Tag: USA

The Retreat

  By

★½
“Striking a blow for equality. With an ax.”

After the unexpected pleasures of What Keeps You Alive, I guess what this proves, is that film-makers are able to make shitty lesbian horror movies every bit as badly as straight ones. Truly, a lack of talent is blind with regard to sexual orientation. This begins in a way not dissimilar to Alive, with a lesbian couple whose relationship is on shaky ground, heading out into the wilderness.  Sadly, things then diverge in just about every metric of quality. In this case, it’s Renee (Pirie) and Valerie (Allen), who are heading off to a country B&B to meet up with two gay friends.  Except, when they get there, the friends are nowhere to be seen. The new arrivals then proceed to ignore more red flags than would be found on May Day 1980 in Moscow, until they get kidnapped by the local homophobic psychos. They have a thriving business in live-streaming snuff films, and welcome the arrival of some fresh meat.

Well, until Renee and Valerie escape, and rather than hightailing it out of there – you know, like any normal, sensible person would do – opt to take on their attackers, because Rural Homophobes Must Die. Oddly, those subsequent deaths are shown in a degree of detail that borders on the gloating, while the murders of their victims take place out of frame. Hmm. Well, when I say “shown”, I’m talking loosely, because this has to be close to the most atrociously-lit film I have ever seen. At one point, our heroines are enjoying a nice picnic in broad daylight. Just a few minutes in story time later, it’s either the middle of the night, or an unexpected total solar eclipse popped up. Because the audience are left peering into darkness, trying to figure out which vague, blobby shadow is doing what, and to which other vague, blobby shadow. I don’t know whether it’s bad film-making, or a really bad transfer, but it’s borderline unwatchable.

From what I could determine, peering into the gloom, it doesn’t have anything much new to offer either. But then, the specific sexual orientation of horror movie characters is rarely relevant: I just don’t care. The film, meanwhile, seems to think that putting lesbians in, is enough to allow them to trot out any number of overused elements everywhere else. They’re wrong. A poorly filmed, cliched horror movie does not become any better because its two heroines are sleeping with each other. Dangling ends abound, such as Renee’s easy familiarity with firearms, which serves no notable point, and there is precisely one (1) decent kill. It even fails as a commentary on society, being far too obvious and simplistic to work on that level. To succeed, a film like this typically needs to have at least one of the following body-parts: a brain, a heart, or guts. Trying to replace all three with a vagina isn’t a recipe for success.

Dir: Pat Mills
Star: Sarah Allen, Tommie-Amber Pirie, Aaron Ashmore, Munro Chambers,

Lady Mobster

  By

★★★
“Because ‘Lady Accountant’ wouldn’t have sold as well…”

The salacious sleeve promises considerably more than this can deliver. For we are actually talking a TV movie from the eighties here, with all the limitations that imposes on content and execution. Yet, if sold a lot more on sizzle than steak, and it did come very close to not qualifying here – likely the last scene being when it finally reached the finish line – I can say I was never bored.

Long-time soap opera queen Lucci plays Laurel, the young daughter of a mob family, who witnesses her parents being killed as part of a war between Mafia groups, over whether or not to go legitimate. She’s then taken in by one of her father’s allies, Victor Castle (Wiseman), and grows up as part of his family, becoming a lawyer and eventually marrying his son, Robert (Born). Castle has never given up the dream of getting out of the mob world, and with Laurel’s help is working towards that goal. However, the more traditional families are no less reluctant than they were decades previously, and the resulting feud comes once again to Laurel’s house and loved ones. She ends up taking over as the head of the family, and is now determined to find both those who killed her parents, and those intent on perpetuating the beef now.

It does play like a low-rent version of The Godfather, with Lucci playing the Michael Corleone role of someone who doesn’t really want to get involved in the criminal enterprise, yet finds herself increasingly drawn into it. As such, she’s good in the role, exuding the necessary confidence to make her facing down a room of Mafia dons at least plausible, if still somewhat unlikely. There’s an effective scene early on, when she has a meeting with a prospective partner of the Castles, and rips him a new one for false accounting and fraud. This establishes her character as at least a financial bad-ass, even if there’s precious little gun-play for her to do over the first 85 or so minutes.

