Tag: USA

Vengeance Turns

  By

★★
“Turnabout’s fair play.”

The film opens with a caption, “The first feature film from Robert Christopher Smith,” and it’s largely superfluous. Because, to be brutally honest, you can tell. It’s filled with choices which virtually scream, movie-making debut. That it’s a passion project for Smith is clear, and the persistence with which he pursued his vision is clear, and highly laudable. Perseverance can only take you so far, however, and is no substitute for skill and experience. It does feels this was a learning experience on the fly, with a palpable improvement over its course, and Smith left the production a significantly better film-maker than he came in, I suspect. At least it does tell a fairly complete story (glares over at Gold Raiders).

We first meet heroine Rebecca Falcon (Luelmo), arguing with other locals outside the town store in the 1876 Western town where she lives with her husband and two children. The topic is the local Kumeyaay tribe, whom most regard as savages, and blame for a series of recent violent incidents. Rebecca disagrees: for her it’s personal, since she’s one-quarter Kumeyaay herself, though few know it. Her home is the next invaded – not by the natives – with Rebecca left for dead, and her family brutally slaughtered. She is rescued by Simon (Vecchio), who is actually the son of the group’s leader Jefferson Coletrain (Gardner). Nursed back to health by the real Kumeyaay, Rebecca vows to take vengeance on Jefferson and his gang.

This was split into two parts for release, but is very much one film. and at two hours forty minutes in total… Yeah, it’s definitely overlong, especially in the first half. While relatively quick to get to the reason for revenge, proceedings then grind to a complete halt while she’s recuperating with the Kumeyaay. You’re left hanging out with characters sporting names like “Delicate Poison” (Jaffer) and – I wrote this down – “Ghost with Silent Knives Protects”. The former is played by a Pakistani-Norwegian actress with a clipped British accent. The weird thing is, Jaffer seems a good performer, just wholly inappropriate for this role, to the point I genuinely felt embarrassed for her.

If you have the mental stamina to reach Volume Two, things do improve. Rebecca’s vengeance proves somewhat unfocused initially, though like other threads e.g. her being part-Kumeyaay, nothing much comes of this. It’s clear she is basically deranged, though this is depicted mostly in Luelmo speaking… slowly… and… slurrrrrring her words. Still, things actually happen, and the arrival of batshit crazy Chinese cannibal lady Gloria (Catherine Bo-Eun Song) adds entertainment value. There are technical issues, not least with the audio: one scene on horseback is almost inaudible, between the hooves and the wind. However, there are also scenes that work, such as the brutal interrogation of a prisoner by Gloria and Delicate Poison, or our heroine’s confrontation with an old “friend”. Copious room for improvement, to be sure, yet not without merit. Everyone has to start somewhere.

Dir: Robert Christopher Smith
Star: Paola Luelmo, Azeem Vecchio, Jamald Gardner, Kelsey Jaffer

Supergirl, on its 40th anniversary

  By

★★★
“Revisiting the original Maid of Might”

Before Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow arrives on our screens in 2026, starring Milly Alcock from House of the Dragon in the title role, I thought, it would be a good time to revisit the original Supergirl movie, which was released in the United States forty years ago this month. So what is Supergirl? A campy trash/cult classic? A fine, forgotten superhero movie? A guilty pleasure? A lame forgettable flop of the 80s? Hopefully, after reading this review you’ll be able to make your own, well-informed judgment!

Originally, the character of Superman’s cousin was supposed to appear in Superman III, but after a new script was written, the character was moved to her own movie. Alexander and Ilya Salkind, the producers who had given Superman life on the big screen in form of Christopher Reeve, probably thought they might score as big with Supergirl as they had with the first two Superman movies. Unfortunately, when Superman III came out in 1983 it was heavily criticized, and fell well below financial expectations, which caused Warner Brothers to give distribution rights to the Salkinds, who would sell it to Tri-Star.

It may not have been the best move, for it seems the film got little marketing (though did get a royal premiere in Britain), and was also sharply edited down. It’s a bit difficult to be certain how many versions of the film exist, but three are well-known: 1) The theatrical cut that runs a bit over 90 minutes. 2) The international version, also called “European theatrical”, though that did not come out in German cinemas. 3) The so-called director’s cut of 138 minutes, which is overly long, especially by 80’s standards. Nowadays, you’re happy when a big movie doesn’t exceed the 2-½ hour mark. How times have changed!

The box-office also ended far, far below expectations and resulted in the Salkinds selling their rights to make any further Superman-related movies. Which is… kind of regrettable, I think, because this movie is not half as bad as it is usually made out to be. I’ll go into its obvious flaws later. But what is the story about? Introducing Supergirl to the film world was not so easy. After all, we had all seen Superman’s home world Krypton blow up in the original movie. But the film actually followed, without really explaining how scientists did it, the original comics which introduced Supergirl in 1959. Argo City, home of Kara Zor-El’s (Slater), was saved from the catastrophe that befell Krypton and in the film survived in “inner space”, whatever that might be – today we would probably call this another dimension.

