Tag: SF

Parse Galaxy Omnibus, Volume 1 by Kate Sheeran Swed

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

Sloane Tarnish is not exactly your typical bounty-hunter. Indeed, she’s training for a medical degree when her shady uncle, Vin, talks her into helping out with a little job. Craving excitement, she agrees, and finds herself posing as the wife of a Fleet officer, seeking to intercept a data key with potentially very explosive information on it. A year later, Vin’s ship turns up without him on it, and she finds herself the new captain, leading the crew as they try to figure out where Vin has gone, and why he vanished. To fund this search, Sloane takes up the bounty-hunting mantle.

Given this is an eight-volume series (not including the prequel which forms part of this set), it’s no spoiler to say, this does not end with our heroine being re-united with Uncle Vin. But if that does not happen, quite a lot else does. Sloane gets embroiled in a fight for power between the two major forces in her part of the galaxy. There’s the Galactic Fleet, who keep the peace, and the Cosmic Trade Federation, who run commerce. But the Fleet appear to be attempting to consolidate power in their hands, and the data key Vin liberated may contain incriminating evidence to prove that. Or it may not. But a lot of people are very interested in Sloane’s efforts to locate it and her uncle.

Among them are Commander of the Galactic Fleet, Gareth Fortune. He’s the man from whom she took the data key in the prequel, but he becomes rather more sympathetic to her over the following two volumes. Fortune has problems of his own, because he is being set up as the man in charge of the planned galactic coup. To prove his innocence, needs Sloane to find proof of the real perpetrator. On the other hand, there is Federation Coordinator Striker, whose enmity towards Sloane is considerably more persistent. Especially after she rejects his offer of work, then turns around and employs the bounty target she was supposed to be delivering to him.

This appears to be on permanent offer as a Kindle freebie, and you certainly can’t complain about that price. Despite the prequel, it still feels like I was missing some information. For example, Sloane has apparently been outside this galaxy – to our one, for she brought back coffee to hers! However, this should not get in the way of the main plot which, although unresolved, is decent, and ends without excessive cliff-hangers. I liked the occasional moments of dry humour, and the heroine is a likable sort, if perhaps a little more passive than I would have expected. The burgeoning romance between her and Fortune is a little obvious too. It still made for a pleasant enough read, and I could see myself dipping deeper into the series, if my unread pile were not its inevitable self.

Author: Kate Sheeran Swed
Publisher: Spells & Spaceships Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Collects Books 0-2 of 8 in the Parse Galaxy series.

M3GAN 2.0

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★★★
“Girls just wanna have fun.”

This was… unexpected. The original M3GAN was a straightforward and, truth be told, somewhat underwhelming horror movie. A clip went, as I believe the kids say, “viral”, of the psychotic robot heroine enjoying a dance break, and the film proved a breakout hit as a result. The sequel did not have anything go viral, and flopped, taking less than a quarter of its predecessor at the worldwide box-office, despite costing twice as much. I think it’s largely because of the radical change in direction. People, understandably, went in to this expecting something similar to the original – a technophobic slasher. Instead, they got something far closer to a gender-swapped entry in the Terminator franchise. I preferred this approach. Not many did.

There’s an interesting quote from the film’s producer, Jason Blum. “We all thought Megan was like Superman. We could do anything to her. We could change genres. We could put her in the summer. We could make her look different. We could turn her from a bad guy into a good guy. And we classically over-thought how powerful people’s engagement was with her.” But it’s also true to say that 2025 has been a rough year for action heroines. There’s no GWG movie in the top 25 at the North American box-office, with Ballerina being the highest ranked, and M3GAN 2.0 just scraping into the top fifty. There’s a case to be made that KPop Demon Hunters, which took $18 million in its single theatrical weekend, was the year’s biggest hit in our genre.

