Tag: seal of approval

Gate of Ivrel, by C.J. Cherryh

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

Once upon an unspecified time, somewhere in the cosmos, a human-like, space-faring race called the qhal (or Qujal, in a later dialect) stumbled upon, and subsequently greatly extended, a system of high-tech Gates, a relic of a vanished civilization, which permitted instantaneous travel to other planets and other times. Fearing that travel into the past would prove dangerous, the qhal forbade it; but they used the Gates to travel extensively in space and future time, building up an empire that oppressed and exploited the various despised other races they encountered. This gave them much wealth and power (and universal detestation from others) –until somebody eventually tried past time-travel. The resulting cataclysm (only dimly surmised in the theories of the subsequent scientists) reached as far as the Gates themselves reached, and proved to be an apocalyptic warping of space-time that destroyed civilizations and worlds in its path. But the Gates themselves survived. We learn all of this from an omniscient narrator in the first part of the Prologue.

The other parts of the Prologue are excerpts of various (fictional) documents. In the Journal of the “Union Science Bureau,” we learn of the formation of a team charged with traveling through the Gates, for the sole purpose of closing or destroying them permanently on the far side, to prevent a repeat catastrophe. (Since nobody knows how many Gates there are, this may be a multi-generational task until the last one is reached; and it’s surely going to be a lethally dangerous mission.) Written on a low-tech, medieval-like world, a short text in the Book of Embry tells us that on “the height of Ivrel” still stand ill-regarded, rune-marked “Staines” [stones] of Qujalish origin and still imbued with their “sorceries,” which if touched produce “sich fires of witcherie as taken soul and bodie withal.” This place and others such are sought by those with Qujal blood, recognizable by gray eyes and tall stature, who are thought to lack souls, but “by sorceries liven faire and younge more yeares than Men.”

Finally, a longer passage from the Annals of Baien-an recounts how, “In the year 1431 of the Common Reckoning,” five strangers supposedly from the distant south came to the northern realms, one of them a tall, light-colored young woman named Morgaine (who was thought to be Oujal). They persuaded the northern kings to make war on “…the witch-lord Thiye… lord of Ivrel of the Fires;” but near Ivrel, the great northern army of 10,000 men was unaccountably nearly annihilated, and the five were blamed for the disaster. All of them but Morgaine vanished without trace; pursued, she fled south and supposedly died at another place of Qujalish “Stones,” afterwards called Morgaine’s Tomb. “Here it is said she sleeps, waiting until the great Curse be broken and free her.”

Our story proper begins about 98 years after the disaster at Ivrel, when we meet young (about 20, from later clues) Nhi Vanye –the first name is the clan name, the second the personal one. He’s the out-of-wedlock son of a clan chief, grudgingly taken into the latter’s citadel because his mother, a lady from a hostile clan taken in a raid, died giving birth to him; but (as we learn later) he’s been persecuted and bullied by his two half-brothers from childhood on. By the second page, he’s in serious hot water with his father after a sword-practice bout turned deadly, leaving one half-brother dead and the other badly injured. Outlawed, disowned, dishonored and cast out, he no longer has a clan or a livelihood. His one hope is to try to work his way southward (through the territory of his half-brothers’ mother’s clan, whose members will want to kill him on sight) to an area where he has kin.

We skip over the details of that slow trip, but by the second winter of his outlawhood, surviving by hunting (and stealing what he has to) he’s close to the border –but also close to the unchancey vicinity of Morgaine’s Tomb. And when he wounds a deer, and the fleeing animal blunders through the Gate, it opens on the other side. A century before, Morgaine desperately rode into the Gate, and horse and rider have been held in suspended animation, but now, as she rides out from legend into Vanye’s reality, for her it’s as if she’s been gone just for a moment. And (being, as we can guess, part of the Union Science Bureau’s afore-mentioned team) she still has the same goal on her mind. By the following morning (long story, but sex doesn’t play any part in it; there’s no sexual content in the book), due to the complicated mores of his people, Vanye finds himself oath-bound to service as her vassal for a year. (The old kings had given her “lord-right.”) So this is to be a “quest narrative,” and hers is to close however many Gates there are, starting with taking out the Gate of Ivrel. (On this world, that’s the main Gate; the other two depend on it, and can’t survive without it.) The latter goal is now, perforce, Vanye’s as well. And Morgaine’s grimly committed to seeing it through, if it kills them both (which it very well may).

This is a tale of action and adventure, hardship and danger in a rugged land, with escapes, betrayals and subterfuge. Vanye’s a trained warrior, and Morgaine packs some high-tech weapons that she knows very well how to use; that’s fortunate, because there will be plenty of enemies in their path. Thiye’s still alive, and still ruling in the Ivrel area (and with power and domains greatly increased since the debacle a century ago). But there’s also the problem of clan chieftains who hate and fear Morgaine, or who would like to get their own hands on Qujal “magic” (or both); and a surprise enemy waits in the shadows…. It’s also a powerful tale of complex, nuanced characters, facing very high-stakes moral choices as they struggle with conflicting values, obligations and emotions. While Vanye is our viewpoint character and maker of the most significant choices, and it’s his head we’re inside, it’s Morgaine who’s the center of the tale, and her determination that drives it. (We can fairly say that she’s the protagonist; and she makes decisions too, or bears the pain of decisions made.) Cherryh’s world-building is superb, her plotting impeccable, her prose deft and evocative, and she delivers an emotional impact that’s almost breath-taking. I wasn’t even remotely prepared for how rich and rewarding this novel is!

