★★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
I want to like Rose, who seems to be making a concerted effort to become an action heroine. It hasn’t always worked out – see 
★★★★
Yeah, it’s kinda like that. As in John Wick, the hero(ine) is an assassin for hire, in a world where there exists a significant infrastructure of support for hitmen and hitwomen. After they fall foul of the wrong people, our hero(ine) becomes the target, but has more than enough skills to be able to fend for themselves, and takes the fight to their aggressors. Oh, yeah, and it also borrows significantly from Leon: The Professional, in that the assassin becomes the protector of a young girl. Hmm. But this leverages those two with very large injections of style. Not quite to the level of 
Said protagonist is Sam (Gillan), a killer with abandonment issues ever since her mom (Lena Headey) walked out on her, fifteen years earlier. Sam is tasked by her employer, Nathan (Giamatti), with recovering a haul of stolen cash. But she finds the thief was coerced into action, after his eight-year-old daughter (“8¾!”, as we are reminded on several occasions), Emily, was kidnapped. Likely reminded of her younger self, Sam takes custody of Emily, though the cash is destroyed in the process. This, and a previous job where she killed the son of a very important person, makes her persona non grata, and the hunter becomes the hunted.
It is notable that the film is split firmly along gender lines. with every one of the protagonists being women, and every one of the antagonists being men. However, it’s fortunate that seem largely to be about the extent of the messaging, and nobody particularly pays attention to this. Everyone is kept quite busy trying to kill each other. It’s also a bit less of an ensemble piece than I expected from the trailer. Especially in the first half, it’s Sam vs. the World, with the Librarians introduced, and then shuffled off to one side until Sam is ultimately forced to turn to them for help. That’s not particularly a criticism. I like Gillan, who was born about 25 miles from where I was, so is likely the nearest I have to a local action heroine. She can carry a film perfectly well, even if I’d rather have heard her natural Scots accent.
Certainly the kind of action film for which you need to suspend your disbelief. In this case, the closest parallel is, as the tag-line above implies, the Jason Statham vehicle, Crank. In it, Statham’s character was poisoned, and had to keep his adrenaline permanently up for the rest of the film. to avoid dying. Here, it’s almost the reverse. Beckinsale’s character, Lindy, was born with a rare condition, “intermittent explosive disorder”. This is pretty much what it sounds like: uncontrollable aggressive outbursts, like a physical version of Tourette’s. This is a real thing. Not so real? Lindy is also “blessed” with high levels of cortisol, which make her faster and stronger than anyone else. Somewhere in the middle? Lindy controls her IED with electric shocks from a handheld device given to her by her therapist, Dr. Munchin (Tucci). All told, I’m tagging this as SF. #ChangeMyMind