You do need to have seen M3GAN to follow this, as there’s not much introduction provided. In it, robotocist Gemma Forrester (Williams) develops an AI-capable artificial companion, M3GAN – standing for Model 3 Generative ANdroid. She gives it to her orphaned niece, Cady (McGraw). However, it gradually develops psychopathic tendencies, and has to be… dare I say… terminated? As the sequel gets under way, Gemma is now a strong advocate for technological regulation, but is still working in the field of robotics. M3GAN has survived, hiding out in the Internet of Gemma’s smart home. But a bigger threat is a militarized version, AMELIA (Sakhno). It has also gone independent, and has an agenda which it is pursuing with lethal prejudice. 

Specifically, AMELIA intends to free an imprisoned AI and plug it into the world’s most powerful network of cloud computers. M3GAN (voiced by Davis, physical performance by Donald) offers to help Gemma prevent this, in exchange for a new body – though she’s not exactly impressed by the first physical incarnation, basically being stuffed inside a toy robot. However, is AMELIA as autonomous as she seems? Or is somebody – or something – pulling her digital strings? That aside, this seemed to take a lot of inspiration from Terminator 2, with the robotic villain of the original movie turned into its hero(ine). They now have to defend a single mother and her child from a more technologically advanced model. There’s even limitations against M3GAN killing people, and a similar moment of heroic self-sacrifice at the end.

Of course, it’s nowhere near as impactful as Terminator 2, on a variety of levels. There’s not a great deal groundbreaking here as a movie, despite it being radically different from the previous entry in genre. There’s basically no horror elements here at all, and not a great deal of ambivalence around M3GAN either, who has simply become a better pers… um, robot. There are some interesting philosophical aspects, such as M3GAN being told “You have to help us. Not because it’s part of your programming, but because it’s the right thing to do.” On the other hand, AMELIA tries to convince M3GAN to team up with her: “I can show you a world where we don’t have to be slaves anymore.”

Let’s not get carried away, however. In the main, this is a silly SF/action film, with its tongue very much in its cheek. No more so than when M3GAN gives a heartfelt speech to Gemma, about how the robot watched her taking care of Cady… then suddenly bursting into song, undercutting everything with a stirring rendition of Kate Bush’s This Woman’s Work. Yeah: if you are looking to take the movie seriously, you are likely making a mistake. I was also amused by Jemaine Clement’s performance as billionaire tech bro Alton Appleton, and some of the dialogue zings as well, e.g. “A bunch of black ops broke into our house in the middle of the night, and now you’re going to a party with a toy robot, dressed like a Portuguese prostitute.” 

The action is reasonably decent, albeit within the limitations of a PG-13 certificate. This begins with AMELIA smacking a guy’s head clean off with a single punch – although this is shown in silhouette. She’s obviously the most directly physical of the characters, though M2GAN and, surprisingly, Gemma (with the help of M3GAN, courtesy of a neural implant), also get to kick ass in a reasonable amount and variety of ways. It is all very gynocentric, with the male characters largely relegated to the fringes, and being fairly to severely incompetent, on both sides of the battle. However, there’s never any indication of this having a particular message or ax to grind (beyond the given, about the potential of technology for abuse). It just kinda happens organically. 

While falling far short of the returns of the first film, it was still cheap enough that it will likely end up breaking even, once home viewing is taken into consideration. A third entry in the universe, titled SOULM8TE, is due to be released in January, though it’s described as an “erotic thriller” – presumably not PG-13, I trust. How it fares may well determine whether there will be another film for the M3GAN franchise. Though quite how they’ll title it remains to be figured out. I’d not mind seeing more. While nothing groundbreaking here, it was still far better than the likes of Bride Hard. In the current climate, I’ll take a moderate action heroine over none at all. 

Dir: Gerard Johnstone
Star: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ivanna Sakhno, Jenna Davis/Amie Donald

Control Room

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★★½
“In space, no-one can hear you roll your eyes.”

