Review Category: Movie

FIVE FINGERS FOR MARSEILLES [FANTASIA FEST 2018]

Screened in the Discovery Section of last year’s Toronto Film Festival and getting a screening at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal, Michael Matthews’ South African Apartheid-themed Western Five Fingers For Marseilles comes with a lot of buzz and acclaim. As another exploration of classic genre cinema from the region, it will heighten the interest made by films such as District 9, which gave real depth and intensity to the sci-fi genre whilst crossing over to the International market.

Set in the last days of Apartheid in a township near the Cape called Marseilles, a group of childhood friends – nicknamed the “Five Fingers” – resist the oppression of South African whites and the brutal police regime. Young Tau shoots two police officers when they kidnap one of his friends in a van, but then runs from the crime scene after he fears the friend dead, but whom is only injured.

Years later, now a convict released from prison for a separate crime, Tau returns to his homestead, where he discovers how the other “Fingers” have changed, including one who is now a local Mayor attempting to rebuild the town. It is only a matter of time before his actions of the past will bring him into conflict with a local gang leader who is determined to create his own separate world of prosperity.

The tone and feeling is very much what you probably have seen in any number of past Western offerings, be it The Magnificent Seven, the Leone classics and, of course, Sam Peckinpah’s ground-breaking and influential 1969 classic The Wild Bunch. One thing that will certainly convince people to see Five Fingers For Marseilles is Shaun Harley Lee’s stunning cinematography, and the film reunites him with the director after they collaborated on his 2010 film Sweetheart. It encapsulates the rural tapestry and texture of a South Africa in transit, and there are some incredibly beautiful compositions on show here.

The key problem the film has is that it succumbs to following a tradition of classic Westerns that we have seen before on any number of occasions. There are the age-old themes of making amends for past sins, the transition of generational intent, the desire to do better for your community, and a lot of plot-lines that would not look out of place in the films of the past. It would have been nice to see more originality that taps into the context of the times and gives more insight into the locality that the film portrays.

Five Fingers For Marseilles also taps into the revisionist style of Clint Eastwood classics like The Outlaw Josey Wales and Unforgiven, focusing on a protagonist who is trying to maintain a moral focus whilst protecting those he comes into contact with. If you sense where those films are structured, then you can anticipate where the pay-offs will be in this film. That said, Five Fingers For Marseilles is well worth the ride for the visual landscape as well as its music and sound, and is a worthy addition to Southern Hemisphere film-making.

FIVE FINGERS FOR MARSEILLES / CERTIFICATE: TBC / DIRECTOR: MICHAEL MATTHEWS / SCREENPLAY: SEAN DRUMMOND / STARRING: ZETHU DLOMO, GARTH BREYTENBACH, KENNETH FOK / RELEASE DATE: TBC

CINDERELLA THE CAT [FANTASIA FEST 2018]

As Sonny might have sang if Coppola’s The Godfather was a musical – “Bippety-Bella-Bing!”

As a classic and well-told fairy tale in countless film and television adaptations, amongst the most recent being the Lily James Disney release, film-makers will always return to the most reliable source of literature upon which to build a great vision. Cinderella will continue to be one such point of reference, as it constantly and continually renews itself for the next generation of children and their families.

With no fewer than four directors attached here, Cinderella The Cat received a screening at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival, following a successful Venice Film Festival bow last year and an Italian cinema release. However, please be advised that although this follows the standard familiar steps of a fairy tale, this is not one for the children, given that it uses gangsters, drugs and a manipulative matriarch with six children already – not to mention a little bit of profanity, sexual suggestion and violence.

Vittorio Basile is a magnate who has plans to give the Bay of Naples a wondrous future with various projects to create jobs and prosperity – the centrepiece of which is an amazing hologram-rich ship, the “Megaride”. His daughter, Mia, is watched over by bodyguard Gemilo, and Basile has plans to marry Angelica, the glamorous mother of five daughters and one effeminate son. However, her gangster lover Salvatore is using the marriage as a ruse to get their hands on the immense Basile fortune, which he demonstrates by shooting Vittorio in the period just after the marriage happens on the night.