Though this is the opener of a four-book series, there’s no cliff-hanger; the immediate situation here is brought to closure. But though I intended at first to read this as a stand-alone, I’m now in it for the long haul.

Note: Andre Norton’s two-page Introduction to this DAW printing is spoiler-free, and basically just an eloquent appreciation of the author’s literary achievement here. But though the accompanying map was made by Cherryh herself, it’s crudely-drawn, with hard-to-read place names, and hard to refer to due to its small size. And while Michael Whelan is a leading cover artist in the field of speculative fiction, his work here doesn’t reflect any actual scene in the book, and gives the wrong idea about Morgaine’s character; she doesn’t dress at all revealingly under her fur cloak, and doesn’t act like a sex object!

Author: C.J. Cherryh
Publisher: DAW, available through Amazon, only as a paperback. There is an e-book available of the whole series. 
Book 1 of 4 in The Morgaine Cycle.

Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer

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★★★★
“Lethally blonde.”

This is Broomfield’s second documentary around the topic of Aileen Wuornos, having previously made Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer. It’s a glorious doc – one of my all-time favorites – but is more tangential, being about those around Wuornos, seeking to exploit her situation for their own personal gain. He thought he was done with the topic, but he was called as a defense witness during Aileen’s final appeal against the multiple death sentences, largely because among those exploiters was her lawyer at the time, Steve Glazer. But around appearing in the witness box, Broomfield decided to make a second documentary, this time focusing on the woman at the centre of proceedings, all the way up to her execution by lethal injection in October 2002.

What I love about Broomfield’s work is, he goes where the story leads him. Some documentarians – and I’m looking at you, Michael Moore – go into production with An Agenda (caps used advisedly). They then craft the end product towards that agenda. To me, that’s less a documentary than propaganda. Broomfield seems to have a much more open mind, and the results sometimes end up going in unexpected directions. Here, it’s clear that he has sympathy for Wuornos, but doesn’t pull any punches about her personality and mental state. He presents footage both of her claiming self-defense and absolutely confessing to having committed cold-blooded murder. The scary thing is, Wuornos appeared to me to be highly credible in each, contradictory situation. Maybe I’m just easily fooled. Sobering.

Certainly, there is evidence of Aileen’s anger issues. During his final interview, we see how she can go from calm discussion to volcanic ferocity in short order, for little or no reason, and storming out while flipping Broomfield the bird. If there had been a firearm to hand during this outburst… Yeah, watching this, the idea of her killing seven in less than a year definitely seemed possible. Rage and easy access to guns is a dangerous combination. But as the film proceeds, it appears Wuornos’s mental situation deteriorates into frequent surges of paranoia, claiming mind-control weapons are being used on her, and that the cops knew who she was after the first murder, and let her continue killing so they could exploit things in the media. 

Should someone so clearly ill in the head be executed? Political considerations – it being an election year, with the governor wanting to appear strong on crime – appear to have overridden any judicial concerns. A cursory mental exam pronounced her fit to die, and the sentence was duly carried out. On that day, Broomfield was interviewed by the media (a classic case of the snake eating its own tail). He said, “Here was somebody who is has obviously lost her mind, has totally lost touch with reality. We’re executing a person who’s mad, and I don’t really know what kind of message that gives.” As someone not averse to the death penalty, this documentary certainly made me pause for thought, and that alone proves its quality. 

Dir: Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill

Hunting Jessica Brok

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★★★★
“What a silly hunt.”

This is a rough, to the point of savage, piece of cinema. If you do not like seeing people get their head blown apart, you should stay away, because that happens more then once here. The provider thereof is Jessica Brok (Jones), who was once part of a black ops operation which went across the border from South Africa into Angola, in search of a poaching ring, only to find far worse. The subsequent ambush wiped out most of her team, though she was able to kill the brother of the poacher’s leader. Over a decade later, she is finished with the business, and living quietly with her young daughter, under a new identity. The business, however, is not finished with her. 

For the leader, Lazar Ipacs (Lukunku), has been harbouring a grudge against Jessica, and has finally tracked her down. With the help of a former colleague, Daniel (Berning), he lures her into a trap and prepares to make her regret… Absolutely everything. But Daniel has second thoughts, throwing Jessica a lifeline which lets her escape. The hunt is on. The only question is, who is the hunter and who is the hunted? After a few lower-tier henchmen are taken out, Lazar’s wife Sherri (Mboya) discovers Jessica has a daughter, and Lazar kidnaps her, intending to use the child as leverage. If you’re thinking that might be a bit of a poor decision, give yourself two points. 

