Tag: seal of approval

Vexille

  By

★★★★
“Breaking the lockdown”

In the second half of the 21st century, Japan closed its borders, after a schism between it and the rest of the world over the development of advanced androids by robotics pioneer Daiwa Heavy Industries, which the United Nations wanted stopped. For a decade no foreigner has been allowed in, and no-one knows what the country is now like. Then evidence arises that makes government agency SWORD embark on an “off the books” mission, to insert a team into Japan. It doesn’t go well, and before long the only member left active is Lt. Cdr. Vexille Serra (Kuroki). She discovers the country is now run by Daiwa, and things are… not what you’d expect. She links up with the head of the anti-Daiwa resistance, Maria (Matsuyuki). But time is running out for them, and the rebels are forced to mount a last-ditch attack on Daiwa’s island headquarters, in the hope of preventing a similar fate befalling the rest of the world.

I was surprised to find how far back this was released, because the animation doesn’t feel 14 years old. It’s a slick combination of CGI and cel work, that looks particularly good in motion – and there’s no shortage of that. The other thing the film does well is balance the plot and the action. The central idea here, that Japan reverted to the state of sakoku, which isolated the country from 1639 to 1853, is intriguing – if a bit implausible – and the story delivers a few unexpected twists on its heels. However, it never topples over into grinding philosophical discussions about the meaning of life, what it means to be “human”, etc. and so is a marked improvement over some anime shows about androids [certain Ghost in the Shell incarnations, but I am particularly looking at you, Mardock Scramble!]

Instead, it uses the scenario as a jumping-off point for a number of wonderful set pieces. Firstly, an initial assault on a Colorado mansion which reveals the evidence of Japanese activity, and ends in a giant fireball to rival all giant fireballs. Then there’s a chase through a docks, between a super-powered motorbike and several mecha suits. And finally, there’s a long, extended attempt to get into Daiwa’s headquarters. This involves a full-speed race through service tunnels connecting it to the mainland, while pursued by “jags” – rogue nanotechnology, whose form and behaviour are not dissimilar to the sandworms from Dune. It is all great stuff, and the soundtrack, produced by trance DJ legend Paul Oakenfold, helps drive things forward.

Vexille and Maria are definitely the two main characters, so there’s no doubt that it deserves to be included on the site, and they have rather more success getting into Daiwa than the male members of the resistance. There’s no much background on the heroine; she has a relationship with another member of the team, its commander Leon Fayden (Tanihara), and his capture by Daiwa is about all the motivation provided. Or necessary, to be fair. Providing you aren’t looking for something deep and meaningful, but enjoy a good high concept, and watching things whizz past at a high rate of speed, this is a solid success as a slick piece of entertainment.

Dir: Fumihiko Sori
Star: Meisa Kuroki, Yasuko Matsuyuki, Shosuke Tanihara, Takaya Kuroda

Sentinelle

  By

★★★★
“Jane Wick, but it’s complicated.”

Klara (Kurylenko) is a French soldier who returns home after a tour of duty in the Middle East. But the homeland security mission to which she’s assigned – basically, patrolling sea-fronts and shopping malls – hardly seems like a credible use of her talents. However, she’s also suffering from PTSD, and it’s easy to see why the authorities decided she was better off kept away from the front lines. Then Klara’s sister, Tania (Lima), is found on the beach in a coma after having been raped. The evidence points to Yvan, the son of prominent Russian businessman, Leonod Kadnikov (Nabokoff). But the cops can do nothing, as the Kadnikov’s have diplomatic passports. Klara, needless to say, operates under no such restrictions and vows that if the justice system won’t make the perpetrator pay, then she will.

On the one hand, this is a straightforward revenge flick, though it’s revenge by proxy, with Klara not directly the victim. However, what I liked is that, while she obviously has the skill-set to pull off her mission, she’s far from invincible, even if the Kadnikov’s need to fire their security advisor. Indeed, there are points at which Karla’s straight-line approach to the problem, causes more problems than it solves. For instance, contrast the nightclub fight in John Wick with the one here. John breezed through the scenario virtually unscathed, dispatching victims with ease, in a plethora of headshots. Klara spends what seems like an eternity brawling against two opponents, and never even gets out of the bathroom. That said, the violence here packs a genuine wallop, with some startling moments which left me feeling certain someone was going home with a concussion that day. It’s definitely quality over quantity.

