Tag: USA

Femme Fatale

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★★½
“Stylishly-shot but largely uncredible thriller, with a lame twist befitting bad soap-opera.”

Odds are you won’t see the key twist here coming, but on the other hand, it renders the preceding hour almost redundant. This sums up the entire film: as an exercise in technical style, few directors are as good at camerawork as De Palma, yet little here withstands scrutiny, despite an abundance of smoke, mirrors and Romijn-Stamos. She plays Laure, a jewel thief who cons her partners out of $10m in diamonds, then is lucky enough to fall into another identity. Seven years later, they get out of jail, still miffed, and she’s now married to the American ambassador. When paparazzi Bardo (Banderas) exposes her identity, she instigates a complex plan to play her various problems off against each other.

You have to admire De Palma’s guts: large chunks are without dialogue, and what’s spoken is mostly in subtitled French. It’s almost as if he wanted to piss off a typical American audience, not least in a finale so audacious, it almost invites you to come and have a go, if you think you’re hard enough. However, too often the style is pointless – a split-screen, except nothing of significance occurs on either side – and the twist remains a copout on every level.

While at best a borderline entry in the action heroine genre, femme fatales have a long, dishonourable history, going back to before women got to kick butt. Pointedly, the film opens with Laure watching Double Indemnity; both psychologically and mentally, she punts Bardo’s ass into 2008. This isn’t great art, and neither Banderas nor Romijn-Stamos were unjustly overlooked for Oscars, but any film where the heroine says, “You don’t have to lick my ass, just fuck me” has guilty pleasure potential.

Dir: Brian De Palma
Star: Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Antonio Banderas, Peter Coyote, Gregg Henry

The Silencer

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★★½
“Soft gun-porn with hidden depths. Probably too hidden.”

This is an odd little film; heroine Angel (Walden – by some reports now a ski-lift attendant) is an assassin, ordered to take out the leaders of a white slavery ring. After the first killing, she finds solace in the arms of a random guy, and you think you know where this is going: a killing, then a sex scene, for the rest of the movie. Yet this first is also about the last, from then on, the erotic thriller angle is largely ignored, in favour of her former partner George (Mulkey), who takes out any man with whom Angel forms a relationship. It’s almost like she’s working for SD-6.

The film may be all the better for this avoidance of the obvious, and certainly improves as it goes on – though after an opening credit sequence that appears to have been shot directly from the screen of a ZX Spectrum, it could hardly be otherwise. [It’s also the distinctly cheapskate method by which Angel gets her orders] Morton Downey Jr. makes a cameo, and the movie even brushes against self-reference, when one of Angel’s hits takes place on the set of a girls-with-guns movie.

Walden certainly looks the part, and there was one major surprise at the end. But the surreal, dreamy approach for which Goldstein appears to be aiming, comes off more as if the whole cast were dosed up on ketamine. Is there any reason why George is able to follow Angel’s entire life on the screen of an arcade game? It’s a rare genre entry, in that it was directed by a woman; however, it did take her eight years to make another movie. Read into that what you like…

Dir: Amy Goldstein
Star: Lynette Walden, Chris Mulkey, Paul Ganus, Jaime Gomez

Fallen Angel

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★★½
“Workmanlike but largely uninspired serial killer thriller.”

Paul plays Philadelphia detective Laura Underwood; while investigating a string of deaths in which men have fallen from buildings, she discovers they are all her high-school classmates. Someone is clearly delivering payback for old misdemeanours. That someone would be Vicky (Johnson); the film is upfront about this, and indeed, there’s very little that isn’t out in the open. We know the who and the why, which leaves the film short on suspense. Paul is hardly credible playing a cop either, and Hall as her ex-fiance Brian is simply irritating.

Fortunately, the script is better than you might expect, with some thought going into the actual detective work – a phrase used by the killer during one of her taunting calls, eventually leads to the discovery of her identity. Brian gets his just reward, and the obvious cliches we expected, never quite materialised, though it teetered precariously close on occasion. There’s also a nice circularity; the opening scene, in which Underwood disarms an abused wife, who is threatening her husband with a gun, is more significant than you’d think.

The film still plays too much like an ABC movie of the week, or perhaps a discarded pilot, and there’s no reason to feel anything at all for the victims. If this one has a moral, it’s likely less the oft-stated, “Never trust a man after midnight,” and more “Don’t climb over railings to have sex with suspiciously-blonde women on the edge of seven-storey drops.”

