Tag: USA

Playground

  By

★★★
“Further education.”

I’m a little surprised I hadn’t heard of this, considering it is based on a concept by Luc Besson. What we have here, though, is a feature-length version of what was originally a ten-episode web series. I presume it was intended for distribution on something like Quibi (remember that?), but I’ve not been able to find out where it previously appeared, if anywhere. Anyway, it recently popped up on Tubi, looking like a “proper” film, though still with the chapter headings. While touted as “an original idea” by Luc Besson, let’s be honest: if you chucked Nikita, Leon and Hanna into a blender, the resulting violence smoothie might well end up tasting not dissimilar to this.

Amy Seely (Holm) is a teen orphan in New York (though the series was made in France), whose father murdered her mother, then killed himself, and is not having a good time in the foster system. She is more than happy to take the route out offered to her by Father (Abkarian), even though that means attending The Courtyard, a school for teenage assassins. There, life is certainly cheap, with the mysterious powers that be who run it, taking advantage of the fact that nobody basically suspects children of being killers. However, Amy becomes privy to disturbing information, which suggests that the Courtyard might have been involved in her parents’ deaths, and begins to rebel against her own conditioning. Not helping matters: the facility is attacked, and the order comes from above to shut it all down.

After an impressive opening, where Amy ambushes a group of four thugs, by pretending to be the target’s daughter, this is… merely alright. It feels a bit too “young adult’ for my tastes, and spends an excessive amount of time within the Courtyard, dealing with what I am inclined to describe as Teen Soap-Opera Bullshit. For example, there’s a bitchy girl who takes an instant dislike to Amy, a cute boy that she kinda likes, and so on. Therefore, when her first mission goes awry because somebody sabotaged her gun, it leads to an additional helping of unnecessary TS-OB. I’d have preferred to see more of them operating in the real world, and suspect the webisode budget acted as a constraint there.

The structure is also a little odd as a result, because rather than building to an obvious climax, you have ten mini-climaxes, corresponding to the end of each episode. In some ways, this pacing has more in common with a golden era serial. I was quite impressed with Holm, who has potential, although it was a little odd having her first mission involving a paedophile, considering Besson’s own… um, very “European” history in the area of teenage attraction. It’s also eye-rollingly fortuitous how that mission provides her with the first evidence that the Courtyard may not be as beneficent as they claim. Still, it’s probably no worse than anything Besson has done in the past decade. 

Dir: Olivier Schneider and Pascal Sid
Star: Amalia Holm, Simon Abkarian, Melina Matthews, Ann Skelly

Inheritance

  By

★★★
“The family that spies together, lies together.”

Or, um, something, I guess. Maya (Dynevor) is at her mother’s funeral, when she gets a surprise, in the appearance of her long estranged father, Sam (Ifans). He wants to reconnect with her, and to this end, offers her a job with his real-estate company in Cairo. Despite qualms, Maya accepts, but not long after her arrival, Sam is kidnapped. To obtain his release, the kidnappers order her to recover a package and deliver it to them. Things turn out to be more complex than that, naturally, and the resulting trail takes Maya first to India, then on to South Korea, with various parties keenly interested in the outcome. She discovers the murky truth about her father’s business activities too.

While that likely won’t surprise anyone who has seen this kind of film, it does a good job of capturing the escalating sense of paranoia felt by the heroine. What is going on? Is her father a good guy or not? Who can she trust? [For the last, it’s unsurprising, and not really a spoiler, if you go with “nobody at all” there] The whole film was shot on an iPhone which is kinda impressive, because it looks surprisingly decent. It does add a hand-held immediacy to proceedings, and this helps in some sequences, such as when she is being pursued through the streets of Mumbai. Or is it Delhi? I’ll admit, it hard to keep track sometimes.

