Tag: USA

Tigresa

  By

★★½
“Tigresa, tigresa, burning bright…”

tigresaTIL there’s a genre of cinema – indeed, an entire culture – called “Nuyorican”, which is for and by the immigrants from Puerto Rico who now live in and around New York. del Mar made five such movies, mostly in the late sixties, but this 1969 production is the sole action heroine entry. It has a nice sense of local atmosphere, feeling a bit like the early work of Abel Ferrara, but also has it’s moments of berserk insanity, which one can only presume must have made sense at the time.

The heroine is Patricia (Faith), a young woman who is bullied by her schoolmates, and whose life reaches a low after she is assaulted by a bedroom intruder, an attack which also results in the death of her father. But, in a plot twist I defy anyone to see coming, she is left half a million dollars in the last will of a Jewish store-owner for whom she works, and this lets Patricia dye her hair blonde and sets her up as the owner of a nightclub, the ‘Chateau Caribe’. She has also developed a heck of a lot more self-confidence, allowing her to take revenge on her former tormentors, rescue other women from assault and continue looking for the man responsible for her assault and her father’s demise. However, her friend, Maria (Lee), has plans to rob Patricia, with the help of her boyfriend, Jimmy (H) – who, it turns out, was also the rapist. They concoct a scheme for Jimmy to seduce Patricia, providing a distraction which will allow them to break into her safe.

There are also subplots involving the local mafiosi, and a police detective (Crespo), who doggedly attempts to solve the crime by dressing as a transvestite hooker. I’m not quite sure hoe that’s intended to work: it might take a while, to say the very least, and my instinct is it probably says more about the cop’s personal proclivities than anything. Certainly puts a new spin on “to protect and serve”. I liked Faith’s performance, since she genuinely manages to get your sympathy, as the dysfunctional nature of her relationship with her father becomes apparent. He gets drunk because its the only way he says he can see his late wife; so she then gets drunk, wanting to see her dead mother too. This is accompanied by a tinkly, music-box like score that’s quite poignant – well, up until the point that the musical cue gets overused to death, anyway.

After her transition into the tigresa [incidentally, the “La” part of the title seen on the DVD sleeve appears to be entirely the distributor’s addition], she’s still quite a laudable character, taking no shit from the organized crime boss. She refuses to let him use her club as a front for drugs and prostitution, but does partner with him in exchange for his help finding her attacker. Though this just consists of wandering local gyms trying to find someone with the distinctive back scar which was her assailant’s sole distinguishing feature – I’d have expected better from the mob. It’s just a good thing absolutely no-one in these places ever wears a shirt. There’s another bizarre diversion where she meets a gangster, who then goes home to discover his wife in bed with another man. So he drowns her in the bathtub and decapitates her lover, before vanishing from the film entirely.

Yeah, it’s like that: nonsensical in many ways, and obviously cheaply made, with performances all over the place, from the monotone to the hysterical. Yet it’s strangely hypnotic, and you find yourself watching, just to see what will happen next and in what surreal way things will develop. For all its many faults, I can’t say I ever found Tigresa dull. There are GWG films which are so forgettable, I find myself struggling to write 300 words on them. This was certainly not one of those.

Dir: Glauco del Mar
Star: Perla Faith, Johnny H, Cindy Lee, Guillermo Crespo

Amazon Warrior

  By

★★★
“Where’s Lana Clarkson when you need her? Er… Never mind…”

amazon warriorI’ve seen some painfully cheap, poorly made excuses for movies in the post-apocalypse genre in my time, and I was actively braced for another one here. To my pleasant surprise, this didn’t suck. While it certainly delivered on the first half, apparently being made on a budget of spare change off the producer’s bedside table, the film possesses a script into which some work has gone, and decent leading performances, neither being expected. Indeed, this is likely some production values away from being genuinely good, at least in a nostalgic way, harking back to the Argentinian sword ‘n’ sorcery flicks that were churned out for the video market in the mid-eighties.