Dir: Marc S. Grenier
Star: Alexandra Paul, Vlasta Vrana, Michelle Johnson, Anthony Michael Hall

Freeway

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★★★★
“Little Red Riding Hood: the crack whore years…”

Right from the opening credits, a debt to the Brothers Grimm is clear. In this modern-day version, Red’s stepfather is a sleazebag crackhead, and her mother a street hooker; when both get carted off to jail, Vanessa Lutz (Witherspoon) heads, with basket, up Interstate 5 towards Grandma’s house. Except that on the way, she meets Bob Wolverton (Sutherland), the notorious I-5 killer. And what big teeth he has!

From there, the tale diverges a bit: I don’t remember a prison catfight in the original, and recall Red relying more on a woodsman with a large axe than her own handguns, but it has been a while since I read it. This is, however, unashamedly grim with a small G. Er, and one m. :-) The Lutzs take “dysfunctional” to new levels, and it’s frankly astonishing that Vanessa has retained any sense of morality, albeit a severely skewed one. I wasn’t surprised when her only decent relationship was terminated by a drive-by.

The cast is a mixture of has-beens (Sutherland, before resurrection in 24, and Shields) and will-bes (Witherspoon and also Brittany Murphy), but all deliver fine performances. The weakest point is a script more concerned with satire than logic – would they really let a convicted arsonist carry a lighter in jail? No wonder Oliver Stone is a producer, given the undeniable echoes of Natural Born Killers. As a benchmark, at one point, when Vanessa shows Bob a photo of her “real” father, it’s actually serial killer Richard Speck. If that amuses – and must confess, it did us – this film is probably for you.

Dir: Matthew Bright
Star: Reese Witherspoon, Kiefer Sutherland, Brooke Shields, Bokeem Woodbine

Killers 2

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★★★★
“Heather is sick and twisted…”

Director Latt and star (and wife) Little came to our attention through a highly-amusing comedy about TV, Jane White is Sick and Twisted. This is radically different, but still effective, thanks to Little’s performance as Heather. The sole survivor of a warehouse massacre, she is taken, catatonic, to a mental hospital. The bad news is, associates of the gangsters she killed want her dead – try convincing a doctor his staff have been bribed to off you. [They skip the potential ambivalence as to whether Heather actually is imagining everything.] The good news is, she has developed ‘hunter craze’, and is capable of enormous strength and savagery when threatened; hence her nickname, ‘The Beast’.

The detailing is poor: Heather’s hair changes length at random; crop-tops & make-up are apparently easily available; she dislocates her shoulder to escape a straitjacket, but five seconds later, she’s 100% well. Yet there is a lot to admire, especially a final battle where the gangsters give up trying to make Heather’s death ‘accidental’, and storm the hospital – it’s an excellent sequence, albeit underlit, like much of the film. We also liked co-incarceree Emma (Martin), in for clinical depression, and not the best hostage for the villains, since she wants to die. There’s something of Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted about her. We haven’t seen Killers, yet happily recommend the sequel, though it ain’t One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Refreshingly free of romantic interest, this is a straightforward story, vigorously told and largely avoiding low-budget pitfalls.

Dir: David Michael Latt
Star: Kim Little, D.C.Douglas, Mellisa Martin, Nick Stellate

Fatal Conflict

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★★★
“Die Hard in space – no ifs or ands, though plenty of butts…”

Wuhrer plays Sasha, a space pilot coerced into attempting to stop a rocket, hijacked by evil emerald dealer Conrad Nash (Rossi) and his creepily incestuous sister Carla (Rubin), from ploughing into LA. The proper pilot (O’Keefe) provides assistance, with much running around corridors and plunging into a glycerine tank. Yes, glycerine: a feeble excuse to give our heroine the wettest T-shirt of all time. Between this and the “ass panning” (as Chris described Simandl’s fondness for shooting at waist level), it seems disturbingly fetishistic, though a large chunk is due to footage spliced in from another movie – see Jolly Roper’s review for full details. Hack out all that stuff, and you’ve got a serviceable little movie in the Die Hard vein, with the cast doing surprisingly well. Wuhrer, Rossi and Rubin are all interesting to watch, and are entirely responsible for this being half-decent.

Well, I thought it wasn’t bad – Chris, in her regular role as voice of sanity, pointed out several gaping plot holes. Not least, when Sasha gets the drop on the villain, she doesn’t simply kill him, but embarks on a convoluted plot to con him into believing she’s an escaped prisoner. This was perhaps to justify earlier jail footage, large chunks of which also look suspiciously like they came from somewhere else. If I’d watched these other movies, I’d probably feel significantly more cheated – as is, it gets the benefit of first sight and so proves an acceptable time passer. If all else fails, start the drinking game where you take a swig for every gratuitous buttock shot. Unconsciousness will soon be upon you.

Dir: Lloyd Simandl
Star: Kari Wuhrer, Leo Rossi, Miles O’Keefe, Jennifer Rubin

Outside the Law

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★½
“A reminder of the inalienable rule of Rothrock films: the US ones suck.”