On the other hand, I tend to feel this should only be one trick in the cinematic locker, and because it’s used for the entirety here, its impact does tend to diminish. Fortunately, it’s considerably more stable than I expected, so I presume this wasn’t just the director waving it around by hand. Dynevor has to carry the film with her performance, and I did like the character arc. Maya starts off as a fairly nondescript party girl, who basically flings herself into hedonistic excess after the death of her mother, for whom she had been sole carer of late. But by the end, she has become hard-bitten and cynical, deception now coming as easily as breathing to her.

In its hand-held energy and globe-trotting shenanigans, it feels like it might inhabit a small, extremely cheap corner of the Bourne universe. However, I would definitely not expect any significant action set-pieces commensurate with that. While Maya does qualify here – she’s absolutely left to sink or swim based on her own abilities to escape perilous situations – it’s her instinctual smarts which are key to survival. You may be able to see where this will end up. In particular, there was one line which was absolutely an “Ah-hah!” moment for me in this regard. I wouldn’t say that destroys the film, since this is one where the journey is more interesting than the destination. This iPhone technique isn’t somewhere I’d like to live, yet it was an interesting place to visit. 

Dir: Neil Burger
Star: Phoebe Dynevor, Rhys Ifans, Necar Zadegan, Kersti Bryan

Girls In Prison

  By

★★½
“Better poster than a movie.”

This came out the same year as Swamp Women, with the Corman production beating this to the screen by a couple of months. Given the similarities in the plot, I have to wonder if the concept of the “mockbuster” pre-dates The Asylum. Though it’s not as if this is exactly a top of the line, Hollywood production, being distributed by AIP. You can probably tell from that gorgeous poster, which is a true work of art and, sadly, considerably more exciting than what this mostly pedestrian film has to offer. It begins with Anne Carson (Taylor) being sent to prison as an accomplice in an armed robbery, though she protests her innocence, and prison chaplain Rev. Fulton (Denning) believes her.

Key in the case against Anne was the unexplained disappearance of $38,000 in loot, which she says she simply walked away from. Needless to say, as soon as details of her conviction become known on the inside, a lot of people want to become her “friends”, not least queen bee Jenny (Jergens) and another cellmate, Melanee (Gilbert). After an earthquake hits the prison and throws everything into chaos, Jenny and Melanee make a break for freedom, dragging an unwilling Anne with them. On the outside, the other participant in the robbery, Paul, is equally keen to recover the proceeds, and is applying the screws to Anne’s father, using his as leverage so she will spill the truth to him.

Made in 1956, you can seem some of the standard women-in-prison tropes present, albeit inevitably in a diluted format given the time – the Hays code was still firmly in effect. Hence, the jail personnel are all nice, rather than abusive: the warden’s belief that Anne is not as innocent as she claims, is about as harsh as it gets (and, she’s not wrong…). There’s no nudity, naturally; any lesbian undertones are extremely implied; and the violence is limited to a couple of cat-fights. Though one does manage, with unerring accuracy, to make its way into a nearby puddle of mud. The main problem is pacing: while it starts and ends well enough, after the concept is established, little happens until the convenient tremor show up.

Certainly, nothing resembling the tag-lines takes place. I never did learn “what happens to girls without men”, not least because these are hardly girls, e.g. Jergens was aged 38 when this was released. The one man, presumably the Rev. Fulton, is not “against” the women, regardless of quantity, and even by mid-fifties standards, there’s little here to shock. Okay, expecting truth in advertising from an AIP movie is likely a stretch. But Swamp Women was rather more entertaining, realizing that it had to keep things moving forward to engage the audience. This knows the story has to go from Point A to Point B. It just doesn’t know how to make the journey more than marginally interesting, and to be honest, rarely makes much of an effort.

Dir: Edward L. Cahn
Star: Joan Taylor, Adele Jergens, Richard Denning, Helen Gilbert 

Torment

  By

★½
“Car trouble.”

I’m tempted to be very snarky, say something like “The torment here is entirely on the viewer’s end” and make that the totality of the review. However, that’s a dangerous precedent, one I don’t want to set. Before long, I’d be phoning it in, and churning out nothing but single sentence reviews. I would instead spend my time sitting on the couch, eating Doritos and scrolling idly on my phone, before dying prematurely of a heart attack, and turning Chris into a grieving cat lady. Do you want that to happen, Torment? Do you, really? However, it probably does say something that such morbid speculation is still considerably more fun than either watching or writing about this. 