Still, director Moxey has been doing this kind of thing for what seems like forever – he directed the original Charlie’s Angels pilot – and keeps the story-line progressing consistently. Certainly, Lauren’s resulting character arc is the best thing the film has going for it, as we see her develop over the course of the film. If this does resemble a pilot episode for a series that never happened, the way it finishes makes it one I would be more than slightly interested in watching. It feels a bit like an eighties version of La Reina Del Sur, with its story of a woman whose family ties to organized crime prove eventually to be a critical formative influence in her life. At the time, that was positively radical, and even if the treatment here is undeniably milder than I’d have preferred, I wasn’t left feeling like I’d been too badly deceived by the cover.

Dir: John Llewellyn Moxey
Star: Susan Lucci, Michael Nader, Roscoe Born, Joseph Wiseman

Streets of Vengeance

  By

★½
“Porn stars vs. Incels”

This poorly-conceived and even less effectively executed cheapo, starts off looking like a home-video recording of a movie, taken off late night TV. There’s a bikini-clad hostess, who introduces the film, and it might not have been a bad idea, had they actually run with it. Cut into the movie for spoof adverts, bad infomercials, further host segments, etc. Yeah, could have been fun. Instead, it’s completely forgotten until almost the end, when she pops back up… purely to showcase a trailer for the directors’ next film, Slash-lorette Party. Verily, the level of cringe is strong in this one. If it had even embraced the eighties aesthetic for which it is clearly aiming, that would have been a credible substitute. But outside of the synthwave score by the very wonderfully named “Vestron Vulture,” there’s hardly any effort put in there either.

Instead, what you get is porn star Mila Lynn  (McKinney), who is about to quit the profession. Her boss, disgruntled by the news, delivers her up to a member of The Sword, a “men’s rights” group who have been abducting and torturing other adult entertainment stars, blaming them for causing addiction to porn. Mila manages to escape, beating her captor to death with a baseball bat, and sets up a vigilante squad, who will take the fight to the members of The Sword, and show them the error of their ways.

The above sounds considerably more interesting than the reality. I will say, that most of the actresses make thoroughly convincing porn stars – unfortunately, this is mostly in the way they can’t act their way out of a paper-bag. The pacing is also terrible. At 101 minutes, it’s at least twenty too long, and takes far too long to get to the meat of the matter. As a result, it commits the cardinal sin of grindhouse cinema: being boring. This is in part because it insists on being didactic, pushing its moral viewpoint to an obvious and rather painful degree. That’s another sin in which you never see good grindhouse flix indulge. I Spit on Your Grave didn’t need to spell out any obvious messages.

There’s a certain hypocrisy here, given the female nudity on view, frequently combined with things like the owners having their throat slit, New York Ripper style. None of the main actresses indulge, implying they are in some way “better” than that. It also fails to make a coherent argument against The Sword’s proposition – basically that, without porn, there’d be no porn addiction, and those who profit are no better than pushers. It’s just taken as “bad,” m’kay? Of course, the brutality with Mila and her pals react, is morally little if any different from The Sword: an uncomfortable truth the film never dares address. All of which I could probably tolerate, if this was anything like fun to watch. It isn’t, and I couldn’t.

Dir: Paul Ragsdale, Angelica De Alba
Star: Delawna McKinney, Anthony Iava To’omata, Paige Le Ney, Daniel James Moody

Golden Arm

  By

★★★½
“Arms and the (wo)man.”

The sport of arm-wrestling has been featured in the movies before, most notably the Sylvester Stallone vehicle, Over the Top. But that wasn’t a comedy – at least, not intentionally. This entry, as well as switching to the distaff side, also has its tongue in cheek, while still sporting a strong message about female empowerment, that never becomes a lecture. If you’re looking for an inspiration I’d saw the first season of TV series GLOW is very much a touchstone. As there, we have a woman who becomes involved in a sport at a difficult time in her life, only to find herself… well, finding herself as a result of her new endeavour.

