Tag: vigilante

Handgun

  By

★★★½
“The Equalizer”

Either by intent or accidentally – and we’ll get to that in a moment – this manages to be both an indictment of and an advert for, American gun culture. That’s quite a spectacular achievement, and it’s perhaps no coincidence that the writer/director is British, so brings an outsider’s balanced eye to a topic that’s often acrimonious in the States. Kathleen Sullivan (Young) is a teacher who has just moved from Boston to a small Texas town. She falls for local attorney Larry Keeler (Day), though is only interested in friendship, not a significant relationship. The initially-charming Larry eventually won’t take no for an answer, and date-rapes Kathleen. However, the circumstances and her attacker’s local reputation mean she gets no satisfaction from the police. The meek and mild Kathleen decides to take matters into her own hands, buying a gun and taking up combat shooting – at the very same club Larry frequents – with the aim of meting out her own brand of justice.

Director Garnett is a fairly outspoken Socialist, most well-known in film circles for his work with Ken Loach, and those left-wing beliefs appear to have informed his approach here. For example, he said in regard to this film, “America is built on genocide, has a macho culture and confuses owning guns with individual freedoms.” It doesn’t exactly make him a candidate for a film pointing out the positive elements of gun ownership. But it’s absolutely no stretch to read this as a Janie’s Got a Gun-style tale of empowerment through firearms. Yes, Larry uses his gun to coerce Kathleen into sex. However, we then see her use her gun to punish him when society fails to do so. There’s no doubt that weapons and the skills to use them are part of her transformative process, and the Kathleen we see at the end is a much stronger woman than the one to whom we are introduced. Guns, it appears Garnett is saying, are just a tool which can be used for good or evil – like any other. It’s when they become fetishized to a dangerous degree, problems like Larry arise.

This does lead to the film seeming rather ambivalent, though it’s hard to tell how much of this is due to studio interference. Garnett sold the film to the mainstream Warner Bros, and says, “I had to cut elements from the film that I now regret.” While slow-paced at times, it benefits from a good performance by Young, who is pretty without being perfect (the gap in her front teeth is a seriously eighties throwback), and can also sell the transformation believably into an angel of vengeance. Yet there’s one final twist at the end, with Kathleen stopping short of becoming what she despises, and it confirms this movie’s position as easily one of the more thoughtful films in the rape-revenge genre. You may or may not necessarily agree with what Garrett has to say, yet it’s hard to say he does a poor job of making his argument.

Dir: Tony Garnett
Star: Karen Young, Clayton Day, Suzie Humphreys, Helena Humann
a.k.a. Deep in the Heart

She Never Died

  By

★★★★½
“Angel of vengeance”

This is neither a prequel nor a sequel to He Never Died, but is clearly related, and takes place in the same universe. Like its predecessor, it was written by Jason Krawczyk, who hands the directorial reins over to Cummings for this. And it probably works better as a result. I tend to think having a separate writer and director allows each to build on the other’s talents, while countering the weaknesses. In particular, He, which starred Henry Rollins, didn’t have quite enough plot to sustain it. That isn’t an issue here, resulting in improved pacing. Combine this with the ultimate “give no damns” performance at its core, and you’ve got one of the best action heroine films of 2019.

That performance is Adeliyi’s portrayal of “Lacey”, whose real name we learn at the end, and which will make some sense to students of Biblical lore. Like Rollins’s character, she plays an immortal being, doomed to wander the planet for eternity, sustained only on human flesh. However, she operates on a code, eating only scumbags. This still brings her to the attention of local authorities, in particular the thoroughly world-weary Detective Godfrey (MacNeill). But when he discovers Lacey’s nature, he makes the ill-fated decision to weaponize her, and points her in the direction of a sex-trafficking ring run by Terrance (Danby), which he has been unable to take down by more formal methods. Complicating matters is the gang’s victim, Suzzie (Madeira), whom Lacey encounters during her first mission, and who becomes something of her acolyte.

Lacey is potentially among the most taciturn bad-asses of the genre, a woman of few words, whose remarkable healing powers allow her to take a baseball bat to the head, and then discuss the mild irritation of having to wait for a detached retina to repair itself. No wonder Suzzie is confused, wondering “Are you just a jacked-up lady blitzed out of her mind? Or a government experiment on the lam? Robot? Zombie? Vampire? You sound like a vampire.” The contrast between the pair, one hyper almost to the point of manic, the other deader than deadpan, is a joy. Seeing Adeliyi in action is another. This film doesn’t shortchange her diet, and Cummings background in horror is apparent. About the only person who can half-stand up to Lacey is the person in charge of the traffickers – which makes me wonder if they, too, may be more than human.