After the world has gone to hell in a hand-basket [and a bad digital effect], it returns to a tribal state. One of these are the gynocentric Amazons, but their territory is invaded by the marauders, an alliance of tribes under General Steiner (Storti), who perpetually needs to find and takes over new territory, to stop his alliance from splintering. You could read a political subtext into this, although that would likely be giving the script too much credit, I suspect. The only survivor of the slaughter that follows is Tara (Rodgers), who grows up, vowing revenge on Steiner and his crew. We join the vengeance in progress, with Tara now a mercenary who notches her belt for each marauder killed, but has taken time out from her busy revenging to escort two young women from one spot to another, at the request of their father (Sherer). On the way, she meets Clint (Jerman), a like-minded individual, who also had his family killed by Steiner, and so who is on his own personal mission. Or, is he?

It’s this angle which is one of the facets that keeps things interesting, with the storyline taking some unexpected twists and turns, right up to the final scene. Rogers is also effective in a role that could easily have become a collection of cliches, and the supporting performances are appropriate to their tasks. The fight sequences just about pass muster – it helps if you squint at them sideways, rather than giving them your direct attention – and it appears that after civilization has collapsed into anarchy and chaos, what remains will resemble an SCA get-together, albeit with rather more fur bikinis. The audio could also have done with some significant clean-up, not that hearing every word of dialogue is exactly crucial. Still, this comfortably exceeded all expectations, even if those were basically flat-lined going in; it retained my attention and was entertaining throughout. If you can manage your hopes realistically, not anticipating something on a par with the upcoming Mad Max remake, this should do the same for you.

Dir: Dennis Devine
Star: J.J. Rodgers, Jimmy Jerman, Raymond Storti, Bob Sherer

Deliverance Creek

  By

★★★½
“Once in a Lifetime.”

deliveranceThere’s one thing it’s vitally important to understand before watching this. It’s not a stand-alone Western movie. This is what’s called a “backdoor pilot”: something aired as if it were a discrete entity, with the aim of gauging audience reaction to see if it gets picked up. This matters, because it explains the film’s otherwise inexplicable failure to resolve… Well, just about any of the plot threads it constructs during its 90 minutes. If you expect closure, you’re going to be massively disappointed, and there are other aspects which are similarly out of place, such as Skeet Ultich as a local saloon pimp, who serves absolutely no purpose. However, if you take this for what it is – an introduction to the setting, characters and situations – it’s actually more than serviceable, especially since it’s a product of Lifetime, whose output tends to the bland in the same way as vanilla pudding. Thanks largely to Ambrose, this rises above that, and leaves me definitely interested in seeing more.

She plays Belle Barlow, struggling to keep things going on her farm as the Civil War grinds on; her husband was fighting for the Confederates, but has not been heard from in forever. Things aren’t made easier by the neighbours, the Crawfords, who own the local bank and the loan on which Belle is falling behind. Her sister, Hattie, is also involved in helping the underground railroad, the network which smuggled escaped slaves to freedom: Belle has mixed feelings about this, but finds herself hosting one such refugee as her “slave”, Kessie. Meanwhile, a bunch of renegade soldiers, led by Belle’s brother Jasper (Backus), arrive on the farm, intending to knock off a delivery of army gold that will be held temporarily in the bank. Initially opposed to this, Belle’s opinion is changed after a tragic accident, for which she blames the Crawfords, and it turns out Kessie holds the key (literally) to pulling off a successful robbery.

I can’t stress this enough: do not go in, expecting any one of these threads to reach a satisfactory conclusion. It’s the journey which you need to enjoy instead, because the destination is never reached. Fortunately, I was forewarned, and so didn’t suffer the same sense of “Is that it?” as some reviewers. Instead, I was able to appreciate a heroine that’s a good deal more complex than many, and the film also does a good job in portraying the murky nature of the Civil War, where people from the same town (or even family) would sometimes be on different sides. I particularly liked Belle’s little rant in regard to the Crawfords:

I want revenge too. But a bullet for each of them while they sleep is little comfort. I want them to suffer, as I have suffered. I want them to feel what it’s like to have everything they love stripped away from them, piece by piece.

