Tag: USA

Never Back Down: Revolt

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★★★½
“The women are revolting!”

The “underground fighting” subgenre is among the most macho of action films, so it’s interesting that this entry doesn’t just feature a female protagonist. It’s also written and directed by women, with the lead villain also from that gender. It’s a particularly novel twist, considering the previous three installments in the Never Back Down franchise were, by most accounts, competent yet entirely generic, male-dominated movies. I say “by most accounts,” since I’ll confess to not having seen them. This is both a positive and a negative, I think. It means I can go into this with no preconceptions or expectations. On the other hand, it also means I can’t compare it to the rest of the series.

The latter is perhaps less important since it seems to be a sequel in name only, without any characters or story-line carrying forward. The heroine is Anya (Popica), a Chechen refugee now living in London with her brother, Aslan (Bastow), who takes part in those underground fights. After failing to throw a fight, he finds himself thirty grand in debt to some very nasty people. But Anya, who’s no novice with her own fists, gets an offer from swanky promoter Mariah (Johnston) to help pay off the arrears with a trip to Italy. Naturally, it turns out to be a front for “fight trafficking”, with the female participants held against their will, and shipped off to Albanian brothels, when they can no longer battle for the amusement of rich patrons. The title tells you the rest of the plot.

Madison isn’t without an action pedigree, having directed rather good short, The Gate, starring site favourite Amy Johnston. That’s currently being shopped around to become a feature; fingers crossed that happens. In the meantime, this would appear to match its predecessors in being competent, yet entirely generic. Everything unfolds exactly as you would expect, if you’re at all familiar with this kind of thing. It’s the kind of film where you can pop into the kitchen for 10 minutes without pausing it, make a sandwich and a cup of coffee, and return, safe in the knowledge that you’ll still be able to follow the plot perfectly well. I can neither confirm nor deny having done exactly that.

While predictable, it’s never dull though. Popica doesn’t appear to have any particular martial arts background, yet is decent enough to pass muster (even if you wonder what someone like Amy Johnston might have done in the part). There’s a laudable and complete lack of romance here, just the sibling relationship. I could probably have used some more action, even if the quality of what there is, is decent. I particularly liked the fate meted out to the chief guard. The size issue, inevitably present in mixed-gender fights, is overcome by having him held down by two women in a bath, while a third shanks him very enthusiastically. In comparison, Ghislaine Maxwell Mariah seems to get off easy, just when I was looking forward to her getting her just deserts. Still, solid enough to leave me anticipating what The Gate feature might be like.

Dir: Kellie Madison
Star: Olivia Popica, Tommy Bastow, Brooke Johnston, Nitu Chandra

The Princess

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★★★★
“Die Hard in a castle.”

Well, this was a surprise. I was not expecting too much, this being a movie released straight to Hulu or Disney+ (depending on your territory), and starring someone best known for rom-com franchise, The Kissing Booth. Actually, scratch the “too” from that sentence. I went in on the basis that I was contractually obliged to watch it, as the guy running this site. I say this, so you’ll understand how unexpected it is to be writing this: it’s the best action-heroine film of the year so far. This is just thoroughly entertaining, and as the tag-line above suggests, is as close as I’ve ever seen to a genuine, female version of the greatest action movie of all-time. 

The first half structure though, plays more like The Raid in reverse, the heroine having to fight her way down, floor by floor, from the top of a high tower. It opens with the Princess (King) ‐ and that’s her credited name – waking to find herself in a bed-chamber. She’s being prepared for a marriage she very much does not want to happen. Her father, lacking a son and heir, intended to wed her to Julian (Cooper) for diplomatic purposes. She jilted him at the altar, and he then staged a coup, seizing her family and planning a union by force. What he doesn’t know, is that the Princess had been quietly trained by family retainer Linh (Ngo) in fighting skills, and begins working her way down, to rescue her family and stop Julian. Guess he is going to have to “altar” his wedding plans, hohoho.

