Tag: vigilante

Trigger Warning

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★½
“May contain boredom, stupidity and poor action.”

There’s an old joke about bad movies: “This film wasn’t released, it escaped.” It seems disturbingly appropriate here, however, considering the shooting of this finished in October 2021, and it has been part of our annual previews for 2022, 2023 and 2024. Quite why Netflix sat on the end product close to three years, I don’t know. But having watched it, I can confidently say: it wasn’t long enough. This is the kind of movie that left me feeling actively more stupid by the end of it. Alba plays Parker, a soldier who returns to her hometown in rural New Mexico after her father is killed in a mile accident. Only, of course [and that whirring sound is my eyes rolling], it turns out not to be an accident.

From here spirals off a ludicrous plot in which local ne’er-do-well Elvis (Weary) is selling heavy armaments,  include machine guns and RPGs, to domestic terrorists. His family basically runs the town: brother, Jesse (Webber), is the town sheriff, and his father is Senator Ezekiel Swann (Hall), an obviously Republican politician running for re-election. It’s up to Parker to stop the bad guys, who are so evil, they burn down the bar which is Parker’s inheritance from her father. Named after her grandmother, he apparently built it when he wasn’t busy being a miner. Or a Green Beret. It’s all a bit vague. This is as authentic a portrayal of Hispanic culture as you’d expect, given a script written by three white people, which unironically uses the word “Latinx”.

It’s also directed by an Indonesian which, in a nod to the politics criticized by the movie, makes me want to go on a rant about foreigners coming over here and takin’ er jerbs. For, after all, there are plenty of American directors who are perfectly capable of making shitty action films with ham-handed social commentary. We do not need to be outsourcing this work. However, we maybe should look at outsourcing Jessica Alba. Possibly replacing her with a stick insect, since she is among the least convincing soldiers I’ve seen. The action is equally dumb: it’s the kind of movie where a bad guy picks up a chainsaw in a hardware store fight, and it starts, apparently being fully fuelled.

The whole thing is littered with similar elements which had me shaking my head. Parker can waltz into any location at will, such as finding the exact file she needs in the police station within ten seconds. While most recent Netflix action heroine films have been forgettably acceptable ways to pass a couple of hours, this one probably competes with Interceptor over the coveted crown of Worst Netflix Original. It’s amazing to think how far Alba has fallen from the glory days of work like Sin City. For Jessica’s sake, I hope her cosmetics company endeavour is working out. Because she seriously needs to rethink this whole acting thing.

Dir: Mouly Surya
Star: Jessica Alba, Mark Webber, Anthony Michael Hall, Jake Weary

Guilt

  By

★★½
“Guilty of being kinda dull…”

This starts off strong, with an attention grabbing scene where a woman gets a visit from a plumber. She offers him a glass of water, and… Things do not go as expected. For the woman is Jessie (Shay), a psychiatrist on a mission. She has made it her purpose in life to punish paedophiles whom she feels have been too lightly punished by the law. The man is one such, and it does not end well for him. Specifically, he is stabbed, and buried in a shallow grave, deep in the Australian outback. Safe to say the film has got my attention. Unfortunately, it’s more or less downhill all the way from here.

The main problem is probably the script, which fails to build on this dramatic opening. For example, shortly after, we see a policewoman, Detective Swan (McKenzie) puzzling over the unexplained disappearances of a number of paedophiles, and it appears to be setting up a cat-and-mouse hunt. Except, she all but vanishes for the next hour, only reappearing significantly at the end. There’s also Jessie’s relationship with her younger sister. Or the hint that some kind of PTSD is responsible for Jessie’s vigilante activity – either connected to her own childhood, or perhaps her experiences in the military, where she served in the Middle East. None of these elements ever come together, feeling more like loose ends than coherent parts of the story.

Instead, she eventually kidnaps Grace (Flowers), a woman who helped her boyfriend to traffic in young children, but who claimed to be abused by him, and so was considered a victim as well. Similarly, if properly developed, this could have been a good source of tension. Was she actually an accomplice, just playing the abuse card? Again, the script seems almost to get bored with itself and drifts away to Vigilante Movie Cliche #45, where Jessie discovers that one of her previous victims was actually innocent. This triggers an existential crisis in Jessie, and she carelessly leaves her thoroughly incriminating diary for the receptionist at work to find, giving Detective Swan the break in her case she needs. Yeah, you’ll understand why I rolled my eyes a bit at that.

