Tag: spy

Part-Time Spy

  By

★★★
“Korea careers.”

An amiable piece of light fluff from Korea, while this probably doesn’t need to be 117 minutes long, the time passed comfortably enough. After many years of failing the civil service entrance exam, Jang Young-shil (Kang) finally succeeds and is rewarded with a contract job in the national security agency. However, she’s still mediocre, and is laid off. Fortunately, she overhears her boss (Jo) having been phone-phished out of $500,000 of departmental funds, and is the only agent available to go undercover in the ‘boiler room’ carrying out these scams. There, she recognizes another employee, Na Jung-an (Han) – having seen her take out a pickpocket on the subway, she knows Na is an undercover cop. The two women, of sharply disparate backgrounds and skill-sets, form an uneasy alliance, seeking to take down the charismatic boss of the con company, Min Seok (Namkoong).

The similarities to the Melissa McCarthy vehicle, Spy, extend to more than the title, being a similar combination of goofy comedy and action, with a lead who is far from conventionally pretty [the poster on the right is spectacularly misleading, as far as 50% of the actresses are concerned]. Though neither the comedy nor the action here prove quite as successful. For all Kang’s charms, she lacks the impeccable comedic timing of McCarthy, though her long list of former jobs e.g. dog whisperer provide some amusing moments – as well as coming in surprisingly handy, for example when the villains unleash their canines of war. Han isn’t exactly Jason Statham in the martial arts department either. That said, her anger management issues are a nice touch, making her far from the perfect choice to go undercover at a sketchy call-centre, and she can pull discontented faces with the best of them. Her efforts to seduce Min are delightfully OTT as well.

For an action-comedy, I found this surprisingly eye-opening too. The concept of having to pass an exam to get a job with the government, for instance. Or the entire voice-phishing thing, which seems to be an epidemic in Korea, if this movie is to be believed. In the film’s defense, it is possible that cultural differences such as these may partly explain why some of the humour occasionally falls painfully flat. However, even local reviewers seemed unimpressed with the more slapstick elements, so it probably isn’t just me who was highly underwhelmed by these aspects. It does build nicely, with the finale seeing our two heroines sent to scam an army officer out of $500,000 – money which Jang’s boss intends to “requisition” and replace the money he lost. Needless to say, things don’t quite unfold as expected, especially after another employee overhears Jang and Na talking, and realizes they are not who they claimed to be.

It’s the kind of film I can easily see being remade by Hollywood, perhaps with McCarthy and Sandra Bullock as the tw… Oh, hang on: they already did that, and it was called The Heat. But in most ways, this is its equal: slickly-made and unashamedly commercial, if also largely forgettable.

Dir: Kim Deok-su
Star: Kang Ye-won, Han Chae-ah, Namkoong Min, Jo Jae-yoon

Wish Me Luck

  By

★★★½
“Life during wartime.”

This British TV series ran for three series from 1988 through 1990, with 23 episodes (each an hour long including commercials) in total. The same creators had previously been responsible for another WW2-based show, Tenko, about women in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp after the fall of Singapore. The time period here is similar – the second half of World War 2 – but the focus moves from the Far East to Occupied Europe, in particular, France. At this point, the Allies were sending in agents to assist the local Resistance – and as we’ve documented before, this was one of the few areas where women were used as much as men.

While partly inspired by the exploits of Nancy ‘The White Mouse’ Wake, the show cover a range of characters, both at home on London and on the ground in Vichy France. The main one present throughout is Faith Ashley (Asher), who eventually rises to run the department from London. She is responsible for recruiting (more or less) suitable candidates, getting them trained, and once they’re embedded, managing their needs. In the first season, it’s an exercise in contrasts: the two main agents sent over are an upper-class housewife Liz Grainger (Buffery), and factory worker from a refugee Jewish family, Matty Firman (Suzanna Hamilton). In the second and third series, the focus is more on Emily Whitbread (Snowden), an initially rather naive woman, barely old enough to join up. She quickly has to adapt and make some extremely difficult decisions.

It’s at its most effective when concentrating on ratcheting up the tension and depicting life in enemy territory, where the slightest slip can prove fatal. Interestingly, there’s no attempt made at the players speaking – or in most cases, even sounding – French. Yet, this is easy to forget, and soon seems natural, with their English accents still conveying information about their position and social standing. Less successful, with the exception of the final season, are the aspects portraying life in Britain. These are just not very interesting, save for the last batch of episodes. In those, Faith tries, with increasing desperation, to get much-needed resources for a rebellion, when the higher-ups are far more concerned with matters elsewhere. It’s an object lesson that the needs of the many may outweigh the needs of the few – yet the consequence for the few are no less tragic as a result.

The last season also has considerably loftier production values, with location shooting in France, and significantly more military hardware on view. However, the cheap music still undercuts this, apparently being played by a three-man band, when the action really needs something sweeping and orchestral. That still doesn’t destroy the tension of the final few episodes, when it becomes increasingly clear that the makers have no intention on letting all the characters walk off into the sunset unharmed. But you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way. Because in wartime, there’s really no such thing as a happy ending.