It’s one of the intriguing questions which this poses. Particularly at the end, after things appear to have been tied up nicely, the story opens an entire case of cans of worms, with both Godfrey and Lacey having encounters that’ll leave you going “Hmmm…” And that’s not even including the Bikers of the Apocalypse. While it’s definitely not necessary to have seen He Never Died, the cross-over of information may slightly enhance your information of both. I’m wondering if it’s all pointing towards a third entry – They Never Died?- in which the characters from these two films team up. If so, where do I start the queue?

Dir: Audreey Cummings
Star: Olunike Adeliyi, Peter MacNeill, Kiana Madeira, Noah Danby

Screened at Phoenix FearCon 2019

A Vigilante

  By

★★★
“The grubby truth about vengeance.”

Sadie (Wilde) has escaped from an abusive relationship with her husband (Spector), but at a terrible cost: the death of her son. In an effort to come to terms with her grief, and make use of the survivalist skills forcibly imposed on her, she becomes a vigilante. Responding to coded messages left on her phone, she travels around to confront abusers and prove that there is someone tougher, willing to stand up for the victims against them. But this doesn’t give Sadie the closure or peace that she seeks. Before she can help others, she’s first going to have to help herself, and confront the man who made her what she is.

There’s a grim, messy realism about this, which is plausible, and is both the film’s biggest strength and its greatest weakness. Violence, or the threat thereof, doesn’t really solve anything, and there’s precious little satisfaction gained by Sadie from it. Or anyone else: you could argue that, by robbing others of their agency, she’s doing more harm than good. But nor does this mundane approach make for great cinema. It’s one thing to rob vigilante violence of its adrenaline-powered rush, and the film consciously does that, even cutting away during the final confrontation between protagonist and antagonist. However, the film-maker needs to find something to replace it, otherwise you’re left with an empty experience. Admittedly, that may be the intended conclusion here. Yet if your point is the pointlessness of it all… what’s the point?

There is something to be said for the banality of the evil we see portrayed here, especially in the first case, when the well-dressed businessman is revealed to be an abuser. Yet, I can’t help noting the complete lack of any due diligence by Sadie. If a woman says she’s abused, well, that’s clearly good enough to justify a good helping of the old ultraviolence. A less polemic film might have leveraged that into its story, though again, perhaps her lack of interest in justice (despite her stressed reluctance to kill) is part of the flawed package she represents, along with a supreme disinterest in what happens to anyone after she has left the building.

The looming presence of her abusive husband is a little too convenient, especially in the way he suddenly pops up when dramatically necessary; some kind of foreshadowing would have helped. No denying the strength of Wilde’s performance though, and you get to see and feel every ounce of pain as she experiences it, in a way that becomes almost uncomfortable to watch. In the end, however, it doesn’t really tell us anything we didn’t already know. No matter how many “upbeat” vigilante movies I see, I enjoy them purely for the cathartic exercise, not as a primer. I don’t think I need a cinematic antidote like this, in order to be reminded that it’s actually not a good thing to take the law into your own hands.

Dir: Sarah Daggar-Nickson
Star: Olivia Wilde, Morgan Spector, Kyle Catlett, C.J. Wilson

Death Angel December

  By

★★
“Liable to provoke hibernation.”

Marginally competent, and just not very exciting, this low-budget offering is the story of December (Kurishingal). As a young girl, she watched as the rest of her family was slaughtered by Law (Ramsey) and his villains, the result of a debt owed by her father. A decade or so late, she has grown up and taken to the streets as a vigilante, seeking vengeance on those responsible. Or, until she finds them, any other perpetrators she comes across during her night-time ramblings through the mean back alleys of the city. Helping her mission, is that she now works for the police, which puts her in a prime position to ensure, for example, that any evidence pointing in her direction goes “missing”.

The main problem here is the lack of any significant progression in story or characters. Once the basic concept is established, it’s more or less clear where this is inevitably going to end: in December confronting Law – who, miraculously, looks exactly like he did when killing her family a decade previously – and his minions. Little of interest happens during the eighty minutes in the middle to escape from the cinematic rut which this ploughs, save perhaps a brief interlude where one of her colleagues on the force mistakes her nocturnal activities for something else, and consequently thinks she’s moonlighting as an escort. They have a good laugh about this confusion, needless to sa… Nah, who am I kidding: she rips open his chest and pulls out his heart.

That’s actually one of the highlights – it helps that it is largely realized through physical effects, rather than the crappy CGI, of which we see rather too much in the rest of the film. The old nemesis of low-budget cinema, bad audio, also rears its ugly head on occasion, most notably a scene shot in a foyer, which sounds as if it was recorded inside a toilet bowl. Re-recording dialogue in post is an actual possible thing, y’know: given the copious voice-over, the makers would seem to know this. Not helping is the painfully inept nature of the fights, especially true for the final battle, which appears to have been filmed in a public park, using swords made of tin-foil.