Here, Kara lives with her parents, other families and scientist mentor Zaltar (Peter O’Toole). The parents are played by Mia Farrow and Simon Ward in cameos; obviously the producers wanted to give Supergirl the same support, with famous or well-known actors, as they did for the Man of Steel. After losing the Omegahedron, the power source of the city, Kara follows it via unexplained Kryptonian technology to our Earth to bring it back. Unfortunately, evil wanna-be witch, quack doctor and esoteric Selena (Dunaway) has taken it with plans to conquer the world. Their mutual interest in young gardener Ethan (Bochner) and Kara’s need to conceal her real identity, going by the alias of school girl Linda Lee, complicate matters further.

From that summary, you should be clued in to what the movie is. It’s a loose repackaging of the Superman story; though some aspects are different here, at the core it’s the same. Maybe this was one of the reasons why the movie failed to attract audiences. But the story and some characters chosen for it come with problems too. While Superman could still be seen as science fiction, Supergirl seems more like a fantasy movie. While Clark Kent’s continuous attempts to dupe Lois that he is Superman were used in the original two movies to wonderfully hilarious effect, this aspect doesn’t appear here at all.

Then again, how could it? Supergirl has just arrived on Earth, differently to Superman. Christopher Reeve’s Superman was originally heavily involved in the script but Reeve politely declined; maybe he didn’t want to play second fiddle to someone else? So the script was rewritten, with Superman on a “special mission” in another galaxy. Neither her room mate – who happens to be the younger sister of Lois Lane – nor Jimmy Olsen, the only character from the Superman movies to appear, know her, so there can be no “A-ha!” moment. Nor can love-struck gardener Ethan see that the brunette school girl he was just talking to, is also the blonde girl in the super-dress. Whoever wrote this should get a “D-” in basic logic. At least Superman changed totally in behavior and wore glasses when he played Clark Kent. Here, there is no believable excuse for it.

The film has other problems. One is a lot of unnecessary characters that are neither needed, nor add anything essential to the plot. It’s especially apparent with actors probably cast for their comedic talents. Peter Cook, often well-matched with Dudley Moore on stage and film, might be a good comedian but is totally unfunny here. The same goes for Brenda Vaccaro as Dunaway’s sidekick: compare her to Ned Beatty’s Otis, alongside Gene Hackman, and you’ll see how ineffective Vaccaro’s role is here. I’ve already mentioned Lucy Lane and Jimmy Olsen. Why are they here? What do they add to the story? Do they do anything that has an impact?

Trimming should have happened in the writing phase. If they would have eliminated, reduced or at least given these characters something of meaning to do in the plot, the movie might have been much better. Additionally, there is a side-plot of female bullies picking on Kara, seeming only to serve the purpose of showing that Kara has the same heat-vision as her cousin. Other strange decisions were made by the screenwriter, and slid past the producer and director. When Kara lands on Earth the first people she meets are two drunk, wannabe rapists who try to molest her. Hurray for feminism, I guess, as Kara shows them that a Kryptonian teen can defend herself. It’s an ill-fitting scene in a movie apparently intended to be family- and kid-friendly. Wonder Woman 1984 also had such a stupid, distracting scene. So either there is something I  don’t understand, or film directors and screenwriters have not learned much over the four decades between the movies!

Also, the “love story” between Ethan and Kara is essentially a “non-love story”. His love for her is induced by Selena’s magical potion, who wants the man for herself. If the first person Ethan saw after waking up had been a cow, would he have fallen in love with a cow? The length of the movie was already criticized when it originally came out, even though it was shorter at the time. And the version that I knew from seeing the movie in the late eighties on German TV was even shorter. You can hardly expect a movie, of whatever quality, that has been edited down so much to still make much sense at all.

It’s no surprise O’Toole and Dunaway were nominated for Razzie Awards, though it’s not all their fault. Obviously, director Jeannot Szwarc had no problem with Dunaway going as campy as she wanted. It’s a pity because her role could have been convincing or even menacing, played straight. There is no doubt Dunaway, with a fine reputation of playing difficult characters, could have given a good, villainous performance. Heck, she already played a first class femme fatale in the Musketeer movies for the Salkinds in the 70’s. Of course when you go camp, you can hardly blame Dunaway for trying to repeat what Gene Hackman successfully did as Lex Luthor, But you have to be really funny, something that worked for the Hackman-Beatty pairing but not here.

O’Toole has only two significant scenes in the movie, at the beginning and the end. His performance in the first seems a bit uninspired and odd. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was drunk while doing it; the actor was famous for this, like Richard Burton or Oliver Reed. The second, where Zaltar seems to have given up all hope and sacrifices himself for Kara, is quite well done and touching. Although a strange decision was made in the German dubbing, where someone came up with the idea of casting the German voice of Clint Eastwood for him!

