Tag: UK

The Tournament (2009)

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★★★
“The exotic life of an assassin is all glamour and exotic places, e.g. all-expenses trips to Middlesbrough.”

Every seven years, thirty of the world’s greatest assassins gather together for a battle. The winner gets $10 million, while bettors view the action remotely and gamble on the duels, face-offs and bloodbaths which ensue. Each assassin has a tracker implanted, and has a scanner where they can see the location of any other contestants nearby. This time, it’s in Middlesbrough, England, with reigning champion Joshua Harlow (Rhames) returning after he it told the murderer of his wife will be taking part. One of the 30 dumps their tracker into an alcoholic priest (Carlyle), who is “surprised”, shall we say, to become the target for the other 29. Lai Lai Zhen (Hu) realizes he’s an innocent, and vows to protect him, while also trying to win the competition.

The concept is, of course, completely implausible, and if you can’t drive a bus and a tanker through holes in the plot, you’re not trying. There are far too many assassins, too: of the 30 listed, probably no more than half a dozen get any lines, so they’d have been better off shrinking the number and giving them actual personalities. What results is basically “kill porn”: a massive number of deaths, some impressive, a couple genuinely spectacular, but possessing no emotional content or resonance whatsoever. That said, this is by no means unentertaining. Hu (I have consciously got to stop myself from calling her “Cindy-Lou”) seems to be carving a niche for herself as a low-rent version of Lucy Liu, and the action here is decent, and undeniably copious.

It all builds to a massive chase on a motorway, which sees the bus driven by the priest, being chased by the tanker driven by Harlow, while Zhen fights off the parkour guy from Casino Royale, in, on and around the bus. Mann has clearly been watching all the right movies, and if he needs a trailer reel for a career as a second-unit director, then he should just pop the DVD in and leave the room for 90 minutes. The writers, on the other hand… It really took three of them to come up with this complete nonsense? What did they do with the rest of the beer-mat?

Dir: Scott Mann
Star: Kelly Hu, Robert Carlyle, Liam Cunningham, Ving Rhames

Dirty Weekend

  By

★★★
“This is the story of Bella, who woke up one morning and decided she’d had enough.”

So opens this rare example of British grindhouse. We don’t generally do that genre – it’s just not us, all that violence. But there are odd exceptions, and this would be one. It’s the story of Bella (Williams), who relocates from London to the genteel seaside town of Brighton after splitting up with her boyfriend. However, her flat is overlooked by a window belonging to Tim (Sewell); he begins a series of increasingly-vile phone-calls to Bella, who is terrified at what might happen. A chance encounter with an Iranian clairvoyant (Ian Richardson – yeah, about that…) changes her ‘from a lamb to a butcher’, and she visits Tim in the middle of the night, smashing his head in with a hammer. Galvanized by this, Bella moves on to further “sanitation”, cleaning the not-so mean Brighton streets of other male scum. Meanwhile, a serial killer who preys on young women is gradually moving towards her location.

From the director of the controversial Death Wish, it’s as if Winner said, “Hah! You though that was bad? I’m going to make the heroine female and turn it into a war of the sexes, with every man a sleazy caricature. And it’ll include the Man from UNCLE as a perverted dentist!” It certainly turns your typical British film conceits upside-down, yet still retains that undeniable character: when Bella first sees Tim spying on her, she simply draws the curtains. Her transformation from mouse into avenging angel is impressively put-together, and no doubt Winner was influenced by Ms. 45, with Bella pulling on her stockings and acting out a gun-battle.

But the problem in this case is, Bella’s transformation doesn’t make a difference. In Ms. 45, the interesting moral dilemma was, that our initial sympathy for the central character proved misplaced, as she moved towards killing innocent men. Here, it’s just an ongoing series of repugnant, shallow stereotypes, and attempts to give them depth e.g. with McCallum, are a miserable failure. [Amusingly, one of the thugs she takes out in an alley would go on to greater things: Sean Pertwee has become a genre mainstay, in the likes of Dog Soldiers and Doomsday. Another, Christopher Ryan, was Mike in The Young Ones and has since carved a niche playing Sontarans in Doctor Who!] The subplot with the approaching serial-killer is a complete mis-fire too, and after achieving potential cult-classic level in the middle, it falls short. Still, it’s better than you might think, and is certainly one of a kind.