Former Bond girl Kurylenko has graced these pages before, in The Courier and The Assassin Next Door, but this is probably her best effort yet. She is in almost every scene, and does a solid job of holding the audience’s attention, with a sympathetic portrayal of a damaged, yet still extremely dangerous, heroine. She also demonstrates her flair for language, switching effortlessly between French, Russian and Arabic. In real life, she speaks English and Spanish too, as well as bits of others. In 2013 on Twitter, she said, “I want to speak ALL the languages.” [She also knows how to say “I love squirrels” in many of them…]

Coming in at a brisk 80 minutes, it does still take a little while to reach the meat of its topic, The assault at the core of the film (which, incidentally, we don’t see – and nor do we need to) takes place not far short of half-way in, though the pace never feels as if it’s dragging. I also have some questions about the ending, which out of nowhere seems to suggest a Nikita-like program of black ops assassins, created by the government out of captured murderers. Though to be honest, I’d not mind seeing such a sequel, and definitely would not want to be the one on whom Klara was unleashed.

Dir: Julien Leclercq
Star: Olga Kurylenko, Marilyn Lima, Michel Nabokoff, Carole Weyers

Jessi’s Girls

  By

★★★★
“And not a Rick Springfield in sight.”

It’s about the year 1880, and Jessica Hartwell (Currie) is heading out West in a wagon with her preacher husband. They encounter the gang of Frank Brock (Frank); they repeatedly rape Jessica, before shooting her husband fatally, and leaving her for dead. She survives, returning to health with the help of prospector Rufe, who sports an unfortunate, obviously fake beard, yet also teaches the young woman how to shoot. For Jessi has vengeance on her mind, and to assist her in this path, she liberates three other women from the custody of Sheriff Clay (Lund). There’s outlaw Rachel (Jennifer Bishop); saloon girl Claire (Regina Carrol); and Indian Kana (the not-exactly Indian Stern), who had been a part of Frank’s gang until he abandoned her.

While director Adamson was best known for his horror films, some of his work has been covered here before: The Female Bunch and I Spit on Your Corpse! This is his best entry yet, which is straightforward, short on pretension and all the better for it. It certainly doesn’t hang around; we’re barely a few minutes in before the reason for revenge is under way, and it’s not easy viewing. It sits particularly uncomfortably, since just a few minutes earlier, the audience was enjoying the sight of the lead actress (also seen in Mama’s Dirty Girls) skinny-dipping. For the film doesn’t forget the sex in exploitation. Jessi is surprisingly quick to forget her late husband and bed the Sheriff, with most of the other female cast similarly disrobing at some point.

On the other hand, there are occasionally surprising elements, such as Tana’s refusal to help a wounded Apache; often, films lump all native Americans together, forgetting that tribes were sometimes disparate groups, who hated each other. It’s a decision which causes conflict – of the muddy, cat-fight kind – between her and Claire, a diversion on the otherwise fairly straight arrow journey towards the expected and likely inevitable confrontation with Brock. This, along with other forms of more brutal attrition, do mean that by the time Jessica arrives at her target’s hideout, the film’s title is no longer accurate. Indeed, Jessi is back to ploughing an almost solitary furrow on her mission, made all the more hazardous by Frank knowing she’s on her way.

The supporting actresses are not exactly given more than simple sketches, yet manage to make them feel like actual people. The focus is firmly on Jessica, and I liked Currie in the role, with her managing to portray both a vulnerable side and a steely determination that will not be swayed from her intended path of retribution. Her coolest moment is probably at the end, lighting sticks of dynamite off her cheroot and tossing them to great effect. Admittedly, when it comes to the finale, Brock and his men tend to demonstrate all the shooting skills of Imperial Stormtroopers, and you wonder how they ever managed to rob anyone. A great ending though, with a twist I did not see coming, providing the icing on the cake of a unexpectedly pleasant surprise.