The heroine is Melanie (Holland), a mild-mannered cafe-owner whose enterprise is almost out of business. Her pal, truck driver Danny (Sodaro, sporting one of the worst haircuts in cinema history), takes part in women’s arm-wrestling, but just had her wrist broken by the infamous Brenda the Bone Crusher (Stambouliah).  Seeking revenge, she eventually convinces Melanie, who has a natural talent – the “golden arm” – to enter the national championships in Oklahoma City. The goal is to win the crown, and fifteen thousand dollars that go with it, to save Melanie’s business and take down Danny’s nemesis. But the path towards that title will go through not only Brenda, but over a number of other hurdles for the rookie athlete, both physical and mental.

There’s very little new here in terms of plotting. Everything unfolds exactly as you’d expect, right down to the final which pits – surprise, surprise! – Melanie against Brenda in a best-of-three battle. Still, the joy here is in the characters and performances. There appears to be, if this film is to be believed, a significant overlap between arm-wrestling and pro wrestling, with the participants here adopting personas and cutting promos to intimidate their opponent. Melanie, for example, begins as a masked wrestler called “Freaked Out”, after the ring announcer mistakes a comment as her name. But she eventually becomes The Breadwinner, complete with a dusting of flour on her cheek.

However, the greatest pleasure is the Melanie-Danny relationship, which builds over the course of the film. They’re total opposites – “Please don’t say ‘twat'”, begs Melanie repeatedly – but there’s still such chemistry, you can see how they’d be fast friends. It’s so good, in fact, that the romantic angle between Melanie and referee Greg (Cordero) seems entirely superfluous. It actually drags down the rest of the movie, and provides nothing of substance except for an explicit reference to The Natural. That’s another apparent inspiration, in its story of a sports star rising above injury at the moment they need to most.

This is thoroughly foul-mouthed, albeit for comic purposes, and I will say, it doesn’t all quite work. For example, there’s an extended discussion over the female equivalent of “going balls out,” that’s frankly a bit cringe. However, the sheer heart on view throughout is undeniable: that powers this through the flaws, and will likely leave you with a big, goofy grin on your face.

Dir: Maureen Bharooch
Star: Mary Holland, Betsy Sodaro, Olivia Stambouliah, Eugene Cordero

Army of One

  By

★★
“Basic, and in need of training”

Husband and wife Dillon (Passmore) and Brenna Baker (Hollman) are out on a camping trip in the Alabama wilderness. They have a brush with some crude locals, led by the mountainous Butch (Kasper), but are saved by his diminutive mother (Singer), who takes no crap from anyone, and whom everyone locally calls Mama. Later, while sheltering from the rain in a deserted cabin, the Bakers stumble across a cache of arms. Before they can do anything, they are captured by the owner – Butch, of course, since his family are involved in a whole slew of criminal activities, including white slavery. Any hopes of playing the innocent tourists are wiped out when Butch finds Dillon’s police ID. Oops. He and his gang dispose of the couple, but do a poor job on Brenna. And, it turns out, she’s a former Army Ranger, who now has vengeance on her mind.

It’s a solid enough idea, albeit nothing we haven’t seen before. Hollman looks the part too, plausible enough in her attitude that she could be a soldier who has gone back to civilian life. The action, in general, is well-enough handled to pass muster. The lead actress was in Spartacus and Into the Badlands, while she is apparently going to be in the fourth Matrix movie (though I’m restraining my expectations for that). She does seem to know her way around a hand-to-hand fight sequence, and the film has some well-staged examples, helped by Durham avoiding editing them to death.