It’s the kind of film which will stand or fall on its action sequences, and the good news is, these are the movie’s strongest suit. Kiet had previously worked with Ngo on Furie: that was solid, yet it now appears his imagination was bigger than the resources available to him there. Right from the start, when the Princess takes out the two attendants sent to her chamber, the fight scenes are all inventive, well-executed and assembled in a coherent manner. Now, King is no MMA fighter. However, they’ve constructed a fighting style for her character based on speed and agility, rather than strength and power. Her holding her own against bigger (sometimes, far bigger) opponents feels credible as a result. 

This reaches its height in a glorious, extended sequence, with the Princess battling her way down the tower’s staircase. It feels as if it’s 20 minutes long, such is the energy contained in it. There’s even a beautiful moment of tension releasing humour, part of a running gag involving one of Julian’s minions who is too fat for all the stairs he’s ordered to climb. Nothing thereafter, including the inevitable fight against her wannabe husband, quite reaches the same heights. Glover is good value as Julian, staying just this side of a pantomime villain. As Die Hard shows, having a memorable antagonist is an important element. He’s not quite Alan Rickman – though who is? And I do have to question some of Julian’s decisions. 

I mean, if ever I become an Evil Lord, I will choose a more definitive method of execution for my nemesis than defenestration. And if I did chuck them out a high window, it would be on the side of the building over the cobblestone courtyard, rather than the one facing the water. Though I must give credit where it’s due, for his selection of a sidekick, in whip-wielding bad girl, Moira. Kurylenko has a track record of her own on this site, most recently in Sentinelle, and builds further on that here. On the other hand, the Princess’s father is a totally ineffectual pussy, when faced with the brutality of Julian and his crew. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though. It makes his daughter’s rebellion feel organic and legitimate, rather than some kind of obvious third-wave feminist statement. I’d rebel in her shoes too.

Speaking of which, my concerns this would end up being some kind of Statement Movie, largely proved unfounded. Indeed, some reviews criticized it for not being progressive enough. [Insert eye-roll] This is largely traditional fairy-story territory, except with a female lead who is capable of rescuing herself, rather than needing a prince to come to her aid. I would say some of the flashback scenes were superfluous, breaking into rather than enhancing the narrative progression. For instance, we know Linh trained the Princess; do we really then need to see it taking place as well? The R-rating, while welcome, seems a little at odds with the atmosphere too, which does feel quite Disney+. If you’re going R, embrace it in all its forms, I’d say. However, these are minor gripes, and this is one Disney princess I’m certainly happy to endorse. 

Dir: Le-Van Kiet
Star: Joey King, Dominic Cooper, Olga Kurylenko, Veronica Ngo

Panther Girl of the Kongo

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★★½
“The (serial) end is nigh.”

This was the second-to-last of Republic’s sixty-six serials and, to be honest, it shows. Having watched Jungle Girl recently, the recycling here of its action footage – particularly, of the heroine swinging through trees – felt embarrassingly obvious. In the studio’s defense, the contemporary audience might well have forgotten, the source having originally come out fourteen years earlier. However, that doesn’t excuse the fairly threadbare plot, which is laid out inside the first ten minutes of the opening episode, then goes almost nowhere for the rest of the serial. The only point of note is the use of giant crayfish. Yes, coming out the year after classic giant insect movie, Them!, Republic opted to go there.

Rather than radiation, these are the product of mad “differently sane” scientist, Dr Morgan (Space), who has developed a growth hormone which causes the creatures that consume it to achieve massive, rapid growth, and apparently renders them impervious to the inverse-square law too. You’d think that kind of thing would be a fast ticket to fame, fortune and Nobel prizes. But it turn out, Morgan is instead embedded deep in the African jungle, using his creatures to try and scare off the local tribe, so he and his minions can get unhindered access to a diamond mine on their lands. Caught in the middle is wildlife photographer Jean Evans (Coates). When she catches the monster on film, she sends for help from big game hunter Larry Sanders (Healey), and they have to fend off both hormone-enraged crustaceans and Morgan’s thuggish henchmen.