Dir: Al Adamson
Star: Sondra Currie, Ellyn Stern, Geoffrey Land, Ben Frank

Wait Until Dark

  By

★★★★★
“The missing link between Psycho and Halloween?”

I’m quite serious about the above. In 1959, Hitchcock’s classic psycho-thriller, which gave an entire genre its name, showed a normal, self-confident woman falling prey to a psychotic serial killer, while John Carpenter’s Halloween, also now a classic, had its heroine fighting off menace Michael Myers. In between these two iconic movies, there is not much that is worth mentioning. Some final girls in Italian gialli maybe managed to survive, I guess – but there’s nothing in big screen thrillers that the average Joe or Jane would be able to name.  Except… This movie, in which blind heroine Susy Hendrix (Hepburn) is able to see through the ruses of three gangsters, fight them off, and even win in a final confrontation against evil-as-evil-can-be psycho Mr. Roat (a very young Arkin – gosh, this guy is now 86 at the time of writing).

The story: gangsters Talman (Crenna – best known as Rambo’s boss) and Carlino (Jack Weston) meet the gangster Roat, previously unknown to them, in an empty apartment. Roat is obviously working for – or may even be the boss of – a drug-smuggling ring. A doll that was used to smuggle drugs had been given, for later collection, by their colleague Lisa (Samantha Jones) to an innocent photographer Sam Hendrix (Zimbalist). Sam lives in this apartment, with his blind wife Suzy (Hepburn). As a quick inspection of the flat didn’t lead to the doll, Roat recruits, or more accurately. blackmails the two men into helping him.

As Sam is away for the week-end, the three men are going to put on a kind of play for Suzy. The intention is making her believe Sam is suspected of murder of (the already dead) Lisa, putting psychological pressure on Suzy to reveal the whereabouts of the doll. Fortunately, Suzy may be blind but she is not stupid. Very soon, she notices little things in the behaviour of the men that suggest something else is going on. With help from a young girl who lives in the flat above (Julie Herrod), her suspicions are confirmed and she suddenly realizes she is on her own against three men. The worst of whom is Roat, not just a normal criminal, but who enjoys killing – and from the get-go had planned to kill everyone off, once he gets what he wanted.

Oh, my… ! This movie was (and IMHO still is) a real nail-biter. Based on a play by Frederick Knott who also provided the basis for Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder (1953), the movie very much breathes Hitchcock’s air and makes good use of the master’s famous “suspense” techniques, in which the audience knows more than the movie’s protagonist. By this method, very special tension arises, as the viewer constantly wonders what will happen when the hero/ine finds out, and how s/he will escape the situation. Of course, this works much better when you have real danger imperilling the central character, so you can worry about them, and get caught up in the web of “suspense”.

For this to work, you need a character the audience likes, feels for and identifies with. In a Hitchcock movie, that might be your average, normal guys like James Stewart or Cary Grant, or later, much less lucky female characters like Janet Leigh or Tippi Hedren. There is no doubt that Audrey Hepburn’s casting here was a stroke of genius; she was at that time probably the most likable and beloved Hollywood star. Having her play a blind woman even contributed to the sympathy and fear felt for her, in a movie that was a very unusual genre for Hepburn.

Until then, she had been seen mainly in sweet love stories like Roman Holiday (1953) and Sabrina (1954), or comedy-thrillers like Charade (1963) with Cary Grant, or How to Steal a million (1966) with Peter O’Toole. She had broken through as a serious actress with The Nun’s Story (1959) and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961). She had even been cast by Hitchcock in an adaptation of Henry Cecil’s novel, No Bail for the Judge. But other commitments, qualms about a rape scene in the script, and a pregnancy combined to scupper her involvement and, eventually, the movie itself, which infuriated the master of suspense. So Hepburn had never previously played in a movie like this one.