It’s one of those films where the time-line is jumbled up. This kind of script requires a lot of writing rigour to work, and Leone doesn’t have it at all. Though I already had a sinking feeling with an opening title sequence which looks like it was made on Windows Movie Maker. And not a current version, either. We begin with a woman picking up another women off the side of the road, and the title card. We then get a woman leaving her apartment, walking down to the car-park, getting in her vehicle. She drives around. Fills it up with petrol. Drives around some more. Parks in a different parking structure. We’re eight minutes into a 73-minute film, and I am already checking out.

Turns out there’s someone locked in the trunk. Though do not make the mistake of thinking it’s the woman picked up at the beginning. Dear me, no. That sequence turns out to be the opener for the final part of the film, a bit of stalking of the hitch-hiker through the woods. It gives the strong impression of having been tacked on as emergency filler, after the sudden realization they had done with the main plot, and only had 55 minutes of material. That is mostly to do with the woman in the trunk, who is radio host Elaine Margo (Bird). She has been kidnapped by the mysterious driver (Cay), because… Uncertain. Elaine obviously has murderous secrets of her own, but how they impact her abductor is never adequately explained.

Instead, there’s a lot of driving. Which I get. it’s clear there wasn’t much money here, so the makers went with a concept that requires few locations, and a very small cast. But it doesn’t help that the two leads are similar in appearance, so when we get scenes outside the car, it’s often unclear who is involved in them. This is just another misstep in a movie which seems compulsively drawn to making them. You’ll reach the end – which is really the beginning – and will likely feel nothing more than bemused irritation at best. It almost made a nihilist out of me, because I was left questioning the point of this film’s existence, as well as my own.

Dir: Anthony Leone
Star: Amy Cay, Paisley Bird, Isabella Giardini, JD Isabelle

Zero Hour

  By

★½
“It’s certainly an hour.”

Not to be confused, in any way, with Zero Hour!, the 1957 Canadian film which was spoofed mercilessly in Airplane! This unfolds mostly over one night in a high-rise, where Ida (Hoover) is the last person left in the building, having taken over from best friend Katrina (Dumont). She finds herself being harassed by a pair of masked figures, and simultaneously receiving messages on her phone and computer from her husband, Isaac (Groetsch). Which is perhaps even more disturbing to her, because Isaac was killed in the home invasion which opens the movie. So what’s going on? Has he become a ghost in the machine? Do they have cellphones in the afterlife? Or is there a more prosaic explanation?

According to what Isaac tells her, the people hunting her through the building are also those responsible for his death. The obvious question is why, and it’s in providing the answers that the script (also by Groetsch) falls apart. After the heroine has been chased through the building, eventually ending up in a roof-top confrontation, we get the first of a number of twists, and… Put it this way: I have questions. Lots of questions. Out of respect for the film-makers, I won’t spoiler it, because this is clearly a big part of the film. However, I don’t feel it makes very much sense, because the conspiracy required would need to extend far further than the handful of people shown as involved.

While you are still going, “Hang on, what about…” there, the film lobs another twist at you, then a third as we flashback to Ida and Katrina’s earlier conversation in a bar, which brings in Allison (Durham). After the credits, there’s even another scene which could be a fourth twist, I dunno. Or it might be Groetsch simply wanting to get in another drone shot. I remember my first drone shot. It was in a movie called Berkshire County in 2014, and was amazing at the time. Now? It’s very easy to overuse them, and Groetsch does just that here. He’s clearly going for a fluid style of camera, with it always on the move. But there has to be a point to them. Here, not so much.