It might have worked better as an 80-minute B flick. I have to say the miniature work by the Lydecker brothers, does a good job of making the crayfish look gigantic. However, there’s no need to have them roar, and the interaction with the human characters is basically limited to a single claw grabbing an appendage from out of shot. Morgan’s tactics appear to be limited to getting his minions to shepherd the creatures towards the locals, with a small side-dish of preventing word of the beasts getting out. Rinse and repeat: you’ll likely get bored and drift off before the end, despite another case of dynamite being carelessly left around.

Jean is certainly the most firearm happy heroine, blazing away almost as soon as we see her. Though it’s never explained why she is also so adept at swinging through the jungle, etc. She gets her titular name as an honorific, after saving the villagers from a rogue black leopard, and I guess she is isn’t a cat person. For at another point, Jean engages in hand-to-hand (or paw?) combat with a lion, in order to prove her “magic” is good, and not responsible for the monsters. Obvious stunt doubling is obvious here, even if admittedly someone is still getting closer to the lion’s jaws than I’d want to. But this certainly does not live up to the poster proclaiming it “The most exciting serial ever filmed!”

Dir: Franklin Adreon
Star: Phyllis Coates, Myron Healey, Arthur Space, John Daheim

The Black Widow

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★★½
“Stay here. And make me a sandwich!”

This is something of a fringe entry, and illustrates a few of the issues with Hollywood of the time. In particular, a severe reluctance to let female characters act with genuine independence. We see this on both side of the story here. The title character is Sombra (Forman), a vaguely Asiatic woman who is engaged in a plot to steal nuclear secrets from the United States. To this end, she has been trying to bribe acquaintances of a notable scientist, but the trail of spider-envenomed corpses resulting from their refusal to help has brought her to the attention of the Daily Clarion and its ace girl reporter, Joyce Winters (Lindley). Which would be fine, if the women were allowed to go head-to-head on their own terms, in the same way as Perils of Nyoka.

Except, neither of them are. Sombra is basically a puppet of her father, King Hitomu, who pops up through a cloud of smoke in a teleportation device, to keep her in line and hand down decrees that must be obeyed. Worse, the newspaper calls in Steve Colt (Edwards), a hard-boiled crime fiction author, to take lead in their investigation. He truly treats Joyce like crap, repeatedly ordering her to stay behind and refusing to let her drive. This unrepentant chauvinist even handcuffs her to the car at one point, to stop her following. Fortunately for him, Joyce is resourceful enough to unbolt herself, and so is able to stop Steve from being gunned down by Sombra’s minions. His gratitude for saving his life is… largely notable by its absence.

In between the blatant sexism, which definitely hampers things, there are some cool elements. I particularly liked the way Sombra is a woman of a thousand faces, able to disguise herself as any other woman perfectly. So we get some scenes where we have Lindley playing Forman as Sombra, pretending to be Joyce, if you see what I mean. It’s fun. There is a fair amount of technobabble here e.g. a sonic disruption device, but occasionally the script does hit on something a little prophetic, e.g. the tracking device Steve uses to locate Sombra’s lair. Though it is rather larger than the modern equivalent, shall we say! I’m also a little concerned about the ease with which he is allowed to gun down unarmed civilians, and his lack of remorse thereof.

I did like the performances of both Lindley and Forman, though one aspect of the latter is a “Yellow Peril”-like portrayal that hasn’t aged well. But as is often the case, being a villainess does give you a bit more independence, and Sombra is clearly the boss when her father isn’t around. However, if you’re not throwing things at the screen when Steve gets all “No, you’re not coming with me, little lady,” then you’re probably on the wrong website. I was wishing throughout for him to have a close encounter of the poisonous kind with Sombra’s arachnid pals.