Creators: : Jill Hyem & Lavinia Warner
Star: Jane Asher, Jane Snowden, Michael J. Jackson, Kate Buffery

Miss Bala (2018)

  By

★★½
“Cultural appropriation”

As the lazy joke goes, I preferred this film the first time I saw it, when it was called… Well, actually, it was called Miss Bala then too, this being a remake in (mostly) English of the Mexican movie from 2011. Its remake status probably explains why both protagonist and cartel boss antagonist are American citizens: convenient to avoid those pesky subtitles, yet it also allows the director to avoid blaming poor, downtrodden Mexico – in an interview, she pinned the drug business on “American demand, and of course, American guns.” Calling that a gross simplification is an insult to gross simplifications.

It keeps a similar structure to the original, albeit with tweaks necessary to get a Yankee involved. Rather than a beauty pageant contestant herself, Gloria (Rodriguez) is a Los Angeles make-up artist visiting her friend in Tijuana. After witnessing a nightclub shoot-out after which her friend vanishes, and making an incredibly stupid decision to tell the first cop she sees about it (really, I’ve spent one weekend in Mexico and know better than that), she ends up under the thumb of Los Estrellas, a cartel run by Lino Esparza (Córdova) – hey, also brought up in America! After unwittingly dropping off a car-bomb that blows up a DEA safe-house, Gloria also ends up under the thumb of Brian Reich (Lauria), a federal agent who makes her operate as an undercover mole inside the gang.

When Chris discovered the director of this was responsible for Twilight, she paused and then asked with a concerned expression, “They’re not going to turn into sparkly vampires, are they?” Fortunately, they don’t. Yet the adjustment in story is almost as problematic, because it seriously weakens Gloria’s motivation to comply. Rather than having her direct family be threatened, it’s just some friend and her little brother; we’re given no reason to understand her desperate willingness to do anything to save them. There’s also the sudden transformation into a heavily-armed beauty queen at the end, where one quick session of “Fire at them from the pointy end” training apparently turns her into the evening-gown clad angel of death shown in the picture.

Hardwicke even complained the film’s poor reviews were due to male critics preferring the more passive heroine of the original. Uh, no. It’s more that the 2011 version didn’t go full Peppermint – and with less justification. It was because its original heroine was atypical which made it work better. The remake manages to reproduce the flaws, while weakening the best element: depicting the futility of struggling against immensely powerful forces on both sides of the law, which really don’t care, save for how they can use you for their own purposes. Depressing, maybe; yet it had a realism this version could use, wanting instead to be both empowering wish-fulfillment and gritty narcocinema. Hardwicke should have swallowed her faux-feminist outrage, and just given us 90 minutes of Rodriguez shooting shit up in a long dress.

Dir: Catherine Hardwicke
Star: Gina Rodriguez, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Matt Lauria, Ricardo Abarca

Anna

  By

★★★★
“Luc Besson’s Greatest Hits”

Before getting to the film, we probably have to address the elephant in the room: the rape accusations against Luc Besson. Though police investigations have finished, with the allegations unproven, they definitely have damaged Besson’s reputation. While in Europe, the basic rule remains “Innocent until proven guilty”, in Hollywood a mere accusation in a newspaper headline or online can potentially destroy a man’s career these days. And while some people are guilty of the crimes of which they were accused, I personally strongly doubt that the small, overweight, apparently introverted Frenchman is a serial rapist.

Honestly, if I go by what I heard about countless actors and directors working in Hollywood today, I probably wouldn’t be able to watch any movie. The logical thing for me is to separate a creator and what you know about them (or perhaps, think you know) from their work. Beethoven is said to have been a terrible, unsympathetic misogynist but his music is great. Klaus Kinski was one of the most controversial actors of the 20th century, with a reputation for unpleasantness at best; yet there is no doubt of his acting genius that shines through almost any movie he made in his life.

Right now though, a whiff of suspicion, and you are already dead to Hollywood. Besson might be slightly safer, as he is not part of the business there, and lives in Europe. But I wonder if the allegations may have led to some kind of semi-sabotage by his distributor in the US. For hardly any cinemagoer seemed to have known about his new movie, Anna. Even though I was told the film got some TV spots on cable channels and a trailer in cinemas, it seemed marketing was seriously toned down, and the movie rushed out of cinemas shortly after release.

[Note from Jim. I can confirm this. We were on holiday in Scotland when it came out. By the time we returned to Arizona and got over the jet-lag, it was basically gone. Anna opened in 2,114 screens. Three weeks later, it was on… 92. I still haven’t seen it, which is why I was glad Dieter stepped in with a review]

There seems almost to be some kind of unspoken agreement just to bury this movie quietly. Heck, even here in Germany the film wasn’t advertised apart, from the online trailer. I definitely didn’t see a trailer for it at the cinema, or big posters for it anywhere. If I had not consciously looked out for this movie, due to being a fan of Luc Bessons work over the last 36 years, I probably wouldn’t even have known about it.