For all the negatives I have listed, there are quite a few positives, shining bright in this movie pursued by bad luck. Helen Slater probably gave the performance of her career. She is really, really good playing the female version of the true-blue hero, as well as the innocent-looking big-eyed teenager in Argo City, and her cute school girl role of Linda Lee. Slater was even nominated for a Saturn Award for her performance. If the film had been better – or at least financially successful – maybe she could have had a similar career to the one Christopher Reeve enjoyed due to his Superman role? Alas, it wasn’t to be…

The special effects of the film may look dated today – and they are. But considering all of it was before the advent of CGI, digital and computer effects, it’s impressive what could be achieved by in-camera-tricks, visual illusions, miniature and composite effects. Sure, a lot of effects could be simply generated on the computer today. But even a cardboard photo cut-out of Supergirl, drawn quickly out of the water, is astonishingly effective and can only be recognized for what it is today, due to DVDs and Blu-Rays. How do you show Supergirl almost torn to pieces by a monster in 1984? At that time all the filmmakers had were some distortion effects by a changed perspective – nevertheless, it works, and there are some very nice effects.

As kitschy as it seems, I personally loved the aerial ballet of Supergirl when she arrives. For the first time too, we get to see the Phantom Zone: it’s constantly mentioned in the Superman movies, but here it is actually a set in Britain’s Pinewood studios (used for many Bond movies), and must have been one helluva work to create. Selena’s traps and the shaking, fiery ground are impressive, as are her manipulations in the abandoned event park. My favourite effect might be Kara fighting an invisible monster which you only can recognize by its impact on the environment, e.g. giant footprints on the ground, breaking fences, etc. This seems directly inspired by the classic “ID” monster from Forbidden Planet.

All in all, the effects were as good as possible at the time, so shouldn’t be judged by today’s standards. The film in addition boasts great production design, luscious exterior shots, a well-timed tractor-on-the-loose action sequence, appropriate and good-looking costumes (especially for Dunaway), all of which are undeniable pluses. Then there is the – as always – great Jerry Goldsmith score which makes up more than half of the movie’s atmosphere. It’s especially impressive, considering I could hardly imagine anyone else being able to step in the shoes of John Williams, who scored the original Superman score.

Supergirl is still not a great comic book superhero movie. Nor a bad one: more somewhat mediocre, but kind of sympathetic. As mentioned, the movie had bad luck, being both too late and too early. Too late, as it seems audiences had started to grow tired of the whole Superman circus: within six years people had been exposed to four Superman-related movies. The “All-American” hero had become kind of passé with Schwarzenegger, Stallone and co. introducing the new, harder and gritty anti-hero who would dominate the screens for the next decade. Alternatively, you had more goofy heroes like Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop or the Ghostbusters. A simple, straightforward hero didn’t fit into this time anymore.

But the movie might have been too early as well. At that time, audiences were simply not interested in female comic book heroes as flops like Red Sonja, Sheena and Brenda Starr proved again and again. Even a further attempt in the early 2000s with Elektra, Catwoman and the like failed. It’s only recently that movies like Black Widow, Captain Marvel or Wonder Woman are really scoring big at the box-office. This was also before the “girl power” era. In the late 90s and early 2000s, with TV shows like Charmed, Buffy, Xena, Kim Possible and movies like The Craft, Mean Girls or Legally Blonde, a movie about a school girl fighting an evil, powerful witch could have scored big – but well… not in the 80s!

So… maybe “Supergirl” was just a bit ahead of its time. Judge for yourself.  What about my interest in the movie? Well, I saw photos of it in film magazines, years after it was in cinemas. At that time the movie had not been shown on TV and my family had no VCR yet. All I had was some photos and my imagination to tell me what the movie might be about. For me the film belongs in the category of enjoyable fantasy movies of the 1980s together with fare like The Neverending Story or Highlander. That photo of young Helen Slater with her clenched fist, flying with the glowing sun in the background, still hangs on my wall! So I may be a bit biased concerning the film. But aren’t we all regarding our favourites?

Dir: Jeannot Szwarc
Star: Helen Slater, Faye Dunaway, Hart Bochner, Peter Cook

Don’t Move

  By

★★★
“Suicide hotline stalking”

A somewhat gimmicky but adequately competent Netflix Original, I guess the moral here is that being abducted and stalked by a serial killer is the best kind of therapy. We meet Iris (Asbille) in the remote woods where her young son previously died. She never recovered, and is now standing on edge of a cliff, contemplating suicide. She’s interrupted by the arrival of a stranger, Richard (Wittrock), who talks her down. However, it turns out he has an ulterior motive: he wants to be the one to kill Iris. He tazes her, and while subsequently managing to escape, she has also been injected with a muscle relaxant that in twenty minutes will render her unable to move. 

Obviously, this makes for a perilous situation, as the drug slowly works its way through her system, eventually shutting down almost all conscious muscle movements. As such, it is going to be an “action” heroine film more in spirit than literally. For the vast majority of the film, Iris is unable to do very much more except blink enthusiastically. Naturally, both coming and going, the chemicals operate in exactly the way necessary to facilitate the script, and ratchet up the tension. Need to alert a suspicious police officer (Francis) to her presence? She will be able to move her hand just enough for that purpose, albeit very slowly. However, the script is assembled well enough, these moments feel organic enough to pass muster.