That speech does a really good job of setting up her character’s direction for the rest of the movie, and providing credible motivation. As yet, I haven’t heard of any series following and that’s a pity, because this has potential and I’d like to know where it might have gone. While it’s obviously much easier to write a film where you don’t have to worry about the ending, don’t let the attached name of Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook, and other sappy romances) put you off, for this is better than many TV movies, and definitely better than almost all Lifetime ones.

Dir: Jon Amiel
Star: Lauren Ambrose, Wes Ramsey, Christopher Backus, Riley Smith

Robo-CHIC

  By

★
“Overdrawn at the comedy bank”

robochicDr. Von Colon (King) has completed his life-work, a female robot called Robo-CHIC (Shower and/or Jennifer Daly – we’ll get into the logic of this later), the second half of her name standing for Computerized Humanoid Intelligent Clone. At the same time, nerd terrorist Harry Truman Hodgkins (Ward) has planted a dozen nuclear bombs around the United States, times to go off at regular intervals. While he’s easily arrested, he is busted out during transit to the federal pen, falling under the control of evil overlord Quentin Thalian, who decides that if he holds Hodgkins hostage, he’ll then hold the nation hostage. And his demands won’t stop at getting girls to like him: he’ll also demand the police stand down so he can do whatever he wants. An unguarded remark by the Doctor – more or less along the lines of “somebody needs to do something!” – sets Robo-CHIC in pursuit of Hodgkins, along with TV reporter John Kent (Baker), and they have to resolve all this mess before any more stock footage of nuclear explosions occurs. And I haven’t even mentioned the biker gang, Satan’s Onions. They should be Satan’s Minions, but there was a screw up with their jackets. This does, however, provide a good indication of the extremely low-hanging comedic fruit at which this film aims.

Even given this, it misses more of than it hits, in particular with Dr. Von Colon, who comes over as some bizarre cross between Albert Brooks and Lloyd Kaufman – and not the good aspects of each, either. The only two people who have the right approach are Ward, and Rita Gonstodine as stunningly stupid newscaster and colleague of Kent’s, Bambi Doe. Those offer about the only times you laugh with the film, rather than cringing at it. Then, you have the fact that two entirely different actresses play the heroine during the film. It appears Shower, despite receiving a production credit, bailed on the production midway through shooting, but it was decided to replace her and keep shooting, on the basis the audience either wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t care. The blonde, curly wig worn by both helps, and it’s not as blatant as, say, Bela Lugosi in Plan 9, yet they also decided this was a story which needed to be told at a length of more than 100 minutes. Even if this was now a sunk cost, the correct decision when the lead actress left, would have been to shoot the bare minimum necessary with the replacement to qualify as a feature. Trust me, future generations of viewers would have thanked you.

This is so lacklustre, it barely qualifies as an action film. However, this is also so unfunny, it barely qualifies as a comedy, and long before this reaches its climax, your attention will be sorely taxed, because it feels perilously close to an idea rejected by Troma. And given the films Troma did make the same year this came out (1990) included Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. and A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell, that would set the bar so low, a limbo-dancing midget would encounter problems. Avoid, at all costs.