But to put things in a more objective perspective: over his entire career Besson has had only two real successes in the US: One was Leon (1994), which made Jean Reno a big star and started the career of Nathalie Portman; the other was Lucy (2014), the break-through film for Scarlett Johannson, now the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. Heck, even now-loved cult movie The Fifth Element (1997) (originally supposed to be a two-parter!) was considered a flop in America at the time of release. What has always been Besson’s bread and butter is the rest of the world. Though in the beginning he had some detractors in his own country for a style which was seen as “Americanized” and “not really French enough”.

Nevertheless, it seems kind of strange when looking at the box-office numbers of Besson’s movies in the last few years. Lucy was an international success, that in the US alone made $126 million, while Anna closed with takings of under $8 million.  It’s easy to create conspiracy theories looking at these numbers. But in between came Valerian and the City of the 1000 Planets (2017). Despite being the most expensive European movie ever, with a budget of about $178 million, took a disappointing $41 million in the US (though made its costs back in the rest of the world). And yes, some of his movies never were commercial successes – regardless of their quality – such as Adele Blanc-Sec (2010), The Lady (2011) or the sequels to his Arthur and the Invisibles animated movie.

Why do I mention all of the above? I guess, because I think that Anna may be a turning point in Besson’s career – perhaps more than you may think. Valerian seemed to have cost his French Eurocorp studio money, despite pre-sales and – according to Besson – only a small financial investment by Eurocorp itself. It seems that about two-thirds of the company are now in the hands of foreign investors, and they don’t want Besson to continue in the chairman’s seat of his own company. With Valerian under-performing, and Anna a theatrical flop despite a modest budget (reportedly around $35 million), we could be looking at the last big movie of Luc Besson.

Sure, he has always shown that he can make effective and very good movies with small budgets such as his debut movie, The Last Battle (1983) or Angel-A (2005). Indeed, maybe the quality of his movies increases, as his budget decreases. But the big question is if the 60-year old director really wants to start again from the ground up, especially given his age. He’s not the youthful punk he started as. In Europe (or at least France) he is what Spielberg might have been in mid-90s Hollywood. But then Spielberg grew up and matured; can Besson do that? Does he even want to? I also think you can compare him with contemporary James Cameron, a famous director who now mostly has others direct his productions. Certainly, I don’t think Besson has to prove anything to anyone, anymore.

With all that said, how is Anna? Answer: surprisingly good. I went into this movie not expecting much at all (going from the quasi non-existent marketing). Yes, it’s true, it’s not one of the “greats” of Besson, and he also doesn’t re-invent the genre wheel with this. If you have seen his classic Nikita (1990) which has been exploited by Hollywood ad infinitum, and her spiritual successors Atomic Blonde (2017) and Red Sparrow (2018), you know the story. And knowing these kind of movies, you’ll be familiar with a story arc, you can figure out from the very beginning.

But then, I don’t hear anyone complaining about the 1000th Marvel movie following the same paths of its superhero predecessors. In the end, the question is how the cook combines the ingredients to bake his cake. And this cake tastes good – but definitely not great. While the DNA of Nikita is everywhere, it never reaches the fine and poetic quality of that movie. It feels like a modernized remake, with Besson obviously having seen Sparrow and Blonde too, and saying to himself: “I can do better!”

And I think, subjectively, he mainly succeeds. Red Sparrow was a very heavy, slow-burning spy movie without what I would really call action scenes. Atomic Blonde had impressive action choreography, which Besson definitely tried to top here – up to the individual viewer, whether or not he succeeded. But Blonde also had, at least for me, a strange, difficult to figure-out ending, and characters which were all cool, to the point of emotionless. My feeling is that Besson took the best elements of all these movies – the intrigue of Sparrow; the action of Blonde – and combined it with his own style.

What I always notice when watching one of his movies, is that Besson can be an incredibly visual director if he wants. He knows how to do great mise-en-scéne, how to give his movies a lot of kinetic energy. The scenes are not too long, but also not so short you can’t invest yourself into them emotionally. He inserts moments of genuinely funny humor and sometimes almost kitschy emotional scenes, that are a component of his own unique style – and, unfortunately, usually not to be found in American action movies. And when he gets playful, the editing and the music of his “house composer”, Eric Serra (Nikita, Leon, The Fifth Element, and many others), join each other in a perfect marriage that’s just incredible fun to watch.

Do I sound too enthusiastic? I don’t think so. Besson is an excellent director. This doesn’t exclude him from creating flawed movies or average scripts; yet even his failures are – at least for me – still more satisfying and interesting than an average “successful” conveyor-belt Hollywood movie. He is an almost classic storyteller, telling his very own stories, depending on what he focuses his current interest on in the moment. One quality I think I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere, is his ability to lead actors. All of the performances here, including Evans, Murphy and Mirren are very good. But the one that really impressed me is supermodel-turned-actress Sasha Luss, who previously played a smaller role as an alien in Valerian.