Years later, the Megaride has become a dilapidated haven for sleaze, retitled “The Ace Of Clubs”. As per classic Cinderella fashion, Mia has become a slave to Angelica and her daughters, crawling around the air vents between cleaning up her step-sisters’ rooms, constantly being scolded for her illiteracy and appearance. However, salvation for Angelica is imminent with the reappearance in her life of Salvatore, who has been building his own illicit empire and vision for Naples, and the real possibility that she can finally be his bride, not to mention finally claiming the spoils of the Basile family…

Cinderella The Cat is one of the most imaginative renderings of a fairy-tale produced in recent years, and a movie that still surprises on occasion. The usual motifs of midnight and the shoe are here, but there are one or two little tweaks that make it more like a gangster classic, whilst keeping the dream-like mystique of any number of iconic stories that we have all grown up with.

The visual style is reminiscent of Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape Of Water and, like the best of his work, uses familiar elements fused with a unique perspective of vision. There is a twinge of a non-PC reflection on ethnicity that belongs decades earlier, but perhaps the period in which the film is set allows that because of the historical sense of what this used to represent.

That is one minor gripe in a very pleasurable animated experience, and one hopes that Cinderella The Cat will find an outlet away from the festival circuit. Given a positive review from Variety post-Venice last year which alluded to an international release, there is a chance here.

CINDERELLA THE CAT / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: ALESSANDRO RAK, IVAN CAPPIELLO, MARINO GUARNIERI, DARIO SANSONE / SCREENPLAY: BARBARA CIARDO, ANNARITA CALLIGARIS, ANTONIA EMANUELA ANGRISANI / STARRING: MASSIMILIANO GALLO, MARIA PIA CALZONE, ALESSANDRO GASSMAN, MARIANO RIGILLO / RELEASE DATE: TBC

THE SHELTER

A middle-aged man in a hoody and not insignificant 5 o’clock shadow makes his way around a townscape that at once has the burned out appearance of any long-lived place but at the same time the hazy, quasi-romantic quality of Edward Hopper’s café painting, Nighthawks. The man is Thomas (Michael Paré) and throughout this film we see him attempt to deal with the grief of losing the perfect American life owing to his own boneheaded stupidity. This is actor John Fallon’s directorial feature debut and while it has some issues with hokey tropes, its overall vision is audacious.

Paré is the heart of the film. We see him move from emotionless, dislocated sex scenes through to a state of bitter desperation so understated as to not be able to muster the Lucifer to light his smoke. Following a ruck up with a cheap woman (any woman), he ambles into a house for safety only to be trapped by the memories of what his life might have been. At his best, actor Paré maintains a quiet but furious desperation. He always has a gruff quality suggesting he’s come too far to suffer fools, but at the same time some clever lighting often highlights the lines that puncture that handsome face, making him seem utterly isolated, realising why he was unable to learn from his mistakes. The supporting actors are also reasonable, though it must be said in each instance that the film works best when underplayed and often with a little dry humour as some of the showier segments do feel a little forced.

The salvation or damnation of the film is that it tries to hit too many bases. At its heart, it’s a psychodrama with some inventive uses of surrealist imagery that act to project the mental purgatory, complete with a lot of religious iconography, in which the drunk find himself. The neon lights become the power of Christ and his need to beg forgiveness jostles with memories that aren’t allowed to fade. He goes from grime into the outright sublime with a score that transcends its simplicity while the iconography and cinematography of the surrealist imagery allow the viewer to project their own emotions on to the sequences. Shawn Knippelberg and Bobby Holbrook deserve plaudits for the former and latter of these respectively. What is unfortunately misjudged, however, are the haunted house segments that periodically pop up. They are simply too overt to work in the context of a piece that is frankly more complex than cheap shots allow for and they often act to take the audience out of the narrative.

For all its anger and impressive visuals, The Shelter is a meditative piece about moving from confusion to the acceptance of something perhaps cannot be fully understood. Fallon’s piece is piercing as a disconcerting family dreamscape, if not always focused. With a little more clarity of purpose, his work may be extraordinary.

THE SHELTER / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: JOHN FALLON / STARRING: MICHAEL PARÉ, LAUREN ALEXANDRA, RACHEL G. WHITTLE, GAYLE JAMES / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

TEEN TITANS GO! TO THE MOVIES

With Pixar upping the ante with The Incredibles 2 – a hugely enjoyable sequel that has raised the game on computer animation to live-action quality – and Marvel still holding their own with the MCU offering more and more new varieties of their trademark characters, the DC Universe is in lagging behind.

The latest addition from Warner Animation, Teen Titans Go! To The Movies, may not hit the blockbuster heights of an Avengers: Infinity War, but it has just enough to offer families to provide a mildly amusing outing; and at least it tries to play off with humour those communal heroics that are taking the genre to billion-dollar returns worldwide.