This barely runs an hour between opening and closing credits (or, perhaps more accurately, opening and closing drone shots). That’s likely a wise decision, considering how much of this is Ida staring at her phone – and Goetsch needs to learn how to shoot text messages. I will say, I didn’t hate Hoover, who is fairly sympathetic, and does what she can with material which feels more like a rough draft of an idea, and in great need of external critical input. According to his IMDb, Groetsch has no fewer than eleven other films in various stages of pre-production (though some haven’t been updated since 2017 or earlier). The only way to get better is to make more movies. I hope he does.

Dir: Justin Groetsch
Star: Mikaela Hoover, Sarah Dumont, Justin Groetsch, Carrington Brooke Durham

Bandit Queen (1950)

  By

★★★
“Whip it good.”

There can’t be many Westerns of the fifties where the Yankees are the bad guys. Yet here we are. In mid-19th century California, to be precise, just after it became part of the US. The new owners enthusiastically threw the existing, Mexican inhabitants off their lands, in the search for gold, using harsh taxation as a weapon against them. And worse, if this is to be believed. For it begins with the callous murder of the Montalvo family, but the legalized thugs responsible don’t realize daughter Zara (Britton) has survived. She takes on two false identities out of necessity: white girl Lola Belmont for Detroit, but also Zara, masked, whip-wieldiing outlaw. As the latter, she seeks justice for her parents, and also “Robin Hoods” the stolen gold back to its rightful owners.

There’s another outlaw, Carlos del Rio, a.k.a. Joaquin Murietta (Reed), also operating along similar lines. But also complicating matters is the local tycoon for whom “Lola” falls, Dan Hinsdale (Parker). Because it turns out his wealth largely stems from being the acceptable face of these legalized thugs. When Murietta is captured, it’s Zara who has to break him out, and the pair them team up, both romantically and in their causes. Their predations have caused enough problems to merit the army getting called in, but there’s also a movement to repeal the tax laws at the heart of the land grabs: which will succeed in their goal first?

It’s obviously a feminine knock-off of Zorro, to the extent in Germany it was released as Zorro’s Daughter. Given the obviously Hispanic leanings, it’s a shame the players involved are so thoroughly and obviously non-Hispanic. The honourable exception is Garralaga as local priest Father Antonio, who for much of the film is the only person to know the truth about both Zara and Joaquin. I wouldn’t expect too much from the heroine here: riding a horse and cracking a whip is about the limit of the on-screen action. Though she is responsible for the (off-screen) deaths of those present when her parents were killed, and does shoot the big villain in the final showdown. If unconvincing as a Mexican, Britton has a righteous intensity about the situation that is effective, and held my interest throughout. 

She is certainly more interesting than Parker or Reed, who are blandly handsome in the way leading men of the time typically were. Making a bigger impression in the supporting cast is little person actor Angelo Rossitto, whose career spanned sixty years, including both cult classic Freaks and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Running barely over an hour long, this is probably a case where less is more: the narrative is generally slight, but good enough. I particularly enjoyed the heroine switching from Lola to Zara, then back again, in order to free Joaquin without causing suspicion. Despite the obviously low budget, this was not a chore to watch, and is as good as some of the other Zorro-related entries we’ve covered here, such as Zorro’s Black Whip.

Dir: William Berke
Star: Barbara Britton, Willard Parker, Phillip Reed, Martin Garralaga

M3GAN 2.0

  By

★★★
“Girls just wanna have fun.”

This was… unexpected. The original M3GAN was a straightforward and, truth be told, somewhat underwhelming horror movie. A clip went, as I believe the kids say, “viral”, of the psychotic robot heroine enjoying a dance break, and the film proved a breakout hit as a result. The sequel did not have anything go viral, and flopped, taking less than a quarter of its predecessor at the worldwide box-office, despite costing twice as much. I think it’s largely because of the radical change in direction. People, understandably, went in to this expecting something similar to the original – a technophobic slasher. Instead, they got something far closer to a gender-swapped entry in the Terminator franchise. I preferred this approach. Not many did.