The best thing I can say about this is, while running comfortably over two hours, it doesn’t feel like it at all. There’s not much of a lull: a brief period of peace depicting Jessica’s new life working on a wildlife sanctuary is as quiet as things get. Once she is kidnapped, there is little pause for breath thereafter. It is fair to say that the action here is more inclined towards the comic-book, rather than the realistic. Jessica, for example, takes more damage than any normal human could be expected to survive. She takes an arrow right through the thigh, and basically shrugs it off, while stepping on a grenade booby-trap leaves her with little more than slight tinnitus. However, the same goes for Lazar and Daniel. 

Taken in that spirit, I enjoyed this a great deal, and it’s the first film I’ve watched in 2026 to merit our Seal of Approval. The characters here are broadly-drawn, yet no less effective for it. Credit especially to Lukunku and Mboya, who make a spousal pair who are the stuff of your worst nightmares. The script doesn’t do anything particularly new – especially obvious, the way Lazar and his men spurn opportunity after opportunity to kill Jessica, to the point it begins to feel like a deliberate running joke. Yet it feels like its simplicity leaves the film stripped-down and lean, rather than underwritten. I suspect director/co-writer Orr might be a big fan of Revenge. I am too: there’s much worse from which to take inspiration.

Dir: Alastair Orr
Star: Danica De La Rey Jones, Richard Lukunku, Clyde Berning, Hlubi Mboya

The Last Exit

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★★★★
“Manson family values.”

Genuinely good Tubi Original shocker! Well, that’s a bit harsh: there have have been decent ones before – such as Lowlifes, which certainly has some DNA in common. But this is likely the best I’ve yet seen, anchored by an excellent performance from Richardson. This takes place on a dark and stormy night, in a remote Scottish farmhouse. Rose (Richardson) is taking care of her disabled husband, with the help of daughter Maisy (Soverall), where there’s a frantic knocking at the door. It’s two men, Matty (Cadby) and his badly injured brother, Jack (Linpow). Their car got into a wreck nearby, and they are in desperate need of help. Naturally, they aren’t innocent passers-by. 

No great surprise there, and it turns out they are fleeing from a robbery, with the intention of getting across the North Sea to Norway. However, there was a third member of the gang, who didn’t survive. He’s the son of the man who planned the heist: for obvious reasons is not happy about the situation, and ends up heading for the farm. However, that is not the biggest problem Matty and Jack face. For it turns out they aren’t the only ones keeping secrets, and they have just chosen the wrongest possible home to invade. Told you it was not dissimilar to Lowlifes.  The question of who are the villains here becomes a good deal less clear, the more we know about everyone involved.

To that end, much credit to the script, also written by Linpow in an impressive feature debut. It reveals the necessary information at the right pace, and just when you think you know what’s going on, it’ll throw another twist at you. Loyalties shift from scene to scene as the characters discover more about each other, or themselves, and the situation becomes inextricably messy. You know it’s going to end in messy violence, and the film certainly doesn’t disappoint there. The cast are all solid – though in the credits, I notice the production had a “sensitivity consultant”, which is apparently a thing now. I’d like to offer my services as a crass insensitivity consultant to any movies interested. My qualifications there speak for themselves.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. It is, however, Richardson’s movie, having the toughest arc to handle as she moves from caring and compassionate mother to… Well, I guess technically she is still a caring and compassionate mother. It’s just that, well… /gestures vaguely at the screen. The film opens and closes with meaningful quotes about motherhood and the emotions it can trigger. Although what transpires between them, makes them read in radically different ways. To that end, I was getting notes of French horror flick Inside, another story of maternal instincts gone horribly wrong, or Matriarch, also set in Scotland with visitors getting more than they bargained for. Yet despite the influences, this is its own creature, powered by Richardson, and is a solid thriller to the very last shot.

Dir: Matthias Hoene
Star: Joely Richardson, Neil Linpow, Sadie Soverall, Harry Cadby
a.k.a. Little Bone Lodge
[A version of this review originally appeared on Film Blitz]

Woman at War

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★★★★
“Feel the electricity in the air.”

This was a real and pleasant surprise. I wasn’t even sure if this would qualify for the site, or if it would end simply being too gentle. Whole it’s not going to get any awards for hard-core action, it does fit in here. More impressively, it managed to make my empathize with someone whose views are ones I’d generally disagree with. It takes place in Iceland, where Halla (Geirharðsdóttir) is a middle-aged, single woman, waging a near one-person campaign of sabotage against heavy industry, mostly by disabling the power-lines which supply electricity to it, disfiguring the landscape and exacerbating climate change. It’s a game of cat and mouse, with the authorities keen to stop the eco-terrorist from dissuading foreign investors.

However, Halla has issues of her own, beyond the net closing in on her property destruction. A long-dormant adoption request is suddenly approved, and she can’t risk further criminal acts, as a conviction would bar her from proceeding. She intends to go out with a declaration of her manifesto, literally flung from the Reykjavik roof-tops, and a final act, stealing Semtex to blow up a key electricity pylon. Her accomplice, government employee Baldvin (Ragnarsson) is increasingly concerned about the “one last job” trope, and twin sister Ása (also Geirharðsdóttir), a yoga teacher, threatens to put a spoke in the adoption process too, by vanishing off to India for two years to live with her guru.