Dir: Michael Winner
Star: Lia Williams, Rufus Sewell, David McCallum, Michael Cule

The Witches Hammer

  By

★★★½

“Hammer time!”

If never quite escaping its low-budget roots, or producing enough compensations or fresh imagination to make you forgive them, this is a robust enough vehicle and a decent entry in a sadly-small sub-genre: British girls-with-guns. It’s perhaps closest to the 1998 movie, Razor Blade Smile – which I really should get round to covering here, except it was pretty freakin’ awful. Similarly, Hammer involves a vampire assassin, though you can also lob in a shedload of other influences, conscious or otherwise, from Buffy, through Nikita to Bloody Mallory. If originality is not the movie’s strong suit, it is at least stealing from some of the best action heroines.

Rebecca (Coulter) is resurrected from the dead by a secret (government?) program, Project 571. They turn her into a vampire, giving her enhanced speed, reflexes, strength, agility, etc. – with the downside that she’s explode into flames if she goes out in daylight. After one assignment, she discovers her handlers have been killed, but is contact by Madeline (Beacham), who runs the imaginatively-named Project 572. Together with sidekick Edward (Sidgwick), she is sent to retrieve a mystical tome a the necessary first-step to slay the head vampire, Hugo (Dover), who… Ok, I’m somewhat hazy on the specifics, but he’s the bad guy, alright? Rebecca has to martially-art her way through an ever more dangerous series of witches, vampires and self-replicating ninjas (I assure you, it’ll make sense when you see the movie, to the point where you’ll probably go, “Oh! Self-replicating ninjas! That’s what Jim meant…”) until the final encounter with what a certain action heroine would certainly call The Big Bad.

Pluses? It’s actually shot on 35mm – while HD video has become the staple of low-budget cinema, it still doesn’t have quite the same feel as film, and the atmosphere here benefits as a result. Stephanie Beacham is magnificent, possessing a calm assurance that is marvellous to watch: she breezes through her scenes like a galleon at full sail, befitting her status as a genre icon. And the little and large duo of vampire, Oscar and Charlotte, are entirely endearing – their moments of comic relief work very nicely. [The idea of a midget vampire has been used before, as anyone who saw the truly appalling Ankle Biters will know.] The digital effects are nicely done too, with the vampires collapsing into a shower of glowing sparks, in a way that would also gladden the heart of Sunnydale’s favourite slayer.

Minuses? There’s a certain unevenness of tone which doesn’t quite work. At various moments, the film wants to be exciting, poignant, self-aware, slapsticky and dramatic: these individual moments work with varying degrees of success, and the combination, with the frequent gear-changes which result, occasionally seem clunky. Camp also needs to be played completely straight to work, and that isn’t always the case here. Hayes is over-fond of flashbacks: there are at least four here, and that’s probably three more than are necessary, with the only truly significant back-story belonging to Kitanya, the Russian witch who supposedly wrote the Malleus Maleficarum, the magic book which everyone seeks. As noted above, Eaves doesn’t really bring much new to the show: if you can find a review that doesn’t mention, say, Blade, your Google-fu is stronger than mine, and it is a very obvious comparison.

Coulter is acceptable in the central role – she reminded me most of Yancy Butler from Witchblade. She just doesn’t have quite the right attitude for a supposedly ruthless killer: Olivia Bonamy, in Bloody Mallory, brought the appropriate level in such things, such as her gloves with FUCK EVIL on them. Coulter is a shrinking wallflower in comparison, and this is shown in a sequence where she’s rescued from a morgue by one of her Project 571 colleagues. Rebecca clings on to the sheet with an obvious death-grip, rather than showing any skin, almost keeping it up to her neck. Hard to imagine a stone-cold assassin caring too much about nudity in front of another woman, and a less coy approach would perhaps be more appropriate.