She’s not perfect: Luss playing a poor Moscow-wife selling “matroshkas” on the market, can’t disguise what a beauty she is. Compare that to Anne Parillaud’s ugly punk-girl-duckling in Nikita who only turns into a beautiful swan later in the movie. Still, Luss comes across as very charismatic, believable as a model (not a stretch!) and seductress, as well as a murderous killer for the KGB. Honestly, I was really impressed: for me, she gives a better performance than the enigmatic but also somewhat bland Jennifer Lawrence in Red Sparrow.

But then a talent of Besson is being able to insert some “emotionality” into his characters. This adds just enough to make them appear more believable than many similar characters in Hollywood movies. Here, he even manages to make Helen Mirren’s role, playing a cold-hearted merciless KGB trainer and mentor of Anna, comparable to Lotte Lenya in From Russia with Love and Charlotte Rampling in Red Sparrow, into an oddly likable character.

What seemed a problem for some cinema-goers was the non-linear storytelling of the movie. The film jumps a couple of years ahead, a few months back, another year forward and so on, allowing it to surprise the audience with some unexpected revelations. I personally had no problems with that – but some people don’t like to use their brains at all when watching a movie. Their loss. :) Where I’d say Besson fails is in what I call the “model photo shooting scenes”. Here, he overdoes it so much, to the point you wonder if he intended to make a satire about haute couture. These scenes come across as exaggerated and almost cringe-worthy. Fortunately, they don’t occupy too much of the film’s running-time.

The basic story is of a trained secret agent who works for one side, becomes a double agent, then is essentially only working to get back their personal liberty, and isn’t a new one. This plot goes back at least as far as Triple Cross (1966), a WWII-spy movie from Bond director Terence Young, with Christopher Plummer, Romy Schneider, Gert Fröbe and many others. The comparisons to Nikita really write themselves. There are many similarities to the movie that, 29 years ago, more or less signified Besson’s breakthrough out of arthouse cineaste circles. Despite this, they are different, probably due to a different contemporary zeitgeist, which made the movie an interesting viewing experience for me.

Gone is the girl who never had a choice, as Anna originally applied to work for the KGB by herself – though ends in a situation where she can’t quit. This makes for a different dynamic to Parillaud in Nikita, although I also don’t really buy the emotional and psychological interest in being a killer for the state here. Nikita was a desperate girl, slowly breaking apart through having to follow the orders of her handler while wanting a normal life with her boyfriend. Anna comes across as a hard professional: she is not just Nikita but also “Victor, nettoyeur” in one person, andcomes off as remarkably cold-blooded.

In one scene, a not unsympathetic, shy Russian who is an illegal arms trader confesses his love for her; she kills him in the moment she has the relevant information. Then there is that scene in a restaurant, which makes the similar scene in Nikita look like a Disney movie in comparison. Anna leaves a room full of bloody corpses behind her; the word “overkill” sprang immediately into my mind! A normal “relationship” with her girlfriend seems possible; but Anna hardly seems to care for her, since said friend is mainly a cover. At the same time she has passionate sex with Evans and Murphy, and calls them her family. But is this just another deception? You never know if she cares for anyone at all, or if she is just manipulating everyone around her emotionally and sexually, for use later in her intricate plan.

That may be the weakest point in Anna’s character. She is just bigger than life, out-fighting, out-manipulating, out-smarting and out-sexing anyone. Somehow, Nikita seemed much more grounded in reality, and more believable because of that human character. Anna is purely professional, always ahead of the game, even when you think: “Well, now she is done!” You wonder why she needs all these complicated components of her plan, when she seems quite capable off killing off half an army of KGB-employees [And you definitely don’t want to play chess with her!]

Other aspects: It’s nice to have actual Russians speaking real Russian in a movie. I had a hard time when watching Red Sparrow with all these Hollywood actors speaking English with Russian accents. It just sounded fake. The solution here is much better: You have Russian actors speaking Russian, maybe the main actors say a thing or two in Russian, then you change to the “normal” language. I didn’t feel that it broke the illusion, since it was well enough established that the characters were Russian. Kudos also to Alexander Petrov, who plays Anna’s original Russian criminal “boy-friend”, Piotr, an especially unsympathetic human being. It’s an important and effective role, letting the film establish a feeling of reality before it shifts into the more fantastic spy genre we know and love. John le Carré it ain’t!

Some production credits stood out for me. Shanna Besson, one of Luc’s daughters did the stills photography for the movie, and his wife Virginie Besson-Silla seems to have been involved in some capacity. Responsible for the car stunts is David Julienne, who has worked for some Besson productions already in the past. I suspect he is related to Remy Julienne, the famous driver responsible for all the great car chases in the Bond movies of the 80s and also some Jean-Paul Belmondo films. [There was a major issue between Remy and Europacorp, after a stunt went wrong during the filming of Taxi 2]  As mentioned, the music of Eric Serra, is as remarkable as ever, and I had a big smile on my face when in one specific scene he directly referenced a melody from his own Nikita soundtrack. I notice and appreciate little things like that.