On the positive side, Kurishingal has a striking appearance that makes for a great poster, and director Woodell does know what to do with the camera. Between the two of them, they manage to stop things from collapsing entirely, even if my interest was sorely taxed at times. The IMDb tells me this was apparently a remake of a short film the pair made two years earlier, called Scarlet Widow. That ran about a quarter of the length, and may well have been a more appropriate running-time for the content. The additional 70 minutes here feels almost like needless padding, with a script in need of significant additional development in order to sustain itself over the length of a full feature.

Dir: Bennie Woodell
Star: Leena Kurishingal, Will Cummings III, Chad Meyer, Charles Ramsey
a.k.a. The Long December

The Stolen

  By

★★
“98 minutes robbed from my life.”

Rarely has such promise been so spectacularly and vigorously squandered. For this starts well enough. In 19th century New Zealand, English ex-pat Charlotte (Eve) is settling into a new life with her husband and newborn child. This is upturned when a midnight raid leaves her husband dead and the baby kidnapped. Months later, after everyone else has moved on, she gets a ransom demand in the mail, and she tracks its source to Goldtown. This remote outpost is truly an Antipodean version of the Wild West, a rough-edged mining town run by Joshua McCullen (Davenport). Braving all manner of threats – not least, that the only other women there are prostitutes – Charlotte makes the perilous journey to the frontier settlement in search of her son.

So far, so good. The landscapes and photography on the way there are gorgeous, yet threatening, and Charlotte is built up nicely, possessing a strength and inner steel which belies her “English rose” appearance. Both her late husband, and the guide who accompanies Charlotte (also bringing to Goldtown a batch of fresh hookers!), have laid the groundwork, both theoretical and practical, for her to learn the use of firearms, that great equalizer of force. The foundations were apparently being created for her to put her training to good use, when she finds out what happened to her child.

Then she arrives in Goldtown and the film goes to hell in a hand-basket, almost as soon as Riff Raff from Rocky Horror (O’Brien) shows up to portray the manager of the local brothel, sporting an accent of entirely indeterminable origin. For a good chunk, Charlotte appears to forget entirely what the purpose of her trip is. Even when she remembers, her investigative approach initially consists of little more than roaming the town, yelling at miners about her minor. When the truth about who is behind the abduction is revealed, it doesn’t make much sense: the motive for their acts, in particular, is more “it needed to happen because film,” rather than anything springing organically from the nature of their character.

Eve does makes for a heroine with potential. There’s something of the young Nicole Kidman about her, and it’s a good character arc for Charlotte. She transforms from a passive lady of the manor, to someone forced to sleep in a dormitory with a bunch of whores (the most acidic of whom, the severely mis-named Honey, is played by the film’s writer, Emily Corcoran), and fend off men who, somewhat understandably, believe she is also pay-to-play. However, the film likely reveals the culprit too soon: doing so eliminates what little sense of suspense present, and it’s not hard to guess how things will develop thereafter.

Such speculation will likely be accurate, and the film does at least deliver the expected payoff at the end, in the form of an armed confrontation between Charlotte and the kidnapper. By that point, most viewers will likely have given up caring much, beyond being reminded of New Zealand’s picturesque qualities.

Dir: Niall Johnson
Star: Alice Eve, Jack Davenport, Richard O’Brien, Graham McTavish

Peppermint

  By

★★★
“A case of Miss-Taken identity.”

I’m tempted to award this an extra half-star, simply for pissing off liberal film critics, upset by the fact that most of the film is devoted to a white woman killing Latino drug dealers. Of course, they completely miss all the points, instead complaining – and these are direct quotes – there is “not a word about corporate complicity in the opioid crisis” and that the heroine’s “true enemy is a system of income inequality driven by hyper-capitalism.” Because, of course, if was hyper-capitalism which gunned down the husband and daughter of Riley North (Garner) in the parking lot of a fun-fair. Oh, my mistake: it was Latino drug dealers.

The main complaint though, is it “bought into the political rhetoric that conflates gang members with law-abiding immigrants.” Uh, speaking as a thoroughly law-abiding immigrant: no, it doesn’t. I never felt at all conflated. But then, I never regarded Trainspotting as any kind of indication that all Scottish people are heroin addicts. For that’s the mistake critics like this keep making, going all the way back those who claimed Basic Instinct was homophobic: taking characters in a film as statements about that group as a whole. As one defense of the film wrote, “all too many members of the Left have reacted to Trump allegedly making gang members represent immigrants by, yes, making gang members represent immigrants.”