I did appreciate the effort to be nuanced. Given the topic of avenging angel versus child molesters, it would have been very easy to become a one-sided and shrill polemic (we’ve seen those in the past). Here, there’s a bit more subtlety, acknowledging that everything isn’t necessarily black and white. It’s also very female-centred, with almost all the significant roles going to women, and the individual performances are decent or better. But the lack of a compelling narrative sinks this ship, with it left feeling like a series of largely unconnected strands. Perhaps if we’d been brought along on Jessie’s journey, and saw how she became a vigilante, it might have been different? As is, there’s not even much resolution, and we are simply 95 minutes later in the day.

Dir: Karl Jenner, Lyndsay Sarah
Star: Janet Shay, Hayley Flowers, Mikaela, Franco, Kirsty McKenzie

Bang Bang Betty

  By

★★½
“Why not Kill-shot Kiara?”

If I was feeling mean, I’d have tagged this as “Pretty shitty Bang Bang”. But while undoubtedly amusing, that wouldn’t be 100% fair. For in the field of low-budget urban action heroines, this is actually better than most. Now, by broader standards, that’s still not exactly great. However, I’ve seen enough of the genre to appreciate and welcome mere technical proficiency. Simply by having decent audio, I was already impressed. It’s the story of Kiara Sommers (Nunno-Brown), a former soldier who is now a prosecuting attorney. During a meet with one of her informants, she is shot and left for dead, but rescued by another veteran, Ray Smith (Parrish) and nursed back to health. [I’ve vague memories of a Chow Yun-Fat film with this plot]

She’s then able to take revenge on the man responsible, local crime-lord Darnell (Walzer). Which is a bit awkward, because he is her boyfriend. There’s also Valerie Mendez (Hernandez), who used to be a colleague of Kiara in the army, and is now walking a dangerous line, playing for both sides, as a cop and an inside woman for Darnell. It feels as if considerably more thought has gone into this than many in this field, whose plot could typically be written on the back of a beer-mat, and leave room for your pint. Some other elements also deserve praise, such as a soundtrack which isn’t just the director’s rapper mates on shuffle (though there is still a fair bit of that).

While Nunoo-Brown and Hernandez are decent enough in their roles, there are several elements that manage to stop this reaching three stars, which would be close to an all-time high for the genre. There’s a serious question over Kiara’s complete ignorance of her boyfriend being a organized crime boss. I mean, really? Some of the supporting cast are not very good: Walzer in particular struggles with his delivery. There’s also a point where a significant character is killed in front of another. It should have a devastating impact, yet their lack of reaction is notable. A few minutes later in the film, they’re cracking wise with Kiara and Valerie. The bruising on Valerie’s face is a continuity disaster. 

My biggest issue, however, was the bad CGI. The muzzle flashes were marginally acceptable, but the explosions are poor, and the CGI blood close to the worst I’ve ever seen. Having no blood at all would have been a vast improvement. It’s a particular shame, as some of the hand-to-hand action is decent enough (again, compared to what I’ve seen previously), with both lead actresses occasionally impressing. I did laugh when Valerie attempted a lucha libre throw on Darnell’s henchman, only to be tossed aside, and told “That superhero shit doesn’t work in real life, does it?” More of this degree of self-awareness might have been welcome, yet it’s probably wise not to ask for too much. I’ll settle for competence, and there’s just enough here to leave me mildly interested in the sequel, already in post-production: Bang Bang Betty – Valerie’s Revenge.

Dir: Alexander T. Hwang
Star: Kakra Nunoo-Brown, Gerald Parrish, Emily Rose Hernandez, Marc Anthony Walzer

La Madre

  By

★★½
“Is there such a thing as whiteface?”

I ask, because this film, made in Mexico City and starring mostly Mexicans, seems to be trying to take place in America. It’s not doing a good job of it. The heroine is Martha (Mazarrasa), a single mother running a shop in a border American city with the help of her two daughters, Eva (Reynaud) and Raquel. Then Eva is kidnapped by evil Mexican cartel boss, El Chacal (Guerrerio), and held by him, even after Martha pays the requested ransom. However, it turns out Mom has a hidden past, which gave her a set of special skills. With the help of sympathetic cop, Juan Cinderos (Dulzaides), she sets out to bring down his organization and retrieve her daughter.