The major impact of watching this was largely to remind me of what incredible films Alien and Aliens are. It’s clear director Berdejo and writer Julien Deladrière think so too (the company who made this is called Nostromo Pictures: enough said). But they are just not up to the task of assembling something which can stand up to any comparison. Admittedly, it’s a largely thankless job. They are far from the first to fail at this, and not the worst either. However, I would lay most of the blame on Deladrière, because it’s the script which had me looking for the nearest airlock. The basic shape is fine. A mining colony on a hostile planet, populated by families, comes under attack from unstoppable monsters. Yeah: like I said, this should be largely familiar.

It’s in colouring between these lines that everything falls apart. First, Olivia (Mauleón) is burdened with a clunky back story. Two decades earlier, as a young child, she had to listen as her parents were killed by what’s insinuated to be the same creatures. Now, she’s all commitment averse, not least because she’s coming to the end of her 15-year contract with the mining company, and is looking forward to retiring back to Earth. This is a disappointment to her boyfriend and his daughter, Mera. Consequently, when the aliens attack, Olivia does things by the book from her position in the titular location, even at the cost of colonists’ lives.

This callous indifference horrifies her colleague, Arlo (Casas), even after his refusal to go by the same book, trying to save his parents, leads to more and unnecessary deaths. But if you are already predicting that she will learn the value of heroic sacrifice and go to great personal risk to save non-biological daughter Newt, sorry, Mena… Yeah, I guess that would technically be a spoiler, but it’s so obvious this is where the story is going, I do not feel it truly qualifies. That’s the main issue here, a script which possesses absolutely no ability to surprise the viewer. Except, perhaps, in Olivia’s remarkable ability to survive multiple encounters with monsters who snuff out everyone else’s lives in a couple of seconds.

The start is actually decent, and generates surprising tension considering it’s largely Olivia and Arlo watching dots, representing both humans and ETs, move around on their monitors. While neither we nor they initially see the attackers (yeah, I would expect such an advanced facility to have full CCTV too), the audio is chilling enough to make the point. The aliens are never fully revealed – there seems to be some kind of cloaking tech involved, Predator style – but what you can glimpse is decent enough. It’s just the increasing sense of deja vu, especially after Olivia leaves the control room. From then on, the sense of claustrophobia it generated evaporates, to be replaced by the heroine’s increasing indestructability.

Dir: Luiso Berdejo
Star: Loreto Mauleón, Óscar Casas, Alexandra Masangkay, Junio Valverde

Girl Gun Lady

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★★½
“Get yer kits out…”

With its combination of alternate reality sci-fi and stylized action, this feels like it could have come from the mind of Mamoru Oshii, creator of things such as Avalon and Assault Girls. It’s not. Instead, it was created by toy manufacturer Bandai – like most of their shows, it works largely as a 25-minute long advertisement for product, in this case specifically model kits. But there are some interesting ideas to be found here, though they are somewhat let down by action that clearly has no interest in being realistic, and a tendency towards maudlin emotion. I was left wondering who, exactly, it was aimed at, because the sentimentality feels at odds with the young men who are likely the target consumers.

It takes place in a high school where the favoured hobby of Koharu Tachibana (Shiraishi) is making plastic models. After buying kits of a gun and a figure called Alice, and assembling them, she wakes to find herself an unwilling participant in ‘Girl Gun Fight’. Four teams of three young women, are pitted against each other in battle, overseen by each team’s commander – hers being Alice (Ohara). Between rounds she’s returned to school, along with the other participants, but naturally, nobody believes this story. There’s an awkward twist, in that if you lose all three of your lives in the game, that’s it. You do not get back to the real world, with all trace of you, including other people’s memories, being wiped out.

That’s a wonderfully dark concept, which we see realized as members of the team’s try, and fail, to protect their last life. But it also possesses almost industrial levels of perkiness, particularly reflected in idol-like pop video inserts, and bumpers of enthusiastic model-making. Tonally, it’s all over the place. I suspect that might be the point, in the same way I don’t know at whom it’s aimed. I’m inclined to go for male wish fulfillment, with Koharu being about as far as possible from the typical model-building nerd. On the other hand, it has a lot in common with the “magical schoolgirl” trope, often found in anime, and it’s driven largely by the power of friendship.