Unfortunately, the plotting is flat out terrible. I think it begins with the couple opting to have sex in the highly grubby cabin, and goes downhill from there. It’s never quite clear how Brenna survives Butch’s murder attempt, she just kinda gets up and starts walking about. Then she returns to the campsite and finds an ax. Yeah, she has a weapon… which she uses to sharpen a branch, then drops the ax back on the ground and wanders off with the pointy stick instead. She waits for daylight to infiltrate the family compound, rather than taking advantage of darkness. Brenna spends days just wandering the forest, rather than getting help or trying to leave. A booby-trapped branch appears, seemingly out of nowhere. The random Aussie guy.

The idiocy on view here goes on and on, and the missteps are so frequent and painfully glaring. They rob the film of almost all its energy, and any chance of real success. They’re too much of a distraction to ignore, and certainly stick in my mind more than the positive elements. There are few surprises as events unfold, with Butch, Mama and crew continually underestimating Brenna, even after she has wiped out half of their number. Rather than putting a bullet in her head, the idea of “breaking” Brenna and making her as docile and submissive as their other trafficked women, is just another example of the dumb writing in which this indulges. By the time the (no more plausible) ending eventually comes, it’s almost as a relief.

Dir: Stephen Durham
Star: Ellen Hollman, Gary Kasper, Geraldine Singer, Matt Passmore

Restless (2020)

  By

★★
“Mom on a mission”

Single mother Naomi Harper (Anderson) is devoted to her son, and he to her. In an effort to help Mom make ends meet, he gets a job working for notorious local “businessman”, Noah Oliver (Wilson). When her child turns up dead, Naomi is sure that Oliver had something to do with it. The police, in particular Detectives Emory Kota (Conell) and August Hayes ( Jeziorski), don’t necessarily disagree, but their hands are tied. This is partly due to a shortage of actionable evidence, partly because Oliver’s connections run deep into the local political and judicial establishment in Conyers, Georgia, making it impossible to take action against him. Well, at least officially. Naomi has no such limitations, and this apparently mild-mannered loan officer has a background that may prove of help.

The script here isn’t bad. There are a number of interesting angles, such as the parallel actions of a vigilante, working in same area as Naomi, and targetting those who consider themselves above the law. Naomi isn’t the only strong female character either, with Det. Kota frustrated by the restrictions of her position. Then there’s Sophia (Rachel Burger), Oliver’s right-hand ma… er, woman, who proves capable of handling herself physically as well. Though I probably would have been more impressed had Naomi not done that crappy, gangsta “holding the gun at an angle” thing, as she headed towards her final confrontation with Oliver. Nobody with experience and an interest in being taken seriously would be caught dead doing that.

However, the problems here are most readily apparent in the resources here. Or, to be more accurate, the lack thereof. Even though the film tries to work within the budgetary limitations, these are so severe, they can’t be hidden. For instance, scenes which are supposed to take place in a police station, very clearly don’t. Indeed, there’s very little effort to make it look like anything, except a bare, empty room. The same goes for a number of other locations, where the bare minimum appears to have been done in terms of set dressing. Hardly less glaring are the plugs for local venue, Triplz Lounge. I’m sure it’s a lovely place.

Another weakness is that most of the actors don’t appear to fit their characters. Wilson is probably the worst offender, never being convincing as a mob boss – he’s just not intimidating or threatening enough. But to a lesser extent, the same goes for Anderson. Despite copious flashbacks to a time when her son was alive, she rarely seemed like a distraught mother, pushed into unthinkable acts by the callous and indifferent hand of fate.  She’s not a bad actress, competent enough from a technical point of view. There just wasn’t any reason for the viewer to pay the emotional buy-in to her portrayal. I’d not mind seeing what Jackson and his team could do with more money, and I’ve certainly seen worse. Here though, the challenges prove just too much for them to overcome.