The action is solid, if generally short of spectacular. There doesn’t seem to be much doubling of Coulter – or if there is, it’s not obvious. She get to use a selection of weapons, which adds a nice sense of variety; from swords through staffs to the F-sized rail-gun pictured top left (even if the cartridges being ejected were rather too obviously digital), Kris Tanaka was the action choreographer, and also appeared as one of the vampires near the end; it’s clear he knows his stuff. I’m not quite so sure Eaves does, as the editing of the sequences – for which he is also responsible – seems to be choppy and occasionally difficult to follow, though not to the level of MTV-style editing, the bane of my life as a viewer.

This was probably better than I expected it to be. The low-budget is not often obvious, and there are enough moments of charm to tide you over the less successful elements and make up for a certain lack of genuine freshness. Finally, despite the director’s protestations to the contrary, I’m still fairly sure there’s an apostrope missing from the title, which would only be grammatically correct in a context such as “The witches hammer at the door.” Eaves claims the apostrophe-less version is an accurate translation of Malleus Maleficarum, let’s just say, Wikipedia begs to differ. It probably doesn’t matter as much as I find it does, but while we can expect apostrophically-chalenged titles from Hollywood (I’m looking at you, Two Weeks Notice), good grammar costs nothing. ;-)

Dir: James Eaves
Star: Claudia Coulter, Jon Sidgwick, Stephanie Beacham, Tom Dover

The Deadly Females

  By

★★½
“Tea, polite conversation and cold-blooded murder, British ’70’s style.”

An intriguing premise is ground into the dirt, with execution which could hardly be more tedious. An agency of hit-women are run by an antiques dealer (Reed), taking on clients from all walks of life, who can use the skill-set of her assassinettes. Flaky business partner? No problem. Trapped in an unloving marriage? Will that be cash or charge? It’s imbued with a curious degree of social commentary, as the scenes are intercut with newspaper front-pages, intended to convey the impression that 1976 society is on the edge of collapsing into predatory carnage, anarchy and chaos. Which, in the post-9/11 world, really seems more quaintly ironic than remotely threatening.

The main problem is pacing which takes the simplest scene and stretches it far beyond the point of relevance, or even interest. The killers are clearly in absolutely no hurry to carry out their tasks: for example, one poses as a student carrying out a survey on housewives to gain entrance. Which would be fine, except that we then have to sit through a whole spiel on the survey, the target’s daily routine, a cup of tea and a tour of the house before the hit-lady appears suddenly to remember why she’s there, karate-chopping the victim and dropping her down the stairs. Similarly, the “nurse” who turns up to give a massage…actually does give the massage. And then a bath, all depicted in much more detail than remotely necessary.

It’s less a story, than a series of unconnected clients. The only real linking influence is an Italian assassin, whose weapon of choice is poisoned cigarettes. She shows up right at the start, and then vanished for almost the entire movie: it’d have been fun to have seen two “killer companies” fighting it out for business. That lady is played by Rula Lenska, a genuine Polish countess who achieved further 70’s fame in the UK TV show Rock Follies, and was the US spokeswoman for VO5 shampoo. I suspect most of the other people in this may be recognizable from British horror of the period, though perhaps more Amicus and Tyburn than Hammer. It would certainly have benefited from the presence of someone like Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee.

While the violence is mostly understated, on the exploitation front, there’s plenty of softcore flesh – and even some male full-frontal nudity, though it’s not what you’d call erotic. This is in part because people seem to spend an awful lot of time lounging around in bed, chatting with each other – or, more often, bitching at each other. This does not exactly present a flattering portrayal of British men; as Chris put it, “My god – how did you ever come out of such a place?” But it remains such a unique and cynical animal that I found myself unable to do anything but keep watching, even as this continued to plod on, in its mostly-tedious vein.