I think the best sequence has her washing up on the land of the reclusive Bill (Treadwell), an old geezer who is initially able to help. However, he is interrupted by the arrival of Richard, supposedly looking for his mentally disturbed wife. Bill can sense this isn’t exactly the truth, but Richard spins a plausible web of lies, all while Iris is inches away, unable to do anything. This generates quite the nervous energy, before it’s suddenly released. Indeed, Bill is an interesting person, albeit by the low standards of “minor characters in serial killer films”. Richard, too, has some surprises in his back-story. An unexpected phone call upends his carefully prepared plans, requiring a quick disposal of Iris, which leads to the movie’s climax. 

This is where it does topple over in terms of credibility, with more than one, “Wait, what?” moment. Apparently, a dunk in cold water is all it takes to reverse any pharmaceutical effects. Didn’t do much earlier, but I’ll say no more. While it’s always an issue if a film can’t stick the landing, Asbille delivers a good enough portrayal to keep me interested. That’s especially so, given the physical limitations imposed on her by the script; there are points where her eyes are the entire performance. Like most Netflix Originals, this isn’t likely to leave a lasting impression. However, unlike some, it did not leave me feeling my time had been wasted. Producer Sam Raimi, his name larger on the poster than the stars or directors, shouldn’t be embarrassed by this.

Dir: Brian Netto, Adam Schindler
Star: Kelsey Asbille, Finn Wittrock, Moray Treadwell, Daniel Francis

Canary Black

  By

★★★
“Gone, and soon forgotten.”

Both director Morel and star Beckinsale should be familiar names around here. The former directed Peppermint, the latter for the Underworld franchise. Indeed, I was a little surprised this wasn’t directed by Mr. Kate Beckinsale, Len Wiseman. But I guess he was too busy getting booted off Ballerina. Morel, who also directed Taken, is a perfectly adequate stand-in. This is more or less what I expected. A forgettable yet adequately amusing spy caper, with Beckinsale kicking moderate ass in pursuit of… [/checks notes] a computer virus which could potentially wipe out the whole Internet in selected countries. As I write this, two weeks before the US presidential election, nuking the Internet seems like a pretty good idea to me.

She plays Canary Black no, actually, Avery Graves, a globetrotting spy whose husband David (Friend) has no idea of her day job. If that sounds a tad familiar, I refer you to Role Play, which had a similar concept. Then, David gets kidnapped and used as leverage against Avery. She is ordered to liberate the “Canary Black” file of blackmail data, and hand it to David’s abductors, or he will pay the price. Needless to say, her boss Jarvis Hedlund (Stevenson, in one of his last roles) isn’t happy about his best agent going rogue. However, in one of a series of twists – some expected, some not – the file ends up containing the virus discussed above, and Avery must stop it from being released by the bad guys.

This all just about skates by, mostly on the strength of Beckinsale’s charisma. She keeps things watchable, and helps paper over a number of elements that would otherwise have you going, “Hang on a minute…” For instance, when Avery is breaking into a server farm, she flies in on a drone, which for some reason, is lit up like Times Square. The facility also lets you slap in a USB drive without authorization. My entry-level work PC won’t let me do that, and I don’t believe I have access to world-shattering computer viruses, the last time I checked. Naturally, it all ends with Avery rushing towards a computer as the upload progress bar crawls… ever… so… slowly towards a hundred percent. 

Morel handles the action with a professional eye, and considering she’s now in her fifties, Beckinsale isn’t bad. Though watching this the night after The Shadow Strays, the fights here seem like the participants are playing patty-cake in comparison. There’s a nice car chase through the streets of [/checks notes] Zagreb, but most of this is simply reasonably-made and thoroughly generic, and the lack of a memorable villain poses a problem. I couldn’t even tell you the main villain’s name, and his motivation appears to be purely mercenary, which is bad form for a bad guy. While I wasn’t bored, this is destined to be forgotten within a few weeks, and vanish into the black hole which is beyond the front page of Amazon Prime.

Dir: Pierre Morel
Star: Kate Beckinsale, Ray Stevenson, Rupert Friend, Jaz Hutchins

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft

  By

★★★
“Croft Original?”

I’m rarely going to find animated action as impressive as “live action”. Something done by an actual human will always seem more real than anything CGI or traditional hand-drawn animation can achieve. That’s true even if the former is arguably as fake, between stunt doubles, green screen and no small amount of CGI itself. Maybe it’s just me. While I have given multiple animated films our Seal of Approval previously, including Mulan, Aeon Flux and Battle Angel, these have been won on the basis of other elements beyond action. A live-action film can get there purely on those merits, despite clear deficiencies elsewhere e.g. In the Line of Duty IV. I don’t think animation can do that.