Dir: Rodney Jackson
Star: Tai Anderson, Tavares M. Wilson, Robyn Conell, Will Jeziorski

Certain Fury

  By

★★★★
“When child stars grow up”

Child actors have a difficult challenge facing them when the reach adulthood. They are not the sweet kids anymore that everyone loves and wants to cuddle with. They can’t rely on the cuteness factor anymore that made them once so successful. That can lead to tragedy. How many former kid stars became drug addicts or committed suicide because they couldn’t return to that time anymore, when in a way the world was theirs? Others were smart enough to leave film business behind them and start a new career e. g. Shirley Temple. But a few of them are indeed lucky. they stay calm amidst all the thunderstorms of early successes and puberty, manage to stay relevant to audiences and even find a new footing and grown-up roles, that cement their careers as everlasting film stars. Actresses like Sophie Marceau or Jodie Foster come to mind.

The latter is a particular success story, making the transition from child actor to grown-up movie star. In the 70s she was the regular tomboy in Disney family comedies and at one point was even under consideration to play a young Princess Leia in what would become the first Star Wars movie. Her constant competitor in tomboy roles was Tatum O’Neal. the youngest ever to win an Oscar, for her performance in Peter Bogdanovich’s beautiful tragic-comedy Paper Moon (1973), next to her father. She also played a tomboy in The Bad News Bears as Walter Matthau’s daughter. Coincidentally, Paper Moon became a TV series in which Jodie Foster played O’Neal’s role! Unfortunately, O’Neal went through the usual teen-phase, then slowly disappeared from the screen. Later she made headlines for her troubled marriage and addiction. Just a couple of years ago again when she was taken in by police because she wanted to buy some drugs.

Why this long introduction? It’s because I think it’s kind of unjust how her career went – though everyone is responsible for their own decisions and you never really can plan to be in “successful movies“. But contrast the career of Foster who had a similar basis, but persevered after making some less interesting movies for much of the 1980’s. Her second career in films began with the Oscar for Accused (1988) and then moved on from there to bigger things. It just shows that you may have talent and get credit for some time in Hollywood. But if the right movie and role doesn’t come along, and you make some bad decisions, anyone’s promising movie career can just evaporate in front of your eyes.

There are movies that are crossroads that can lead to other – maybe better – things or open up a new role type for you, maybe an entire new genre. My feeling is that Certain Fury (title in German cinemas: “In the heat of New York”) could maybe have been that for O’Neal. It just wasn’t to be.

From 1985, it checks all the boxes for a typical 80’s action buddy movie, beginning with the story. At a mass trial of young girls, responsible for different criminal acts, two prostitutes start a shoot-out in the courtroom that has to be seen to be believed. A remarkable act of violence which you hardly would ever find in a modern action movie of today where everything is usually very neat and clean. Scarlet (O’Neal) who has killed a man – in self-defence as we find out later – and Tracey (Cara, who won an Oscar herself for her song in Flashdance shortly before; the title song here is also by her) are among those who take their chances in the ensuing chaos. They run from the court building into the streets, chased by the police.

They are more fortunate than one of the prostitutes, who gets shot into the back. Really, this movie could only exist in the 80’s, and would be unthinkable for today’s Hollywood. The pair make it into the sewers, and survive an underground explosion, caused by a cop’s lit cigarette igniting sewer gas. They eventually meet one of Scarlet’s lovers named Sniffer (Nicholas Campbell) who is an especially disgusting creature. He obviously makes porn and after Scarlet has left, tries to rape Tracey in the shower. While not a particularly graphic scene, it might well work against the possibility of the film being released in the US again. 

Scarlet tries her best to get help from another former lover, the arrogant, rich, criminal Rodney, who turns out to be played by Peter Fonda. Did he ever get an Oscar for one of his movies? I don’t think so. [Jim: no, just nominated for Ulee’s Gold] It’s so strange because he’s the most well-known actor in this movie. But he likes her as lttle as her other ex, and cuts her cheek with a knife. She just returns right on time to escape with Tracey before Rodney’s men arrive to get her after he made a deal with the police. Scarlet has taken some of Sniffer’s drugs and manage to sell them in what looks like a giant derelict house in the slums. It really is a movie from Reagan era! ;-)) Her persecutor arrives on the scene, injects Tracey with drugs, sets fire to the house and has a final fight with Scarlet before meeting a fiery death.