Dir: Donovan Winter
Star: Tracy Reed, Bernard Holley, Scott Fredericks, Heather Chasen

Doomsday

  By

★★★½
“McResident Evil”

Basically every review I read of this has started off by stating it’s a cross between…well, perm any three from Mad Max, Escape From New York, Aliens, I am Legend, 28 Days Later and Resident Evil, depending on how well-informed the writer is about the action and horror genres. That’s fair enough: there’s no denying that Marshall has chosen here to create a film that is as much as compilation of influences as anything, and this therefore falls short of his previous work, The Descent, which went places few recent horror films have gone. However, most reviews sniffily stop there or, worse still, engage in petty cinematic snobbery: witness Jeff Otto of ReelzChannel.com – I’m not going to do him the honor of linking to the piece – who says, “Not pre-screening this one was a smart move on Universal’s part. It has no need for critics because the people who will enjoy this movie are very unlikely to possess the cognitive skills or attention span to read a review anyway.” I came up with several witty rejoinders to that, but opt instead for the tried and tested one of, fuck you, Jeff Otto. For sometimes you don’t want something that pushes the boundaries of cinema; the films listed in the first paragraph are (mostly) classics, and if you’re going to steal from anywhere, steal from the best.

In the near future (next week, actually at the time of going to press), Glasgow falls prey to the Reaper virus, which is exactly what it sounds like. The government in London deal with the problem by building a 30-foot wall along the border and sealing off Scotland – which is basically the approach taken by the government to problems in Scotland since, oh, about 1707. [Hello, born there!] 30 years later, however, the virus breaks out in London, and all of a sudden, the information that people are still alive in Scotland, suggesting they found a cure, is now of more than academic interest. To get the cure, they send Eden (Mitra) up North, to find Kane (McDowell, appearing in about two scenes, then taking his salary and leaving), who might just have the solution. However, things do not go as planned, needless to say, not least because Glasgow is inhabited by nothing but psychopathic thugs with poor dress sense and bad skin, stuck in the past. So, no change, then. [Hello, not born there – East Coast Scotland, represent!]

It’s clear that Marshall has a strong interest in action-heroines, having not only directed The Descent but also written Killing Time. Mitra also has something of a track record, having been one of the live-action Lara Crofts for Eidos a few years back. Here, however, she comes across as more of a Kate Beckinsale wannabe – my first reaction when I saw the trailer was this it was Kate. That works better in Underworld or Resident Evil, where the setting gives us reason to believe that the central character has special powers of one kind or another; as a straight-up action heroine, Mitra is just not physical enough to convince. This may perhaps explain the limited amount of physical action she does; a fight against another woman warrior, appears to have been edited with a weed-whacker, but another, in which she goes one-on-one with an armored knight, is pretty decent.

It all builds to a monumental car-chase, though you have to suspend disbelief there, as apparently Bentley cars will start right out of the crate, even if they’ve been sitting there for thirty years. You can also plough them through an exploding bus, amongst a litany of other torments, and they’ll come out the other side with barely a scratch. Again, if you’re going to ground your film in the ‘real world’, admittedly a questionable concept given the plot synopsis above (and I haven’t even got to the more outrageous elements yet!), then mis-steps such as these should be avoided. They’ll just give the more moronic end of the critical fraternity – paging Jeff Otto – blunt objects with which to whack your film about the head, as they ride off on their high horse. They only bothered me slightly, since I was already in full-on disbelief suspension, and since the resulting car-chase was cheerfully destructive, I’m inclined to give it some slack.

There’s also a certain point at which it’s clear that Marshall is operating tongue in cheek: it may be the sign on the Glaswegian bus which reads ‘Out of Fucking Service’, or in the castle where Cane and his followers have regressed to medieval times, yet have left up another sign, this one saying ‘Gift Shop’. Or that two of the soldiers in Eden’s party are called Miller and Carpenter: the directors of Mad Max and Escape From New York being George Miller and John Carpenter, of course. Or the elaborately choreographed ritual of human flesh-eating, like an Archaos show [there’s an 80’s reference for you!], set to a song by punk icon Siouxsie and the Banshees. Though the immediately-preceding use of Fine Young Cannibals was, I admit, a bit much. Still, let go, don’t expect the atmosphere of The Descent – this is much closer in tone to Marshall’s preceding Dog Soldiers – and just enjoy the gloopy violence or slabs of black humour which pepper the film, and you’ll have a more than adequate time.