Hence, I suspect that I would look more kindly on this were it another live adaptation. It wouldn’t have to do much to be an improvement over the Alicia Vikander version, though to be honest, the Angelina Jolie versions were only adequate and borderline bad respectively. Maybe the makers would be better taking a Resident Evil approach, and not worrying about being faithful to the video-games. I did play the original – it remains one of only a few I ever completed – but care not about accuracy. Films and games are different, and need to be. Plot and character matter more on screen, not playability. Here, those elements are alright: they feel functional rather than organically inspired. For instance, it feels less a story than a series of levels.

We begin with a prologue which sees Lara (Atwell) in Chile retrieving a box, alongside her mentor, Conrad Roth. Three years later, Roth is dead and Lara blames herself for that. She’s about to sell off all the family’s treasures, when the Chilean box is stolen by Charles Devereaux (Armitage). Turns out the stone it contains is the first in a series of four, which when combined will destroy the precarious balance under which the world operates. Along with sidekicks Jonah (Baylon) and Zip (Maldonado), Lara criss-crosses the globe, from China to Turkey to France, and back to China, trying to stop Devereaux from completing the set and unleashing the power they contain.

From subsequent reading, I suspect you probably need to have played the specific games on which this is based (I believe it’s the “Survivor timeline”), to understand the significant of the apparent trauma through which the character has gone. None of this is depicted in the film, so I had no clue why I should be bothered by the off-screen death of Conrad, someone I’d only known for about five minutes. Also, Lara seems a bit gay here. Quite why a video-game character should be given specific sexuality escapes me. Shame they didn’t have the courage of their apparent convictions, to do more than hint heavily. To quote Yoda, “Do. Or do not.” Give us hot cartoon babes making out, or don’t bother bringing it up.

Of course, an old white guy is the villain, in comparison to the young, ethnically diverse group in Lara’s camp, and there are a couple of other jabs along those lines. But in general, it’s light enough with the messaging. The eight episodes probably total just under three hours, by the time you trim off the credits, so not all that much more than The Cradle of Life‘s 117-minute running time. You could probably get through it in a single sitting: it’s not difficult viewing. The animation is mid-tier, but does the job, and I liked the performance of Atwell (well-known here for her depiction of Agent Carter), who comes over as a serious, almost solemn, heroine – yet one with whom it’s still easy to empathize. Her supporting cast though, feel superfluous and don’t make much impression.

Within the limitation of animated action discussed above, what you get here isn’t bad. There are some good set pieces, and a couple of occasions where I almost forgot I wasn’t watching actual people, and held my breath. Key word there though, is “almost”. There’s an overall air of competence surrounding the production, and no obvious elements at which I can point a critical finger. Yet there is also not much to cause me to recommend this actively to anyone, who isn’t already a fan of the games. A second series hasn’t been confirmed: there are reports it received a two-season order out of the box, although it doesn’t appear to have received the critical acclaim given to Arcane. But if Lara does return, she probably falls into the “If I’ve nothing else to do” category.

[Jim]

Looking at some of the harsh reviews for the show, I get the impression a lot of it comes from, “I wanted the show to be this but it was that.” It’s a bit unfair because as a show, the series is good, standard adventure animation. Those who expected the show to be somewhat like Arcane: League of Legends, for example, were setting expectations very high. It’s true, that there are “two Laras”. The original by Eidos was invented in 1996, and the “modernized version” came out with the new games of Crystal Dynamics in 2013, and influenced the 2018 reboot movie, with Alicia Vikander. The original Lara could be described as a rich but goodhearted sociopath: watch the Angelina Jolie version, she really got it. Lara was a female Indiana Jones, living in a Bruce Wayne-like mansion, while the modern version seemed inspired by the Lisbeth Salander character from the Millennium Trilogy.

She instead became a guilt-stricken trauma survivor: I remember a trailer for one of the modern games, where she was talking with a psychiatrist and her whole body shook while remembering her previous experiences. The relentless adventurer who just enjoyed the journey seems to be out; the pain-stricken and emotive heroine is in. Still, she does all the action you would expect from her. This Lara just comes with emotional baggage; she has to learn to value her friends and understand that people are more important than the things she hunts. In a way it’s like modern and old James Bond. Once upon a time, he was a superhero we all loved and adored. Today, he has been cut down in size to make the character “more human”. For Lara, it makes her more relatable, for sure – but arguably less interesting. I’m not sure it’s the best way to present the character.

Filmed versions of Lara always seem to have her suffering from the loss of her father. This is the third such, after the Jolie and Vikander live-action versions. It should be noted this was not originally part of her imagined biography, which has changed several times over the years. Originally, she fell out with her family, when she decided to make adventure her lifestyle, earning her living as a travel writer, instead of marrying the Earl her parents had chosen for her. Her big defining moment was surviving alone for two weeks in the Himalayas after a plane accident. It was only after the Jolie films and the reboot games, it became that she had lost both parents.