It might have worked better if everyone has spoken Spanish, and they’d actually set this in Mexico. Not that Mazarrasa’s English is bad. It’s far better than my Spanish. But early on, she tells her daughters, “Our family has been in this [American] city for generations.” Yet she sounds like she’s still dripping wet out of the Rio Grande: “Ey neeeed tu dooo zees!” It feels particularly fake to me, since I’m married to a first-generation Hispanic immigrant, so know Chris and her siblings sounds completely indistinguishable from native citizens. Literally nobody in the film speaks without a notable accent: the closest is El Chacal, the character you’d least expect to know English. It’s all tremendously off-putting.

The rest of the plotting is similarly shoddy, in particular the way Martha is able to infiltrate El Chacal’s operations and get them taken down from the inside, in a way Paul and his pals have been utterly unable to do. I get that she’s operating outside of the usual legal encumbrances, but building her history and doing more than slapping a wig on her as a disguise, would have gone a long way to avoid my eyebrow entering “Oh, really?” mode. The way a random cop like Paul gets to take part in police actions South of the “border” – quotes used advisedly – didn’t help. All told, too many elements here seem to have wandered into this Tubi Original, from a script discarded by the Hallmark channel.

Yet it’s not entirely worthless, with Mazarrasa just about able to hold things together through a decent central performance. She had a long-running role in Camelia La Texana, so has a handle on the more soapy elements here, and is capable of putting over the raw emotion appropriate to the circumstances. The individual pieces could have been re-arranged into an effective combination. Perhaps if Martha had gone full Liam Neeson from the moment Eva was kidnapped, telling El Chacal, “You just messed with the wrong madre…”, instead of wasting time faffing around, naively trying to negotiate and pay the ransom. That is quite at odds with the street-smart, take no prisoners approach she later shows. Maybe her brains were in the wig as well.

Dir: Mitchell Altieri
Star: Tamara Mazarrasa, Giovanna Reynaud, Javier Dulzaides, Alex Guerrero 

Divide & Conquer

  By

★½
“If this is empowerment…”

There are times where I regret my choice of pastime. It means I end up watching things for this site that I would never give the time of day, given the choice. This is one such, having endured the almost physically painful experience which was Hellfire, starring the same three lead actresses, and to which this appears a loose sequel. In this case, Mercedes also took over directorial duties, and… it’s actually somewhat of an improvement. Still not good, by any objective standards, let’s be clear. Yet there’s a punky and unrepentant attitude that clearly doesn’t care what I, or anyone else, thinks. Put it this way, if you want a film which includes close-up shot of the director having a pee, here you go. Offense is its raison d’etre.

The story has (loosely) Greek goddesses Lilith (Divine), Athena (Peach) and Toxie (Mercedes) roaming the blasted hellscape of Tromaville, taking on the evil forces of misogyny and white supremacy, mostly through the superpowers of really bad acting and highly deliberate offense, it would appear. This probably teaches its peak with a recreation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in a strip-club. It feels as if Mercedes simply threw every idea of questionable taste she could come up with into her script, and filmed the result, largely using her pals. If you want a puppet, voiced by Troma movies head honcho Lloyd Kaufman, sitting on the toilet and delivering a lecture on artistic freedom. Again: here you go.

There’s even stuff here I can’t describe, without getting down-ranked by Google for explicit content. Trust me. There is certainly an aesthetic here, and it’s one to which Mercedes is clearly 110% committed, and personally too. [Is it exploitation if you’re doing it yourself?] But it’s not a style which overlaps more than fractionally with my tastes. I’ve been a fan of Troma since back in the days of Toxic Avenger (its star Torgl has a supporting role as creepy motel owner N. Bates). That looks like a Christopher Nolan movie in comparison to Divide & Conquer. Philosophically, I tend to have a different view of empowerment. To me, it doesn’t mean women copying the worst of male behaviour, as seems too often the case here e.g. rape.

There are times when restraint is not necessarily a bad thing. If you drop F-bombs every second word, eventually people are going to tune you out, and this is pretty much the cinematic equivalent. About half way through, as the story meandered its way to, then past, a confrontation with a geriatric Adolf Hitler and his pet werewolf (there’s a phrase I didn’t expect to be writing today!), I simply lost interest. There’s only so much toilet humour, potty-mouthed dialogue and amateur acting I can take in one sitting. This provides an all-you-can-handle buffet of those things, with enough left over to feed your entire family the next day. I prefer something a little less in your face. Quite often here, literally.