Visually the film is – as can be expected from a Besson movie – stunning and top-notch. There are some beautiful shots of cities and once again Besson reminds us why people love Paris so much. Unlike so many modern secret agent and action movies, Anna leaves you with a real sense Besson and crew jetted around half the world to capture as many beautiful images as possible for this movie. The end titles included thank-yous to the cities of Moscow, Belgrade, Guadalupe, Milan and – of course – the studios of Paris. 

Unfortunately, Anna is a commercial flop right now. Sure, the film is less than subtle, and Nikita stays unchallenged as a genre icon. We might have seen this kind of story a bit too often recently – and probably will again next year when Marvel’s Black Widow comes out. But among the modern entries in the genre, it is easily one of the best. Besson doesn’t quite reach the quality of his formative years as a director, and I doubt he ever will. But as typical genre fare, even if exaggerated in the depiction of its female main character, this is solid entertainment, and should be enjoyed as such.

I just hope this isn’t Besson’s last movie, since he is still better than most of those trying to walk in his footsteps. We’ll see!

Dir: Luc Besson
Star: Sasha Luss, Luke Evans, Cillian Murphy, Helen Mirren

In Darkness

  By

★★½
“Hard to see the appeal.”

I literally had to check at the end of this, to see if M. Night Shyamalan had been involved. Because rarely since the likes of Signs – or, worse still, The Village – has a final twist so completely derailed a movie. As soon as it happened here, I was immediately listing off the scenes previously which now made absolutely no sense at all. While it’s hard to provide more information without massive spoilerage, it turned a film which was doing not badly, into one which is a poster-child for poorly-conceived ideas.

Sofia (Dormer, who also co-wrote the script with the director) is a blind piano player, living in a London apartment. One night, she hears an argument in the flat above, and its occupant plummeting to her death. Turns out the victim was the daughter of an accused Bosnian war-criminal, Radic (Bijvoet), a man with a murky past and present, whose asylum status is being challenged. The hunt is then on for a USB drive containing incriminating evidence of Radic’s business dealings, with a brother and sister pair of “security consultants”, Marc and Alex, (Skrein + Richardson) heading the chase. Mark saves Sofia from Radic’s thugs, who believe she knows the location of the USB drive. But what is their agenda – and what is Sofia’s? For, as gradually becomes clear, her presence in the affair may be considerably more than coincidental.

This starts off impressively enough, taking you into the world of a blind person living in one of the world’s biggest cities, with some particularly effective sound design. The script is very cautious with its release of information, depicting things that aren’t necessarily explained for some time. Who is sending Sofia notes in braille, that she burns after reading? Or what is the significance of her tattoos, which are not what you’d expect from a classical musician. It’s all quite intriguing, We’re deep into the film before her motives become clear, and it may be too late. For by that stage, we’re already passed the point where people are acting in ways necessary to the plot, rather than that make sense to the viewer.

It feels as if Dormer saw one too many of those awesome Korean revenge films, and decided she wanted to make one while on vacation from Game of Thrones [She, Skrein and James Cosmo, who plays Sofia’s mentor, have all appeared in that show]. She just apparently forgot, those inevitably possess a razor-edged script, in which what drives a character is always kept front and centre. Here, by the time you are given sufficient reason to care about Sofia, you have already waded through too many scenes that are dead weight. Sometimes, this is because you don’t have the necessary information yet; in others, it’s just because the makers thought they were needed. None of which excuses the revelation in the last shot; it’s been while since I’ve come as close to throwing something (remote control, coffee table, dog) at the TV set.

Dir: Anthony Byrne
Star: Natalie Dormer, Ed Skrein, Joely Richardson, Jan Bijvoet

Angel Strikes Back

  By

★★½
“You only film twice…”

This is a sequel to Angel With The Iron Fists, and again sees Ho playing Agent 009 – though this time, the character is named Ai Si, different from its predecessor. Whatever… Here, she’s on the trail of the unimaginatively named Bomb Gang, who do exactly what you’d expect. They threaten companies, extorting them for large sums of money, and if they don’t pay up… things go boom, courtesy of their new, highly concentrated explosives. It’s led by Xiang Xiang, a.k.a. the Specialist (Shen), who has taken over a nightclub run by her twin sister, to act as a front for the group. Though, as in Fists, the true lair of evil villainy is a delightful excess in unnecessary over-production, resembling a game-show set on acid, with bonus trap-doors.

Unfortunately, it has much the same weaknesses as its predecessor (and without even the sublime glory of that moment). There’s a good chunk of time where 009 all but vanishes from her own movie, with the spotlight instead being given over to her ally in the investigation, Deng Lei (Tang). There are certainly far too many scenes of people sitting around in night-clubs, or of one set of suits chasing another set of suits around the streets of Hong Kong. Deng ends up captured by Xiang Xiang, who attempts to seduce him into joining the gang, and after he spurns her, Deng is thrown into a cell conveniently next to the twin sister. Fortunately, Ai Si is able to locate the facility, leading to a very Bond-esque climax, in which the forces of law and order storm the complex, resulting in a massive gun-battle. Throw in some gadgetry plus a Barry-esque soundtrack (in some places, actual Barry), and it’s a surprise Eon Productions weren’t consulting their lawyers.