Here, Hayley Atwell gives our favourite tomb raider a very good voice, and you wonder why film makers seem so resistant to casting a British actress as real-life Lara, with the previous actresses being American and Swedish. After all, Lady Lara Croft is as quintessential British as Sherlock Holmes, James Bond or Emma Peel. [Jim: be careful what you wish for, Dieter. You now have to deal with Sophie Turner as Lara in Amazon Prime’s adaptation!] In Charles Devereaux, this show offers Lara a villain who gives her the old, “You and me are actually very much alike” speech, as heard from Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun, to emphasize the darker side of a hero. Nothing new here on this front.

A lot of effort goes into giving Lara a circle of friends, something less a factor in the games. But as every Bond has his Felix Leiter, every Indiana his Sallah, it’s only fair Lara also get her sidekicks! Interestingly, Lara’s arc is as an emotional vulnerable character, who finds her way back to humanity, in contrast to the villain who seems to lose his more and more. But the “coolness” of the original character, as seen in the early games and movies, has perhaps been lost in favour of her becoming a team player. It’s indicated that what prevents Lara from falling to her more negative instincts, is that she has friends who care for her, and help cope with her pain and grief. Devereaux is essentially alone, with no reason for him to overcome his anger, pain and wish for revenge. Richard Armitage gives a believable performance there. Yet she is still constantly trying to save her enemy. I suspect that “old Lara” would just have killed him when he attacked her, of that I’m quite sure.

There are a lot of small nods to previous games and films if you pay attention, beyond Lara doing parkour, reflecting her running and jumping around in the games. Things like a mention of the Trinity group, which appears in the Alicia Vikander movie, or her hallucinations of demons with a striking resemblance to the stone gargoyles that came alive in the first Jolie adventure. However, the show delivers only standard adventure, neither great nor bad; like so many things, it’s in the middle, just average. If you can cope with that, the show should entertain – no less, no more, with animation which similarly is fairly standard but satisfying enough. It provides the action and adventure I would expect from this genre. The one real flaw I see, is that it lacks the kind of humour, fun and levity I’d also deem essential elements of the Tomb Raider franchise. Lighten up a bit next time, Lara.

[Dieter]

Showrunner: Tasha Huo
Star (voice): Hayley Atwell, Earl Baylon, Richard Armitage, Allen Maldonado

Birth of a Savage

  By

★★
“Not really very savage at all”

This is one of those films where the same person wrote, directed and starred in it, and once again, the results illustrate the problems with such an endeavour. Almost any project will benefit from an external perspective which can offer constructive criticism, but when this is removed, the flaws typically end up multiplied. That said, this isn’t terrible. I think Riches the screenwriter comes out best, with a story which bypasses the usual cliches of urban storylines e.g. gangster rising out of the gutter, and does offer some genuine surprises. Director Riches also gets some points for restraint on the soundtrack front; it’s not comprised entirely of her mates rapping badly. 

It’s as an actress that Riches is weakest. The story has her playing Tiana, a woman whose entirely life has been dogged by poor relationships with men, from a distant father through bad boyfriends, to a controlling and eventually abusive husband, who kicks her and young daughter Erica (Session) out on the street. The only thing keeping Tiana sane is the classes she gives at the local martial arts school, owned by Mr. Lewis (Hoo), and she decided to use these skills to make bad men pay for their behaviour. This comes close to home, because she suspects that her sister, Rochelle (Amor), is also in an abusive relationship. These suspicions prove well-founded, though in one of those genuine surprises, not quite as Tiana believes.

The problem is that Tiana is never even slightly convincing as a bad-ass. Her idea of martial-arts training is, I kid you not, jumping jacks, and most of the fights we see are poorly-staged and/or brief, I suspect out of necessity. It’s the kind of film which needs to go a lot harder than the lead actress is capable of. “Concerned mother” is within her acting range; “angel of vengeance” is not. I did appreciate how the script does not attempt to go #AllMen on us, with a couple of sympathetic male characters. Mr. Lewis is probably the most well-developed, though he does fall right into the wheel-house of the “wise Oriental spouting philosophical insights” trope instead. But he does deliver some unexpected truths.

The structure is either clunky or interesting, and I’m not sure which. It begins with her abducting one of her targets, then leaps back decades to tell Tiana’s story from the very beginning. I’m not certain anything useful is gained by this, and by the time it circles back, we’ve largely forgotten why we are supposed to care. The final act is the best in most departments, including Riches apparently doing one actual stunt which genuinely surprised me, and proceedings that capture a down-to-earth tone, missing in dumb plot threads like Mr. Lewis giving the dojo to Tiana. To be brutally honest, I’d not blame the viewer if they’d bailed by that point, having decided Riches needs to focus her talents on one area.

Dir: Jezar Riches
Star: Jezar Riches, Howard Hoo, Cheri Amor, Dalaini Session

 

High Heat

  By

★★★½
“Now we’re cooking.”