It’s charming, quirky and rather subversive, all at the same time. It could easily have toppled over into preachiness, but is leavened with enough humour to keep the messaging secondary to the medium. For example, there’s a poor Spanish tourist (Estrada), who is perpetually getting blamed for the attacks, simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, leading to his tent getting SWATted. There’s also the soundtrack, which shows up on screen as a three-piece band, and a trio of singers, who play whatever music is needed to accompany the scenes. Every character is a pleasure, not least the farmer (Johanson) who becomes Halla’s leading accomplice. I will say, any wannabe eco-warriors might well get some helpful tips here, such as the best place to hide your explosives…

But it’s Geirharðsdóttir’s film, in both of her roles. She has a quiet yet absolute commitment to her cause, and it’s thoroughly convincing, even to someone like me who thinks “Earth First” means, “We can strip-mine the other planets later.” I still found myself rooting for her, as she scurried across the Icelandic moors, using low-tech means to counter the authorities with their drones and thermal imaging cameras. For what’s as much a comedic drama as anything, these sequences pack their share of tension, and I was left wondering how it would get resolved. It is a bit of a cheat – are the Icelandic authorities that incompetent? I’ll let it pass, since this demonstrates the way message movies should be executed.

Dir: Benedikt Erlingsson
Star: Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir, Jon Johanson, Juan Camilo Román Estrada, Jörundur Ragnarsson

[A modified version of this review first appeared on Film Blitz]

Arisen: Operators, Volume I – The Fall of the Third Temple, by Michael Stephen Fuchs

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

From what I can tell, Arisen is a massive zombie apocalypse saga, with a heavy military focus, by Fuchs and Glyn James. There are fourteen books in the main series, but Fuchs has also spun off related sets to tell other stores set in the same universe, such as Arisen: Raiders. The Operators series appears to be another. It looks to be intended as a trilogy: at the time of writing (March), part one is out, with part two next month and the finale in 2026. It feels like subsequent installments might be more team-oriented, but part one? Hoo-boy.

Yeah, this is the first book to ever get a five-star action rating from me. It just doesn’t stop. There’s a sub-genre called “hard SF,” which according to Wikipedia, is “characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic.” I suggest this could be labelled as hard action, with a great deal of information about hardware, like guns and vehicles. Here’s a sample paragraph: “The boat itself is a low-observable, reconfigurable, multi-mission surface tactical mobility craft with a primary role to insert and extract SOF in high-threat environments, but can also be used for fire support, maritime interdiction, and VBSS missions, as well as CT and FID ops.” I’m not sure what much of that means. Though I suddenly have a strong urge for a glass of whisky and a cigar.

The heroine here is Yaël Sion, an Israeli special forces soldier, who lost her parents in a terrorist attack when she was young, and has become utterly self-reliant as a result. We begin with her part of an operation against Palestinian terrorists on the West Bank. But it’s not long before the pandemic strikes, and political concerns become irrelevant, as the world turns into a hellhole. Every hour brings a new, ferocious battle for survival, and any sanctuary can suddenly become a deathtrap. It’s positively relentless, Yaël needing to fight not the infected, but the living. Things perhaps peak in an ocean-side fire-fight simultaneously involving the Israeli military, Hamas terrorists, civilians desperate to escape, and the undead. And Yaël, who just wants the boat described above.

While the open water is relatively safe, it’s hardly the end of her problems, as she encounters survivors, good and bad. It’s a chilling realization that survival means suppressing the natural human desire to help, even when this means condemning them to death. Yaël is utterly ruthless when she needs to be, and certainly has the skills to handle the situation. I’d love to see a movie made of this, though to some extent we already did: World War Z is a clear touchstone, with other genre classics also referenced, such as Aliens. The action here is almost non-stop, very well written, and considering the book is 573 pages, I raced through it. If any of the other entries are GWG-oriented, I’m certainly going to check them out. Just as soon as my heart-rate returns to normal.

Author: Michael Stephen Fuchs
Publisher: PF Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 1 (for now) in Arisen: Operators. But as discussed above – it’s complicated…

Overturned Heart, by A.W. Hart

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

A. W. Hart, the nominal “author” of the Avenging Angels series of western adventures featuring a twin brother-sister pair of bounty hunters in the post-Civil War West, is actually a house pen name; the books are all really written by different authors. (The writer here, Paul Ebbs, though working in a quintessentially American genre, is an Englishman, but a long-standing Western fan.) Barb and I were introduced to the series because the author of one of the books, Charles Gramlich, is one of my Goodreads friends. Before starting on this one, together we’d read and liked three of the books. But, because it’s a long, episodic series (in which the books after the first one don’t have to be read in order), and I was impatient to see whether one romantic connection and another possible one set up in the first book would really come to fruition, I suggested that we make this concluding volume our next read, and she agreed. (To avoid a spoiler, I won’t say whether or not my hopes on that score were fulfilled.)