Dir: Ed Hansen + Jeffrey Mandel
Star: Kathy Shower, Ranson Baker, Kip King, Burt Ward

Perfect: Android Rising

  By

★★
“Future imperfect.”

androidFeeling mostly like a fan-film located somewhere between the universes of Robocop and Terminator, this starts with a military project to create a soldier-android, which goes wrong and ends with the creation killing the wife of its creator, Dr. Peter Hess (Lombardi): it’s then abducted from a storage facility, and vanishes. Fast-forward a few years, and Hess tries again, this time creating Lia (Talbott), in the image of his wife: the military, led by General Arken (Zahn)  remain interested, because America has collapsed into internal strife and civil war, with group of rebels taking on the larger forces of the government. As a test, Lia is sent out to exterminate one of their nests, but with the help of an EMP gun, the rebels’ leader, Kass (Williams) captures the attacker. Can she be re-programmed from a mindless killing machine into something bearing a closer resemblance to a human? And what will Lia do if Kass succeeds?

Having enjoyed Notarile’s previous GWG film, Stand Off, this one was somewhat disappointing. The sci-fi oriented theme attempted here requires a little more in the way of production values, than the urban crime one of Stand Off, even if it’s simply to give the impression Lia is stronger, faster or more powerful than a human. That doesn’t happen, and she simply appears bulletproof, so you wonder why they bother. The other main problem is the dialogue. You know how some films sound like people speaking, and in others, it sound like characters saying lines from a script? This definitely falls in the latter department, with too many lines that seem necessary to the plot, rather than flowing naturally from the situation. The re-wiring of Lia is also way too easy: this is supposed to be bleeding-edge military technology, unseen in the civilian world, but I’ve installed browser plugins with more difficulty. Delete one file, tell her, “Hey, you shouldn’t be killing us,” and she goes, “Well, I’m convinced”, then changes sides. And the Genesis subplot is abandoned entirely in the middle, before showing up again at the very end, for no apparent reason beyond foreshadowing a sequel.

This isn’t to say it’s totally without merits. Talbott is rather better as Lia than as Mrs. Hess, capturing the emotionless android well, and the lack of wire-fu or other artificially-enhanced action sometimes does work for the movie. Notarile captures the blasted post-industrial landscape well, getting good bang for his (relatively few) bucks. But unlike Stand Off, this never escapes its low-budget origins. If you’re into fan films, this is respectable enough, and I remain interested in see further work from his Blinky Productions studio – Assassinista looks particularly interesting. However, you need to set your expectations appropriately, and if you’re looking for something reaching the level of a fully-professional feature, you’re going to be disappointed.

Dir: Chris R. Notarile
Star: Roberto Lombardi, Samantha Talbott, Kasey Williams, Rick Zahn

Cyborg 2

  By

★★★
“The film that launched a thousand lips…”

cyborg2Before there was Salt, before there was Mrs. Smith, before there was even Lara Croft, there was Cash Reese. For Angelina Jolie got her start as a grown-up actress in this 1993 sequel to a Jean-Claude Van Damme action film. She plays a cyborg pumped full of liquid explosives by her creators, Pinwheel Robotics, with the aim of being dispatched to assassinate the board of their Japanese rivals, Kobayashi Electronics. However, Cash is busted out from their complex by employee Colton Ricks (Koteas) along with a mysterious virtual guide known as “Mercy” (Palance). Unwilling to let their investment go, Pinwheel unleash psychotic bounty-hunter, Danny Bench (Drago) to track her down, before the pair can escape to Mombasa, a free zone for independent cyborgs.

“After I saw it, I went home and got sick,” said Jolie. Really? Damn, she must have hurled like Regan MacNeil after watching The Cradle of Life then, for this isn’t all that bad. Sure, it’s cheap, and rips off Blade Runner shamelessly in its visual style. However, it benefits immeasurably from an above average cast, who are all good for their roles. While Jolie’s lack of acting experience is certainly apparent, this doesn’t work against her character, an artificial person who is getting to experience the real world for the first time. Koteas is decent as the rugged hero – even though Cash is obviously stronger, quicker and probably smarter than he is. This does make the film’s finale somewhat dumb: in it, Ricks takes on Bench in a fight to the death, in order to win money for their passage to Mombasa, even though the rest of the film strongly suggests it’s Cash who would have a better chance of beating the hunter.

However, we must not forget the supporting cast who certainly help carry this, in particular Palance. His is mostly a voice performance, his lips appearing on video screens along the way to direct and assist Cash and Ricks, and brings an understated gravitas to proceedings they really don’t deserve. At the other end of the performance spectrum, yet equally fun to watch, is Drago, chewing scenery in memorable fashion. And we mustn’t forget Karen Sheperd as Chen, another hunter trailing Cash, leading to some good action there too. The script was originally intended as a standalone film called Glass Shadow [the name of the bio-explosive], which may explain why there’s no apparent connection to the original movie – as the not necessarily entirely accurate sleeve shown suggests, it was released this way in some territories. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and purely for opening the door to Jon Voight’s little girl, and the much bigger, (mostly) better things to come, definitely is deserving of a certain regard.

Dir: Michael Schroeder
Star: Elias Koteas, Angelina Jolie, Jack Palance, Billy Drago

Cut Off

  By

★★
“Can only dream of being a competent movie.”

cutoffRich-bitch heiress Patricia Burton finds her easy life yanked out from under her, after her millionaire father stops her allowance and requires her to get a job. Rather than anything legal, she opts, along with dumb boyfriend Pauly (Nicholas) and his friendly drug dealer, opt to rob a check-cashing store. That goes badly wrong, and they’re forced to hijack an ambulance which is transporting a stabbing victim to hospital. That doesn’t exactly solve their problems, as the local cops are on their trail after the drug dealer is arrested, whole the patient in the back (Kurupt) also turns out to have gang ties, and so is none too keen to meet the police either. How will Patricia handle the multiple threats?

The makers must have called in a lot of chips here, since the supporting cast is impressive and well above average in terms of star power. Patricia’s parents are portrayed by McDowell and Faye Dunaway, while also in the cast are Anne Archer, James Russo and Clint Howard. However, these fail miserably to cover up the flaws in the script, which is full of massive plot-holes. Apparently, when you hijack a vehicle in Tucson (hey, local interest to this Arizona resident!), for the first few hours, the authorities will only send a single patrol car, containing two vanilla officers, to keep an eye on you. And if you’re in a siege situation, you can just wander out the back, because the police won’t bother to cover it. I will admit, these inconsistencies are addressed with a final twist. On the other hand, that simply replaces it with a far worse, cop-out, which I’ll avoid spoiling, except to say I was warned against it by my English teacher when I was seven. This is, however, probably the only GWG film which explicitly nods for inspiration to The Wizard of Oz.

It’s a difficult role for Brooks, especially given her lack of experience, because the film starts off by making Patricia borderline repellent, and she has to spend the rest of the film pulling the audience back from this initial dislike. There are a number of flashbacks, which explore her relationship with her father, and make it clear that her brattishness and delinquency are largely cries for his attention. However, this may be a case of ‘too little, too late,’ and while you can admire the strength of personality she is shown as developing over the course of the proceedings depicted here, it’s a quality which also has its impact undercut by the final twist. The influence of Quentin Tarantino is clearly present in an excess of mind-numbingly meaningless dialogue, and if I remain a sucker for an action heroine with a British accent, that isn’t enough to salvage what is closer to an ill-conceived mess.

Dir: Gino Cabanas + Dick Fisher
Star: Amanda Brooks, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Kurupt, Malcolm McDowell

88

  By

★★★
“Not entirely forgettable.”

88More by accident than design, this is the third film I’ve seen in the past couple of weeks which features amnesia as a plot-device. It’s a bit of a scripting minefield, since it’s easy to become a crutch for the writer, with the amnesia being “cured” at the moments necessary to the plot. You need a lot of discipline to avoid this: Memento is likely the platinum standard for this being done well, and to be honest, most other efforts come up short in comparison. This is no different, with an absolutely key piece of data being withheld from the audience [and the lead character] until dramatically convenient at the end – though it doesn’t exactly take Nostradamus to figure it out in advance. Gwen (Isabelle) find herself eating in a diner, with absolutely no memory of how she got there. Checking her purse, she finds a gun, and accidentally shoots a waitress. Fleeing the scene, she also discovers a key to a motel room, #88. Going there, she finds more questions than answers. What was her relationship to local mobster, Cyrus (Lloyd)? Did her really kill her boyfriend, Aster? Who is Ty (Doiron), the cheerful killer who is helping her? And why does everyone keep acting as if she’s a stone-cold killer?

This opens with a caption explaining the concept of the “fugue state”, which Wikipedia tells me is “characterized by reversible amnesia for personal identity, including the memories, personality, and other identifying characteristics of individuality… and is sometimes accompanied by the establishment of a new identity.” I note that the section there on this disorder in popular culture, is rather longer than the list of real-life incidents, since it’s pretty much an open invitation to scriptwriters, to sculpt as they see fit. The key question is how interesting the story would be without the conceit. Here, I give it a qualified passing grade, since both Gwen and Cyrus are interesting characters, the former particularly when she’s in bad-girl mode, and just not giving  damn [the same can be said about Isabelle’s most well-known performance, as a teenage werewolf in the wonderful Ginger Snaps] It’s also fun to see Lloyd, better known for his mad scientist in Back to the Future, playing a sleazy scumball, But I can’t help thinking the fractured timeline doesn’t actually add all that much to proceedings, and is only made necessary by that single point of data mentioned above. It could have been played as a straightforward revenge flick, without the psychological trappings, and been little or no less effective.

The style here is a mix of the effective and the irritating. The soundtrack seems particularly intrusive, as if the director simply set her iTunes collection on random and let it play, and the shootout at the bowling alley ends with the characters skipping merrily away across the lanes, which as someone who has tried to walk down one knows, is wildly unrealistic [a over-energetic bowl had led to my wedding ring following the ball, and I can state confidently, it’s the only location where the physics of a Tom and Jerry cartoon is actually a good approximation to real life!] But even if you work out where this is going, the underlying story is a solid one, and Isabelle’s performance does a good enough job of compelling attention, to make for a passable 90 minutes of entertainment.

Dir: April Mullen
Star: Katharine Isabelle, Christopher Lloyd, Tim Doiron, Michael Ironside

Wild

  By

wild★★★
“Wild at heart”

While certainly not your typical action-heroine film, it’s hard to argue this falls outside our broader remit: movies about strong, independent women who strive physically to overcome the odds, even if in this case their opponent is more internal than anything. Witherspoon and Dern both find themselves nominated for Oscars thanks to their performances here, and it’s the kind of obvious portrayals that the Academy loves. A woman, Cheryl (Witherspoon) spirals down into a morass of depression, casual sex and drug addiction after losing her mother (Dern) to cancer, only to find herself while walking eleven hundred miles up the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave up to Washington State.

It’s a deliberately fractured narrative, beginning with Cheryl’s removal of a damaged toenail, then dropping back in time to her arrival at the motel from where she’ll start her hike, with here aim being “to walk myself back to the woman my mother thought I was.” Immediately, her unsuitability for the trek is apparent, as she can barely lift her pack, and she manages only a couple of miles the first day and contemplates quitting. She perseveres, and as she marches on, remembers at semi-random, incidents from her life that brought Cheryl to this point: her divorce, shared moments with her mother before the diagnosis, etc.

I found the literal journey more interesting than the (likely too obvious) metaphorical one, perhaps because it has some personal resonance. Back at college, I set off on an overly-ambitious month-long solo trek around Europe, having never been outside the country before. I almost packed it in the first night, when my carefully-planned accommodation in Denmark fell through. But I persevered too, and it turned into one of the best months of my life, so I can relate to the transforming power of independent travel. On the way, she meets people good and bad, has experiences both miserable and ecstatic, and achieves a goal that’s much about the journey as the final destination. It’s beautifully shot, capturing the loneliness and splendour of the great outdoors, though never shies away from the negative aspects: I’m not sure if I finished the film with a desire to hike the PCT, or having crossed it firmly off my bucket list. Likely the latter, for we do not camp well. Our idea of “roughing it” involves a hotel which does not offer free wi-fi, so the prospect of having to filter water from a fly-blown puddle to survive is kinda deal-breaking.

