland doesn’t explain why Leslie needs the deputy job badly enough for that character’s desperate suggestion to seem realistic. Travel between Waterhole and neighboring Buford, Texas is initially shown to take nearly all day; but it can suddenly be accomplished in vastly fewer hours when the plot needs it to be. Given that all of the Hardin sisters are supposedly very savvy gunfighters, two of them make a ridiculously dumb tactical decision here, and Rob acts at one point with a really amateurish recklessness which even Barb, who’s more inclined to be lenient in judging these books than I am, considered out of character. And though I liked the basic gist of the ending, and though I consider myself an equalitarian feminist, another factor was my feeling that it’s irresponsible for a pregnant woman to insist on being in a physically dangerous situation if it isn’t absolutely necessary.

Ardent fans of Western romance, who like the genre enough not to be too critical, can enjoy this series. But I don’t recommend it to readers who want more accomplished and textured writing.

Author: Joi Copeland
Publisher: Lovely Christian Romance, available from Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Sheriff Bride: Dan’s Story, by Cheryl Williford

  By

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

Despite the fact that all of the books of this series are written by different authors, they exhibit a lot of similarity in style, and also in literary quality. Since the quality tends to be wanting, that’s not a good thing. (My wife Barb really likes these books, which is why we read them together; and even I find the premise novel and intriguing. But it suffers from mediocre and even amateurish execution.) However, Williford has a bit smoother, less pronoun-averse and a trifle more textured prose style than her colleagues, and also a more realistic and less “vegetarian” approach to the realities of lethal force in law enforcement than the first two books displayed. There are situations that can arise where killing a determined aggressor is the only way to protect innocent lives; and she recognizes both the fact that a decent person doesn’t want to do that and may be severely torn up by the pain of doing it, and that neither the reluctance nor the pain change the moral necessity of doing it at times. In fairness to the author of the first book, Teresa Ives Lilly, her heroine realized this as well, but was able to make a decision to disable rather than kill in the particular case she had to confront. But circumstances may not always provide that option…

How much time has elapsed since the previous book isn’t explicitly stated at the outset; but there, the oldest Hardin sister Sam was newly pregnant and here she’s full term, so we can infer about nine months. Here, the focus is on the third-oldest of the quartet, Dan, who’s the sole viewpoint character – though, as always in the series, narration is in third person. Mutual attraction between her and circuit-riding preacher Joshua Plain was already established in the first book, so the romantic focus in this one is predictable, to the readers, the Waterhole townsfolk, and Dan’s sisters; she’s the only one with doubts about it, centering on whether or not her affection is returned, and on whether she’s cut out to be a preacher’s wife. The short length of the book keeps the angst over this from getting too repetitive and wearing.

There’s no single overall conflict here, so even with just 104 pages the plot has an episodic quality; attention passes from Dan’s venture of opening a café on the side, to allow scope for her cooking talents (Joshua, with 19th-century prejudice against women in business, is very opposed to the idea –though he’s had to admit that she and her sisters are very qualified peace officers!– and to her credit she sticks to the idea anyway), to Sam’s pregnancy and delivery, to the problem of a couple of newly-arrived underage saloon girls, and to the conflict with a tyrannical local rancher. And sometimes we shift back and forth among these. Williford doesn’t really develop the latter character enough to make his motives, and his drastic escalation of the conflict, really credible. On the other hand, the character of young Native American woman (and Christian convert) Morning Glory gets to shine here. Though I’m still not buying the secondary romantic thread provided for her! The role of prayer and Christian faith in God’s guidance in the main characters’ lives is treated positively, and I appreciated the point that combative fighting over Bible interpretation doesn’t please God. The Apostle Paul would agree!

There are a number of editorial issues here that simple proofreading and minimal attention to detail would have corrected, and that frequently took me out of the story. The rancher’s last name changes unaccountably from Dunner to Norton, and then to Newton, in different parts of the book, and sometimes between paragraphs. (Rolls eyes.) We’re told at one point that a circuit judge will arrive tomorrow; but that doesn’t happen, and a prisoner remains in jail with no realistic follow-up. Then near the end, a “district judge” from Dallas makes a quick appearance in response to a telegram. Dallas is in eastern, not western, Texas, and it’s not likely that Waterhole would have been in the same judicial district. We learn here that Morning Glory’s grandmother was of the Comanche tribe, kidnapped and raped by an Apache, among whose people Morning Glory and her mother were raised. But it was said in the second book that she was from Wisconsin, which is quite far north and east from the Apache homeland. There are several other clashing details, that show poor attention to the writing craft. Despite all of these issues, I do like the Hardin sisters as characters; I just regret that they weren’t blessed with more competent chroniclers!

Author: Cheryl Williford
Publisher: Lovely Christian Romance, available from Amazon, as a printed book or for Kindle.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Steal Her Breath

  By

★★½
“Don’t hold your breath.”

I wonder if this film was made as some kind of bet. How many tropes and clichés can you fit into a single movie? It would make for a fun drinking game, though not one I would recommend, unless you have first checked the fine print on your health insurance. It focuses on two characters, though both of them are more like walking collections of issues. There’s a thief, Laura Nehls (Binger), who is seeking to liberate the NOX list, which is about to be sold on the black market. It contains “The true identities of hundreds of investigators, informants, and undercover agents.” Needless to say, the authorities are keen on this not falling into the wrong hands. 

Seeking to stop it is police detective Maxine Kämmerer (Lopes), a single mom whom we first see trying (and failing) to get some quality alone time in her shower, if you know what I mean. On her side is somewhat useless colleague Joachim (Hauber), of whom Maxine says, “Nobody likes you and nobody takes you seriously, because you’re a coward, corrupt, a grumbler, and a disgusting asshole.” These are the good guys, folks. The film isn’t really selling them. Mind you, just about every other man in this film is a bully or worse, up to the psychotic Laschla (Möller), one of the buyers of the file, whose hobbies include stringing women up and gutting them. 

An exception might be Laura’s uncle Dirk, though he seems to have some kind of terminal disease. Cancer. It’s probably cancer. So he’ll be abandoning her soon too. You won’t be surprised to discover that Laura and Maxine meet up, have instant sexual chemistry and decide to work with each other (more or less) to recover the NOX files. This happens after an surprisingly lengthy and surprisingly graphic spot of lesbian canoodling, finding in each other’s arms what they are unable to get from the male sex. There might have been a point where I would have appreciated this unexpected treat. But in this case, I was largely making “hurry up” gestures toward the screen. Though you won’t be surprised to discover that the sides disagree in terms of their commitment to the new relationship. 

From reading local reviews, the most memorable thing here seems to be the use of local Swabian and Saxon dialect. Needless to say, that’s an element which entirely escaped me, and there wasn’t much to keep me interested otherwise. Things unfold almost as you’d expect and, while both Maxine and Laura are characters with potential, the fact that chief antagonist Laschla looks to have strayed in from a bit of Euroschlock, Possibly involving gay vampires. It all unfolds in a plodding and predictable fashion, though it’s nicely photographed, and the leads stop it from collapsing entirely under its own weight. If you have a burning desire to see a German version of Bound, I guess this will satisfy the urge. 

Dir: Andreas Kröneck
Star: Luisa Binger, Christina Lopes, Harald Hauber, Oliver Möller