No exact dates are given here; but since the first book began in 1865 (the next book would have to have been set in 1866) and judging from the number of intervening adventures, I’d guess the main storyline here to be set no earlier than 1870, making co-protagonists George Washington (“Reno”) and Sara Bass in their early 20s at least. But the book opens with three short Prologue vignettes, the first dated “twelve months ago,” from the viewpoint of an unnamed female pushed off of a bridge to a 40-foot drop into a raging river, followed by two more dated, respectively, three and two “months ago.” None of these give us much information; but we are told that she survived, that her brother Robert Stirling-Hamer was a wealthy Arizona copper-mining magnate who has been murdered, and that his accused killer “Don” was in turn killed by bounty hunters (guess who?), but that Don’s brother in New York has now gotten an anonymous letter claiming that his brother was innocent.

Our main story opens with the Bass twins in a tight situation in West Texas, in danger from a psychotic fugitive who’s already murdered his own parents and set fire to a schoolhouse full of kids. But they’re soon to learn that there are now wanted posters out for them, claiming that their killing of Donald Callan eight months previously was an unauthorized murder. From there, the present narrative is periodically interspersed with flashbacks to “eight months ago,” doling out strategic memories of the earlier events (which will finally come together with the present), and at times some short scenes from an omniscient third-person narrator describing present goings-on in Robert’s town of Dry Mouth; but none of these fully explain what actually happened with Robert’s murder. and may at times deepen the mystery.

Ebbs writes very well, with a gift for apt and fresh (but not overdone) similes and vivid turns of phrase. He also brings the varied Southwestern landscape to well-realized life. The publisher and writers have always tried to make this series Christian-friendly; but where it’s clear that some of the authors had only vague knowledge of Christian beliefs, Ebbs actually does explicitly refer to Christ’s sacrificial death for sin in one place. A unique feature here (at least, compared to the other three installments we read) is that all of the chapter titles have biblical or hymnic cadences, and epigraphs that I’m guessing come from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Although the book is very violent (as usual for this series), bad language is scanty and not very rough, and there’s no graphic sexual content and little reference to sex at all. (A Catholic priest is a sympathetic character, Reno’s search for God’s guidance here is a realistically-treated and important theme, and the Bible he inherited from his dad plays a big role.) Reno and Sara’s character portrayals are in keeping with the earlier series books we’ve read (except that Sara’s ruthless streak, at one point, cranks up a notch that even startles Reno).

There are a few nits to pick here, mostly with a number of places where typos in the form of omitted words, negative statements inadvertently expressed as positives or vice versa, etc. change the meaning of sentences; but I could always tell what was meant. A statement early in the book seems to suggest that Sara has lost her faith, but Ebbs subsequently back-peddles from that. Reno’s Bible at one point is described as a “Lutheran Bible,” so while the author knew about the Christian gospel, he obviously wasn’t much versed in church history. (Many U.S. Lutherans in the 19th century were still German-speaking, so would probably still have used Luther’s 16th-century translation; but any that were English-speaking used the King James Version, like all other Anglophone Protestants.) But these are minor quibbles. Overall, I found this an outstanding entry in the series! However, Barb did not; she greatly/exclusively favors linear plots, so she was VERY put off by Ebbs’ non-linear storytelling here (and also disliked the ending, though I didn’t), to the extent of being soured on the rest of the series. So, we’ll be abandoning it, at least for a while.

Author: A.W. Hart
Publisher: Wolfpack Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 12 of 12 in the Avenging Angels series.

 

 

Murder by the Lake

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★★★★
“ScandiNoir – made in Germany…”

Murder by the Lake is a TV crime series co-producted between the second public German TV channel ZDF and the public TV channel of Austria ORF. It started in 2014 with a 90-minute long TV movie, followed by a further movie each year until 2017, when the yearly output was doubled. Since 2024, there have been three movies each year. So far, 22 episodes have come out, with #23 scheduled for later this year. The German title Die Toten vom Bodensee translates as “The Dead of Lake Constance” – “Bodensee” is literally “Ground Sea”, but is called Lake Constance in English. When I saw the first movie I was struck by its surprising quality. If you have read my reviews here, you know I usually don’t think much of the quality of German film productions. This is different: not only is it a show that I always watched, but one where I bought the DVDs. 

German crime shows tend to be boring and tedious, though I admit some have become much much better in the 20-odd years. This is one of those exceptions: The series captured my attention from the get-go; I found the single episodes remarkable and was quickly invested in the characters, who were very well portrayed by the actors. In short: It had a different dynamic and feel than most German shows. I wondered why it felt like that until I realized something: The creators of the show have borrowed heavily from successful recent Scandinavian TV crime series, so that you easily could call this “Scandinavian Noir, German style”.

It starts with Lake Constance, which is split between Germany, Austria and Switzerland. When a crime happens that falls under the jurisdiction of Germany and Austria, the commissariats of both countries decide to work together. A new special commission of “German-Austrian Crime Prevention” is formed, headed by German chief inspector Micha Oberländer (Matthias Koeberlin) and Austrian detective inspector Hannah Zeiler (Nora Waldstätten). Also involved, though more in secondary functions, are Austrian chief detective inspector Thomas Komlatschek (Hary Prinz), as well as a pathologist.