Dir: Spencer Gordon Bennet and Fred C. Brannon
Star: Bruce Edwards, Virginia Lindley, Carol Forman, Anthony Warde

The Tiger Woman

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★★½
“A leopard which changes its spots.”

Am I the only person irrationally annoyed by the title of this 12-episode serial? It takes place in South America, where the only tigers are in captivity. And look at the picture of the heroine. LOOK AT IT. In what universe is that a tiger? I mean, the ears are a nice touch, but it’s very obviously not tiger stripes. Though it has been pointed that in its location, the jaguar is known as el tigre. Which might make sense if there was any other jot of Hispanic culture to be found here. [GWG readers: “Get on with it!”] Oh, alright… if you insist.  

As mentioned, we’re in South America, where two competing oil companies are seeking to establish their territory. The Inter Ocean Oil Company are the current occupants, and have been working in association with the indigenous population, under their white queen (Stirling), known as the Tiger Woman. But if they don’t strike oil soon, their franchise will expire. A predatory, far less friendly (but unnamed) company, is standing by, to make sure that doesn’t happen, allowing them to take over. But Inter Ocean has sent top troubleshooter, Allen Saunders (Rock Lane), to work with the Tiger Queen and block their enemy’s attempts. Those get more desperate as the deadline approaches and Inter Ocean appear to be succeeding. Complicating matters is the Tiger Queen’s original identity as missing heiress, Rita Arnold, something her enemies want to use to their advantage.

The heroine is something of a step forward from Jungle Girl, with Rita/Ms. Tiger at least making an occasional effort to get involved in the fisticuffs (copious, to the point half the oil company’s profits must have gone on replacement furniture). However, it’s rare for this to last more than a few seconds, and it seems she’s as fragile as cut crystal. Run into a wall? Knocked out. Trip on the carpet? Knocked out. Looked at askance by a bad guy? Probably knocked out. I swear, there are times where it feels like she spends half her screen time unconscious.However, as in Jungle Girl, there are odd moments which rise above, though I’m not sure the aeroplane spin would be a move familiar to white goddesses from the sky.

She does have a regal presence (perhaps due to Sterling’s background as a model, before she turned to acting), even if her throne looks a bit like it was built out of banana boxes. Ms. Tiger is also reasonably brave, always willing to put herself in danger when necessary for her tribe – or, probably more relevantly, necessary for cliff-hanger purposes.  I was less impressed with the plotting, especially the shenanigans of the villains, which seem almost random, rather than well-conceived to their particular aims. For instance, they’re supposed to kill Rita, then get someone else to impersonate her and claim the inheritance. If that’s the best plan you can come up with… you need to bring in some kind of outside consultant. Again, it feels as if everything they do is for cliff-hanger purposes, not as a means to an end. It gets kinda repetitive after a while.

Still, this was a big hit, and led to Republic fast-tracking another vehicle for Sterling. Only a few months after this was released, production started on Zorro’s Black Whip, in which she would get to be more of a proper lead.

Dir: Spencer Bennet and Wallace Grissell
Star: Linda Stirling, Allan Lane, Duncan Renaldo, George J. Lewis
Subsequently re-released in 1951 as Perils of the Darkest Jungle, and in a cut-down TV version in 1966 as Jungle Gold.

Shut In

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★★
“Woman who talks through doors”

After Run Hide Fight, this is another film produced by political outlet The Daily Wire. This inevitably leads to reviews which are as much concerned with the leanings of the production company, which is annoying, albeit understandable. If the Huffington Post got into the movie business, I imagine the same thing would happen. But it also ignores the fact that you would have to look hard here, to find much indication of a political agenda. A considerably bigger issue is that it’s quite dull, with a heroine who spends much of the time living up to her apparent Native American name given above. Certainly, I hoped for more from this synopsis: “When a young mother is barricaded inside a pantry by her violent ex-boyfriend, she must use ingenuity to protect her two small children from escalating danger while finding an escape.”