Based on the successful animated TV series Teen Titans Go!, children will have no trouble dragging their parents along, given its on-going presence on Cartoon Network and the appeal of superhero films in general.

Daffy Duck’s appearance during the opening Warner Animation logo sets up the tone of the piece, in which the Teen Titans – Beast Boy, Cyborg, Raven, Robin, and Starfire – are ridiculed by the Justice League in their opening scrap against the Balloon Man (voiced by British comedian Greg Davies) for not having their own movie when the villain doesn’t recognise them.

Taking the idea seriously, they head to one of the top Hollywood producers, Jade Wilson (Frozen‘s Kristen Bell), with whom Robin becomes attached (which leads to him wanting to get his own starring role in his own feature, even though the message becomes clear about the reality of why some are heroes and some are sidekicks). Soon entertainment and practical reality are about to collide and their own purpose in life is about to be challenged to the fullest…

Teen Titans Go! To The Movies is a lot more fun than some of the recent DC offerings, which continue to take themselves a little too seriously, perhaps to appease the purists. Interestingly, those who fans who were saddened not to see the Tim Burton Superman project come to fruition in the nineties will be amused to know that the main contender for that version, Nicolas Cage, fulfils his mandate as the Man of Steel in this film.

There is a fun reference to Back To The Future when the Titans decide to try and alter the course of superhero history, with a montage tapping into every homage and original story we have ever experienced over decades, be it comic book, film, or television adaptation and Alan Silvestri’s iconic theme from the 1985 classic adds to the flavour.

There are some neatly skewered references to the MCU and some knowing structural references that fans and followers will pick up. One suspects, however, that the Deadpool duo of films might have more or less cornered the market in self-depreciation already when it comes to spoofing the Marvel and DC Universe.

A fun and mildly diverting film.

TEEN TITANS GO! TO THE MOVIES / CERT: PG / DIRECTORS: AARON HORVATH, PETER RIDA MICHAIL / SCREENPLAY: MICHAEL JELENIC, AARON HORVATH / STARRING: NICOLAS CAGE, HALSEY, JIMMY KIMMEL, GREG CIPES, SCOTT MENVILLE, KHARY PAYTON, TARA STRONG, KRISTEN BELL / RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 3RD

HANG UP! (SHORT)

We’ve all experienced moments when loved ones or friends have inadvertently hit the dial button on their phone, calling us by mistake. Sometimes we just hear some background noise – a TV, the radio – others it could be a conversation the person is having. It’s the latter that’s the focus of this new short from Fatal Pictures, who have impressed us previously with the likes of Heir and Familiar.

Gary (Nolan) is working in his office when he gets a call from his wife, Emelia (Auza). Within moments, it’s clear she’s butt-dialled him and she’s actually in mid-conversation with a friend. Before he hangs up on her, part of the discussion piques his interest – and not for any good reason. He discovers his wife’s real feelings for him and – much more sinister – her intentions.

Hang Up! shows what can be achieved with a minimalist approach (we only actually see one actor and we’re only in the one location) and a great script. Presented in black and white, Nolan is the primary focus – with very little dialogue – who sits and listens to Auza’s monologue. The range of feelings on show is stunning, the guy is a tour de force of acting skills. As an audience, we’re put through just as much of an emotional ringer as the character.

Although it’s presented in a rather low-key manner, the music (by Christopher Guglick) and the masterful editing (from Marc Roussel, director of The Last Halloween) bolster the atmosphere and tension.

It’s difficult to discuss the direction the film takes without descending into spoiler territory, but rest assured, it descends into some very dark places and has an increasingly relentless psychological edge unknown in a less-than-fifteen-minute short. The monochrome look works perfectly, adding to the tone of the piece. Despite having no visual effects or gore, this is one of the most disturbing films that you may see this year.

Hang Up! will be screening at festivals soon and has its World Premiere at FilmQuest, Utah in September.

HANG UP! (SHORT) / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: RICHARD POWELL / STARRING: ROBERT NOLAN, ASTRIDA AUZA / RELEASE DATE: TBC

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT

Like a spy with many masks, the Mission: Impossible series, for a while, redefined itself with each adventure. It started with Brian De Palma’s cerebral tale of spying and deception, before flipping tone to the cartoonish gun porn of John Woo. A flashy but insubstantial instalment from JJ Abrams and the high-tech gadgetry of Brad Bird followed. But after 2015’s Rogue Nation, from writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, was praised as the best mission to date, we now have the first M:I movie to see a director return for a second go.