Sounds familiar? Well, then you probably have seen The Bridge. It had a Danish and Swedish inspector working together, in a concept used for many remakes around the world. Then there is the Swedish-German-Norwegian crime series The Sandhamn Murders,  perhaps the first show to adapt ScandiNoir for a warm summer environment, rather than the usual harsh, cold surroundings of typical Scandinavian shows. The same goes for Lake Constance, whose beautiful surroundings immediately inspire viewers to plan their next holidays there. And last but not least is the character of Hannah Zeiler who is unlike any ever seen in any German TV show, let alone as a police investigator. With her hair combed back tightly, a nice Lara Croft braid, and a Spock-like mind, she moves like a cat. Unless she’s driving her 1971 Moto Gucci Nuovo Falcone motorcycle.

But most interesting is her behavior. When she first appears, she is strictly business. She says hardly a word otherwise, with  no interest in getting to know the wife and daughter of her new colleague. She lets no one in emotionally, and shows an aversion to personal connection. Her behavior feels awkward, even upsetting, until you get used to it. Some watchers complained she mumbled her lines, but then, most characters here speak with an Austrian accent which can be a bit difficult to understand for Germans. It might also have something to do with the idea of a character who only slowly reveals her secrets to the audience. Because what I realized after a while, was that Hannah Zeiler is actually a more clinical, streamlined and slightly tamer Austrian version of Lisbeth Salander. Or at least her distant relative.

Similar to Lisbeth, Hannah has childhood trauma, as the sole survivor of a boat accident 20 years ago, where she lost both parents. While her mother died, her father’s body was never found. Hannah was raised by her adoptive father and now boss, Ernst Gschwendner (August Schmölzer), who plays an important role here. But in contrast to her Swedish predecessor, Hannah was never physically or psychologically abused, though the accident has left her with a fear of taking to the water. Also, the idea her father might still be alive has not entirely left her. This is a larger story arc that concludes four years later in episode 6, “The Returner”. It’s fascinating to realize how the “MCU method” of preparing a story arc over years, can pay off handsomely in the end.

Like Salander, Zeiler is a social recluse, and lives in a big house inherited from her parents. Her controlled external demeanor is in contrast to the chaotic life of Oberländer. He has family problems,  with a wife who feels chained to the house and their child. He is constantly on the job, driving an old Volkswagen bus: he sometimes even spends the nights there, drunk, and it’s usually not very clean. Zeller and Oberländer are bound to clash; for a long time, it was the main reason for me to watch the series. Initially, their characters seem to come from different planets – the comparison of “like cats and dogs” is very fitting. Yet they learn to respect and rely on each other. It is touching to see Zeiler start to trust Oberländer, slowly open up to him, and their relationship develop.

There was a lot of personal development around the duo, which kept the audience coming back every year, and these were good storytelling moves. The original idea was to have cases with some kind of mystic or mythological touch, although after the first movie, it was then entirely forgotten for the next nine. Mind you, this isn’t The X-Files. The angle is more related to folk customs, superstition or single elements. For example, in the first episode a murder seems related to a Celtic mask found in the lake. In another, a dead girl is found in a mermaid costume. One episode happens during a traditional and ancient local parade. Another has a belief that a house is cursed because it was built on a former path. Or there’s a film that begins with finding a baby in a basket in the lake – was this meant to be a reference to Moses?

However, these serve only as local colour for the stories, and not much more. The stories themselves are often very complicated, with the present crimes related to ones in the past. There is a common theme of how the sins of the fathers (or mothers) are visited on the sons and daughters. Very often the results are tragic. Though thanks to the officials, these family stories are revealed and there might be a chance for a better future. For example, one episode involved two men swapped at birth by accident, and brought up by the other’s mother; when one of them finds out, it leads to tragedy. Another theme through the show, is the inability of characters to communicate with each other. and say what they feel or know. That begins with Zeiler, who is so tight-lipped in the beginning, you could get the impression that she keeps state secrets, though a logical and understandable explanation emerges later.

Yeah, tragedy is very much ingrained in the lives of the show’s protagonists. Oberländer in particular is faced with this a lot: An old love returns and tries to kill him with the rabies virus(!). His wife cheats on him, only then to die in a car accident. He has significant problems with his teenage daughter Luna, who doesn’t stay the lovely little girl she was in the first episodes. What Zeiler and Oberländer have in common, is that they are essentially both lone wolves whose main focus is their work, with Komlatschek in the middle as the well-meaning and warmhearted successor of Gschwendner. He partly balances out the behavior of Oberländer, who often appears overtly aggressive and angry, and Zeiler, who especially in the beginning seems cold-hearted, odd and a bit inhuman.