The mom in question is Jessica (Qualley, the daughter of Andie McDowell), a recovering drug addict who is preparing to get out of town, and start a new life with adorable little moppet, Lainey (VanDette), and her toddler, Mason. Unfortunately, her plans are derailed by a troublesome door, and the arrival of her skeevy ex-boyfriend and father of Lainey, Rob (Horowitz), who is still very much under the control of his meth habit. Dodgier still is his skeevier pal, Sammy (Gallo, making his return to features after close to a decade), who has a very poor reputation, to put it mildly. An argument with Rob leads to Jessica being nailed inside the pantry, with her two children outside, Rob storming off promising to return when she has learned her lesson. Worse follows, with Sammy sleazing his way back. As a storm erupts, he poses an unspeakable threat to Lainey, who now also has to take care of Mason, under Jessica’s increasingly fraught instruction.

Especially in the first half, this means a lot of Jessica shouting through a door, and Lainey whining “I am hungry/am scared/need the toilet” in repetitive order. It gets old very quickly. Even though Gallo certainly makes for a slimy villain, the reality is that the film has locked itself in a confined space, along with its lead character. Neither of them are going anywhere for about the first hour. Caruso attempts to ramp up the tension by having everything threatening happen out of sight of both his heroine and the audience, but I never felt particularly concerned. This is a case where it felt like we needed a more direct approach to the threat. There’s also a weird religious subtext, which is neither prominent enough to be significant or objectionable. So I was left wondering what the point of it was.

Things do pick up, at least somewhat, for the final reel, where things are allowed out of the closet. Had the script worked on that basis from the start, this might have had a chance. Instead, it’s the very definition of “too little, too late.”

Dir: D.J. Caruso
Star: Rainey Qualley, Jake Horowitz, Luciana VanDette, Vincent Gallo

Aileen Wuornos: American Boogeywoman

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★★
“Till death do she part.”

Almost twenty years after her execution, Aileen Wuornos remains a cultural icon. A very rare example of a genuine female serial killer, she was killed by lethal injection in 2002, after being convicted of six murders, and confessing to a seventh. The following year, Charlize Theron won an Oscar for her portrayal of Wuornos in Monster, though for me, the film about the killer which is the best, is Nick Broomfield’s, Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer. It certainly deserves to be ranked among my favorite documentaries of all time, along with its post-execution follow-up, Aileen Wuornos: Life and Death of a Serial Killer. Any other version is going to have an uphill struggle in comparison, and this peters out into a trashy, tabloidesque tale, with perilously little connection to reality.

It does have an interesting structure, with a Broomfield stand-in (Sturgeon) interviewing Wuornos, the night before her execution. At this point, the killer is played by Ashley Atwood, and the make-up crew have done an amazing job, along with Atwood’s capturing of her target’s mannerisms. Wuornos then tells the interviewer the story of her short-lived marriage to yacht club president Lewis Fell (Bell), almost five decades her senior. During this, she confesses to several murders, including that of her brother, though the interviewer pulls her up, as her version doesn’t align with the known facts. This “unreliable narrator” element has potential, but is rapidly discarded – a shame, as what the film offers instead is rather pedestrian.

Overall, it’s not much more than a truish-crime take on pot-boilers like the Poison Ivy franchise, in which attractive young gold-diggers embed themselves in families, before revealing their murderous natures. Here, the young Wuornos (List), considerably more attractive than the Death Row version, charms her way into marrying Fell after just a couple of weeks, much to the concern and chagrin of his daughter, Jennifer (Hearst). We’ve already established Wuornos’s violent tendencies, and these escalate until she murders the family lawyer, who threatens to expose what he has uncovered about her past, unless she takes his cash offer and leaves town. It all builds to a late-night confrontation on a boat in a storm, which I’m fairly certain is entirely fictional.