Wait Until Dark is a dark, almost nihilistic thriller. This time, Hepburn’s heroine is all on her own, and if she isn’t able to put the puzzle pieces together and use her own wits, she will end up dead like poor Suzy in her cupboard. There is no Cary Grant or George Peppard coming to the heroine’s rescue. Even the not unsympathetic Crenna isn’t able to help. The gloves are truly off this time. It was kind of a gamble. There is a tradition of blind people in thrillers now; to name just some, Jennifer 8 (1992), Blink (1993), In Darkness (2018), or home-invasion thrillers e. g. Jodie Foster in Panic Room (2002). But these genres are relatively new, and not that often used then: 23 Paces To Baker Street (1956) and The Spiral Staircase (1945) with its deaf-mute heroine come to mind.

Also, would fans of Hepburn accept her in such a role? A cold, chilling thriller? Her husband, and producer of the movie, Mel Ferrer (himself a former film star whose fame was fading, though he stayed in the business as a successful producer) wasn’t quite sure it would work. But he convinced Audrey, who wasn’t nearly as confident as many believed her to be, to accept the part. But it worked really well. Director Terence Young was a great admirer of Hitchcock’s techniques and had already successful applied them to his James Bond movies Dr. No (1962), From Russia with Love (1963) and Thunderball as well as WWII thriller Triple Cross (1966). Together with Henry Mancini’s highly effective soundtrack, the movie creates an atmosphere of claustrophobic doom around the sympathetic heroine.

In a way, the film somewhat ended the career of Hepburn, as at the same time it started the career of Arkin – though he had some way to go before achieving the status he has nowadays. After this movie, the already rocky marriage between Hepburn and Ferrer came to a quick, unhappy ending. She stayed away from movies for the next eight years until she played opposite Sean Connery in Robin and Marian (1976). But none of her later movies would achieve the iconic status of the string of classics she did in the 1950’s and ’60’s.

She plays Suzy as a sympathetic, sweet woman who tries to be the best she can, even though she complains to her husband about whether she really has to be “the queen of the blind”. It’s nice to see a movie where a man isn’t the big saviour of the damsel in distress, but instead supports her in doing things by herself. Suzy is not without flaws; she insults and hurts the girl neighbour, though more by lashing out, regretted the next moment. It’s a more modern version of the classic Hepburn film persona. But Arkin leaves the strongest impression. His Roat comes off as evil incarnate. Wearing dark glasses throughout – you don’t see his eyes until the finale – and with the typical ‘bowl’ haircut of the time, he looks like an evil version of one of the Beatles! His cold, precise speaking style and efficient, smart handling of things give us the feeling that guy is a terrible wild-card.

The film was a great success. On a budget of $3 million, it made $17 million at the North American box office alone, and earned Audrey Hepburn her fifth and final Academy Award nomination. The plot may seem overly complicated, in how much trouble the gangsters go through for a few grams of drugs, knowing on what scale drug-dealing is executed today (I refer you to the James Bond movie Licence to Kill). But the film is extremely effective, delivering the kind of Hitchcockian experience that, at the end of the decade, Hitchcock himself wasn’t able to provide anymore, experiencing a creative trough at that time.

Arkin was watching the movie at the time with a studio executive and when the audience jumped out of their seats at the final moments of the film, when he came out of the shadows, the exec leaned over to him and said: “Do you realize that’s because of you? You scared them to death!” I think I rest my case there. Wait Until Dark makes a fine link between Psycho and Halloween, making Hepburn probably the most famous “final girl” of all!

Dir: Terence Young
Star: Audrey Hepburn, Alan Arkin, Richard Crenna, Efrem Zimbalist Jr.

The Plagues of Breslau

  By

★★★★
“Siedem”

The above is the Polish for “seven”, and in the first half-hour, you’ll be forgiven for thinking that’s what you’re watching: a Polish knock-off of David Fincher’s Se7en. Homicide cop Helena Rus (Kożuchowska) is struggling to come to terms with life, after her boyfriend is killed by a drunk-driver and, for political reasons, the criminal is allowed to go free. A welcome distraction comes in the shape of a series of ritualistic murders: every day at 6 pm, a body turns up on the streets of Wroclaw. The victims have been killed in strange and unusual ways – the first, for example, is sewn inside a cow-hide, which shrinks as it dries, crushing the victim to death. Each has a word branded into their flesh, such as “Degenerate”.