Two years after Rogue Nation, the terrorist Syndicate has re-emerged in the form of splinter faction the Apostles, with a motive along the lines of ‘let’s kill a lot of people’ and a plan to set off some large bombs. When an attempt at keeping plutonium out of the wrong hands goes awry, Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his team set off on a globe-hopping adventure which takes them to Paris, London and Kashmir, and back into conflict with now-imprisoned Syndicate leader Solomon Lane (Harris). Alongside his usual support unit of Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg, Hunt’s joined by CIA assassin August Walker (Cavill, plus now-notorious moustache), though Walker distrusts Hunt and has objectives of his own, as does MI6’s magnificently named Ilsa Faust (Ferguson), returning from Rogue Nation.

Those who skipped the previous film may be briefly confused by those throwbacks; Fallout does one major thing the M:I series hasn’t done before, in that it’s a full-on sequel. There’s also a guest appearance from Ethan’s ex-wife (Monaghan, last seen in 2011’s Ghost Protocol) and a new character related to Vanessa Redgrave’s villain from the very first movie. Swot up with some Wikipedia plot summary-centred revision beforehand, and this can be very rewarding. The series has settled into a solid continuity rather than having Hunt throw away women and friends after just one fling, and Fallout manages not to make these returnees feel crowbarred in but to properly develop all concerned.

But what we’re all here for, let’s admit it, is the grandstanding set pieces, another aspect in which Fallout ups the game. If you’ve seen the much-trailered shot of Hunt clinging onto a cargo rope beneath a helicopter, that’s just the start of a sequence that gets more brilliantly ludicrous as it goes on – wait till you see what happens when the other chopper gets involved. Other highlights include a brutal road chase through Paris and a punch-up in a nightclub toilet which is weirdly clean until Hunt’s finished with it. This balls-through-the-wall action is countered nicely by the cleverer, more deception-based espionage – there’s a great “oh, that’s what they were doing” moment when Hunt’s team get the upper hand on a villain – meaning that the two-and-a-half hour running time actually flies by.

And among all this, there’s a thematic thread about Hunt’s devotion to protecting innocent lives, whatever the cost. It’s slight, but that’s kind of the point – this is a series that refuses to be too introspective, and the character development is there to add a bit of depth to the action rather than detract from it. The Daniel Craig Bond movies may have taken Bond from rookie double-O to old-timer whinging about his knobbly knees in just three films, but twenty-two years in, Ethan Hunt shows little sign of ever slowing down.

If there’s one word that sums up Fallout, it’s ‘confident’. It has no desire to do anything new or polemical, but it gives us fans what we want – Tom Cruise hanging off of things, the team back together, quick-witted deception antics, and a heavy dose of charm. Accept this mission.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT / CERT: 12A / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: CHRISTOPHER MCQUARRIE / STARRING: TOM CRUISE, HENRY CAVILL, REBECCA FERGUSON, VING RHAMES, SIMON PEGG, SEAN HARRIS, MICHELLE MONAGHAN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Expected rating: 8 out of 10

THE ENDLESS

Imagine if the makers of Lost had really known where they were going instead of making it up as they went along. Imagine if all those crazy ideas they hurled into seven seasons of the desert island drama had somehow managed to end up making some sort of sense. The Endless occasionally feels like a typically bizarre episode of Lost, but fortunately, directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead have a clear ending in sight. Though they may not answer all your questions by the conclusion, they’ll leave you feeling a hell of a lot more satisfied than when you watched Jack lie down with that dog and smile at a bunch of people in a church.

If you weren’t a watcher of Lost, never mind. The Endless sees brothers Justin and Aaron (played by the directors themselves) making a return trip to visit the cult that they escaped from many years earlier. When we meet them, Justin and Aaron are working as cleaners, still having therapy, and younger brother Aaron is particularly unhappy with his lot in life. When a videotape arrives with a message from one of the cult members, they decide to spend a night or two back with their former ‘family’, mainly to see if anything has changed and if it was all really as crazy as Justin says it was.