This is the first Cyn-flick seen in a while: rumour has it, she made a brief diversion (after implants) into erotic thrillers, but the good news is, she’s back in the martial arts arena. The bad news is, er, the film. It starts with her DEA colleague, about to bust a Colombian drug-lord, promising Julie (Rothrock), “Four kids, a dog, and a house with a white picket fence.” You know he’s dead, though given his willful lack of a bullet-proof vest, he also has a death-wish.

Before dying, he hands her evidence on the sale of US-government supplied equipment to the cartel, making Julie a target. Returning to Florida (how, exactly?), she goes on the run, with a dog, a truck and a sense of justice. Eating in a restaurant, she breaks up a fight, and gets fully involved when the woman running the joint is murdered by a guy connected to (tah-rah!) Colombian drug-dealers.

All of which might not be so bad; you watch this kind of film for action, not plot. But the director has no idea how to shoot fights, and the results are so poor as to make it look as if Rothrock has been replaced by a stunt double in a bad wig – oh, sorry, that’s her hair. The results are a pale imitation of her work in Hong Kong, and are even less interesting than the likes of China O’Brien. If she is, as the sleeve claims, “the queen of martial arts”, a popular coup must surely be imminent.

Dir: Jorge Montesi
Star: Cynthia Rothrock, Jeff Wincott, Seamus Dever, Dan Lauria

Supreme Sanction

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★★½
“Alias kicks back with a martini and some valium.”

Director Terlesky starred in one of my favourite guilty pleasures, Deathstalker II, but this shows he still has much to learn about directing and, particularly, scripting. There just isn’t enough going on here to sustain attention, with too many scenes taking twice as long as necessary. Swanson plays Jenna, assassin for a government counter-terrorist agency which is now creating incidents in order to get increased funding. She switches sides and protects TV journalist Jordan McNamara (Dukes), whom she has been ordered to kill – her handler Dalton (Madsen) must now take her out.

Subsequent events have given this 1999 film a creepily prescient air, and I’m always up for a good conspiracy. But neither Swanson nor Madsen ever provide the necessary energy, which we know the latter at least can deliver (though he gets the best moment, shooting the journalist, then offering him a BandAid). Faison makes a mark as Marcus, Jenna’s gadget man who avoids the usual stereotypes, but Dukes is so irritatingly whiny, it’s hard to see why Jenna chose to save him.

There are moments proving the ideas have potential, such as Jenna and Marcus disguising themselves to penetrate the enemies’ base. More of this invention would have helped enliven what is instead just marginally acceptable entertainment. The climax also relies on chief villain Ron Perlman willingly confessing all to his “helpless” captive. Guess he must never have seen any Bond films.

Dir: John Terlesky
Star: Kristy Swanson, Michael Madsen, David Dukes, Donald Adeosun Faison

Retroactive

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★★★★
“Trippy time-travel done with almost enough energy to cover the plot holes.”

It’s not often I criticise a film for too much explanation, but Retroactive might have been better off with more hand-waving. I’ll explain later; first, the plot. Travis plays Karen, a police negotiator who just screwed up badly; driving down South she ends up hitching a ride with Frank (Belushi) and his abused wife Rayanne (Whirry). Frank is a psycho, and Karen ends up sheltering in a secret lab where time-travel experiments are going on – she ends up with another chance to deal with Frank, only to discover this second attempt may not be an improvement…

This is a nifty little sleeper that seemed to get buried when Orion Pictures went belly-up. It deserved a better fate, with everyone turning in sterling performances, even if Karen’s reaction to being shot back in time is too calm and understated! Belushi makes a fine, creepy redneck, a sense of tension springing from your feeling he is capable of anything at any time. The deviations with each attempt are marked and cleverly written, and the ending is satisfactorily imperfect.

Our qualms were largely because, unlike Run Lola Run or Groundhog Day, which made no attempt to explain what was happening, here there’s just enough logic to be unsatisfying. The “rules” are clearly important – for example, do time-travellers keep their memories? – yet are inadequately laid out. We spent the last 15 minutes with furrowed brows, trying to see if it made sense. It may, or may not, but either way was an unwelcome diversion in an otherwise pleasant surprise.