To help her, a profiler is sent from the capital, Warsaw: the equally brusque Magda Drewniak (Widawska), who quickly identifies that the perpetrator is replicating the titular incidents – Wroclaw was previously known as Breslau. In those, the ruler cleaned up town by selecting a criminal each day for gruesome public execution. So far, so Se7en. But just as we were settling in comfortably, the film hurls an absolute doozy of a twist at the viewer, and from then on, all bets are off. It becomes less of a whodunnit, and more a whydunnit, with the killer having a very specific agenda, which might be considerably closer to Helena than is comfortable for her.

Director Vega was previously seen here with Pitbull: Tough Women and Women of Mafia, but has stepped up his game a notch with this. Not least, in the spectacularly grisly nature of proceedings, with some disturbingly realistic deaths and corpses: you will need a strong stomach for a number of moments. However, both Helena and Magda make for excellent characters. The former is perpetually soft-spoken, yet takes absolutely no shit from anyone, despite possessing arguably the worst hair-cut in cinema history. And Magda’s impeccable knowledge of subjects from Polish history to coma recovery, makes her a force to be reckoned with as well. However, they’re facing a killer who is always one step ahead of them, and whose plan will come right into police headquarters.

It ends up being a little Se7en and a little Dragon Tattoo, yet has more than enough of its own style and content to stand on its own terms. It does perhaps stretch belief in some of the elements: a couple of the killings feel like they would require a road-crew to assemble, rather than being the work of a single person. However, in Helena Rus, we’ve got one of the most uncompromising heroines to come out of the European noir scene, and I’d love to see more of her cases in future – even if the ending makes that… somewhat uncertain, shall we say. Just be prepared for a film which is short on genuinely likable characters, and long on carnage. In particular, I recommend having a shot of vodka at hand for the guillotine scene.

Dir: Patryk Vega
Star: Małgorzata Kożuchowska, Daria Widawska, Tomasz Oświeciński, Maria Dejmek

The Poppy War, by R.F. Kuang

  By

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

“Was she now a goddess or a monster? Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.”

There can’t be many fantasy novels based on the events of World War II. But here we are, and Kuang has done an amazing job of taking historical events and weaving them into a saga of gods, magical powers and monsters, that works very well, even if you have no clue about the background.

At the beginning, Rin is a young orphan girl in a remote village in the South of the empire. Abused ceaselessly by her foster parents, they’re about to sell her into marriage. Her only hope of escape is to pass the exam which grants admission to the military academy of Sinegard. Even though she succeeds, she remains an outcast there, except to the equally derided Master Jiang, professor of lore. He helps her tap into powers largely forgotten by the Empire, but warns that if she doesn’t control them, they will control her. Her studies are brought to a sudden end when the Federation invades, laying siege to Sinegard. With the city about to fall, desperate measures have to be taken. But some doors, once opened, are an awful lot harder to close.

“This is what you have to tell yourself,” Qara said fiercely. “You have to believe that it was necessary. That it stopped something worse. And even if it wasn’t, it’s the lie we’ll tell ourselves, starting today and every day afterward.”

The above quote is a good depiction of the dilemma at the core of the book. Is it permissible to do evil deeds to stop evil deeds? But that’s just part of the moral quagmire in which Rin finds herself, where a desire to protect her country merges with a quest for vengeance – both personal, and for previous genocide. There’s no denying the abilities into which she can tap are increasingly powerful, bordering on the divine. But she’s no “Mary Sue”: the cost mounts alongside them, to the point where her humanity is in danger of being entirely scorched away when she uses them.

And even if it doesn’t, the drugs necessary – both to reach the Pantheon where the gods reside, and to numb the pain of life following her awakening – won’t necessarily help Rin retain her sanity. There’s a gigantic stone prison, inside which are entombed, in a state of living hell, the thousands of previous shamans, who were driven completely insane by what they unleashed inside themselves, and had to be contained or they could destroy the world. The dangers here are very real, and only escalate the further Rin develops.