Police inspector Lt. Speier (Murdock) is meanwhile trying to find the girls, together with Tracey’s father, Dr. Freeman (Moses Gunn, e. g. a gangster boss in Shaft). The theme of Black and White working together is repeated in these characters, as in the girls themselves. This is a very positive, uplifting message but – unlike today where many movies have become a lesson about racism and discrimination – it’s not a lecture, it’s inherent in the movie’s story and characters. It makes this much more palatable for me than modern movies who lose the entertainment aspect in the background, while putting their lessons in your face.

As the two girls are believed to be dead (Tracey reads it in the newspapers; Scarlet can’t read) they consider a new life together, free in the mountains. But Scarlet doesn’t believe it’s possible, and in her brusque manner tosses Tracey away from her. When the police arrive, Scarlet still keeps on walking on a bridge, so they shoot her in the back. But the last shot shows Scarlet being hold by Tracey and Dr. Freeman saying it is not so serious, and was only into the shoulder. Guess that’s a happy ending… or something like that!

It’s all tough stuff. Certain Fury isn’t an “important” movie; indeed, you could even argue whether or not it is a “good” movie. As a matter of fact, I had a strong feeling when watching this movie that Charles Bronson might come around the corner any moment to “clean up the slums of New York“. It really looks like one of those cheap Cannon flicks that were such guilty pleasures in the video stores of the 80s (and might be even more now!). And, indeed, just a short time later, Cannon had Charlie handcuffed to a snotty teen, and sent on a similar road trip through gangster-land in Murphy’s Law (1986). Though that movie more or less dropped any social issues of the O’Neal-Cara-film and concentrated on the bloody action of Bronson versus the rest of the criminal underworld.

I note also obvious similarities to the Stanley Kramer-classic The Defiant Ones (1958) with Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier. Scarlet is not nice and understanding, she is street-wise, prone to anger and absolutely insulting. Heck, she even drops the N-word to Tracey. So the inspiration is arguably there. And who knows, maybe it wasn’t an accident that a year after this movie, The Defiant Ones got an update in a 1986 television movie with Robert Urich and Carl Weathers (also a very watchable movie). [Jim: there’s also Black Mama, White Mama, in which Pam Grier and Margaret Markov are another inter-racial pairing, who escape from prison handcuffed together]

While I mainly saw and enjoyed Certain Fury for what it was – enjoyable over-the-top action trash – the movie nevertheless put some fingers into social issues that may be as relevant today in America, as they were almost 40 years ago. Racism, social class differences, uncontrollable no-go areas, criminality, poverty, drugs and – yes – even police brutality can be witnessed in this movie. Though after the bloody mass shoot-out in the courtroom at the beginning, where hardly anyone is left alive, you can maybe understand the over-reaction of the police! I don’t think this  almost forgotten little movie offers any solutions to these myriad of problems. But it at least suggests that even very different people can understand and support each other, even if it needs an extreme emergency to do so. It’s a theme also mirrored in the very different duo of the white police inspector and the black surgeon.

Now, I wouldn’t recommend the movie if you want a high-quality social drama: too much Charles Bronson in it, if you ask me. But it’s enjoyable action trash, and interesting that at one point Tatum O’Neal could have become an action or thriller star. The latter genre was, after all, the one in which Jodie Foster found her greatest commercial success. O’Neal’s acting is very good, I think; there’s nothing left of that little brat she embodied in the 70s. Her Scarlet is an interesting character of the “hard shell, soft core” variety. She could maybe have continued in this manner; who knows? Instead of that she chose to marry tennis player John McEnroe, which obviously wasn’t the best move for her in any way.

Here’s a little confession: I feel a certain emotional connection to this movie as I discovered the trailer online and then suggested it to a German DVD label who promptly released the movie on DVD here in Germany (even with an audio commentary of two film historians!) – I think my ego is going to explode! ;-) And an interesting final tidbit: In the German-language version Tatum O’Neal is played by the voice artist who regularly dubs… Jodie Foster!