Dir: Mercedes
Star: Irie Divine, Knotty Peach, Mercedes, Mark Torgl

The Vigilante

  By

★★★
“The Noise of Freedom”

Not to be confused with A Vigilante, this is rather more downmarket and straightforward. It’s likely less thought-provoking, yet probably works a bit better as entertainment, albeit being so basic as to border on the simplistic. Marine Jessica (Jandreau) comes back from a tour of duty in the Middle East with PTSD, following an encounter with a kid wearing a suicide vest. Almost immediately on her arrival, however, her 13-year-old sister, Aimee (Timmons) is kidnapped by sex-trafficker Frank (Cesario), who plans to sell her off in the vilest of ways. It’s a race against time for Jessica and her army buddy and tech wizard Dan (Pierce) to track down those responsible before… [/gestures vaguely] y’know…

If this feels like it has a certain similarity to an unexpected hit in cinemas this summer, you’re probably right. In the movie’s defense, this has been in the pipeline for five years or more, so it can’t be called a quick cash-in – though The Sound of Freedom goes back even longer. Interestingly, director Whittaker worked on Freedom as a stunt co-ordinator, part of a career in that field which goes back to the early nineties. He brings that experience to The Vigilante and it shows, with the action probably the film’s best element. There are a couple of undeniably impressive fights for Jandreau, in particular the final one after she has located the house in which Aimee is being held by her kidnappers.

The other elements are a bit more variable. It begins with an earnest recitation of facts about sex trafficking, with voice-over from (real?) victims detailing where and at what age they were ensnared. But the concept of Frank literally ploughing into the car in which Aimee is a passenger, in order to kidnap her to order out of the wreckage, is hugely, almost ludicrously, implausible. The reality of sex-trafficking is considerably less dramatic: like murder, it’s far more likely the perpetrator is someone known to the victim, rather than a complete stranger. Some of the other elements also don’t feel like they ring true, and the sheer number of shots of underage girls in white underwear had me expecting Chris Hansen to pop out of my closet.

Another weak spot if quite what Dan is doing to locate the trafficking houses which Jessica and he then hit. It’s only vaguely explained, in tech-speak of the least convincing kind. However, there are times where the film does still hit the mark, such as the line said by one of the girls with almost chilling off-handedness: “The first time is the worst. Then you simply go numb.” You sense any creepiness is entirely deliberate, although it is undeniably playing up the more sensational aspects for the viewer. Nothing new there, of course. In many ways, The Vigilante is simply a spiritual successor to the white slavery movies which date back well over a century to the silent era, and titles like Traffic in Souls. As such, this is no better or worse; it succeeds well enough, despite low ambitions.

Dir: Lee Whittaker
Star: Jet Jandreau, Eric Pierce, Jamie M. Timmons, Julien Cesario
a.k.a. Aimee

The Moderator

  By

★½
“Falls far, far short of reaching moderate”

Oh, dear. Where to start? Let’s get the positives out of the way. This looks reasonable enough, and clearly was not a poverty-row production. The central idea isn’t bad either: while a vigilante killer taking out misogynistic online sexists is a fairly ludicrous concept, if you squint a bit, you can see how it could have become an acerbic comment on the toxicity of social media. And that’s all I’ve got. For any potential is ruthlessly exterminated by staggeringly feeble execution. We’re there inside two minutes, when an unnamed Russian supermodel wakes, to get a video message from two pals vacationing in Morocco, then turns on the TV immediately to see a news report about them being executed by ISIS, with the video online for all to see. Wait, what?

Ms. Supermodel then visits a shadowy character who gives her a small rucksack telling her it contains everything she needs, including her new identity as “Mya Snik”. This is only the second-dumbest name, because later on we hear of somebody called, I kid you not, Dr. Akula. No, really. The rucksack also contains a scorpion, for no reason ever made clear. Mya then heads off on a somewhat ruthless pursuit of random Internet trolls, leading up to serial rapist and shitty white rapper, Vance Wilhorn (Lane), who is in Morocco too, abusing any young woman stupid enough to hang out with him. And we are talking very, very stupid, as shown by this stunningly terrible piece of dialogue:
    “Do you want to get raped or what?”
    “Oh, come on – don’t start that again…”

Once more, this might all have been tolerable, had it focused on Mya giving scummy perverts their comeuppance. Instead, there are meandering subplots about the Interpol pursuit of her, led by agent Bourdeau (Dourdan), and local cop Selma (Azzabi). The latter lets Mya go after capturing her, because her prisoner recites crime statistics at her, apparently boring the policewoman into hypnotic compliance or something. We hardly ever see Mya even lightly kick significant butt, and her talents evaporate entirely at points. One minute, she’s efficiently taking down security personnel in a resort (albeit to no real purpose). The next, she can’t beat a fat Moroccan tour-guide, who can barely waddle away. I’m not impressed.