“I will die on my feet,” she said. “I will die with flames in my hand and fury in my heart. I will die fighting for the legacy of my people, rather than on Shiro’s operating table, drugged and wasted. I will not die a coward.”

Kuang has constructed a great heroine in Rin. From the very beginning, she is driven to escape a situation many would accept as hopeless, and demonstrates enormous resilience, and an utter commitment to do whatever she feels is necessary. She succeeds, not through some innate ability (hello, Harry Potter), but by working her butt off. Yet it’s that same willingness which ends up taking her, both physically and mentally, to some appalling places and experiences. The descriptions of Federation atrocities are all, apparently, backed by historical fact, matching what the Japanese did during the occupation of China in the thirties and forties. Most notably, the sacking of one city is based on the Rape of Nanking, and even a hardened soul like myself had his stomach flip on occasion. Kuang doesn’t pull her punches. There also seems to be a scientist based on the infamous Unit 731, who carried out human “experiments” on the locals.

But it’s all severe unpleasantess which is very necessary to the plot. Because it’s the only way through which Rin can justify her own reactions, and the extreme measures which she unleashes, along with the rest of the Cike [the Imperial shaman troop to which she is conscripted, and who are used to take on the Federation by unconventional means] There’s certainly no shortage of awesome-if-horrific set pieces, such as the Cike’s luring in and destruction of an enemy fleet. I’d love to see Peter Jackson or Guillermo Del Toro take on a cinematic adaptation, though the entire $200 million budget would probably end up going on digital flames…

“She was no victim of destiny. She was the last Speerly, commander of the Cike, and a shaman who called the gods to do her bidding. And she would call the gods to do such terrible things.”

The general tone is one of increasing darkness, and by the end, I was as much scared of Rin as in awe of her or concerned for her fate. About the only weakness I can think of, is that she’s rather distant and unlikable. Not exactly fun to be around, shall we say, and given some of her later acts, the term “heroine” seems dubious at best. But she’s going to need to be an ultimate, supernatural bad-ass in future volumes – not least to deal with a potentially equally-lethal shaman, who escaped from the stone prison, partly through Rin’s actions. There’s also the little matter of the Empress, who may not be the honourable subject of veneration she initially appeared to be.

It all sets up very nicely, without needing to create an artificial cliff-hander. As time permits, I definitely look forward to reading the next installment, The Dragon Republic.

Author: R.F. Kuang
Publisher: Harper Voyager, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 3 in the Poppy War series.

Revenge

  By

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Hunt

  By

★★★★
“Don’t believe the political hype.”

This was a genuine and pleasant surprise. The original release was pushed back due to some severe controversy: not many films get Tweeted about by the President of the United States, who stated this was “made in order to inflame and cause chaos.” Needless to say, the studio ended up riding that publicity when the movie eventually came out. The current pandemic ended up trumping that (pun intended), so the film hit the home markets, just a week after its theatrical release. To my surprise, it’s considerably more nuanced than the “Red State vs. Blue State” concept I expected. And Gilpin has clearly put her GLOW training to good use, becoming quite the thirty-something bad-ass here.

It is, at its heart, another variant on The Most Dangerous Game, with a dozen people being kidnapped from their everyday lives, and taken somewhere that looks much like Arkansas, to be hunted by the rich for sport. The film is very good in the earlier stages at disconcerting the viewer by shifting their focus: you’ll settle in with one character, only for them to be wiped out in brutal fashion. Gilpin’s character, Crystal Creasey, isn’t even seen until more than 25 minutes in. But she makes up for her late arrival in no uncertain style, quickly establishing that the people behind the hunt, led by Athena (Swank), might have made a mistake by selecting Crystal as their entertainment.