The Endless works best as a story about family and particularly fraternal relationships, rather than a meditation on faith. However, family and faith are constantly tested throughout. The dynamic between the brothers is of considerable interest as Justin controls and dominates his younger brother. Justin feels the burden of responsibility to look after his younger sibling and it was his decision to get them both away from the cult. But Aaron’s awakening and desire to revisit the cult is born of his memories of a happier life there. The film raises questions about how this pair relate, and whether their relationship is at all healthy, even without the influence of a group of people that have been labelled a UFO Death Cult.

And it’s with the introduction of these benign characters and their peaceful surroundings, that things take a turn for the weird. The cult seem to be a group of decent people; they make money from the ale that they make and sell, they’re big into self-improvement, and their rural existence seems perhaps a little too idyllic. This clearly complicates things for the brothers. Is Justin paranoid, or is Aaron missing the truth of what Justin sees? Before long, there is definite proof that something isn’t quite right here.

The Endless only manages to remain believable because its leads, particularly Justin, stay so cynical about the cult and its many members. As events start to spiral intriguingly and take a long leap towards the science-fiction genre, Aaron and Justin make a grounded pair to balance the tone.

There’s a neat premise at the heart of The Endless and its characters feel real enough to keep you engaged even as the plot gets more peculiar. It’s a little lacking in heart, but it makes up for this with some striking imagery and a satisfyingly out there story that goes to some truly unexpected places.

THE ENDLESS / CERT: TBC / DIRECTORS: JUSTIN BENSON, AARON MOORHEAD / SCREENPLAY: JUSTIN BENSON / STARRING: CALLIE HERNANDEZ, TATE ELLINGTON, LEW TEMPLE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Expected Rating: 7

DARK DITTIES PRESENTS ‘MRS WILTSHIRE’

Cult Screenings UK and Dead Mouse Productions have created an anthology of sorts, Dark Ditties. In a similar open vein to the old Hammer TV series, the films are about an hour long with an emphasis on character-driven narratives that allow for small budgets to be stretched as far as possible. The Offer from 2017 started the anthology and at least two more productions are underway. In the meantime, we have Mrs Wiltshire.

Here, we spend some time in the house of the titular character, an elderly lady who reflects on her life direct to camera. Despite pleas from her son to leave with him, she’s trapped there by the spirit of her dead husband, a vile and violent man whose abuse of her and their children becomes more apparent. What will it take for her to leave him behind?

On the plus side, Mrs Wiltshire is handsomely mounted, the single setting its often nicely lit. There’s a very strong performance too from former Coronation Street star Bruce Jones as the ghostly and ghoulish Mr Wiltshire (he was also in The Offer). There’s a neat twist you may see coming, but it’s fun.

However, clocking in at just 67 minutes, it still feels like this would have made a better half-hour short, too many scenes just fading to black when you think things are getting going. The writing too is a little odd. Mrs Wiltshire talks like a pensioner from decades ago as if she had never moved on from the 1950s, despite references to mobile phones, so she seems to have been written by someone who doesn’t talk to any old people in real life. Some of the plot makes no sense (the phone call to the daughter) and makes the whole thing slightly confused. Also, it just isn’t scary.

Still, hats off to the Dark Ditties team. Even if this one doesn’t quite work, it’s a great endeavour and here’s to the next instalment.

Finally, in what’s essentially a chamber piece, the character of Mrs Wiltshire is played by the recently departed Doris M. F. Bonham. Apparently, she died just after filming was completed. Funny that, as she looks like a man in some heavily-aged makeup. Read her entry on IMDB – if the script to Mrs Wiltshire showed half as much wit and invention, it would have made for a much more enjoyable hour. If we’re wrong and Ms Bonham was actually real, we apologise before she comes back to haunt us…

DARK DITTIES PRESENTS ‘MRS WILTSHIRE’ / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: NEIL MORRIS, GARY SMART / STARRING: SIMON BAMFORD, BRUCE JONES, RAY SKEEMER, SIOBHAN KILMARTIN, DORIS M.F. BOHNAM / RELEASE DATE: TBC

THE BRINK [FANTASIA 2018 REVIEW]

Getting a screening at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal, Jonathan Li’s Martial Arts actioner The Brink comes on the heels of an Autumn 2017 release in the Far East.

Li’s pedigree before his debut as director here makes him an ideal choice. Not only has he been a long-established Assistant Director on a number of Hong Kong action classics, he is also backed up by a veteran of the business in the form of Nicky Li, who worked on a number of Jackie Chan’s blockbuster hits and who has been nominated for a Best Action Choreography award for this.