Reading other reviews, this seems like an exercise in managing expectations. It is, very much, a tongue-in-cheek entry in the action genre. If you’re expecting something serious or even marginally realistic, I can certainly see how you’d be disappointed. But as a dry satire, I found it worked more often not. It takes place on Opening Night at the Etoile Rouge restaurant, where Ana (Kurylenko) is beavering away as head chef in the kitchen, while husband Ray (Johnson) glad hands things in the front of house. Except, both have a secret. Ray’s is that he ran up over a million dollars in gambling debts to Dom (WWE star Page). His creditor now intends to burn down the restaurant and make Ray collect the insurance. 

Ana is not willing to stand by and watch her life’s work go up in smoke, which is where her secret comes in. For she is a former KGB agent, and is more than capable of taking out the low-level goons Dom initially sends in. That forces the gangster to up his game, and hire some bigger guns (literally, even if the mercs demand a catered lunch should the job takes more than four hours). However, Ana has resources she can call on as well, in the shape of former fellow spy Mimi (Doubleday). Though Mimi may not be entirely pleased to get the call from Ana, given the way they previously parted company. Their unfinished business also needs to be resolved. 

Initially, it’s hard to tell this is parody, but it plays not dissimilar to Cat Run. I had my suspicions from the facile way Ray accepts his wife was a Soviet asset. But the comedic aspects really kick in with the arrival of Mimi, her sniper husband and their daughters who feel like teenage versions of the twins from The Shining. They’re as intent on working through their relationship issues – mostly through bickering – as much as helping Ana. The rest of the supporting cast are along the same lines. Larger than life caricatures, yet ones that are amusing to encounter, such as Gary the masseuse, who would rather be anywhere else than storming a restaurant occupied by a pissed-off chef.

Kurylenko still carries herself very well, both looking the part and cracking heads with some style. It’s mostly firearm action until the end, when there’s an extended brawl that offers a decent payoff. Not all of the humour works: Mimi and her husband are a distinctly mixed bag. The structure is also kinda sloppy. Initially, Dom is set up to be the big bad; by the end, he has become almost an afterthought. Yet it’s still a breezy bit of fun. I could have sworn I’d written about this before: however, I’m damned if I can find my review. I’d definitely heard of it, and can’t figure out why it slipped through the net. Although it may have taken two years, I’m glad to have finally caught up with it.

Dir: Zach Golden
Star: Olga Kurylenko, Don Johnson, Dallas Page, Kaitlin Doubleday

Deep Fear

  By

★★
“Shallow entertainment”

Naomi (Ghenea) is sailing a schooner single-handed in the Caribbean, returning it from Antigua to Grenada so it’ll be ready for a charter customer to take out. Her boyfriend, Jackson (Westwick) has already gone ahead to prepare things there. But a squall diverts Naomi off course, and she then stumbles across boat wreckage to which Maria (Gómez) and Jose (Coppet) are desperately clinging. They tell her there’s still a survivor trapped on the sea bottom, and Naomi dives down to rescue Tomas from his watery tomb. However, on returning to the surface with him, she gets a nasty surprise and finds her work is not over. For the survivors were also transporting 200 kg of cocaine.

Naomi is now key to salvaging it, whether she wants to be or not. Complicating matters is the presence of a large, predatory shark prowling the area, which makes simply going up and down from the sea bottom a perilous endeavour. Especially after one such encounter, where we get the immortal line, “The shark bit into the bags and now the shark is probably high on cocaine.” Sadly, hopes that this was going to become a sequel to Cocaine Bear never materialized [there is a film out there called Cocaine Shark, but it’s so bad, even a hardened connoisseur of badfilm like I, couldn’t get through the trailer] . Instead, there’s just an awful lot of sub-aqua shenanigans, and there’s really only so much SCUBA-ing I can take.

I will say, it all looks lovely. Malta actually stood in for the Caribbean, and if you’re looking for a picturesque tourist destination, combining beautiful scenery with clear water, it seems a good bet. However, as a thriller, it’s distinctly lacking in thrills, whether it’s a shark whose diet seems exclusively to consist of the bad people, through a cast for whom English is not their native tongue in many cases, to a heroine whose lips appear recently to have encountered a swarm of wasps [I note Ghenea’s credit in Zoolaander 2 as “Hot Shepherdess”]. The pacing is also off, especially early, when irrelevancies like Naomi and Jackson renting an apartment show up, serving no apparent purpose except delaying her arrival on the scene.

Gómez, whom you might remember from SexyKiller, is likely the best element the film has to offer, switching from cowering victim to manipulative sociopath. For instance, Maria conceals her nautical skills because if Naomi realizes she’s surplus to requirements after bringing up the coke, she might not be willing to do so. That kind of smarts is something the film needs to have more, ideally replacing the apparently endless amounts of moist mischief. I did like how the shark attacks don’t hold back on the blood, something you don’t see often. However, the creature rarely feels more than a toothy plot-device, thrown into scenes whenever the film-makers run out of other ways to generate tension. And that is far too often, to be honest.

Dir: Marcus Adams
Star: Mãdãlina Ghenea, Ed Westwick, Macarena Gómez, Stany Coppet

Martingale

  By

★★½
“Double or – more likely – nothing.”