What I found interesting is how even-handed this is. Yes, it’s about the elite hunting common people, and on its surface, i.e. the trailer, could be seen as Democrats hunting Republicans. But they’re hardly depicted as heroic, and indeed, it turns out, there’s considerably more to this. The whole thing started as an off-colour joke by Athena that got out, causing the wrath of #CancelCulture, as propagated through social media and conspiracy circles. She then decided, if we’re going to be blamed for something we didn’t do – why not do it anyway, and targets those who were her harshest critics on social media? Neither side gets out unscathed: not the liberals with their virtue signalling and hypocrisy, nor the conservatives with their paranoia and self-deceit. Yes, it is certainly guilty of picking at the raw scab which is the divided state of the nation (something for which the media, in general, must take much of the blame).

But the horror movie as social commentary is something that has been around for at least fifty years, since Night of the Living Dead.  As I’ve previously made clear, I’m fine with that, providing the film works regardless. And you could safely ignore all the satirical aspects, and you’d still have something among the upper tier of movies inspired by The Most Dangerous Game. It all builds to a kitchen battle between Crystal and Athena, that for sheer savagery, is one of the best woman-on-woman brawls I’ve seen since Kill Bill, Volume 2. Providing you are not too blinkered in your political views, the payoff here should be worth putting them to one side for ninety minutes.

Dir: Craig Zobel
Star: Betty Gilpin, Ike Barinholtz, Amy Madigan, Emma Roberts

Guns Akimbo

  By

★★★★
“Don’t bring a spork to a gunfight!”

Harry Potter, this is not. If it’s difficult to separate Radcliffe from the hero of the movie franchise, this is the kind of film which should help considerably. He plays Miles, a computer programmer and online troll, who trolls the wrong people. Specifically, the ones who run Skizm, an increasingly popular and hyper-violent online streaming service, which broadcasts death-matches between contestants. For his sins, Miles is knocked out, and wakes to find himself with guns bolted to both hands. He is now Skizm’s latest contestant, going up against their reigning champion, Nix (Weaving). And to encourage him, the man who runs the game, Riktor (Dennehy), has kidnapped Miles’s intermittent girlfriend, Nova (Bordizzo). To survive, he’s going to need help from a most unusual source: Nix.

This is the kind of incessantly kinetic, brutal action film that you’ll probably either love or hate. I was pushed firmly into the latter company by Samara Weaving, who is a coke-snorting, chain-gun wielding, spiky package of undiluted and venomous awesome. While Miles is the nominal lead character, Nix was considerably more fun to watch, and also has the better character arc. For example, her actions have considerably better motivations, considering Miles is basically trolling for the LOLs. There’s plenty of her in action to appreciate too, pushing this out of the “supporting girl with gun” category into qualification. I haven’t yet seen Birds of Prey, but suspect Weaving would have been an admirable alternate to Margot Robbie.

I’m interested, if somewhat confused, about the moral message being sent here – or whether there is one at all. It’s both condemning the audience for violent entertainment… while, very clearly, feeding that same appetite. Any sense of intellectual superiority over the masses is similarly undercut by the extremely low-brow humour. Have you ever considered how hard it would be to go to the bathroom with your hands locked around firearms? Me neither. But with his writer’s cap on, Howden clearly has. Yet this does help insulate the film from suggestions of hypocrisy, its broken spiritual compass and disjointed one-liners a fitting match for the ADHD and morally bankrupt world it is depicting. Though the most implausible thing here, might be the way Miles’s fuzzy slippers stay on. I can’t even go down the stairs without mine making a bid for independence from my feet.

The action is almost non-stop, and the blood flows in rivers, to the point that it becomes almost a caricature of the more extreme end of video-gaming. It’s staged fairly well, though does occasionally topple over into the manic style of editing which is the bane of modern cinema. Things build towards the expected climax, in which Miles and Nix mount an all-out assault on Riktor’s headquarters, delivering one final shot of adrenaline-powered hyper-mayhem to your lizard brain. If not all the characters receive quite the fate you want, there’s enough here to make me believe Weaving has action heroine superstar potential.

Dir: Jason Lei Howden
Star: Daniel Radcliffe, Samara Weaving, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Ned Dennehy

A Good Woman is Hard to Find

  By

★★★★
“Hammer time!”

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

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

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

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

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