There are some parts here which certainly will stick in memory. The sequence where Deng upstages a strong-man in his night-club act, and is rewarded by having a poisonous spider slapped on his shoulder. Fortunately, Agent 009 is prepared with (I mentioned the gadgets) her incendiary aerosol. And so begins their relationship, albeit at the cost of his jacket being reduced to ashes. Or the bit where Ai Si disguises herself as a man, because… because a bit of cross-dressing seemed required for every Hong Kong action heroine of the late sixties. It’s about as convincing here, as it is everywhere else i.e. not very. Ho’s talents on the action front are little improved from Fists, and leave Tang to take up the slack in this department

The elements here could have been an entertaining pastiche of spy movies – though I am just not certain that was the aim. When you’re unsure how seriously a movie is supposed to be taken, the viewer is likely to be left in cinematic limbo. In the end though, it doesn’t work well enough to be a good imitation of the Bond franchise, and nor is it sufficiently lampooning to be considered a parody of it. 

Dir: Lo Wei
Star: Lily Ho, Tang Ching, Shen Yi, Chiang Kuang-Chao

Ameera

  By

★★
“Explanations. They’re VASTLY over-rated…”

I should probably have learned from my first experience with Ms. Hu: the thoroughly mediocre jungle ensemble piece which was Angel Warriors. For her latest film, she moves from being merely one of a number of interchangeable pieces into the lead, and proves singularly underwhelming for that role. Though in her defense, this could have starred someone with far more charisma, martial arts ability and acting talent, and it would still not have been very good. For all its flaws, Warriors did at least have a fairly coherent plot. This, not so much. For example, it’s a full hour and ten minutes in before we discover what the villain’s Big Plan actually entails. To that point, we know it’s called Operation Hurricane, and little else. Why, pray tell, should we care about the bad guys achieving their goal, when we have no idea what it is?

Things aren’t much better on the heroine’s side. We first meet Ameera (Hu) as she takes part in a gun-battle against ill-defined opponents for ill-defined reason, on behalf of the ill-defined organization for whom she works. This goes wrong, she gets suspended, and the organization subsequently vanishes for the great bulk of the movie, so who cares? However, it turns out her mother has been kidnapped by the villains, in order to get their hands on the products of some research which was being carried out by her dad. It’s up to Ameera and her boyfriend, Jason (Hsu), to ensure they don’t get it, and stop Operation Hurricane – whatever it may be. Though before you can care, you will first have to stop snorting derisively at pseudo-science babble like a virus being “enabled with an isotope nanometers.”

I do have to say, it looks nice, with some very crisp cinematography, and was not a cheap production in terms of locations, sets and cast. This, in no way, excuses the shockingly ropey CGI effects, or the way the action is staged, so you get to see little more than the participants waving their limbs at each other. There is quite a nice car-chase round some winding mountain roads, with Jason on a motorbike chasing after the truck insude which Ameera is dangling. Again, the photography is lovely, until it’s spoiled, first by Jason’s Magazine of Infinite Ammunition, and then the MS Paint-like explosion after a car goes over the edge.

Any technical shortcomings, however, pale in comparison to a script that is spectacularly reluctant to give the viewer any meaningful information, short of having its fingernails pulled out. Both characters and plot elements show up without explanation, and you’re left trying to figure out who or what they are, and why you should give a damn. Long before the climax, where Ameera is suddenly and inexplicably re-united with the organization that suspended her, an indeterminate amount of time ago, you’ll have abandoned any hope of this being any more than incoherent if well-shot nonsense.

Dir: Xiao Xu
Star: Melrose Hu, Ambrose Hsu, Andrew Lin, Bryan Leung

Element 42, by Seeley James

  By

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

Earlier this year, because he knew that I’d greatly liked the two previous Sabel Security novels, my Goodreads friend Seeley James gifted me with the e-book editions of all of the remaining five. This was just an act of friendly generosity, with no actual request for reviews; but I’m glad to treat them as review copies, and (as always) to review them fairly on their merits. This book’s merits earn it very high marks, which came as no surprise to me!

Unlike some series, this one really should be read in order; you need the background of the first two to fully understand the characters and premise, and the previous experiences that shape their situation and relationships. (My reviews of the previous books, also provide background for this review, and a lot of the earlier comments would also apply here.) Here, Pia and her team of veteran agents stumble onto a scheme that clearly involves unethical biological research on natives in the jungles of Borneo. What else it ultimately involves –well, that would be telling, but plumbing the full depth of what’s going on will have our gallant band of heroes/heroines (where gender is concerned, Seeley’s an equal-opportunity writer!) facing danger and death on three different continents, with LOTS of lives, and maybe the future of mankind, at stake.  It’s worth noting that, while Pia earns her three-star kick-butt quotient here, we have at least three action-capable ladies among our characters here (one of whom is much more lethal than Pia is), and another one who grows unto the role.