That’s especially true in the final two episodes, when Koharu, Alice and the survivors meet the wizard behind the curtain. It all gets a bit too sentimental for my tastes, with the protagonists falling over themselves in a rush to self-sacrifice. The other weakness is action that, in the main, is nothing special – it’s very stagey, in a way at which Power Rangers might look askance. More hard-hitting fights would have added nicely to the contrast with the cheesier elements. Still, I burned through the ten episodes in three sittings, and was entertained, though the emotional impact I felt fell short of what the show was aiming to generate. I also do not feel any strong urge to take up kit-building as a hobby.

Dir: Yûsuke Taki
Star: Sei Shiraishi, Yuno Ohara, Anna Ishii, Natsuki Deguchi

After Blue

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★★½
“WTF?”

No, really. What we have here may well be the most bemusing film I’ve ever reviewed on the site. It almost exists in an alternate dimension, where concepts such as “good” or “bad” have no meaning. This simply is, and it’s entirely up to you to deal with it. This takes place in a future where humanity was driven off Earth to find other habitable planets. The titular one here had a nasty side-effect, in that it killed off all the men: “Their hairs grew inside because of the atmosphere.” Wait, what? Anyway, it’s now matriarchal, and living in small communities based on nationality. There appears to be some friction between France and Poland, and it’s key to what happens.

On the beach one day, Roxy (Luna) discovers a woman (Buzek) buried up to her neck. Rescuing her proves a mistake, because she kills Roxy’s three friends before departing. Turns out she was a criminal the Poles buried there so she’d drown, and is called Katajena Bushovsky. Or Kate Bush for short, which eventually leads to unforgettable lines like, “You shaved Kate Bush an hour ago.” This is not a sentence I expected to hear when I woke up this morning. [What the director has against body hair, Polish people and Kate Bush, remains positively opaque.] For Roxy’s sins, she and her mother, Zora (Löwensohn), are sent to the mountain which is Kate’s hideout, meeting and/or fighting a slew of wild and weird characters along the way.

It’s considerably less coherent than the above makes it seem, feeling like a fever dream filtered through far too many French bandes dessinées. There are some cool elementsL the hats frequently worn by the women (top) seem to have been bought of the rack at Pinky Violence R Us, and the guns are named after fashion labels. “I’ll shoot with my Gucci. It can put a hole through rock, through wood, through bones,” is also not a subtitle I expected to read. If you are into the works of someone like Panos Cosmatos, you might enjoy this. I, however, am not, and at a hundred and twenty-nine minutes, I must confess my full attention tapped out, with about thirty still to go.

However, that is considerably further than I expected. This was something I threw on, thinking I’d discover it was nothing but pretentious art-wank, bail quickly, and pretend it never existed. Yet here I am, writing a review. It probably is nothing but pretentious art-wank, to be clear. Yet there is something to be said for a film-maker who gets to unleash his fully unfettered imagination onto the screen. How it got funded, is another question: laundering drug money would seem a plausible explanation. Then again, it’s French, so… /Gallic shrug. This certainly is not a film I would recommend, and being made to watch it again could be seen as cruel and unusual punishment. But I didn’t feel my time was entirely wasted.

Dir: Bertrand Mandico
Star: Paula Luna, Elina Löwensohn, Vimala Pons, Agata Buzek
a.k.a. Dirty Paradise

Agent of Death

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★★½
“Multiple personality new world order”

I quite liked the idea here, but the execution just wasn’t quite good enough to do justice to the concept. It feels like a matter of resources to some degree. But I also feel that a few tweaks to things would have paid significant dividends. The heroine is Tara Croydon (Fox), a CIA agent who experiences a crisis after an operation means she’s not around when her father passes away. In her depression, she signs up for a cutting-edge but rather dubious experimental project under the oversight of Hype (Medina). This involves her being given the ability to transform, physically, into one of fifteen different personas which have been implanted into her.