Farrands has carved out a niche for himself in this kind of not-so-true crime movie, his previous subjects having included Ted Bundy, the Manson killings and O.J. Simpson. Maybe they are more than a shallow skim, with stories which are not largely made up, and provide more insight into their subjects. This has little to offer, and doesn’t have the enjoyably salacious elements of Poison Ivy, even when Aileen is consummating her marriage to her husband. If it had told the story of Wuornos’s whole life, especially with more from Atwood, it could have been worthwhile, especially if embracing the uncertainty around her version of events. Instead, the only real positive result was discovering the two Broomfield documentaries are on YouTube. Guess what I’m watching tonight.

Dir: Daniel Farrands
Star: Peyton List, Tobin Bell, Lydia Hearst, Hamish Sturgeon

Jungle Girl

  By

★★½
“You can take the girl out of the jungle…”

This is nominally based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’s 1932 novel of the same name, also known as The Land of Hidden Men. Though there’s very little beyond the title in common. The book was set in Cambodia, and told the story of explorer Gordon King, who finds a civilization which has been lost for a thousand years. This… isn’t. It is instead the story of Nyoka Meredith (Gifford), the daughter of a doctor working with the Masamba tribe in the middle of Africa. “Nyoka” is Swahili for snake, and she seems to spend most of her free time swinging through the forest on vines.

But there’s trouble in paradise, as ne’er-do-wells Slick Latimer (Mohr) and Bradley Meredith (Bardette) show up, hoping to get their hands on the tribe’s stash of diamonds. Their plan involves Dr. Meredith’s twin brother, who just got out of jail. They knock off the doctor, replacing him with his sibling, who feigns “amnesia” to explain the holes in his memory. They also team up with disgruntled witch-doctor Shamba, who was displaced from his tribal position by Western medicine. But Nyoka, along with Jack Stanton (Neal) and Curly Rogers, stand in the way of the villains. Though naturally, they will have narrowly to dodge death – I’m guessing, fourteen times, give or take.

While this was the first serial in the sound era to have a female lead, it’s a little disappointing in this regard. It feels like, over the course of the 15 episodes, Nyoka is more rescued than rescuing, though it does work both ways. In terms of getting into the action, there’s more than one occasion where she just yells “Look out!”, then lets the menfolk get on with punching each other. However, Nyoka still has her moments, such as in Episode 5, where she dives into a gorge and goes hand-to-hand with a crocodile, in order to save a native child. I did appreciate the lack of any romance here. Despite the obvious candidacy of Jack, everyone is too busy narrowly dodging those deaths, I think, for emotional entanglements.

Considerably less progressive is the portrayal of the natives. I guess we should be happy Shamba is at least played by a non-American, Frank Lackteen being Lebanese-born. But the native boy saved from the crocodile? Born in Minnesota (the actor, Tommy Cook, was still active almost eighty years later, playing a senator in an episode of Space Force!). Even aside from the blackface, add patronising lines like “It took a white man to figure it out,” and there are a lot of elements which have not aged well, to put it mildly. Some of the plot threads are also a bit implausible, such as Jack and Curly building an impromptu refinery in the native village, to convert crude oil into airplane fuel. I’m fairly sure it’s not that easy.

One of the stunt co-ordinators on this was the legendary Yakima Canutt. He would go on to choreograph the chariot race in Ben-Hur, though there’s none of his renowned equine stuntwork here. Helen Thurston was the main double for Gifford, though for the scenes where she’s swinging from vine to vine, a male stuntman (David Sharpe) took over. Apparently, Gifford said he looked better in the costume than she did! The series was so successful it became the first Republic serial to be re-released, six years later. A lot of the action footage from this was reworked into 1955’s Panther Girl of the Kongo, but we’ll talk more about that in its own review.