Like the previous book, this one interweaves two narrative strands, one in third person and one in the first-person voice of Sabel Security agent Jacob Stearne. Also like the previous one, its premise builds a fictional narrative on the real-life realities of actual geopolitical problems and a world ruled by elitist corporations and governments that are almost totally devoid of any ethic except self-centered utilitarianism, and in the grip of a hubris that’s willing and eager to play God. (No, we don’t have any concrete evidence that anybody’s planning a scheme like the one depicted here –but at the same time, it’s a pretty plausible guess that there are plenty of people in high places who at least contemplate it, or would if they calculated they could pull it off.) Of the three books I’ve read to date, this one has the most action, with an almost manic pace, and the highest body count. We also have some more revelation of what makes Pia tick psychologically, and a hint of more revelations to come about the murder of her birth parents when she was five years old. (She’s operating to a big extent in vigilante mode here, but for me that’s not necessarily a negative thing; the book will force readers to consider how they feel about that, and my personal opinion of it is that it can be morally justified at times.)

The plotting is complex, and the chapters tend to end on cliffhanger notes, only to switch back and forth between equally precarious narrative strands. Seeley knows a great deal about high-tech surveillance equipment, weaponry, etc., and makes liberal use of what he knows here; but the reader doesn’t have to share that knowledge –we can just accept that things work the way he says they do, and go with the flow. If one had unlimited time to read, this would be a quick read; it took me nearly two months to finish only because I read it irregularly here and there in electronic format. (I’d have blazed through it a lot faster in paper format, and would have read it in one sitting if I could have!) No spoilers, but the ending was particularly good.

My reaction to the read wasn’t without a few quibbles. Although I sometimes got lost in plot details and couldn’t remember a connection, etc., I think that was mostly because of the piecemeal way I had to read the book over a span of weeks, not due to deficiencies in the narration. Mostly, I could follow the action sequences (not always; they’d be clearer in movie format, and this would be a great subject for movie adaptation!). But on at least three occasions, characters with their hands tied behind their backs reverse that by, apparently, jumping backwards through their own arms. I don’t believe this is physically possible, no matter how athletic the person is; and even if it was, I think it would result in two dislocated shoulders. Seeley also tends to forget details from previous books. It was established in the first two books that persons shot with Sabel Security tranquilizer darts need to be injected with an antidote to prevent possible allergic reactions (if I correctly recall the explanation); that requirement disappears here. Jacob specifically mentioned in the previous book that fellow agent Carla was married; here he tells us specifically that he never knew anything about her marital status, and it’s made clear that she’s single.

Bad language is probably within the limits of realism, and there’s no explicit sex (though, Jacob being Jacob, we’re not terribly surprised in the opening scene when he’s rousted out of bed, and is sharing it with a recently-met woman). But the revelation, at one point, of past messed-up sexual escapades and inter-relationships among some of the characters (not Pia) is so off-putting it inspires eye rolling. (However, while I recently dropped another series because I discovered that the author wants us to believe his protagonist really has conversations with animals, I don’t believe Seeley really wants us to believe Jacob has actual conversations only he can hear with the Roman god Mercury. IMO, we should understand this simply as a hallucinogenic coping mechanism when he’s not on his meds, and the “warnings” from that source as really deriving from a sixth sense and highly-keen natural senses and instincts. I could be wrong, though….)

Regardless of quibbles, though, I really liked the book and continue to really like the series. I’m invested in it for the long haul, though It’ll be autumn before I’m able to get to the next book. But I’ll be champing at the bit!

Author: Seeley James
Publisher: Machined Media, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Killing Eve: Season Two

  By

★★★
“Sophomore slump.”

[Warning: this piece will contain significant spoilers for the show. READ ON AT YOUR OWN RISK!] It was always going to be difficult, if not impossible, for the second series of Killing Eve to match the brilliance of the first. That had ended with mousy MI-5 desk jockey Eve (Oh) stabbing ruthless assassin Villanelle (Connor), as they lay on a bed – platonically, but you could cut the sexual tension with a knife. Where would things go from there? The answer, unfortunately, is nowhere particularly much, except for some thoroughly unconvincing plot twists, such as Villanelle going to work for MI-5. Hello? Did everyone forget her cold-blooded murders of agents Bill Pargrave and Frank Haleton in season one? Let’s just pretend she’s one of us, and send her off on a mission without so much as a background check, m’kay?

This is, of course, an attempt to keep the relationship Eve and Villanelle going, bringing them into a close proximity to each other, where that sexual tension can continue to boil, albeit at the cost of plausibility, Not that it was ever the show’s strong suit to begin with. This is significantly less interesting than the cat-and-mouse game between the two of the first series, and frankly, too often borders on poorly-written fan fiction. A main thread seems to be how Eve is slowly becoming more like Villanelle, drifting from thoughts of murder into an actual killing – “With an axe!”, the hitwoman gleefully recounts. [Adding a second meaning to the show’s title, moving her from object to subject. Or is it the other way round? Whatever…] But we also seem to see Villanelle becoming more human. For someone who isn’t supposed to be able to experience human feelings, she certainly appears a pretty damn emotional psychopath.