It’s probably symptomatic of… something, that the film’s title is never explained. With the main character working in a casino, I presume it’s a reference to the Martingale betting system, where you basically double your bet after every loss. It guarantees a profit – unless you hit such a long losing streak you run out of money entirely. Its relevance here is uncertain, and I doubt most viewers would know what a martingale is either. But then, the film is very good at not explaining stuff. Another example would be, what the scam is supposed to be with Andi (Sullivan) collecting left-behind cash-out casino slips and handing them to a collaborator, Whit (Melikhov). These are for trivial amounts, so why bother?

When not bilking her employer out of pocket change, Andi’s main obsession is investigating the death of her daughter, a year previously. She had overdosed in a drug house, but the police were unable to press charges on anyone. Andi is not put off, and is intent on finding the boy whom she blames for her child’s death, and making him suffer in a similar way. Her investigation proceeds with the increasingly reluctant help of local private eye Levi (Adkins), and brings her up against the powerful and evil Harland (Shockley). Turns out, it was his son Robby who was with Andi’s daughter. Neither parent is prepared to back down and give up on their offspring, so eventually, something will have to give.

The tagline on the release poster was changed to “Revenge is a deadly gamble,” which does at least tie in with the title. But the original one of “Revenge is a real mess,” might be more accurate, with Andi stumbling into increasing trouble, and refusing to accept the very sensible advice, just to let it go. While her persistence is the heroine’s most admirable quality, the film itself is also a real mess in some aspects, with plotting which is often as obtuse as its title. While Harland does project a certain menace as the villain, I found it hard to take anyone seriously as a bad guy, when he looks like James May out of Top Gear. 

Nowhere is the vagueness more apparent than at the end. There’s a knock at the door and… That’s it. We never learn who it is. The makers were clearly going for ambiguity, but if you hated how The Sopranos ended, this might well have you lobbing pets, living-room furniture or small children through your television set. If the script leaves plenty to be desired, at least the performances are decent, and a bit like in Adrenaline, you do get a sense of turning over a societal rock, and seeing the less than pleasant results beneath. As a heroine’s journey, it’s a trip into the underworld, though I would be hard pushed to tell you how Andi was changed by her experience. I certainly know I was not.

Dir: Jeremy Berg
Star: Kelly Sullivan, William Shockley, Jason Adkins, Konstantin Melikhov

Adrenaline

  By

★★
“Taking on organ-ized crime.”

You know you’re in for a shaky experience when the film can’t even spell its own title right. That proves a fairly accurate assessment of the overall experience: while not without its merits, these are outweighed by the negatives in the final analysis. The heroine is Victoria Travers (Payne), an FBI agent on holiday with her family in Romania, when she spots a fugitive from justice, John Slater (Mandylor). She attempts to extract him over the border, to where he can be extradited, but while that takes place, her husband is killed, and her daughter snatched by an organ harvesting ring, run by Ivan Raj (Saini). Suddenly, Slater with his local knowledge, is the only hope of Victoria rescuing her child.

It’s all very basic and quite linear. The plot feels almost like it might have been lifted from a video-game, as the odd couple roam Bucharest, working their way up the criminal organization. with the occasional side quest such as rescuing another kidnapped child, freeing hookers, etc.There’s an NPC, in the form of hacker Tony (Hauck), who provides helpful information whenever Victoria and John appear to be at a dead end. The low-budget nature does work for the film, in that there’s an overall scuzzy feel to proceedings which is appropriate, and the location enhances this. It feels like the kind of place where organ harvesting would take place, though I suspect any such organization would, in reality, be more ruthless – and considerably more competent, to be frank.

Mandylor helps elevate proceedings, as he usually does: nice that his brother, Costas, also appears in this, playing Victoria’s long-suffering boss. Shame the Mandylors don’t get any scenes together. Payne is just about adequate as the relentless mother, and much less convincing as an FBI agent. However, she’s still better than certain members of the supporting cast. Some don’t even appear to have English as a second language, but there are others who can’t lean on that excuse.  The action is intermittent, albeit not badly-staged in general. We could have done with more, perhaps in lieu of the interminable scenes of our heroine and hero driving around town, talking to people on the telephone or, occasionally for variety, driving around town while talking to people on the telephone.

I wobbled back and forth for much of this between 2 and 2½ stars. While low-budget, often obviously, it keeps moving forward, and there’s something to be said for simplicity, rather than burdening the viewer with unnecessary subplots. It’s never boring, over its seventy-five minute duration. But the ending is particularly weak, falling well short of providing Constance with an opportunity to face off against a final boss, something the movie undeniably needs. This passed the time adequately, yet I cannot say I was ever engaged, and there’s not enough to make me look into other work by Cerchi, whose talents appear limited to making sure the image is mostly in focus.

Dir: Massimiliano Cerchi
Star: Constance Payne, Louis Mandylor, Adam Saini, Alexander Hauck