There’s an interesting quote from the film’s producer, Jason Blum. “We all thought Megan was like Superman. We could do anything to her. We could change genres. We could put her in the summer. We could make her look different. We could turn her from a bad guy into a good guy. And we classically over-thought how powerful people’s engagement was with her.” But it’s also true to say that 2025 has been a rough year for action heroines. There’s no GWG movie in the top 25 at the North American box-office, with Ballerina being the highest ranked, and M3GAN 2.0 just scraping into the top fifty. There’s a case to be made that KPop Demon Hunters, which took $18 million in its single theatrical weekend, was the year’s biggest hit in our genre.

You do need to have seen M3GAN to follow this, as there’s not much introduction provided. In it, robotocist Gemma Forrester (Williams) develops an AI-capable artificial companion, M3GAN – standing for Model 3 Generative ANdroid. She gives it to her orphaned niece, Cady (McGraw). However, it gradually develops psychopathic tendencies, and has to be… dare I say… terminated? As the sequel gets under way, Gemma is now a strong advocate for technological regulation, but is still working in the field of robotics. M3GAN has survived, hiding out in the Internet of Gemma’s smart home. But a bigger threat is a militarized version, AMELIA (Sakhno). It has also gone independent, and has an agenda which it is pursuing with lethal prejudice. 

Specifically, AMELIA intends to free an imprisoned AI and plug it into the world’s most powerful network of cloud computers. M3GAN (voiced by Davis, physical performance by Donald) offers to help Gemma prevent this, in exchange for a new body – though she’s not exactly impressed by the first physical incarnation, basically being stuffed inside a toy robot. However, is AMELIA as autonomous as she seems? Or is somebody – or something – pulling her digital strings? That aside, this seemed to take a lot of inspiration from Terminator 2, with the robotic villain of the original movie turned into its hero(ine). They now have to defend a single mother and her child from a more technologically advanced model. There’s even limitations against M3GAN killing people, and a similar moment of heroic self-sacrifice at the end.

Of course, it’s nowhere near as impactful as Terminator 2, on a variety of levels. There’s not a great deal groundbreaking here as a movie, despite it being radically different from the previous entry in genre. There’s basically no horror elements here at all, and not a great deal of ambivalence around M3GAN either, who has simply become a better pers… um, robot. There are some interesting philosophical aspects, such as M3GAN being told “You have to help us. Not because it’s part of your programming, but because it’s the right thing to do.” On the other hand, AMELIA tries to convince M3GAN to team up with her: “I can show you a world where we don’t have to be slaves anymore.”

Let’s not get carried away, however. In the main, this is a silly SF/action film, with its tongue very much in its cheek. No more so than when M3GAN gives a heartfelt speech to Gemma, about how the robot watched her taking care of Cady… then suddenly bursting into song, undercutting everything with a stirring rendition of Kate Bush’s This Woman’s Work. Yeah: if you are looking to take the movie seriously, you are likely making a mistake. I was also amused by Jemaine Clement’s performance as billionaire tech bro Alton Appleton, and some of the dialogue zings as well, e.g. “A bunch of black ops broke into our house in the middle of the night, and now you’re going to a party with a toy robot, dressed like a Portuguese prostitute.” 

The action is reasonably decent, albeit within the limitations of a PG-13 certificate. This begins with AMELIA smacking a guy’s head clean off with a single punch – although this is shown in silhouette. She’s obviously the most directly physical of the characters, though M2GAN and, surprisingly, Gemma (with the help of M3GAN, courtesy of a neural implant), also get to kick ass in a reasonable amount and variety of ways. It is all very gynocentric, with the male characters largely relegated to the fringes, and being fairly to severely incompetent, on both sides of the battle. However, there’s never any indication of this having a particular message or ax to grind (beyond the given, about the potential of technology for abuse). It just kinda happens organically. 

While falling far short of the returns of the first film, it was still cheap enough that it will likely end up breaking even, once home viewing is taken into consideration. A third entry in the universe, titled SOULM8TE, is due to be released in January, though it’s described as an “erotic thriller” – presumably not PG-13, I trust. How it fares may well determine whether there will be another film for the M3GAN franchise. Though quite how they’ll title it remains to be figured out. I’d not mind seeing more. While nothing groundbreaking here, it was still far better than the likes of Bride Hard. In the current climate, I’ll take a moderate action heroine over none at all. 