Action-wise, the show isn’t anything special, though for a German TV crime show, it moves with surprising narrative speed. Guns are drawn quite often, but shooting remains a last resort, even if a rabid dog roams the woods. But I really got to enjoy Zeiler driving her fast motorcycle over long empty roads, through beautiful landscapes. I will say, over time the show lost a bit of its attraction, after her epic arc finished; I cared less and less for Oberländer’s private problems. That said, I still watched every episode. Then in 2022, Zeiler left on a motorcycle trip, never to return. What had happened? Nora Waldstätten (seen in movies such as Carlos the Jackal, and next to Kirsten Stewart in Personal Shopper) had other projects she wanted to take precedence. Since the ZDF had endured a bad experience with an actress in another crime show, resulting in no new episodes for 4 years, they moved quickly to replace Waldstätten, though no-one directly admitted the actress was fired.

In episode 16 (“Nemesis”) Oberländer got a new Austrian partner in Luisa Hoffmann (Alina Fritsch, above). Zeiler was declared dead in the final scene, Oberländer getting a phone call informing him she had a fatal motorcycle accident – strangely in Spain. Honestly, I felt quite cheated by this cheap way to write a character out of a show. The powers that be could have come up with a better, more fitting and respectful way to get the character out of the series, especially considering she was the main reason to watch in the first place. I did get a strong feeling the writers and producers chickened out from what would have been the next logical step, after the relationship building over all those years: making Oberländer and Zeiler a couple! For let’s face it: both were so special, in their own way, that any relationship with a “normal” person was doomed. Yet, they connected with each other and always understood that “the job comes first”.

But the powers that be again ignored their own character and story build-up completely – see my review for Arcane season 2 – and pulled a former girlfriend of Oberländer out of nowhere. Unfortunately, she was a criminal that betrayed him and would be shot later by Komlatschek. I gave the new actress one quick glance and, without condemning her performance, realized that special… strangeness, charisma, aura, call it whatever you want, her predecessor exuded en masse, just wasn’t there at the slightest. You won’t be surprised that I didn’t watch any of the subsequent episodes.

Oddly, while Waldstätten lasted 15 episodes, Fritsch threw in the towel after 6 (her last one, “Medusa”, was shown January 2025). The final episode I saw had Oberländer and Komlatschek becoming the new investigative couple, and it apparently stays like that for the new episodes. It’s kind of sad when I think of how Waldstätten has been getting guest roles in other, definitely inferior TV crime shows since her dismissal. I wonder who will be the next woman colleague to turn up? After all, I think TV audiences like to see a good-looking interesting female character next to the boorish, angry Oberländer. As the films usually (and still) have between 6-8 million viewers for each new episode, it would be quite risky to change the recipe for success.

Creator: Sam Davis et al
Star: Matthias Koeberlin, Nora Waldstätten, Alina Fritsch, Hary Prinz
a.k.a.  Die Toten vom Bodensee
English-speaking audiences can watch the series with subtitles, on MHz Choice, also through Amazon Prime.

Broken Oath

  By

★★★★
“Lady Snowblood, Hong Kong edition”

I guess, the old saying “just there for Godzilla” definitely applies to me. This movie is far from perfect, but as long as I see some skilled fighters in fancy costumes battling it out, I’m in. Additional points are given if the respective dub is at least tolerable. Broken Oath is actually an interesting movie. It is kind of a remake of Japanese classic Lady Snowblood with Meiko Kaji from 1973. The difference is that this Golden Harvest production, from producer Raymond Chow, stars Angela Mao.

She was probably the biggest female martial arts star at the time in Asian movies and had the status of a female Bruce Lee. She had starred with Lee in Enter the Dragon and one-time James Bond George Lazenby in two other movies, and also worked with classic directors like Chang Cheh and King Hu. Some of her famous films include Lady Whirlwind, When Taekwondo Strikes, Hapkido, The Fate of Lee Khan and many others. In the seventies. she could hardly walk down a street without being instantly recognized.

Broken Oath was to be her last movie for Golden Harvest which is quite inexplicable because she was a major star – did they let her go or was that her own decision? After that, she began working in Taiwanese movies with obviously lesser budgets. She lasted in movies for quite some time until the early 90s when she retired from film business. In a way it’s a pity that her golden era more or less ended in the 1970s, considering the success stars such as Michelle Yeoh, Jackie Chan, Jet Li or Donnie Yen would later enjoy – and continue to do so – in the West.

Broken Oath follows the story beats of Lady Snowblood quite closely – until it slowly becomes its own thing. It’s comparable to how Temptress of a Thousand Faces freely emulated the French Fantomas movies of the sixties. Like the Japanese original, it starts with a woman sent to prison where she gives birth to a child. On her death-bed she reveals her story of how her husband, General Liu, was killed by a gang of hoodlums; after resisting a rape attempt by one of them, she was sent to prison because the police didn’t believe her. 

She gives birth to a girl and asks her “sisters” (inmates) to take care of the child, and to raise it to take revenge for the death of her parents. Instead, one of them, subsequently referred to as the girl’s godmother, gives her to a Buddhist nunnery with the blessings of the abbess who doesn’t think that the cycle of violence should continue. In the English dub, the little girl is called “Lotus”; the subtitles call her Jie Lian, though her original name was Xiao Mei. In any case, she has violent tendencies, though for some unspecified reason these Buddhist scholars are constantly fighting when not listening to the wisdom of Buddha. Lotus ends up killing three drifters in the wood when they try to rape her.