Dir: Stephen Gyllenhaal
Star: Tatum O’Neal, Irene Cara, Nicholas Campbell, George Murdock

The Protégé

  By

★★★
“Q’s the boss?”

It’s nice to see Maggie Q get back into the action genre again. It’s where she achieved renown – most obviously in the second Nikita TV series, but we were already aware of her, thanks to Q’s work in Hong Kong, such as Naked Weapon [let’s just not talk about Model From Hell…]. Of late though, she has worked mostly in other fields; while still genre-friendly, such as Death of Me or Fantasy Island, they’re just not our genre. So, when I heard she was playing an assassin, out for revenge after someone kills her mentor (a role originally given to Gong Li), this immediately got moved to the head of the list, since it seemed like a throwback to why we love her.

While I wanted to really like this, I can only say it’s… okay. This is mostly due to a serious mistep in the second half of the film. I can’t talk about it specifically, for spoiler reasons. But it effectively renders everything which had happened up to that point as irrelevant, and sidelines Q’s character in what had been, to that point, her story. The motivation for the character behaving the way they did seems murky at best. I trust this is all adequately vague. Anyway. Q plays Anna, a Vietnamese orphan rescued during a mission by hitman Moody Dutton, and brought up as his daughter and apprentice. Thirty years later, they have formed a close-knit pairing, until Moody is killed after making inquiries into a long-disappeared person.

Anna vows to find and punish whoever is responsible, and soon finds herself under attack as a result, after persisting despite being warned by the mysterious Michael Rembrandt (Keaton). Their relationship subsequently develops, and these events put Rembrandt’s loyalties under pressure. Unfortunately, this is where the script implodes, in part due to the lightly outlined reason above. But it’s also due to other missteps like an extended flashback to Anna’s time in Vietnam, which do not add anything of significance, and instead divert proceedings, just when things should be accelerating towards a grandstand finale – one that never happens.

If I have major qualms about Richard Wenk’s script, I’ve no real problem with Campbell’s direction. The veteran has a good pedigree, including one of the best Bonds ever in Goldeneye and the two recent Zorro film, and knows where to point a camera. Q doesn’t seem to have lost much speed either, though there is a terseness to some of the killings here. It’s not inappropriate – she’s a professional, after all – but I’d have liked the fights to go longer. As is, the first such scene, where she takes out a mob boss and his bodyguards in about ten seconds, is a good indicator of what to expect. Still, in this area it’s solid stuff, with some moments of intense hyper-violence, such as an opponent going face-first through a sink. That helps lift this to the point where it’s still worthwhile. Yet I can’t help feeling it’s just not as good as it should have been.

Dir: Martin Campbell
Star: Maggie Q, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton, David Rintoul

Backstreet Justice

  By

★★½
“V.I. Boreshawski”

It’s difficult to put a finger on exactly what makes this so flat and uninteresting. The individual elements are fine – or, at least, don’t stand out as being particularly troublesome. However, the end product failed to hold my attention, particularly over the second half. It may be a case of the whole being considerably less than the sum of the parts, though if there was a single factor, I’d have to point at the story. This is probably too complicated for its own good, especially in a 90-minute movie: less would likely have been more.

Maybe it’s just the lead actress’s name, but as the tag-line above suggest, I was getting a distinct vibe of V.I. Warshawski from this. That film, starring Kathleen Turner, came out a few years previously, though wasn’t a big success. Still, there’s something similar here, with a female private eye who cracks wise, in a chilly Northern city (here, Pittsburgh; there, Chicago). The main difference is the heroine here, Keri Finnegan (Kozlowski), is burdened by the death of her father. He was a cop who died in the line of duty, but with a severely tarnished reputation, having apparently been on the take. This has hung over his daughter ever since.