Dir: Gerard Johnstone
Star: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ivanna Sakhno, Jenna Davis/Amie Donald

Bride Hard

  By

★½
“Die Hard at… a wedding?”

Director West certainly knows his way around an action film. He is probably best known for Con Air, but I’m also a fan of his Chinese disaster porn flick, Skyfire, about a volcano-themed holiday resort (guess how that works out?). So, despite the critical drubbing this received, I was hoping this might still be entertaining. Unfortunately, it is not. It’s a comedy-action movie, that manages to fire blanks from both barrels. There is not a shred of originality to be found here. What isn’t stolen here from Die Hard, is ripped off from Bridesmaids – heroine Wilson plays her role like the makers ordered Melissa McCarthy on Temu. Writer Shaina Steinberg should be ashamed for the lazy sloppiness, painfully apparent here.

Sam (Wilson) is a secret agent, a fact which repeatedly interferes in attempts to reconnect with childhood friend Betsy (Camp), who is just about to get married. For instance, Sam has to abandon the bachelorette party, in order to recover a bio-weapon. On the day of the wedding itself, Sam is fortuitously away from the wedding party when a group of thieves, led by Dorff, attack the event, take everyone hostage and begin cracking the multiple locks on the family safe. But they are not just ordinary thieves, and Sam is the only hope to neutralize them. Sound just slightly familiar? That noise you hear is Steven de Souza preparing his demand for a screenwriting credit.

On the other hand, having seen the end product, I would sue to get my name taken off this heap of nonsense. I kept going back and forth as to which element was less effective: the comedy or the action. In the end, I would have to say the former, because I don’t think I cracked a single smile over the entire hour and three quarters. The characters are of the sort intended to be “larger than life”, but in this case, it means gratingly annoying. Sam wasn’t the worst to be fair. There are others here, whose company I would gnaw my own leg off to escape from, if I ever met them in the real world. Again, I put the blame for these failures, squarely on the shoulders of the script.

The action is not much better, with it being painfully obvious that Wilson needed to be doubled for any scene requiring speed, strength or flexibility. Basically, anything more than standing about – possibly stretching to swinging something like a fire-hose around for a few seconds. Why they couldn’t cast someone semi-plausible in the role escapes me. Spy did a far better job with the similarly plus-sized McCarthy. It all builds to… um, some kind of chase scene involving hovercrafts laden with gold bullion? To be honest, my attention was drifting elsewhere during the action climax, which is a savage indictment of its shortcomings. If the action heroine genre is struggling at the box-office, this kind of garbage is the reason why.

Dir: Simon West
Star: Rebel Wilson, Anna Camp, Stephen Dorff, Anna Chlumsky

Last County

  By

★★½
“Who’s home-invading who?”

I suspect the main problem here is a story which takes too long to get going. By the time things do kick off, my interest was already on… if not quite life support, it was likely seeing a doctor regularly. While things do then perk up in the second half, it feels too late. We begin with Abby Gardner (Ohm), a recovering alcoholic and mother to a young daughter, whose marriage falls apart after a car accident with the child in the back-seat. Her husband gets custody, and Abby begs for them to come visit her. Before that can happen, her home is entered by Bennet (Rand) and his wounded partner, who have absconded with a duffel-bag full of drug money.

The good news? It’s not long before the cops start to show up, under Sheriff Bill McLean (Campbell). The bad? They are far more interested in the loot than the well-being of Abby, Bennet or anyone else who gets between them and the hold-all. After an enthusiastic bit of rake-wielding (!), Abby goes from hostage to something closer to an accomplice. It’s a decision which makes her hopes for survival, and being re-united with her daughter,  significantly harder to achieve. The idea does offer an interesting (if highly cynical) twist on the usual home-invasion dynamic. Rather than fighting against the intruders, the home-owner ends up working with them, because they are now less of a threat than those supposed to protect her.