Dir: Neil Marshall
Stars: Rhona Mitra, Bob Hoskins, Craig Conway, Malcolm McDowell

Bad Girls: season four

  By

★★★★
“Back behind bars, and back on track.”

badgirls4The real strength of Bad Girls is the almost limitless possibilities of the scenario; if ever things are in danger of getting stale, it’s easy to lob in fresh characters to get the pot stirred up and create whatever angles you want. Exhibit A: new governor, Neil Grayling (Gadds), whose arrival gave the show a whole new direction, at least among the staff – and particularly Jim Fenner, who discovered a whole new viewpoint of sexual harassment. Not that it really made him see the error of his ways, of course.

Obviously, within the general prison population, life went on as before. Well, that’s if “as before” means murder, suicide and escape attempts, a birth… And – with the departure of Helen and Nikki at the end of Series Three – new lesbian couple, Cassie and Roisin, though their whining grew increasingly tiresome as the series went on. Truth be told, there also wasn’t a great deal of light in this season; after a while, you yearned for something to take the weight off. Even the two Julies seemed on a downward spiral.

However, the strongest point of the show this year was the full-flowering of Yvonne Atkins (Henry), who has become the focus around which the series revolves, and one of the best female characters in any TV series. It started with her being set-up for murder, but by the end, we were aware there was much more to this fabulously complex character, underneath the hard shell. Every scene with her in it was a delight to watch, and kept the show a shining jewel in the crown of British television. The cliffhanger at the end (who lives? who dies?) had Chris scurrying immediately for Ebay, and series five.

Star: Linda Henry, Jack Ellis, James Gaddas, Isabelle Amyes

Killing Time

  By

★★★½
“Probably the second-best thing to come out of Newcastle that isn’t in a bottle.”

We Brits don’t do girls-with-guns movies: too busy drinking tea and arranging matchsticks, I imagine. This is a rare exception, and works not badly, combining a striking ‘Italian’ hitwoman in Maria (Torgan), with the bone-dry sarcasm of Guy Ritchie – at least, before he started making movies starring his missus, Madonna. Maria is brought in by Newcastle cop Bryant (Fairbrass) after the local crime lord (Leach) leaves a fellow policeman nailed to Bryant’s front door. Only, Bryant can’t afford to pay her, so blackmails some local thugs, led by Charlie (Thirkeld) to kill her after she’s done the job. Needless to say, things don’t quite go as planned, and the dead bodies start to accumulate, in a most non-British way.

The least convincing aspects of this are actually the action – it seems that everyone in Newcastle has a gun, but no-one could hit a barn if they were standing inside it, and a lengthy gunfight in the main railway station attracts no attention from police or bystanders (actually, the film has no bystanders. Everyone in the movie, is in the movie…). That aside, and the tinny, synthesized soundtrack, the dialogue alone is worth your attention; it’s almost Tarantino-esque, though comes off with far less pretension But I note, with interest, the presence on the video cover of the same Trek quote used to open Kill Bill, Volume 1…and, also, the credits containing the classic Godard quote about a movies, a girl and a gun.

Fairbrass has been in some real cinematic stinkers, such as Beyond Bedlam, but this is much better, with memorable characters and situations, not to mention the same setting as the best British gangster film of all time, Get Carter. Obviously, this isn’t in the same league, but if you’re in need of…well, Killing Time, there are many worse ways to go about it. Co-writer Neil Marshall would go on to write and direct other pics reviewed here, including The Descent and Doomsday, and if you enjoyed those, track this one down too.

Dir: Bharat Nalluri
Star: Kendra Torgan, Craig Fairbrass, Nigel Leach, Stephen D. Thirkeld

Carve Her Name With Pride

  By

★★★
“Worthy, but rather sluggish, retelling of the life of St. Violette of Szabo.”

This is based on a true story, so we know from the start this is going to end in front of a firing-squad – at least until the Hollywood remake, with a happy ending. Given this, the film still tries to crank up the tension, but as written, Violette Szabo comes off as beyond saintly, without flaws or imperfections. Almost as irritating, she is shown as being mostly inspired by the death of her husband, rather than any innate patriotism (Charlotte Gray similarly portrayed a female SOE agent as passive-reactive). Having said that, the movie generally stays true to the facts, though the poem supposedly written by her husband was actually, in far less romantic reality, by her SOE codemaster – interestingly, the SOE’s name is not mentioned at all. Much of the end is fictionalised; details of her interrogation, for example, are obviously unavailable.