Dir: William Witney and John English
Star: Frances Gifford, Tom Neal, Trevor Bardette, Gerald Mohr

American Zealot

  By

★★★
“Constitutional wrongs.”

As I write this, in December 2021, abortion is again a bit of a hot topic on the American political scene. I am, personally, fairly neutral on the topic. Or, at least, to the point that I’d need to spend the entire review outlining my position. Such nuance tends not to fly on the Internet, where you are either a baby-killer or want to turn America into The Handmaid’s Tale, and moderation is for pussies. On that basis, this film is a bit of a losing proposition, likely destined to satisfy no-one with its relative fair-handedness. These days, it feels like everyone just wants their echo chamber reinforced, rather than challenged, even in the mild way this offers.

It is, certainly, a fringe entry here. Lucy (Mackenzie, the director’s fiancée at the time, now wife) is a girl. Who uses a gun. So there’s that. An action heroine though? Not so much, at least in the genuinely understood definition. Like the topic of abortion, it’s complex. For Lucy is in her final year at a Christian high school, and is shocked to discover that her classmate and best friend, Rachel (Marie), has terminated her pregnancy, in defiance of everything Lucy holds dear. After a moral conundrum (basically, the trolley problem) is posed by a teacher, Lucy decides to save future lives by shooting the doctor (Carey) at the women’s clinic, using a gun belonging to the parents of a classmate, Ralph (Miller). However, does Lucy have the moral fortitude necessary to buttress her actions, or will her qualms about the act lead her down a different path?

Though Mackenzie is too old to make a convincing high-school girl (per the IMDB, she was 28 when this came out), it’s a good performance. You can see the way in which her beliefs lead Lucy down the path, to a point where her actions do not just make sense, they are almost required as a result of those beliefs. Less successful is the “de-programming” element, which largely consists of her teacher blustering, “You can’t sacrifice the minority to save the majority. That’s just not how good society functions.” Well, about that… Seems more like a problem with society, to be honest. It’s an angle which needed more effort applied to it, in order to be convincing.

It is also perhaps a little too understated for its own good. The shooting of the doctor is so low-key, you could blink and miss it, when in many ways, it’s the most important moment in the movie, and should have been weighted in accordance with it. Still, given the budget here was just $11,000, this is no small accomplishment. It looks and sounds like a far bigger budget production, and credit is also due to both of the Mackenzies, for being prepared to take on a challenging topic in a way that tries (largely successfully) to avoid being judgmental. While many independent film-makers go the commercially easy route of genre movies, this is something more challenging. If not without flaws, it should succeed in provoking thought.

Dir: James Mackenzie
Star: Ana Mackenzie, Kendall Miller, Keana Marie, Kristin Carey

Everything Everywhere All at Once

  By

★★★½
“I’d have settled for two of three.”

This has been a long, long time coming. I’ve been a fan of Yeoh since seeing her Hong Kong starring debut, Yes, Madam, which came out all the way back in 1985. Over the years since, her career has had its ups and downs, including complete retirement after her marriage in the late eighties. She returned, and is the only actress to have appeared in two movies rated five stars here: Heroic Trio and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. But her career in Hollywood has been limited to sterling support roles, in both movies and television, encompassing everything from Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies through Star Trek: Discovery to Crazy Rich Asians. A starring role, appropriate to her talents, never seemed to come along. 

Until now. Thirty-seven years after Yes, Madam, and at the age of 59, this film finally puts Yeoh where she deserves to be: front and centre. Yet, perhaps partly due to how long I’ve been waiting for this, I must confess to being a bit disappointed this is not a classic to match the titles listed above. Oh, it certainly has its moments, and Yeoh is as good as expected. However, its 139-minute running-time feels more a curse than a blessing. The concept at its core is almost infinite in scope, and I did feel the movie was trying to include all of it. Less could have been more, with a targetted approach preferable to the relentless overload adopted by the makers, which left me feeling as if I was drinking from a fire-hose.