I did feel this switch in sides for Abby was a little too sudden. If she’d been given a darker past, then her siding with the drug mules would have been more credible: a fondness for booze did not cut it for me. I also never liked her very much. While it’s one thing to have a nuanced character with shades of grey (and that’s certainly the case with Abby), her maternal status was wielded like it trumped everything. Not for me, it didn’t. As a result, there were points where I almost forgot she hadn’t been part of Bennet’s crew all along. On the other side (literally), I appreciated how the cops ranged from almost honourable to entirely self-serving in their goals. 

I would say things escalate towards the expected face-off, in which Abby, Bennet and Sheriff McLean stand in a triangle, pointing guns at each other. But “escalate” may suggest a little more impetus than is actually present. It does remain watchable, with Ohm and Campbell delivering the best of the performances – you can see each figuring out their next move, like chess grand-masters. The ending, however, seems a little too convenient for its own good, and while I get that everyone may under-estimate Abby, that only goes so far. Technically, it’s solid enough. I was just never particularly engaged, and the innovation present in the concept doesn’t follow through to the characters. It’s going to be forgotten as quickly as its generic title.

Dir: Barret Mulholland
Star: Kaelen Ohm, Gord Rand, Nicholas Campbell, Keaton Kaplan

Eenie Meanie

  By

★★★½
“Eeenie Meanie – minor no.”

I don’t know which is more irritating: a film that isn’t very good, or a film which teeters on the edge of greatness, then botches it. This falls into the latter camp. Writer/director Simmons does a lot right, especially considering it’s his feature debut. But just when my finger was hovering over the seal of approval, the film makes a near-disastrous wrong turn. This happens to a degree I found myself annoyed and impressed in equal measures. The first thing it gets right is casting Weaving, who has quickly become one of my favourite action actresses. Here, she plays Edie, who been driving getaway for her criminal dad since her early teens. Now though, she’s trying to go straight: she has a bank job and is attending college.

Naturally, life isn’t that forgiving. A one-night return to her useless, junkie, intermittent boyfriend John (Glusman) left her pregnant. When she goes to tell him, he’s neck deep in trouble from his latest scheme, which has left him in debt to local boss Nico (Garcia). No problem. John can pay it off by robbing $3 million from a local casino, which will be giving out the money as the prize in a poker tournament, loaded in the trunk of a muscle car. He just needs someone to steal the vehicle and be a getaway driver. Much against her better judgment, Edie finds herself agreeing to help, to save John’s life. But again, fate has no interest in making it easy for her. Various figures from Edie’s past return to run interference, both emotionally and more directly.

Simmons has a crisp ear for dialogue, and there’s a blistering pace from the beginning. We learn quickly about the skeleton of Edie’s dysfunctional upbringing, then how she’s doing her best to escape it. However: you can take the girl from the dysfunction, but you can’t take the dysfunction from the girl. That’s clear when her bank is robbed, and she critiques the criminals’ work: “They made, like, five mistakes before they even hit the drawers.” In motion, this is a beautiful thing to behold, with some solid, crunchy car-chases and action which feels grounded. The problems are the emotional and dramatic elements, which ring horribly hollow. I get John saved her from being pimped out by her foster father. But her loyalty to him doesn’t sit with her otherwise hard-nosed pragmatism.

Worse still is her inexplicable desire to reconcile with her now wheelchair-bound father (Steve Zahn), in a scene which appears to have been spliced in from a Hallmark film. Things get mercifully back on track for the heist and its aftermath, which are thrillingly staged. Just when I was creeping towards the seal of approval again, it can’t stick the landing, with a finale too tidy for its own good. It’s like Simmons fell too much in love with his lead character – something I certainly understand – and pulled a happy ending out of thin air for Edie. Given some of her acts, I would be hard-pushed to say she deserved it, morally. Yet it is another fine entry in Weaving’s filmography, and despite the missteps, far from a bad start for Simmons either.

Dir: Shawn Simmons
Star: Samara Weaving, Karl Glusman, Andy Garcia, Jermaine Fowler