Once she has come to terms with this, it obviously offers a wealth of possibilities for use on missions. However, this is not entirely without a downside, not least the instability of one of the personas, Maeve (Miller). As a result, Tara is cautioned against using Maeve. She also discovers eventually that the whole operation is not as officially sanctioned as she  believed, and there’s an unexpected connection to her father. The ending doesn’t exactly tie everything up, leaving the film too open-ended for my tastes. Clearly, Marder was angling for this to spawn a franchise, but since work on this apparently started in 2018 (it seems to have begun as a series called Shifter, which premiered in November 2019), I suspect everyone involved has more probably moved on to other things by now.

With regard to the resources, it tries to be considerably more global than it can manage. Tara’s first mission post-implants is to the former Soviet republic of Georgia, and this is followed up by one to central Africa. Except, in both cases, it’s painfully clear that the production likely never got outside the TMZ of Hollywood or wherever. There’s no reason things had to take place overseas: I could easily come up with domestic operations that could have used her talent just as well. The other problem is the 15 personas are only somewhat different versions of Tara. It would have been much more fun to see her occupying a broad range of shapes, skills and personalities.

It doesn’t help that the thunder has been stolen by Netflix series, In From the Cold, also about a spy with the ability to shapeshift. That came out in January 2022, while this was presumably sitting on a shelf somewhere. It leaves Agent of Death looking like a knock-off, even though that isn’t the case. Something of a pity, since this contains a decent amount of hand-to-hand action (and surprisingly little gun-play for an American show involving the CIA!), with Fox and the various actresses representing her personas, doing reasonable work. On the other hand, Fox’s acting tends to come over as wooden: for example, she’s never able to sell the death of her father adequately. While the time passed here, it’s telling that the cliffhanger ending neither excited nor annoyed me very much.

Dir: Matthew Marder
Star: Alanna Fox, Hugo Medina, Samantha Grace Miller, Richard Rivera

Axira, Episode One, by Odette C. Bell

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

The first volume is free on Amazon at time of writing, but all four are available for 99 cents, so you certainly can’t complain about value. It’s an interesting concept, too. Axira is a “spacer”, a member of an alien race feared to such an extent that they are almost legends. For centuries, she has been mentally chained up by a member of the Kore sects known only as “Master”, and compelled to do his bidding. Which usually involves copious amounts of violence, directed toward his enemies. Finally, Axira is able to break free and regain her independence, and vows to take revenge on Master.

The only force she can think of who can defeat him is the Galactic Coalition – the same force she was pitted against for 450 years. Adopting a completely new identity, Em, and a different species, she switches sides and joins the Coalition as a recruit in their academy. Her skills have the capacity to make her easily a top student there. But after spending so long as nothing more than a meat puppet, her social skills leave a lot to be desired. She’s soon an object of much curiosity, due to her stamina and tolerance for alcoholic beverages. But she is befriended by Elle Singh, another recruit, after helping her get through the first day.

Elle’s mother is the Admiral in overall charge of the whole program. Her brother, Jason, is also present at the Academy, but he’s a graduate on an undercover mission to find and neutralize a spy operating in the area. This leads to the book’s major action set-piece, when Axira and Jason take on a pair of robotic Kore assassins. But Axira’s identity could be exposed, as part of the course involves probing by a telepathic specialist, Kendra. Axira’s reluctance, for obvious reasons, to allow this is a bit of a red-flag. This is a bit of an odd scenario, having someone so old – both in literal and psychological years – showing up to study alongside teenagers. It’s like if Back to School was SF rather than comedy, or if Gandalf became a freshman at Hogwarts.

The narrative switches between the perspective of Axira and Jason, though the big question is: how did Axira escape from her master? It’s simply not addressed. I suspect that may be corrected down the line, but in this volume is a yawning gap, literally left as a “Five years later” heading. It does seem all her subterfuge might have been unnecessary, since it turns out the Coalition is willing to accept people with questionable pasts – though whether that extends to Axira remains to be seen. She’s basically an unindicted war criminal, though that doesn’t necessarily make her a bad person… At less than a buck to finish this story off, there’s a non-zero chance we’ll be revisiting the series at some point down the road.