Dir: Louis Morneau
Star: Kylie Travis, Jim Belushi, Shannon Whirry, Frank Whaley

Bandidas

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★★★★
“How the West was Wo(ma)n…”

Let us make no mistake about this, this is a frothy confection of a film, which is not intended to be taken seriously; to do so, would be a serious mistake. The closest parallel here is probably to think of it as a distaff version of Shanghai Noon, with an odd couple teaming up for fun ‘n’ frolics in the Old West. Robber baron Tyler Jackson (Yoakam) comes to Mexico to take away land from the locals so a railroad can be built. In the process, he kills the fathers of both farm-girl Maria (Cruz) and rich-girl Sara (Salma), so he can take their property and bank respectively. To get revenge, each lady independently decides to rob the same bank at the same time, and are forced to team-up; their widely-disparate characters initially cause friction, but they eventally come to respect each other, after being trained by retired robber Bill Buck (Sam Shephard).

When they start their campaign, Jackson brings in a specialist in the new ‘scientific method’ of criminal investigation, Quentin (Zahn), to help track down the bandidas. However, after discovering Sara’s father was poisoned, heis convinced by the pair that he is actually working for the wrong side, and comes across to join them. The latest security measures are defeated – with the aid of a pair of ice-skates! – and as a result a train is loaded with the Mexican government’s gold reserve, to ship it to safety in Mexico. The bandidas resolve to take the cargo, but Jackson and his gang are waiting for them…as is Quentin’s fiancée…

This was co-written by Luc Besson: he is the engine-room of European cinema, listed as a producer of no less than 60 titles over the past five years on the IMDB. He likely deserves a place in the Girls With Guns hall of fame, having directed Nikita and The Messenger, given Milla Jovovich and Natalie Portman their action-debuts in The Fifth Element and Leon respectively, worked as an uncredited co-producer on Haute Tension, and now delivers this. It came up in response to a request from the two leads, who’ve wanted to work together for a long time, and he handed the script to two Norwegians, making their feature debut [but with a lot of commercial experience].

However, there’s no doubt that it’s the leading ladies who make this one click, right from the first scene together, where Sara confronts Maria, who has snuck in to the house to argue with Sara’s father about the ongoing land-grab. The bickering between the two, which continues, in an increasingly friendly way, through the entire film. Maria snipes at Sara because the latter can’t fire a gun to save her life – in a beautiful touch, she gets terrible hiccups when she tries; Sara taunts Maria for her lack of education.

The two also argue over who is the best kisser, notably in a scene where they are dressed as Paris showgirls, and are trying to extract information from Quentin, who is tied to the bed. And Steve Zaun was actually paid to take part? ;-) That’s about as far as the film goes, sexually speaking; much cleavage, but no actual nudity. A fondness for the heroines splashing around in water, especially early on, and the above-mentioned comedic seduction scene, is about as close as we get to exploitation. That news may disappoint some readers, but it really wouldn’t be in keeping with the overall tone of the movie, which is light-hearted and firmly PG-13 rated, despite lesbian scuttlebutt which circulated afte a press conference where Penelope (gasp!) touched Salma’s butt.

What did disappoint me was the action. I expected more from Besson, who helped give us such gems as The Transporter and District B-13, as well as the titles mentioned above, though a couple of moments stand out. There’s a bravura slow-motion scene in the final battle – bullets, knives, bodies and debris fly in a single shot, the camera panning back and forth to capture the carnage. But, the most amazing part is seeing a horse, with a rider on its back, climb a ladder. This was apparently a combination of training (the horse, with a stunt rider, walked up a specially-made set of stairs) and CGI work by Parisian FX house Macguff, to replace the stairs with a ladder, add dust and bounce, etc. It’s a throwaway moment, in a throwaway film, but is worthy of note, and applause.

That may be perhaps down to the leads’ lack of experience: Cruz’s only real brush with the action genre was Sahara, Hayek has more background (working with Robert Rodriguez helps there), but neither of them would appear to be looking to make a name for themselves with their work here. A sequel is hinted at by the ending; however, that this $30m production went all but straight to video in the US and notched only $18m overseas would seem to rule this out. One wonders why, for a film set in Mexico and with two Hispanic leads, why they didn’t speak Spanish; one assumes Besson, with his eye on the international market, went for the more commercial English, even though Cruz seems slightly ill-at-ease thee.

These qualms are relatively minor, and if not the all-out action fest I was hoping for, it’s certainly among the best Westernettes of recent years. This is not a genre which has been kind to action heroines in the past, including such bombs – justifiable or not – as Bad Girls and The Quick and the Dead, as well as less high-profile turkeys as Gang of Roses. Bandidas is nowhere in the same league, and if survives almost entirely on the charisma and energy of Cruz and Hayek, that’s by itself is something which most movies would like to have. If you can certainly argue that to some extent this is a vanity project, here, I’d be very hard pushed to call vanity a sin.

Dir: Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg
Stars: Penelope Cruz, Salma Hayek, Steve Zahn, Dwight Yoakam

"If you can certainly argue that to some extent this is a vanity project, here, I’d be very hard pushed to call vanity a sin."