You can all but ignore the silly plots, such as a convoluted effort to bring down a high-tech entrepreneur selling an uber-Google to the highest bidder, who – wouldn’t you know it? – turns out to be a serial killer himself. Or the marital relationship of Eve and husband Niko: now that both sides have been unfaithful, it should have been buried. Or the brief introduction of another, equally talented female assassin, which is disposed of so quickly, it’s possible I may have made up the entire thing. What keeps the show going, and allows this to remain surprisingly watchable given the weak writing, are the extraordinary performances of the two leads. A contrast in acting styles, between Comer’s flamboyance and Oh’s internal anguish, it proves that both can be equally effective. And there are sequences which still work brilliantly, such as Villanelle’s dalliance with private wet work, stringing up and butchering an unfaithful husband in a window in Amsterdam’s red-light district, like some kind of twisted performance art.

After becoming an under-the-radar hit the first time, the second set of episodes seems to have left a lot of people unsatisfied, for a variety of reason. And the ratings reflect this. Having managed the almost unprecedented feat of increasing almost every week the first time round, this season saw fewer viewers for every part after the debut, than the equivalent in series one. Maybe renewing it the day after that opening episode was a mistake? The final scene of this series ends in a mirror image of its predecessor, Villanelle shooting Eve in a fit of pique after she responds to Villanelle’s declaration of love with “You don’t know what that is,” and walks away. Of course, the renewal and critical acclaim basically make it certain Eve isn’t dead. So it’s less a case of “What will happen?”, than “What cheat will the writers use to get out of the corner into which they’ve painted themselves?” I’m going with a bullet-proof vest.

It’s a shame, since the second volume in the novels went in a very different direction, put the pieces together in far superior fashion and reached the end with a genuine cliff-hanger. Hopefully the third season separates its two leads and gets back to what the show did well, letting each performance shine on its own terms, rather than trying to force oil and water together, to the benefit only of fan ‘shippers. In the penultimate scene of the last episode, Eve  and Villanelle are stumbling through a maze of underground passages below Rome, trying to find their way out of the darkness. Unfortunately, that turned out to an entirely appropriate metaphor for the problems of the second season as a whole.

Showrunner: Emerald Fennell
Star: Sandra Oh, Jodie Comer, Fiona Shaw, Henry Lloyd-Hughes

The Azrael Initiative, by K. Hanson

  By

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

This feels less like a novel, than a novelization of a screenplay, adapted by a not particularly proficient writer. The text is littered with paragraphs which seem more like stage directions than literature, and is startlingly repetitive. For example, in one section near the beginning of the book, five of seven consecutive paragraphs start with, “As she/Kayla…” It’s not necessarily a bad screenplay, with an idea containing some potential. But it would be in need of several rewrites before any studio exec would sign off on it.

The heroine is the Kayla mentioned, an engineering student at South Dakota State University, who is present when ISIS terrorists attack the campus. She and best friend Olivia, an aspiring nurse, take down the attackers before the intended massacre can be executed, and become media darlings as a result. This turns to tragedy when an apparent revenge bomb kills Kayla’s family. Seeking vengeance, the pair accept an offer from the mysterious Mr. Hightower, to join a secret government program and train as anti-ISIS insurgent. They’re inserted into Al-Raqqah, the capital of the ISIS caliphate in Syria, in order to sabotage and disrupt the group’s operations, causing as much chaos and carnage as possible.

They certainly succeed, and there’s no shortage of incidents, from gun-battles in the streets through to a daring rescue attempt on a capture British airman. These are when Hanson is at his best, although the ineptness of ISIS is questionable – that they are so easily and repeatedly bested by a pair of students after a few months of training is difficult to accept. Indeed, how quickly could someone go from no knowledge of Arabic to being able to pass impeccably as a native? For it’s not as if language was Kayla and Olivia’s only area of education. There’s also the “having to dress as a man” thing, which is unconvincingly glossed over with the wave of a fake beard (the cover is not exactly an accurate depiction of their undercover appearance!). Throw in an apparently inevitable bisexual subplot, and the dubious actions of the story’s antagonist – who literally keeps a journal in his desk, describing every aspect of his evil plan – and you’ve got more problems than solutions.

I did find the unrepentant villainy of ISIS somewhat refreshing: there’s no moral shades of grey here, they are straightforward bad guys, with very few redeeming features, and it’s easy to root for the heroines. Though the book doesn’t address the moral hypocrisy at its core: Olivia and Kayla are basically turned into terrorists themselves. You could take a speech by Hightower – “You will strike from the shadows to damage ISIS using any method at your disposal, whether that is through assassination, humiliation, or intimidation… The obvious goal is to eliminate as many terrorists as possible” – change a couple of words, and have Al-Qaeda rhetoric. But it’s okay, because they’re on our side? Still, this makes few claims to be other than a straightforward tale of action and courage, albeit one probably too simplistic for its own good.

Author: K. Hanson
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 2 in the Kayla Falk series.