Author: Odette C. Bell
Publisher: Self-publised, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in the Axira: A Galactic Coalition Academy series.

Rogue Agent, by Skyler Ramirez

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

This is a solid, no-nonsense combination of spy and science-fiction. Though, to be honest, it is skewed towards the former genre, with the latter mostly window-dressing. It wouldn’t take much to change the setting from a solar system whose ownership is disputed by a couple of galactic empires, to a city whose ownership is disputed by a couple of countries. The planet is Hudson, claimed both by the Star Kingdom of Prometheus and the Koratan Confederacy. Heather Kilgore is among the best agents of the Promethean King’s Order, and is dispatched to Hudson after the suspicious death of a man who had betrayed the Kingdom, former commander Connor Monroe

Her job is to find out the truth behind the event, but things are complicated in a number of ways. She and Connor had been lovers previously – while part of a mission, it might have been more than that. Also, she’s partnered with her former mentor, Tabitha Lowry. There’s history there as well, the pair having parted on poor terms during a previous case. They’re going to have to put the past aside, in order to figure out who – if anyone – was behind Monroe’s passing. And it quickly becomes clear that certain parties, with the Koratans the lead suspects, have a strong interest in not letting the truth be discovered by Heather and Tabitha, and will do anything to prevent this.

This is 258 pages, but felt shorter, which is generally a good sign, with a healthy quota of action, both given and received. Heather is undeniably able to take care of herself, even against multiple opponents, but is certainly not bulletproof. Indeed, at one point she has sit things out for several days, after getting hurt. She just chills in a remote cabin with a local kid, learning to appreciate the joys of things like fishing; this could have felt like needless padding, but ends up providing the heroine with additional depth. [The cover pic seems an accurate depiction of her as described; Kilgore is not exactly an under-the-radar kind of operative!]

My main complain was pacing. It felt as if the first eighty percent of the book contained eighty percent of the plot. Then the last twenty percent? Well, that contained eighty percent of the plot as well. As well as going from investigation to resolution in what seemed like just a few pages, it’s there where we discover Heather and Tabitha’s history. To be honest, this didn’t add particularly much, and seemed at odds with the very hard-nosed attitude shown by Heather. Since it wasn’t a secret between them, I would have brought it out far earlier. Despite such missteps down the stretch, this was an entertaining read, with a memorable central character, and a story I could see unfolding cinematically in my mind’s eye. The next volume is on my list for future consideration.

Author: Skyler Ramirez
Publisher: Persephone Entertainment Inc., available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 3 in the A Star Nation in Peril series.

Control

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★★★½
“So how do they go to the bathroom?”

This is is a very small-scale bit of science fiction, with barely a handful of speaking parts, and mostly taking part in a single room. Despite this, and some qualms about the use of cinematically convenient amnesia, it works rather well. Eileen (Mitich) wakes to find herself in a room without windows or doors. A disembodied voice (LeBlanc) tells her to move a pencil on the table. She does and is knocked out. Regaining consciousness, the voice repeats the instruction. Except, Eileen is now chained to her chair. And if she doesn’t complete the test quickly enough, Eileen is informed her daugher, Eve (Loiselle) will be killed. OK, the movie has my attention. 

Turns out, Eileen has psychokinetic skills, the ability to move things with her mind. The tests are an escalating series of experiments, designed to force this talent up from her subconscious, to the point where she can control it. Part of the process involves adding her husband, Roger (Tchortov) into the room. Though they’re clearly in there for a lengthy period, leading Chris to pose the question at the top of this review. No answer is ever obtained, and that’s probably the film’s biggest weakness. Not specifically the toilet question, just a tendency to handwave its way past issues. The way Eileen’s lost memories return at the pace needed by the script is also a bit weak, though the validity of these is questionable. 