There are few things worse than a film which clearly wants to make an earnest point (as evidenced by the quoting of statistics), yet is incapable of doing anything except repeatedly shooting itself in the foot. We’re given no reason to root for or care about the heroine, or anybody else in the picture for that matter. The action is largely feeble, though I did have to laugh at the Interpol agents chasing on foot after Mya’s motor-cycle, which then conveniently falls over. And if you want to see attractive Moroccan scenery, you’d be better off with a Tourist Board promo video. Definitely a candidate for worst movie of the year.

Dir: Zhor Fassi-Fihri
Star: Irma Lake, Michael Patrick Lane, Gary Dourdan, Soraya Azzabi

My Sisters

  By

★
“Sisters that’ll have you crying for mercy.”

This felt oddly familiar, like I had watched it before. One scene in particular – a maintenance man comes to replace a light-bulb, only to become an apparent threat – had me certain I had seen this. But no review of it existed, either here or Film Blitx, my non-GWG site. [For, make no mistake, its credentials here are fringey at best.] My working theory is that I probably fell asleep and missed so much, I deemed it impossible to review, then forgot about it entirely. Yet here we are. I managed to stay awake for an adequate amount of time this viewing, though full disclosure: I did have to pause it about 15 minutes in. I’m still reviewing it  – mostly so I don’t go round the loop a third time.

The hook here is that the whole thing was filmed in 24 hours, something touted by, it feels, every member of the cast and crew during the end credits. On the one hand, it is quite an impressive achievement, considering even the quickest of quota quickies would still need several days [Though 24 hours would be an eternity for Rendez-vous, shot using one take, the first, and thus filmed in under two hours] To the movie’s credit, technically it looks pretty good. The audio is a little ropey in places, however. My question would be: why film it in one day? What did this add to the film? For it seems no more than a pointless gimmick.

Not least because it feels as if the script was also tossed together in a day, easily representing the movie’s weakest element, and bouncing back and forth in time like a meth-crazed ping-pong ball. I’m unsure whether the tedium it induces is a result of its lack of coherence, or if it would have been just as dull with a more conventional narrative. The basic idea is a women’s support group, who decided to become vigilantes, helping their “sisters” who are trapped in abusive relationships by targetting their abusers. [It’s odd that I watched this the same day as the similarly themed Ride or Die. At least that admitted to the psychosis in its vigilante.]

This leads them into conflict with a shadowy men’s support group, the Freemen Society, who don’t take kindly to the women’s actions. The film does a particularly poor job of defining its antagonists, who remain a nebulous threat for the bulk of the running time, and are bad because we are told they are. Yet we discover at the end that one of the women has been an unreliable narrator all along, lying even to the rest of the support group. We are given no particular reason to care about them: there is far too much talk, and the dialogue consists of little more than a series of buzzwords that, presumably, made more sense back in 2020, during the white heat of people giving a damn about #MeToo. That concept has aged like Amber Heard’s milk, and combined with mediocre execution and flat-out terrible writing, these are sisters who need to be doing it to themselves.

Dir: Adam Justice Hardy
Star: Sara Young Chandler, Shanera Richardson, Nadia Marina, Diana Sanchez

The Huntress of Auschwitz

  By

★★
“About three decades too late.”

I came into this somewhat braced, given its 3.0 IMDb rating, and reviews which tended to be scathing e.g. proclaiming “This May Be The WORST Movie I’ve Ever Seen!” While it’s clearly not great, this is not eye-wateringly terrible. The good news is, it’s probably one performance away from approaching decent. The bad news is, it’s the lead role which is the biggest problem. This belongs to the unnamed Huntress (Watts-Joyce), a supposed American who travels to England, to go after a Nazi war criminal,  Rudolf Tannhäuser (Richards), and deliver the justice he has escaped since World War II. Tannhauser is now living quietly under an assumed identity n a farm in the English countryside.

There’s your first problem. This is clearly contemporary i.e. up-to-date iPhones, meaning Tannhauser would now need to be well into his nineties, even if he had been a 16-year-old when the war ended. He’s painted as considerably more senior, and there’s no conceivable way that Richards is pushing a century. Another issue: there really is precious little hunting, and nothing like the cover. She simply shows up on his doorstep, faking a turned ankle, and drugs him. Then we get a great deal of chit-chat as she tries to convince him to come clean about his past, and he repeatedly says she has the wrong guy. If Watts-Joyce did not have the emotional range of a fence-post, these conversations might have generated some tension.

They stand in sharp contrast to the delivery by veteran actress Lenska, playing concentration-camp survivor Amelia Kaminska. [Lenska was born in 1947, so is at least plausible as a child of Auschwitz] Her simple retelling of the horrors which she witnessed and went through are, far and away, the best part of the movie, and proof of how it’s not necessary to show things, when the delivery of the description is good enough. The film would have been far better a) set in the nineties, and b) with Amelia being the person to go after Tannhauser. The fact he killed one of the Huntress’s great-grandparents feels too distant and impersonal – again, compounded by the lead actress’s inability to sell the necessary emotions.

The pacing has some problems too: particularly in the beginning, there are too many scenes which end up being totally irrelevant. Her meeting with some kind of handler, or the travel montage, culminating in the Huntress standing around for what feels like forever, chatting to a pal on the phone. Once we reach the meat of the matter, with Tannhauser tied up, things improve a bit. The problem is, we’re already over half an hour in, and the film has really offered very little reason to engage with it. Thereafter, you’re waiting for the revenge that you know is inevitably going to come (though I wonder: how easy is it to gas someone to death in the middle of an open field?). It probably needs to be either exploitative or thoughtful: it’s neither, and consequently is unlikely to satisfy anyone.

Dir: Richard John Taylor
Star: Lowri Watts-Joyce, Jeffrey Charles Richards, Rula Lenska, Paul Dewdney

Catch the Fair One

  By

★★★
“Down for the count.”

Quite often, in films featuring women who are supposed to be boxers, they simply do not look the part. Safe to say, this is not an issue here. That is apparent from the opening scene, in which Kaylee (Reis) is preparing for a fight. As she warms up with her trainer, the speed and power of her punches is clear, and not cinematic trickery. It’s unsurprising, since Reis is, at time of writing. the current WBA, WBO and IBO light-welterweight world champion. It’s just a shame this movie chooses not to make more use of her undoubted talents in the combat field, and is a tad too earnest to be value as entertainment.

Kaylee falls into a downward spiral after her sister Weeta (Borrero) vanishes, and is barely scraping by, but then receives information that Weeta was abducted by a sex trafficking ring. With the authorities unwilling to do anything – the number of indigenous women who suffer this fate, or are flat-out murdered is startling – it’s up to Kaylee. She infiltrates the ring run by Bobby (Henshall), only to find it’s a lot harder to get out than in, and that he isn’t necessarily the man in charge. If I may trot out a tired boxing cliche, she’s in for the fight of her life, as she seeks the truth about what happened to her sister, and whether Weeta is alive or dead.

Reis is the best thing this has going for it, and the makers know it. There’s a raw intensity which is utterly convincing, as she throws herself into a terrible situation in pursuit of Weeta. Though you do have to wonder why she apparently waited so long before trying to track down her supposedly beloved sibling, leaving the trail close to stone-cold. I mentioned “value as entertainment” above, and that should probably be stressed. This isn’t a Taken-style popcorn audience pleaser. It’s more of a descent into hell, which will leave neither Kaylee nor those with whom she crosses paths unscathed, to put it mildly. The heroine was already badly damaged going in: she sleeps with a razor-blade tucked in her mouth for defense purposes, a note that goes nowhere except as a character trait.

Much the same is true of her boxing talents, which never particularly come to the forefront, leaving me wondering why they made them part of the film. I did have to admire its relentlessly grim tone: there’s hardly a moment of light here, until the very end of the movie. Even then, the carpet of comfort is brutally yanked out from underneath the feet of the viewer with the final shot before the credits roll. I’m not sure if Reis has any future as an actress – or even whether she has an interest in such. However, if this proves to be the beginning and end of her career on-screen, it will still be better than many more accomplished actresses manage.

Dir: Josef Kubota Wladyka
Star: Kali Reis, Daniel Henshall, Kevin Dunn, Mainaku Borrero