As she has “broken her oath” (to Buddha, I guess), she has to leave the nunnery and goes to live with her godmother, from whom she learns how to become a pickpocket and gets to know her friend and colleague Ah Shu. From there on, the movie loses connection to the original movie which I see as a good thing. Jie Lian finds the murderers, though the plot is essentially hardly more than the bones of a story, rather than a fully fleshed-out narrative. It unnecessarily complicates itself with the introduction of new characters and side-stories, but in the end the overall simplicity is indeed for the better of the movie.

For some time, I wondered if this movie was really worth my attention: I just wanted to see Angela Mao show me how hard and high she could kick. Fortunately, the film didn’t let me down. But it has to be said, it needed more than half of the movie until the whole martial arts machinery kicked – as it were! – into high gear. After being saved by an old, wise man named Qi Feng from the poisonous dust of one opponent. and his subsequent death at the hands of uber-villain Zhao Cai (both took part in the raid on Jie Lian’s parents, with Qi Feng now getting redemption by saving Lotus), things escalated quite quickly.

I have to say, I personally still prefer the melancholic elegiac beauty of Lady Snowblood and Meiko Kaji’s unmistakable charisma (I’m aware that Jim gave that movie a low rating, but for me that Japanese chanbara movie is an absolute high-ranking classic. To each their own, as they say), but the sheer number of ideas that this movie here bombards you with is remarkable. Let’s see… Steel claws as weapons; a liquid, one villain uses to spit fire and burn his victims to death; blades on a string used like a yo-yo. by an opponent played by Sammo Hung; a hat that goes over the whole head of Master Yun (later revealed to be Zhao Cai); sword fights; butterfly needles; group attacks, attack scorpions; and secret passages through stone caves hidden behind book shelves.

Really, the last 30-40 minutes of this go like gangbusters! I only wish the first half of the movie would have been like that, too. Granted, a story needs time to be built up, but let’s be honest: there is not much of a story here. Just the outspoken will for revenge, and that only happens after the godmother tells Lotus about her past. It is revealed at the end that the villains had planned to overthrow the government 20 years ago; General Liu discovered their treachery and was therefore killed. Better a good reason late than never, I guess. These things can’t quite disguise some carelessness in the story-development.

For example, Ah Shu seemed to be built up as a love interest. But he is killed off in a way, as well as the heroine’s reaction to it, which is so casual I wondered why he was even in the story. There is another character supposedly killed – silly me, believing that – who is suddenly back there to support the combatants in their fight again. The whole “she is poisoned and has to be cured” episode feels like a pointless story element, with no good reason except for extending the movie’s run time (admittedly I saw the theatrical version at 98 minutes; there is an extended version around 5 minutes longer), and giving Mao the chance to lay down and take a short break.

The actors here… well, they are Chinese actors in seventies wuxia and act accordingly. One shouldn’t expect Oscar-worthy performances here. The evil villains are evil and the rest of the actors hardly make much of an impression. Angela Mao is adequate as expected, though of course I’m more interested in her fighting skills than her acting talents. She moves elegantly and swiftly and I do believe she can fight off and kill more than half a dozen men, attacking her all at once. She is great “hero material”, and I applaud every action of hers. But I can hardly detect any burning pain underneath, or an insatiably hot appetite for revenge. Comparing that with the painful, tragic, almost longing for death portrayal of Kaji might be unjust. But it is also inevitable.

Of course, the dubbing doesn’t help. Yes, one should see movies like this in the original language version with subtitles, but I prefer a dub when I can get one. I don’t know from when this one comes (possibly the movie’s release in 1977), but the performances aren’t Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster acting, to say the least. I’m just happy to get lip-synched dialogue. It mostly plays inside buildings, temples or halls, giving the impression this is first and foremost a studio production. There are only a few scenes on location, though these are nice to look at. While I don’t rank the movie lower for it, I liked the beautiful, natural surroundings of Lady Snowblood much more. It’s just a matter of taste.

That said, as a whole I liked the production design, which makes you feel that the movie’s budget went into it, along with the historical Chinese costumes and some effects. It’s in contrast to Mao’s later Taiwanese films, where I can confirm she was working on a notably lower quality standard. This movie definitely has its qualities. As an old saying (incorrectly attributed to Oscar Wilde) goes: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”. This might be true not only for Lady Snowblood, which Quentin Tarantino paid tribute to in Kill Bill – Vol. 1,  but also for Broken Oath, as the fight between Sammo Hung and Angela Mao is definitely mirrored in the one between Chiaki Kuriyama and Uma Thurman.

Dir: Chang-hwa Jeong
Star: Angela Mao, Michael Wai-Man Chan, Siu-Lung Leung, Shan Kwan

Ballerina (2025)

  By

★★★★½
“If the ballet slipper fits…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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