The film does take much too long to get going – it’s almost half-way done before she touches French soil – and most of the exposition, especially early on, is unbearably clunky. However, McKenna is solid as Violette and, despite some questionable accents, so are most of the cast (look out for a young Michael Caine as a soldier on a train asking for water; Gilbert would later direct Alfie and Educating Rita, in addition to three Bond flicks). The characters are stereotypical, particularly Ze Germans, but we should remember this was made in 1958, only 13 years after the war ended, and balance was not an issue; Szabo’s torture at the hands of the Nazis still makes uncomfortable viewing. Rather than watching the movie at 11pm on Thursday night (as we did!), a Sunday afternoon slot should fit this admirably.

Dir: Lewis Gilbert
Star: Virginia McKenna, Paul Scofield, Jack Warner, Denise Grey

Charlotte Gray

  By

★★★½
“Despite fine performances, this doesn’t know what it wants to be, and ends up between two stools.”

Love story or wartime thriller? The script here tries to have it both ways, and as a result of this uncertainty, the undeniable potential in the idea is unfulfilled. Gray (Blanchett) is dropped into Vichy France during World War II as an agent, but her bosses don’t realise she is more interested in finding her pilot lover (Penry-Jones), who’s been shot down nearby. While conflict between love, and love of country, would have been interesting, the former is almost ignored, then disposed of in a thoroughly unconvincing manner. Not that this diversion is uninteresting; you get a real sense of the terrors of war, with people being “vanished” in seconds, and the tension of living your life on a knife-edge behind enemy lines.

Mostly, the film is concerned with Charlotte’s protection of two Jewish children, and involvement in a resistance cell led by Julien (Crudup). They’re communists, so the British don’t really like them, but they’re convenient – and can be abandoned when necessary, the revelation of which provides the film with its most chilling moment. Blanchett has the right steely resolve for the role, and the cast is generally excellent; particular credit to Gambon (magnificently surly as Julien’s father), Ron Cook as Gray’s contact, and Anton Lesser, an oily collaborator who had us screaming “Die! Die!” at the TV set.

However, the movie never makes us understand why Charlotte would go to such extreme lengths for someone whom she’s known for only a few days. Also, Armstrong seems to have little or no idea how to direct action – not that you’d expect much else from the director of Little Women [one of only two films I’ve ever walked out of] – and the results fall far short of pulse-pounding. Was pleasantly surprised by the ending though, where the heroine discovers that war does indeed change everything. Pity it couldn’t change Blanchett’s dodgy Scottish accent.

Dir: Gillian Armstrong
Star: Cate Blanchett, Billy Crudup, Michael Gambon, Rupert Penry-Jones

Bad Girls: season three

  By

★★★½
“Too much soap and not enough opera, but still entertaining.”

The third series hit the ground running, Michelle Dockley taking evil warder Jim Fenner hostage, after stabbing him in the stomach with a broken bottle (to loud cheers here), and Nikki Wade breaking into jail, having gone to see Helen Stewart. However, in the middle, Michelle and Denny headed to Spain, with Fenner’s help. After a really grim episode, in which they took Sylvia Hollanby and her husband hostage (it felt like Last House on the Left 2), the show seemed to lose impetus, and spent the second half spiralling round a series of love triangles: Nikki/Helen/Thomas, Di/Josh/Crystal, Di/Gina/Mark. Chuck in two “surprise pregnancies” and, while soap-opera has always been part of the show, this was overkill.

The loss of Michelle was particularly apparent. An attempt to introduce a new “evil slut” prisoner was a failure; Maxi, leader of the Peckham Boot Gang, simply came across as a pale imitation. However, there was still plenty to enjoy, and the series finished strongly, with the arrival and departure of Victoria O’Kane (a great guest spot for 70’s icon Kate O’Mara), Nikki’s appeal, plus Michelle and Denny’s Butch & Sundance moment in Spain. The end of this series saw a couple of major departures, and the show will have to work hard to fill the gaps in the roster – we look forward to seeing whether the makers are up to the challenge.

Stars: Mandana Jones, Simone Lahbib, Linda Henry, Jack Ellis