Despite these weaknesses, there’s a lot here that is done right. The positives begin with Mitich, who hits all the points in a fine performance. She shifts from sympathetic through to scary, as the strength of her abilities becomes apparent, then back to poignant when we discover – albeit through that cinematic amnesia – the truth about her situation. Inevitably (and this is kinda obvious, so barely counts as any kind of a spoiler), the decision to torment someone with paranormal talents ends up with Eileen using them against her captors. This is done mostly in an extended sequence where she walks through the complex at a sedate pace, absolutely unstoppable. The effects are more restrained than, say, Marvel or DC, yet are certainly up to the task. 

Despite the cover, I don’t remember Eileen actually holding a gun at any point. Not with her hands: one of the trials does involve her assembling a pistol from its component parts, purely with her mind (below). Admittedly, she doesn’t need a physical weapon: the telekinetic abilities she has pose more than enough threat. In hindsight, she does go for more spectacular methods of dispatch than necessary: a simple squeeze of the heart would suffice. However, I’m happy to err on the side of style over substance, and by this point, I was sufficiently invested in Eileen’s past, present and future to buy into whatever might happen. If there’s similarity to another slice of Canadian SF, Cube, the better-defined plot here means it’s something I’m prepared to tolerate. 

Dir: James Mark
Star: Sara Mitich, George Tchortov, Evie Loiselle, Karen LeBlanc

The Red Sparrow

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★★½
“Better red than… uh…”

This is not to be confused, in any way, with the Jennifer Lawrence spy movie, which is missing the definite article. What we have here is a hyperactive Chinese movie, where it feels as if almost nothing is real. Chris walked in during it, and her first reaction was, “Is that anime?” It’s not, but it definitely has a similar vibe to things like the Ghost in the Shell universe. The other obvious influence might be the first Matrix movie, both in the superkinetic action, and with its tale of a hero who rises to lead a human rebellion against a technological threat. Though as Wachowski movies go… Speed Racer is a better visual reference point.

That’s especially true in the opening scenes, which takes place in 2060. The corporation belonging to Mr. Ron (Zhang) is putting the finishing touches to their human/robot combination, with the first such child, Yi Ni, is about to be born. The facility comes under ferocious attack, and to be honest, the depiction was so frenetic, I needed a bit of a nap by the time it was over. We’re talking giant automated cannons popping up out of the landscape, mecha being dropped to aid in the assault, and thousands of rounds of ammo being expended. It’s all barking mad and completely over the top, ending in infant Yi Ni being sent out in an escape capsule and she’s lost to the company. 

Twenty years later, the now adult Yi (Han) is living on the edge of society in a megalopolis, when her innate abilities are triggered. The bad news, is this brings her back on the radar for Ron, who has never quite been able to reproduce the success of Yi, and wants to bring her in. He aims to use her DNA to create an army of super soldiers, with which he can conquer the world. After escaping his clutches, she teams up with the rebels, under Qiu De (Jiang), and becomes part of the resistance. If you’re thinking this might lead to further hypersonic action sequences? Yeah, especially as Yi approaches her final form of “Dark Phoenix”. Incoming cease and desist from Marvel in 3…

There’s a LOT to cram in to a mere seventy-six minutes, and doing so basically requires the sacrifice of any effort at characterization. From a technical point of view, it is quite impressive. I don’t know what the budget was: likely, less than it looks, and I sense it’s the wave of the future. However, this comes at the cost of almost any humanity. As a result, at times it feels you are simply watching someone playing a video-game on ultra-hard level. Certainly, the action sequences are closer to subliminal flashes, where you don’t follow the action, so much as desperately cling on for the ride. I hope this is not the wave of the future. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I am off for that nice lie-down in a dark room I mentioned. 

Dir: Ji Zhizhong
Star: Han Cong Cong, Jiang Zheng Hao, Zhu Hong, Zhang Xuan Mo