The multiverses here literally rotate around Evelyn Wang (Yeoh), who runs a laundromat teetering on the edge of failure, with her husband, Waymond (Quan). Their marriage is also failing, her relationship with her daughter, Joy (Hsu) is on rocky ground, and she has to go to an appointment with hard-ass IRS tax auditor Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Curtis). The last is where things kick off, as she is visited by a Waymond from an alternate universe, who tells Evelyn she is the only hope of foiling the evil Jobu Tupaki. That’s an alternate Joy, who has gone insane and created a black hole-like vortex which could destroy all the multiverses. Fortunately, Evelyn’s abject failings at life give her the ability to tap into all the skills and knowledge of the other, better versions of herself.

Like I said: almost infinite in scope. Apparently, co-writer/director Kwan was diagnosed with ADHD during the creative process: to be frank, it shows. While the imagination on view is admirable, the film bounces about between ideas at a ferocious rate, almost regardless of whether they deserve it. We spend an inordinate amount of time in a multiverse where everyone has long, floppy fingers. Yet there is also buttplug-fu, which is an example of the movie going places you’d never have expected could be so entertaining. Or a lengthy, surprisingly engrossing, scene in which two rocks in an otherwise lifeless multiverse have a conversation in captions. Because why not?

To the film’s credit, it never abandons its characters, and that helps keep it grounded. Albeit only just, on occasion the movie standing on its tippy-toes as it tries desperately to avoid being blown away by its own excesses. It’s perhaps telling that, despite all the film’s visual bluster, the most effective moment for me was among the simplest, one character telling another, “In another life, I would’ve been happy just doing laundry and taxes with you.” As such, Yeoh is the story’s heart, and gets to demonstrate her unquestionable acting talent. It has been fascinating to see the development of that, especially considering her lack of not just experience but any formal training. I mean, she first entered the field close to four decades ago, as a former Miss World contestant. How many of them eventually go on to get talk of an Oscar?

It’s as a result of this that I kept watching the film, because I genuinely cared what happened to Evelyn. I wanted to see her figure it all out and make peace with the various forces trying to tear her humdrum life apart. From that angle, it’s close to soap-opera, albeit an unusually effective one. Except, of course, the means by which that peace is potentially achieved, includes multiverse hopping, and fighting an evil version of your own daughter, who wields a gurgling plughole of doom. It’s the overlap between the mundane and bizarre where this finds its own voice. The problem is, it tries too hard to live up to the title. Sure, give us everything, everywhere. I’d just rather it hadn’t done so, all at once.

Yet, similarly, it leaves an awful lot of potential on the table. Why is kung-fu virtually the only talent Evelyn uses? Tap into a universe where she’s a cab driver, and give us an epic car-chase. Or the one where she’s a cat-burglar, for heist purposes. It’s not hard to come up with a dozen such threads. Perhaps the makers were constrained by their budget, a relatively cheap $25 million – less than Crazy Rich Asians. They do an admirable job of squeezing value out of it; again, the sheer pace probably helps, with your brain trying so desperately to keep up, it’s hard-pushed to pay attention to any of the finer details.

But I’m glad I won’t go to my grave with my final paid cinematic experience being Terminator: Dark Fate. [Though the two Neanderthals beside us, talking loudly and checking their phones throughout, really make me think we are done with theatres] The Daniels deserve credit for the obvious invention displayed, and this is the kind of original property I’m happy to support, over another sequel and/or shitty comic adaptation. I also must mention the supporting cast, who are uniformly great, particularly Hsu as both aggravated daughter and multiiverse threatening villainess [There’s also a cameo by another eighties Hong Kong action actress, Michiko Nishiwaki. Maybe she’ll get her own movie next?]. That it stars one of the most under-rated actresses in Hollywood, finally getting the opportunity she deserves, is alone reason enough to see this. Just don’t expect too much.

Dir: Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
Star: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis