Tag: USA

Monika: A Wrong Way to Die

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★★½
“She spits on your grave.”

monikaI’m still in two minds as to whether the ending here is utter genius, or the worst cop-out since the entire seventh series of Dallas turned out to be a dream. You could argue a case for either, and I could see your point. On the one hand, there’s a case it renders the previous 80 minutes irrelevant. On the other, it’s also a mindbending twist, which deserves points for sheer audacity, and going to that well, not once but twice. However, the main problem is a central character who is a good deal less interesting than the femme fatale after whom the film is named.

Reagan (Wiles) heads to Vegas after his pal Double (C. Thomas Howell) sends him a pic of the titular hot chick, and tells him she is keen to hook up. On arrival, Reagan doesn’t find his friend; however, he does find Monika (Vincent), and a night of drinking, dancing and making the double-backed armadillo follows. The next morning, she’s gone, and when Reagan meets Double, he’s in for a shock, because he learns that Monika had, apparently, been gunned down the night before. She was the victim of Terry Joe (Branson), a local drug dealer from whom she had stolen a large sum of money, putting him in deep trouble with his boss, Eli (Howard). So, what the hell is going on here? We know that Reagan claims to have “visions,” which sometimes can be premonitions of future events? Is that what he’s seeing? Or is there an alternative explanation, which may or may not be more prosaic?

This isn’t Monroe’s first stab at the action heroine genre. He also gave us It Waits, which I summed up with the pithy, “It sucks.” This isn’t as bad, so I guess he has made some progress over the intervening seven years. There are some interesting aspects to be found and appreciated here, even things which don’t have any significant impact on the plot. For instance, Eli is actually English, but puts on a faux American accent some of the time. Why? It’s never explained, and that’s half the joy. Monika herself is also a fine creation, battling her way through Terry Joe and his minions , with an eye for style and no real regard for her own personal safety. Either of these would have made for a better focus than Reagan, who is very much reactive, rather than pro-active. By which I mean, he responds to the narrative as it unfolds, rather than driving it, and thus makes for an unsatisfying central character. Reagan seems to exist solely to execute the final twists, serving little or no other purpose, and I also have to agree with other reviewers, who have criticized the dialogue as clumsy and poorly-written. Overall, it just about passes muster as a way to occupy the time, providing you’re in an undemanding mood. But I can’t guarantee you’ll be as tolerant of the ending as I was.

Dir: Steven R. Monroe
Star: Jason Wiles, Cerina Vincent, Jeff Branson, Andrew Howard
a.k.a. MoniKa

Lady Street Fighter

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½
“Legitimately terrible, among the worst films I’ve ever seen.”

lady_street_fighterLet me start off by repeating myself, in case you missed it, because I want to be absolutely clear on these points. This is legitimately terrible. This is among the worst films I’ve ever seen. And I speak as someone with over 25 years of watching really bad films. That half-star is solely for amusement to be gathered from how bad this is, because there are basically no redeeming features here at all, and I speak as someone who will tolerate almost any pile of shit with an action heroine in it. This movie is largely responsible for the addition of the word “almost” to the previous sentence, despite being mercifully brief at a mere 72 minutes in length. The half-star is simply because I did reach the end without gnawing a limb off to escape. I think I deserve some kind of Internet prize for that.

The problems start with the lead actress, Harmon, who is barely intelligible in English, to the extent that in her conversations, you largely have to listen to whoever she’s speaking to, and try to figure out what she said from their responses. Her acting talents are almost non-existent. but are probably better than her martial arts skills, which… just aren’t. Gives mean celery fellatio, however. Trust me, you don’t want to know. She plays Linda Allen, flies into the movie to investigate the death of her sister, apparently killed by the villains because she had a stuffed toy containing incriminating information. Ok, let’s pause here for a disclaimer. Please take the word “apparently” as read for the rest of the review, because this film does such a godawful job of explaining things, I’m not prepared to vouch for the accuracy of any plot point. I’m not even sure from which decade this dates. The IMDb says 1985, but the fashions are pure seventies, and judging by the near-sampling, the soundtrack was written when The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was still in theaters.

Allen is in trouble almost as soon as she arrives, with someone trying to stop her, though their efforts to silence her are woefully inept. There’s FBI agent Rick Pollard (McCrea), who may be undercover, may be crooked, and has thing for our heroine; John Verdes, who runs an escort agency; and Max Diamond, who is into drugs as well as “harder things,” (specifically, has an assassin for hire business), and has a foot fetish which would make Quentin Tarantino snort derisively. He holds parties which are the height of 60’s/70’s/80’s/whatever decadence – except for the guys incessantly chanting “Toga! Toga! Toga!”, who appeared to be on loan from Delta Tau Chi. It’s kinda hypnotic, in a “passing a multiple pile-up” kinda way; you find yourself guiltily wondering what horrors will be present around the next bend. The same goes for most of the film as it evolves, and Linda makes her way up the chain to find the truth about her sister’s death, with the help or otherwise of Pollard – it appears she particularly needs help, when clambering over any barrier above knee-high.

Awful on every conceivable level, I was unsurprised to discover the director was also responsible for one of the worst horror movies of all time, Don’t Go in the Woods and also, The Executioner Part II, which likely rivals this one for title of worst action film of all time. Such a broad scope of diverse talent can only be admired. If you can admire it from a distance, without actually having to watch any of his work, so much the better.

Dir: James Bryan
Star: Renee Harmon, Joel D. McCrea

Joan Of Arc (1948)

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★★
“Joan of Talk”

joanofarcingridThis film’s origins as a stage play are painfully apparent, and you can also see why the distributor’s felt it needed to have 45 minutes cut out before it could be released, as frankly, it’s a bit of a bore. The battle to recapture Orleans is the only action of note here, even though that represented the start of the Maid’s campaign to restore France to its proper ruler (Ferrer), rather than the end. After that, this more or less skips forward to his coronation, then Joan’s capture, spending the rest of the movie – and there’s a lot of it – going through the trial, and the railroading of the heroine into, first throwing herself on the church’s mercy, then recanting her recantation and returning to wearing men’s clothes, thereby sealing her fate. There’s not much here which you won’t have seen before, if you’ve seen any of the other versions of the story, touching the usual bases from Joan’s revelations that she’s going to be the saviour of France, through her trip to see the Dauphin, and so on. It does downplay the “voices” aspect, especially early on, perhaps a wise move since it’s difficult to depict, without making her seem like a religious fruitcake.

The other problem I find is Bergman. It’s not so much her performance here, which is actually very good, and help hold the film up when things get particularly static: she hits her emotional marks well, and the Oscar nomination she received was not undeserved. However, she was solidly into her thirties by this point, probably close to twice the age of the actual Miss of Arc [hat-tip to Bill and Ted!]; there’s only so far make-up can go in taking years off someone. It does seem to have been a character to whom she related: she’s play the role again later, for Roberto Rossellini in Joan at the Stake, when she was nearly forty. The other problem is Bergman’s Scandinavian origins, which poke through her dialogue persistently, also damaging the illusion; it might have been fine in forties Hollywood, where one European accent was considered much the same as another, but now, it sounds too much Joan was a Swedish exchange student or au-pair – especially when she’s wearing her headsquare, and looks ready for a spot of light dusting.

But there’s no denying it looks the part, with production value seeping out of every frame – the Oscars this actually won, for cinematography and costume design, are hard to argue. However, there’s only so far this can take a film, along with Bergman glowing her way through her scenes, in such a way you could probably read a newspaper by her incandescence. That distance is considerably less than 145 minutes, and by the time this is over, you might find yourself guiltily cheering for her arrival at the stake, knowing this means the end is nigh.

Dir: Victor Fleming
Star: Ingrid Bergman, Francis L. Sullivan, José Ferrer, J. Carrol Naish

In the Blood

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★★★
“Definitely not produced in association with the Dominican Republic Tourist Board.”

inthebloodWhat? Gina Carano in another action flick? Why was I not informed of this? After all, Haywire was an undeniably impressive entry in the genre, featuring some of the crunchiest mayhem seen in a while. Throw in that this was directed by Stockwell, who directed the hidden gem, Cat Run, and my interest was thoroughly piqued. Sadly, this isn’t up to the level of either, though certainly has its moments. Carano plays Ava Grant, an ex-junkie who met her other half, Derek (Gigandet) at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, but whose murky past is clearly far beyond that of her husband. Ava’s father brought her up tough, and able to protect herself, basing her life on mantras such as, “Survivors have scars. Losers have funerals.” We see, in flashback, that she was an apt student.

Meanwhile, in the present day, she and Derek marry, despite the qualms of his father, who thinks she’s only after money, and honeymoon in the Dominican Republic [played by Puerto Rico, which one imagines was happy to portray a rival tourist destination as a crime-infested hellhole], where they’re befriended by a local, Manny (Cordova). He talks them into a zip-lining expedition, despite after a nasty encounter at a nightclub with local gangster, Big Biz (Danny Trejo). An accident results in Derek being whizzed off to hospital, but when Ava gets there, she finds no trace of him can be found, and the local police chief (Guzman) is less than enthusiastic about investigating. What’s a girl to do? Well, if you’re an expertly-trained fighter with a hair-trigger temper and a grudge, you start off at the zip-line facility, and work your way, methodically and with malice aforethought, up the chain from there, until you find the people responsible.

It works, much as Haywire did, because Carano is entirely convincing as someone who could kick your ass, and is just choosing not to. Indeed, the version here is scarier, in that she has less restraint, but shares the same terse effectiveness; the ass-kicking will be swift, merciless, and to the point. The problem here is the script, which has huge gaps in logic. For instance, at one point Ava is in what’s supposed to be an utterly lawless barrio. But five seconds after firing her gun, sirens sound, and she just sits there. A little later, she shows up in the house of the police chief; how does she know where he lives? It just seems very sloppily plotted, and that’s before we get to the reason for the abduction, which severely strains credulity [though won’t be much of a surprise, if you’ve seen another Stockwell film, Turistas, which painted a similarly unflattering portrait of Brazil] It’s still worth seeing, purely for Carano’s magnificent intensity – but almost purely for that. And Danny Trejo, of course!

Dir: John Stockwell
Star: Gina Carano, Cam Gigandet, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Luis Guzman

Switchblade Sisters

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★★★★
“S’funny, no-one ever calls them Switchblade Sisters.”

switchbladeThe briskly-moving piece of seventies trash is much beloved by Quentin Tarantino, and I have to agree with him about its merits. While some elements haven’t stood the test of time well, in other ways, it’s well ahead of its era, and there is, literally, never a dull moment here. Initially, the teenage girl gang are the Dagger Debs, a somewhat subservient bunch to their male counterparts, the Silver Daggers, and their leader, Dominic (Brauner). He’s paired up with the Debs’ #1, Lace (Lee), but has eyes for new girl Maggie (Nail), who is soon impressing Lace with her street smarts and toughness.

That doesn’t sit well with Lace’s lieutenant, Patch (Gayle), so named because she lost an eye in an earlier incident. However, Maggie might just provide the opportunity for which Patch has been waiting. The Daggers have their own issues, having to deal with a new gang muscling in on their turf. An attempted ambush at the roller-rink goes badly wrong, with their intended targets aware of the plans, and the resulting carnage leaves a power vacuum, into which Maggie steps. She expels the men, changes the gang’s name to the Jezebels, and teams up with a revolutionary group, who can provide the weaponry she needs for revenge. Patch, however, tries to convince the gang that it was Maggie who betrayed them, having shot the leader of the enemy gang, the only other person who knows the real identity of the traitor.

Phew. Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff going on here, and in comparison to the basic plotting of many of its exploitation brethren, that’s one of the joys here. It’s also full of memorable characters, with even the minor members of the girl gang given little quirks and foibles, which help turn them from caricatures into people. In many ways, it feels like an American take on the pinky violence movies that Japan was also making in the mid-seventies, but Hill – who deserves a place in action heroine history, for his part in turning Pam Grier into a star – really amps up the female empowerment here. That’s especially true in the second half, after the Debs declare their emancipation: it’s a communal arc of independence, as they discover what they can do, culminating in a running gun-battle through the streets against their enemy. Can’t put it any better than Maggie does at the end, as she’s being led away, drenched in someone else’s blood, by the police [not much of a spoiler: crime never pays in this kind of film, fun though it might certainly be!].

“Let me give you some advice, cop. You can beat us, chain us, lock us up. But we’re gonna be back, understand? And when we do, cop, you better keep your ass off our turf, or we’ll blow it off! Ya dig? We’re Jezebels, cop – remember that name. We’ll be back!”

If that gets your juices flowing, and leaves you keen to slash the seats at the local drive-in [probably not a good idea, since it’s your own car you’ll be carving up], then this slice of prime cheese will be ripe for your platter.

Dir: Jack Hill
Star: Joanne Nail, Robbie Lee, Monica Gayle, Asher Brauner

Breathless

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★★½
“Don’t mess with Texans…”

breathlessThere’s something almost theatrical about this, because virtually the entire film takes place in a single location, the downscale home of Lorna (Gershon), who has just knocked her husband Dale (Kilmer) out with a frying-pan, after discovering he was apparently involved in a bank robbery which netted $100,000. She has now called over her best friend, local barmaid Tiny (Giddish), to try and decide what to do next, with the first step being to find the loot, which Lorna is convinced Dale has hidden somewhere in their home. However, the local sheriff (Liotta) is also sniffing around, being fully aware of Dale’s fondness for armed robbery in his younger days. It’s not long before the dead bodies are piling up, requiring alternative uses to be found for the turkey carver and industrial-strength blender. And that’s just the start of the unpleasantness.

This felt like a chattier version of 2LDK, both in the restricted setting, and its focus on the friendship between two women, which disintegrates over the course of proceedings. There’s also more than a whiff of the Coen Brothers to be found here, in particular Raising Arizona with its dimwitted criminal staggering from one calamity into another. And the opening sequence is shamelessly cribbed from Dexter, cutting together breakfast preparation, in a way that foreshadows the carnage to come. It’s kinda hard to say what Baget is bringing of himself to proceedings. However, Gershon is her usual, impressive self, infusing her character with unspoken backstory, It’s clear the ill-gotten gains represent her last chance to escape the rural hellhole down which her life has spun, and she’ll go to any lengths to make sure she gets her hands on them. Discovering what that means, is the engine that keeps the film going, driven by her performance far more than a script which seems content to shuffle over-familiar elements around, and hope we won’t notice.

With the self-imposed limitations, the movie paints itself into a corner with regard to where it can go. And the result is, when the inevitable twists come along – and, inevitable they are, in the kind of film this sets out to be – they generate not much more than a shrug of indifference. Probably remains worth watching for Gershon’s performance, and some other powerhouses of 90’s cinema trying to recapture their glory days, but only if you can handle a tired and worn-out plot.

Dir: Jesse Baget
Star: Gina Gershon, Kelli Giddish, Val Kilmer, Ray Liotta

Cleopatra 2525: season one

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cleopatra2525a★★★
“After the apocalypse, crop tops will fortunately not be in short supply.”

When Hercules: The Legendary Journeys ended its run in January 2000, producers Renaissance Pictures looked to replace it, but instead of going with another hour-long show to follow the hit Xena, took the unusual step of making two, 30-minute action series. This was a break from normal practice: half-hour comedies were standard, but for shows like these, it was a format which had not been seen since the seventies. The second was Jack of All Trades, starring Bruce Campbell as Jack Stiles, a wisecracking spy for the US at the turn of the 19th century. The first was radically different: a SF saga, set 500+ years into the future, when robots have driven humanity, literally, underground.

Waking up here is Cleopatra (Sky), a 21st-century exotic dancer who got frozen after a boob-job went wrong. She’s rescued by Hel (Torres, who’d go on to cult stardom in Firefly) and Sarge (Pratt), part of a team fighting the robots, which are known as ‘Baileys’, their human-imitating agents called ‘Betrayers,’ and dealing with the anarchic and dangerous life beneath the surface, guided by a voice in Hel’s head, that organizes the anti-Bailey resistance. [In the original pilot, that voice was Lucy Lawless, but she ended up being replaced by Elizabeth Hawthorne] Cleo gradually becomes part of the team, being the viewers’ voice in the dystopia of 26th-century life, while Hel and Sarge represent the brains and brawn of the team.

cleopatra2525cAll three, however, were clearly selected as much for their visual appeal, and the 25th century is not short of beautiful people – it’s also quite warm, going by the ah, flimsy clothing worn by the trio. Cleo and her former profession fit right in. But taking any of this seriously would largely be doing the show a disservice, because it’s clear it doesn’t take itself seriously. There isn’t really time for that kind of thing, with each episode barely 20 minutes, excluding opening (theme song sung by Torres, a funked-up and lyrically altered version of Zager and Evans’ one-hit wonder, In the Year 2525) and closing credits. There isn’t much time for anything, in fact: both characterization and plotting remain about as scanty as the outfits. Hel is thoughtful but can be distant; Sarge likes shooting things first and asking questions later; Cleo, to be honest, is mostly irritating, coming over as both whiny and rather vacuous.

At least in the first series, the storylines don’t focus on the Baileys as much as I remembered. The heroic trio also find themselves taking on evil clown Creegan, against whom Hel has a personal grudge (for good reason), or psychic Raina, who can not just read your mind, but implant suggestions in it. The latter was a personal favourite villainess, played by Danielle Cormack, who is a veteran from Xena, having played Amazon Ephiny there. That’s true for much of the cast: Sky read for the part of Gabrielle, but also ended up playing another character, Amarice, while Pratt was Cyanne, the Queen of the Northern Amazons. Torres was on the show too, though not as an Amazon. Perhaps more confusingly though, she played Cleopatra – the Egyptian version, not the stripper one.  There’s also a considerable overlap of directors who worked on both shows.

Cleopatra is generally more consistent in tone: that may not necessarily be a good thing, as one of the joys of Xena was seeing it swing from mass crucifixions to musical numbers. It does make Cleo less suitable for binge watching, because the episodes exhibit a certain sameness that grows somewhat repetitive after a while: three was about my personal limit, so not much more than an hour, before the titular heroine started to grate on my nerves. But in the show’s defense, it wasn’t created to be viewed like that, and in 20 minute chunks, generally manages to be energetic and action-packed entertainment. Outside of the Raina episodes mentioned earlier, I particularly enjoyed Run Cleo Run, a take on one of my most beloved films, Run Lola Run, that somehow manages to be even more hyperkinetic than the original – though with a less kick-ass soundtrack.

Star: Jennifer Sky, Gina Torres, Victoria Pratt

"In 20 minute chunks, generally manages to be energetic and action-packed entertainment."
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Concrete Blondes

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★★½
“Would it be churlish to point out they’re not real blondes?”

concreteblondesThis is the story of three young women, sharing a house. There’s Kris (Pope), the sensible and apparently staid one, who works as a tax accountant; her flighty girlfriend Tara (Armstrong); and roommate Sammi (Baird). Tara and Sammi stumble into the aftermath of an apparent gangland shootout, exiting with a bag containing over $3 million in cash. The trio have very different ideas about what to do next, but Kris convinces them the best bet immediately, is to stash the bag in a lock-up, secured by three separate padlocks, with each holding one key, until they figure out if anyone is coming after the money. However, Sammi’s inability to keep her mouth shut proves disastrous, as her boyfriend is $50,000 in debt to local mob boss Kostas Jakobatos (Rhys-Davies), and sees an opportunity to clear the balance, and a lot more. Neither of the men have reckoned with Kris who, it turns out, is much more prepared for the situation than her two house-mates.

The approach to the storytelling feels undeniably Tarantinoesque: we’ll see a scene from one perspective, then crank the timeline back, and see what leads up to it, and the aftermath, from another character’s point of view. This is a mixed blessing. For some scenes, you do go “Ah-hah…” as light dawns; for others, it seems like a pointless exercise – compare and contrast Wild Things, where they saved all these aspects up until the very end, to much greater impact. The other problem is, the characters are not very likeable, particularly Tara and Sammi, who alternate between bitchy and whiny, neither of which are endearing. Kris fares much better, yet her back story is rather implausible and underplayed, in the sense that I’d have liked to hear about it in detail. In some ways, it might have make for a more interesting – and certainly, more original – tale than what we actually get, which is instead, largely a recycled selection of elements and styles from other films, such as Shallow Grave.

I should also point out that nothing matching the cover actually occurs, though by now, I’m quite used to films over-selling the “girls with guns” aspect, probably because of how successful it is. While I can’t honestly say I was bored by the proceedings as they unfolded here, my interest generally remained stuck somewhere in second gear. That may be suitable for pottering around town, but falls well short of adequate for hitting the highway and letting her rip.

Dir: Nicholas Kalikow
Star: Carly Pope, Samaire Armstrong, Diora Baird, John Rhys-Davies

Cleaners: season one

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Cleaners★★★★
“Girls, guns and cars. Well, one car, anyway…”

Crackle is the streaming content subsidiary of Sony – it has been around for a while, but we only became aware of it last December, when a new widget popped up on our Apple TV. Think of it as a little like an advert-supported version of Netflix; you can watch for free, whenever you want, but you have to “pay” by sitting through commercials (during which the FF option on your remote is disabled. Bastards!). The library of movies and shows offered is based around that studio’s library, and has a number of entries for action heroine fans. Bonus points, not just for having Run Lola Run, but in the subtitled version; they also have Ultraviolet: Code 044, the anime spin-off from Milla Jovovich’s action-horror film, though that is only available dubbed. We’ll get to that later, I imagine, but the first thing to leap out at us was this original series, about a pair of female assassins. It’s certainly not to be confused with the Samuel L. Jackson movie or Benjamin Brett show.

The two heroines are Veronica (Chriqui) and Roxie (Osment, straying far from her Hannah Montana roots). Both are hit-women, working for “Mother” (Gershon), but that’s about all they have in common: Veronica is serious and almost OCD about her work, while the much younger Roxie is a party animal who shoots first and asks questions… Well, almost never. Mother insists they work together on this case, much to both their chagrin. This particular mission involves the repossession of a classic car from its current thuggish owners. The car is then to be driven to Point B, without stopping for any reason. Naturally, that doesn’t quite work out, and they discover an autistic boy, unconscious in the trunk. Turns out, locked in his brain is the key to $57 million dollars. Mother wants him. His dad, currently serving 20 years, wants him. FBI agent Barnes (Arquette) wants him. His mother (Missi Pyle) wants him. Now, they all have to go through Veronica and Roxie to get him.

Cleaners2There are six episodes, but they’re barely 20 minutes each, discounting adverts, and by the time you remove the credits, and “previously/next time on Cleaners” sections, it’s basically a single feature. Maybe I’ll get round to editing it together in exactly that fashion. There’s a hint of Tarantino in the fast-paced dialogue, as the characters snark back and forth at each other – my favourite line was Roxie’s response, after Veronica had expounded on some topic: “Jesus! What did you have for breakfast? Wikipedia?” Leyden throws on large helpings of style, which is something of an acquired taste: in the first episode, it seemed more of a chore than a pleasure, but as the show wore on, he either restrained himself better or we grew used to it.

The episodic approach doesn’t leave much opportunity to pause for breath, each part having to fit in advancing the storyline, developing the characters and, typically, an action set-piece, involving guns or hand-to-hand combat. For instance, the first episode has Roxie tricking her way into the thugs’ house, and opening the back door so Veronica can join her for a full-out assault. It’s a structure which makes for a copious volume of action overall, and these are both well-shot and assembled – the art of editing fight sequences is something I think is often overlooked. It looks like Chriqui and Osment both handled more of their own work than I’d have expected, though credit should also go to Osment’s stunt double, Mandy Kowalski.

However, it’s the characters which engage the viewer and keep them coming back for more. The two leads have a nice chemistry, bouncing off each other, and there’s a real sense of development as the show progresses. Initially, the pairing feels like Grumpy Cat being forced to socialize with an energetic puppy, but they both come to appreciate the other’s strengths, and the marginal tolerance becomes more based on respect. It’s a similar dynamic to the one we saw in Violet & Daisy, almost a big/little sister relationship. I do have some doubts about the plotting, which has too many convenient coincidences to be convincing. For instance, I sense that any such series of events with the massive body-count depicted here, would get a lot more traction than the solitary FBI agent who appears to be on their trail. However, this never destroys the energetic, pulpy and B-movie feel which permeates proceedings, and by the time the sixth episode finished (in a hail of gunfire, naturally), we were sad to discover, that was all there was.

For now, anyway. Because, the good news is, another series has been commissioned, and started shooting in January, so will hopefully be out later this year. I say “hopefully,” since Sony abruptly shut down Crackle in the United Kingdom at the start of last month. Fingers crossed that this isn’t an indication of wider problems for the company, because this is definitely a show that deserves a wider audience. You can watch the show online at crackle.com; it was apparently also released on DVD through RedBox, but a quick search of Ebay failed to locate a single copy. [Plenty of the Jackson/Brett versions….]

Dir: Paul Leyden
Star: Emmanuelle Chriqui, Emily Osment, David Arquette, Gina Gershon

Cat Run

  By

★★★★
“More than one way to skin a Cat…”

mcteerI watched this purely on the strength of the sleeve, and wasn’t really expecting too much. Early on, that’s pretty much what I got: a mildly entertaining riff on things like Smokin’ Aces [which I never really liked to begin with]. A pair of Americans living in Eastern Europe, Anthony Hester (Mechlowicz) and Julian Simms (McAuley) set up a detective agency, and offer their services to find a missing woman, Catalina Rona (Vega). However, they don’t realize a lot of rather violent people are also after Cat, because she’s in possession of a hard drive containing some very incriminating footage of an American politician, on which everyone wants to get their hands. The trail bips around from the Balkans to Andorra, London, Luxembourg and probably other places I’ve forgotten, with Mechlowicz making little or no impact, and McAuley shamelessly aping the two Chris’s, Rock and Tucker, to rather too much impact.

Then McTeer shows up, and the film becomes unutterably wonderful the rest of the way.

Seriously: I don’t think I can remember a movie dragged up so much by a single performance. She plays Helen Bingham, an uber-polite, ultra-violent assassin who starts off on Cat’s tail, but is the victim of a double-cross herself, which turns out to be a very, very bad move for the perpetrators. While Bingham owes a clear debt to the other Helen – that’d be Mirren, in Red – the script gives this character much more room to blossom. The Oscar-nominated McTeer sinks her teeth into the role with gusto, not least in a hellacious brawl with Karel Roden, but every scene with her is a joy, such as her asking the victims of her work, “Do you need a moment?” before offing them. If you can imagine a cross between Mary Poppins and Anton Chigurh (and I appreciate, that’s not easy!), you’ll be in the right area.

There are other delights, not least Tony Curran as an extremely irritable rival Scottish hitman, who meets an extremely messy end. As a Scot, this kind of heavily stereotyped portrayal can be irritating – I’d happily stone Mike Myers to death for his crimes in the area – but Curran gets it right. [Besides, he’s allowed slack after his portrayal of Van Gogh in one of the most memorable of Doctor Who episodes] But the main improvement is that the focus of the film becomes Bingham, rather than Vanillaman and his annoying sidekick. It just goes to show that, even when a movie is clearly not to be taken seriously, as here, it can still be an enormous help when the characters do.

Dir: John Stockwell
Star: Scott Mechlowicz, Alphonso McAuley, Paz Vega, Janet McTeer