Illicit gold smuggling amidst a fishing ban in local waters is the backdrop for this thriller, which tells of a rebellious police inspector’s desire to take down a local gangster, Jiang, with his eyes on the water-bound prize. Jiang makes his presence felt early having been betrayed by a greedy boss, by gutting his son and leaving his quarry on the edge of death.

The cop isn’t having the best of times in the world, having been wrongly incarcerated and released without charge, but is determined to make amends (and is also the guardian to the daughter of a man he killed) by going after Jiang. Inevitably, his superiors are none-too-pleased with his methods, and a retiring partner is roped into the mix for one last case.

Before long, though, his actions are creating all manner of complications, but the cop is convinced that his instincts will prevail, and justice will be served to right the wrongs…

While the plot-line and premise is pretty standard for the genre, and you can sense how and when people are going to do their worst, the film is elevated thanks to some well-choreographed action fights and sequences which progress towards a climax that wouldn’t look out of place in The Perfect Storm.

Fans who haven’t really got into Far East cinema yet may get something out of this too, particularly fans of James Bond films such as Licence to Kill and Thunderball, as there is a suspenseful mid-point underwater fight that exudes energy and purpose in a way that the latter movie was often criticised for back in 1965 and beyond.

There are moments where the pace drags, particularly when the cop is wanting to show his more emotional side. This can be the death knell for these types of thrillers, as audiences genuinely want to concentrate on the action, which admittedly this has in abundance from the early minutes.

We’re hoping that Fantasia will help raise The Brink‘s profile and secure it a wide release internationally soon.

THE BRINK / DIRECTOR: JONATHAN LI / SCREENPLAY: PACO WONG / STARRING: KA TUNG LAM, JANICE MAN, CECILLIA SO, TAI-BO / RELEASE DATE: TBC

THE OUTLAWS [FANTASIA 2018 REVIEW]

There is something about the evident brutality of Far Eastern Cinema when you compare it to Western classics like Lethal Weapon and Die Hard that grounds it in a more art-house context, rather than have this ability to shock the local audiences. That isn’t to say that any form of violence is acceptable in a real level and that filmmakers would rather stage violence as a form of primal release to tap into the emotional frustrations of the times the audience is living.

One such example of this which is being screened at the 2018 Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal is Kang Yun-Sung’s The Outlaws, which was selected in 2017 in the Dubai and Macao International Film Festivals. It has won a couple of domestic awards and is certainly going to provide some intrigue and interest.

Based on a real-life incident that took place in 2007, The Outlaws focuses on the exploits of the Serious Crime Squad in Seoul, South Korea. Online reports tell of a total of thirty-two people being investigated for the vicious crimes, so it does seem to have quite a place in Korea police history, who formed the backbone of a Chinese crime syndicate and one individual who was smuggled into South Korea.

Led by a worldly and wise veteran officer Ma (Don Lee), the police are seemingly on the brink with resources stretched, thanks to the arrival of the Chinese Black Dragon Gang amidst the Korea locality. The film doesn’t waste any time demonstrating the true brutality of what the gangs are capable of, thinking nothing of using an axe to reach the body parts they need to and stabbing any number of victims to show their strength.

Compounding the Squad’s efforts comes in the form of senior officers, who have determined that Ma and his team only have another ten days to solve the case, and ensure they can restore order and decency to the district they watch over…

The Outlaws is a taut and tight piece of police drama, as bloody, brutal, profane and violent as anything to have emerged in the last ten years. Fans of Infernal Affairs and the work of John Woo will certainly get a lot from this production and those who might want to research the real-life incident it is based on may find a lot more brutal and shocking evidence, which is often different to when it comes to dramatising what we see on screen, as filmmakers sometimes have to tone down the violence to make it acceptable for viewing by the masses.

There are some well-staged fights and action – notably one sequence when a gang member lets off a fire extinguisher during a birthday celebration – and there are a few well-chosen moments of dark humour here and there, as is the norm for the type of film you can expect from the Far East film community.

Fantasia 2018 is clearly a solid foundation for The Outlaws to build an international fan-base on, and American audiences and beyond will embrace it like they will a Jackie Chan or John Woo film.

THE OUTLAWS / DIRECTOR: YOON-SEONG KANG / SCREENPLAY: YOON-SEONG KANG / STARRING: JIN-AH BAE, GWI-HWA CHOI, HYUNG-JOON IM / UK RELEASE DATE: TBC