Enough politics. The important question here is, is this revenge-driven vigilante pic any good? To which the answer is… somewhat. There’s certainly nothing much new or innovative in the story. After the shooting described above, the scumbags responsible get off, and Riley goes on her mission of vengeance, killing not only those directly responsible, but those on both sides of law she feels were culpable. That involves going all the way up the food chain to Diego Garcia (Raba), the drug boss who ordered the hit, though Riley takes no small pleasure in destroying his organization on the way, not least the piñata factory which operates as a distribution hub.

The film seems to leave a slew of opportunities on the table. For example, the five years before Riley’s mission got under way, when she was living off the grid and acquiring the “very particular set of skills” [director Morel also helmed Taken] necessary for the task. Or the way she operates as an “angel” for the homeless inhabitants of Skid Row. Or the social media debate, mentioned in passing, which her vigilante actions against Garcia and his gang has kick-started. Or Riley’s eventual payback against another mother for a long-ago wrong. Expanding on any of these might have offered more interesting ways to go, rather than being mostly a clone of this year’s Bruce Willis vehicle, Death Wish, in itself a remake that added little to the 1974 original.

Instead, we are left with little more than a competent exercise in Garner returning to her Alias roots, though as such it’s entertaining enough. The fights here are crisply handled, reaching a peak on the piñata warehouse assault, I’d say – an environment which offers a great deal of opportunity for innovative carnage. It’s the bits in between which are the problem, setting up interesting angles, then failing miserably to take advantage of them, instead offering almost as much footage of the cops chasing Riley (Ortiz and Gallagher). And at least it’s not Elektra, the film effectively responsible for killing off comic-book action heroines for a decade, as well as putting Garner’s career in big-budget movies on life-support. We can be grateful for that, I suppose.

Dir: Pierre Morel
Star: Jennifer Garner, Juan Pablo Raba, John Ortiz, John Gallagher Jr.

Should Be Dead, by Jeramy Gates

  By

Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½

“Liberation, Val had learned, was not a simple matter of casting off stereotypes and social conventions. Nor was it a mere change in perspective. Rather, it was an evolution in state of being, a release not from consequences, but from fear.”

Valkyrie Smith was the sole survivor when her family had the misfortune to encounter a serial killer known as “The Collector”. Her husband and son were brutally slain, and she only escaped by hiding in a well. After a long recovery process, and still somewhat disabled, she sets out to track down the Collector and make him pay for what he did to her family. A series of mysterious clues, left for her by an anonymous party, bring Valkyrie to the Pacific coast, where it appears two killers, “Odin” and “Loki”, have teamed up and are inflicting a reign of terror on the region. Playing the risky game of posing as a federal agent, she joins the investigation under local cop Sheriff Diekmann, since it appears there’s a strong connection to the Collector. With the help of her tech advisor Matt and local reporter Riley, can she find and stop the killers before her own identity is exposed?

Despite the odd name, which is really the kind only given to heroines in thrillers like this, I liked Smith. She’s a little older than most of the genre, is intensely focused and owns one of the most kick-ass cars I’ve ever read about. It’s a restored, heavily-customized 1934 Packard, which had been her husband’s pride and joy, and now resembles something Q Branch would hand to 007, after a stern warning to pay attention. There’s little or no romance to be found here: while she beds Riley, it’s a one-night stand, born mostly out of sympathy, and causes more problems than it solves. Her independence from “official” authority gives her more flexibility; she’s better able to respond as things develop, and has no hesitation about putting herself in danger in pursuit of her targets.

The negatives I found here were mostly plot-based. Impersonating a federal agent is one thing – using your own name to do so, an unusual and highly-recognizable one at that? More seriously, the whole “anonymous” tips element bugged the hell out of me. As well as being lazy writing, it’s obvious Valkyrie is being manipulated into doing someone’s work for them. Fortunately, it’s not a major aspect here, save for the beginning and end. I have to say, I wasn’t particularly surprised by the “twist” in the latter, since it seemed obvious to me that Odin was not who Valkyrie hoped or expected. It flows instead into something pointing towards the second volume.

There was one aspect I found particularly well-done. Part of the second half is told from the perspective of one of Odin and Loki’s victims: a retired woman who, along with her husband, has becomes the target of their home-invasion. In terms of the overlying story arc, it’s mostly superfluous. Yet it’s chilling stuff, and in terms of a standalone tale, her struggle to survive may well the equal of Valkyrie’s.

“I had trusted in humanity, the basic goodness of people, that they won’t walk into your house and kill you just because they can. But that’s not the way the world is…”

Author: Jeramy Gates
Publisher: Timber Hill Press, available through Amazon as both an e-book and paperback.
Book 1 of 2 in the Valkyrie Smith Mystery Series.