As the film begins, she is on the hunt for a serial killer whom the local cops seem unable to catch – initially, it seems he may be a member of the force. However, it increasingly appears not to be some random psycho. Keri uncovers evidence suggesting it’s part of a plot to make the area undesirable; this will then drive down property prices, allowing a local speculator to come in and pick up a bargain. And this isn’t anything new. The evidence points to this kind of thing happening for a very long time – indeed, it appears increasingly like there may be a connection to her father’s death. Needless to say, there are a lot of people who have a very strong vested interest in keeping the past buried.

Kozlowski, best known for her role in Crocodile Dundee, does a decent job as Keri, and seems to embrace the physical aspects of the role, with a fair amount of running, jumping and mild to moderate fisticuffs. The rest of the cast aren’t bad either, though few of them escape the obvious characters typically present in such things. I just didn’t find myself caring enough (read: at all) about what was happening. There wasn’t much of a sense of threat, despite a heroine who has to engage in some Perils of Pauline-esque narrow escapes, e.g. lobbing an explosive device out of the window, just before the timer reached zero. I think it may be that the nature of the threat is kept nebulous and hidden for too long. But the time it became concrete, it provoked little more than a shrug of my shoulders, and I then went back to surfing idly on my phone. It’s all far too forgettable.

Dir: Chris McIntyre
Star: Linda Kozlowski, Paul Sorvino, Hector Elizondo, John Shea

Robowoman

  By

★½
“Roboring.”

Winner of the 2021 award for Movie Least Like the Poster, we have another poverty row production from the man who gave us Nemesis 5: The New Model. And by “gave,” I mean, no-one in their right mind would pay for it. This is little or no better, though likely benefited from being watched the same evening as Hellfire, which made Robowoman look as if it was unjustly overlooked by the Oscars. It was not a good night, shall we say. The only saving grace was Chris being out, otherwise I’d have had to cash in my entire annual allocation of martyr points. Anyway…

It’s 2024 Los Angeles, and black-market surgery offers cures for almost all ills. A dinner date for Vivica Stevens (Heising) goes wrong when she’s raped and left for dead by Jonathan (Nation) and his pals. Dodgy physician Dr. Michaels (Novak) saves her and outfits the victim with a robo-arm and robo-eyes. Vivica returns to life with her housemate, Evangeline (Price), but is overcome by an urge to use her new-found robo-talents to take revenge on Jonathan and the other perpetrators. But at what cost to her humanity?

First thing: Heising is in her late sixties, though dresses like a woman half her age (let’s just say, I don’t think her encounter with Dr. Michaels was the first time she’d gone under the knife…). While respect is due, it still makes the whole rape thing highly suspect, and some other scenes, such as the gun dealer who comes on to her. The action here is also pure, undiluted shit, largely due to Ferguson’s complete inability to film it. Multiple scenes are shot from behind Vivica, with her completely obscuring any action. Or it may even be a stand-in; her head is frequently cut off by the framing too. I repeat: pure, undiluted shit.

I did quite like Price, who has an easy-going nature in her performance, which appears to have strayed in from a better film. There’s also a scene at a self-defense class where Heising actually emotes to semi-decent effect. However, these elements are vastly outweighed by negatives, such as the lengthy scene of the heroine eating a pizza. Or the robo-arm which is obviously just a plastic glove, while her robo-vision looks like a 99-cent Geordi LaForge accessory from Party City. Or even the sense of location being derailed, by the Los Angeles cops that stop and question Vivica and Evangeline, sporting Texas patches on their sleeves.

With some adjustments, and a budget in line with the script, this might have passed muster. As is, we have to try and believe that hanging up some decrepit blue tarps makes a room a hospital. That’s more effort than this deserves and if you can manage it: well done. Even a walk-on part for scream queen Brinke Stevens (maybe they should have made her the heroine?) at the end, is unable to elevate this to the level of watchable.

Dir: Dustin Ferguson
Star: Dawna Lee Heising, Sue Price, Jonathan Nation, Mel Novak