There’s no doubt Witherspoon goes for it, putting everything out there on a project which appears to have been a labour of love for the actress. But I found Cheryl a largely unlikeable character, one whose problems are almost entirely of her own making, which left me struggling to empathize. Admittedly, I’ve been fortunate enough never to have to endure the loss of a loved one, with all my immediate relations still very much alive, so I can only imagine the impact it might have. This is where that fractured narrative perhaps works against the film, since there’s little sense of X leading to Y. One second, Cheryl is negotiating a tricky stretch of terrain; the next, she’s shooting up heroin in a dingy motel room. Obviously, it’s all connected, and I certainly respect the performance, yet this never fully engaged me as I hoped.

Dir: Jean-Marc Vallée
Star: Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Thomas Sadoski, Keene McRae

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1

  By

★★★
“The beginning of the end.”

mockingjay1The makers go the Twilight and Harry Potter route here, dividing up the final entry of the series into two parts – presumably so as to maximize revenue. I can’t say how justifiable that is, or how this entry relates to its inspiration, because unlike the other two films. I have not yet read the last book. With this being a “half adaptation”, I didn’t want to end up getting ahead of myself, though I’ll probably end up doing so between now and when the second half comes out, in November. What was notable – and somewhat disappointing – is how passive heroine Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) had become. After spending the first two movies taking the battle to those who sought to repress her, albeit more by accident after her sister was unfortunately selected for the Hunger Games, we left her having escaped the system’s clutches and flying to the legendary District 13, not quite as destroyed as she thought. Here, we discover they had retreated underground, and were now continuing to foment revolt against Panem. They want Katniss to be the figurehead for their rebellion.

And that’s the key word here: figurehead. Outside of a morale-boosting trip to a hospital, which goes horribly wrong, she doesn’t do much [as an aside, I was left wondering if those running the rebels knew or expected the trip’s repercussions, but did so deliberately that they could exploit the consequences for their own ends]. For instance, there’s a rescue mission sent into the capital to retrieve Peeta (Hutcherson), but Katniss stays at home – instead, it’s led by the other corner of that love triangle, Gale (Hemsworth). About the only sequence with any protracted sense of danger is when she’s running around the rebels’ complex, trying to find her little sister and their cat, before a government bombing raid reduces everything outside the deepest levels to rubble. While somewhat reminiscent of Ripley going off to look for Newt at the end of Aliens, it really isn’t anything like a substitute for the linear and more effective approach taken in the first two films. As noted, however, it’s probably unfair to judge this as a standalone film, and it should really be seen as the first half of a single, four-hour epic. I trust the remainder will take care of the action shortcomings here.

What works well, is the increasing awareness of, for want of a better phrase, shit getting real. This isn’t a televised spectacle any more, whose impact is limited to those about whom Katniss cares: it’s much broader in scope, and you can see the weight hanging on our heroine’s shoulders. Credit also due here to Julianne Moore as President of the rebels, Alma Coin, who has an over-arching world view that Katniss can’t quite see initially. But by the end of it, you get the sense she has become rather more pragmatic and realistic about the situation. Later this year, we’ll see how the whole saga wraps up, and I’m just hoping it’s more Lord of the Rings than The Matrix in terms of series finales. It has already reconstructed the landscape for action heroines, showing they can hold their own and appeal to a broad audience. But we still need the last installment to be a rousing success, both financially and critically, to keep pushing the genre forward into 2016, and beyond.

Dir: Francis Lawrence
Star: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson