Review Category: Movie

After his beloved elderly mother is killed during a break in, farmer Donal soon discovers that there may have been more to her death than it first seemed, and as a murky underworld gradually reveals itself, the further he delves into the shadows the more he may regret what he finds there.

 

The surprisingly populous sub-genre of middle-aged-man-on-a-rampage gets an Irish entry. However, instead of the likes of Taken, Man On Fire or any DTV thriller with a generic single-word title that stars Nicholas Cage, this is far closer to the likes of Blue Ruin or Norwegian thriller In Order of Disappearance. Rather than the protagonist having a shady past that has afforded him a particular set of skills, Donal instead becomes successful in his journey of vengeance through little more than grim relentless determination and the criminals he faces being far from efficient professionals, and are overly complacent in how much of a threat they believe their low-rent thuggery radiates. Far more formidable is the crime gang’s leader Frankie, a monstrous woman whose simmering unpredictability punctuated by outbursts of extreme violence calls to mind Ben Kingsley’s psychotic enforcer from Sexy Beast.

 

It doesn’t hurt that Donal is a heavily built guy who can both give and receive a reasonable amount of punishment, and with some wonderfully inventive uses of household implements (such as a saucepan and an iron) as impromptu torture devices, he remains convincing enough as a growing force to be reckoned with. As fun as it is to watch detestable thugs being unceremoniously killed, there never seems to be any indication that Donal’s actions are affecting him in any way, despite previously being an insular man living an isolated existence and now having suddenly jumped to killing half a dozen people in a couple of days, but it also means that you don’t need to expend any pangs of conscience wresting with any moral ambiguity. With the kinds of crime these people are a part of, anything that happens to them they deserve.

 

The story as it stands isn’t particularly expansive so quickly picks up a secondary plot line of Donal helping young Polish man Bartosz in an attempt to save his sister from a life of forced prostitution at the hands of the criminals he is hunting, reflecting an uncomfortable and grim reality for many eastern European girls and putting a human face on the suffering the gang’s actions cause.

 

The film could easily have ended twenty minutes earlier, but it almost seems like the film is consciously aware that so short a running time would seem a little unsatisfactory, so drags out its conclusion and final revelations for as long as possible, trying to inject a degree of moral ambivalence on the way that it unfortunately lacks the emotional weight to adequately pull off. There is a strong suggestion that cycles of vengeance merely go around and around, an observation of particular poignancy for a country with a recent history so mired in conflict and one that in making Bad Day for the Cut is at its most insightful.

 

BAD DAY FOR THE CUT / CERT: TBA / DIRECTOR: CHRIS BAUGH / SCREENPLAY: CHRIS BAUGH, BRENDAN MULLIN / STARRING: NIGEL O’NEILL, JÓZEF PAWLOWSKI, SUSAN LYNCH, STUART GRAHAM, ANNA PRÓCHNIAK, DAVID PEARSE, IAN MCELHINNEY / RELEASE DATE: TBA

 

Expected Rating: 7/10

 

Actual Rating:

Tsunambee is one of those movies which is so howlingly bad it makes your eyes bleed; or at least it makes you wish your eyes would bleed because at least it would mean you hadn’t wasted an entire eighty minutes of your life and that there might be a vague chance you’d remember the experience a couple of days later. Really, this is just terrible. “Atmospheric catastrophes” (could ya make that a bit vaguer for us?) cause havoc in Los Angeles; onscreen this means some seriously shonky loose-change CGI depicting a  few burning buildings and a crashing helicopter. A handful of survivors flee the city (fleeing the film might have been a wiser move) and end up in one of those achingly bland wildernesses so beloved of painfully cheap B-movies. Before long this mismatched bunch are attacked by – there’s no easy way to put this – a plague of giant killer bees (which actually look like wasps and are described as such in what we might generously describe as “the script”) which appear from nowhere, killing people and turning them into zombies. That’s right, zombies.

 

So far, so tedious and terribly badly realised. The effects are uniformly risible, the acting pitiful (there are performances here which will make you want to chew your own knees) and the drama distinctly undramatic – apart, oddly, from one sequence where the car these losers are fleeing in crashes and hangs precariously over a cliff for five minutes. Eventually the survivors of this group come across a farmhouse inhabited by a good ol’ God fearin’ father and his young daughter and, as the already sluggish pace grinds to a halt, we suddenly realise that what we’re watching is an extremely clumsy faith movie. You gotta believe! You gotta have Faith! God wants us to survive! Scene after interminable scene drags by with characters discussing their faith and putting their faith in God and praying for salvation and on and on until, presumably, the End of Days. Now we’re not suggesting for one moment that faith movies don’t have their place in the cinematic scheme of things but Tsunambee (was a film ever more haplessly titled?) is about as subtle as a sledgehammer or, perhaps more aptly, a sting from a giant bee/wasp/whatever-the-Hell-these-things-are and the religious pontificating seems utterly out of place and genuinely awkward and unsubtle in what purports to be a scary (it isn’t), exciting (if only), apocalyptic (the sooner the better) thriller.

Tsunambee could have been a ‘bad movie’ in the style of one of the SyFy Channel’s cheapos, it could have done for bees (or wasps) what the Sharknado series has done for our finny friends from the deep blue sea. Not a chance. Terrible performances abound, the incidental music rarely fits in with what’s happening on-screen and even a ‘shock’ ending is utterly unable to redeem a film which has been so inept and, most unforgivably, bloody boring for so long. Oh, and did we mention the entirely superfluous zombies? Bee off with you, Tsunambee…never darken our hives again.

 

TSUNAMBEE / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: MILKO DAVIS / STARRING: STACY PEDERSEN, RUSELIS AUMEEN PERRY, SHALE LE PAGE, MARIA DECOSTE / RELEASE DATE: TO BEE CONFIRMED (GEDDIT?)

The Transformers films serve as a smug reminder that no matter how criminally unwatchable blockbusters have become, people will still show up and have an awful time. The latest instalment in the franchise, Transformers: The Last Knight, continues the trend established by preceding entries by shoving bad characters and convoluted concepts down our waiting throats. While markedly better than its predecessor, Transformers: The Last Knight exhausts where it should excite, confuses where it should convey, and infuriates where it should intrigue. It’s a franchise that should perish rather than persist, even if the fifth chapter boasts a quality that was predictably absent from the middle three entries.

As an ice-crusted Optimus Prime floats through space, Cade Yeager (Wahlberg) finds himself on the run from the Transformers Reaction Force, a military-run operation tasked with ridding the planet of transformers. Meanwhile, Sir Edmund Burton (Hopkins) seeks out Vivian Wembley (Haddock), an Oxford professor who comes from important stock. Burton enlists Yeager’s help with finding an artefact that, if wielded by the right person, could turn the tide in the impending war between Cybertron and Earth.

Director Michael Bay populates his story with characters that feel shoehorned in as though to appease those who disliked the omission of franchise favourites in Age of Extinction. John Turturro’s Seymour Simmons spends the entire movie in Cuba feeding Anthony Hopkins information, and Bay expects us to welcome his inclusion with an open mind and shut mouth. Josh Duhamel’s William Lennox returns as nobody’s favourite gun-toting, orders-giving colonel who somehow becomes less and less important as the film stretches past the two-hour mark. In fact, everything becomes less important past the two-hour mark. Such is Bay’s style. 

Thankfully, the dearth of gratuitous posterior shots and groan-inducing humour lends itself to the film’s marginal success as popcorn entertainment, which is remarkable considering Bay’s propensity for indulging in the tasteless. Instead of forcing us up Nicola Peltz’s shorts, he forces us up the only place where they can be as clueless and disconnected as he is: his own ass. A world where everyone lives up Michael Bay’s ass is a terrifying one, but it’s one we have willingly paid for since 2007. Such is our style.

Put simply, Bay’s latest directorial effort fails as entertainment and succeeds as amusement. At this point, all we can really do is chuckle at the theatre and cry at home knowing that we will absolutely be back for the inevitable sequel.

The Last Knight isn’t what we wanted it to be, but by god, is it what we expected it to be!

TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT / CERT: 12A / DIRECTOR: MICHAEL BAY / SCREENPLAY: ART MARCUM, MATT HOLLOWAY, KEN NOLAN / STARRING: MARK WAHLBERG, ANTHONY HOPKINS, JOSH DUHAMEL, LAURA HADDOCK / RELEASE DATE: JUNE 22ND

Expected Rating: 3 out of 10
Actual Rating: 

In the aftermath of an earthquake, strange, disgusting and mostly unrelated events occur.

To explain Kuso’s plot is fairly pointless, to be honest. It doesn’t have one. It’s just a bloated bag of vignettes, where boil covered people live in a grubby dystopia. It’s the outpouring of a mind intent on trying to disgust you. An extreme of consciousness. But instead of finding something to say about human nature or society, it instead is happy to flop along like a turd slowly rolling down a hill, soiling everything it comes in to contact with.

It gained a reputation at Sundance festival as apparently lots of people walked out because of its ‘extreme’ content, but we’re inclined to think it was more down to a matter of quality than revulsion. You can probably make up your mind whether you’re going to enjoy the film or not in the first ten minutes. It’s the kind of thing that you would stumble upon at 2am on channel four in the nineties, with the sound effects to go with it. The type of film that would have given Mary Whitehouse an aneurism in the early 1980’s.

It could be fun, like an Adult Swim show spun out to feature length, if only Flying Lotus could write a joke, or had the wit and imagination for surreal humour that the Adult Swim team obviously possess. It’s a shame and a bit strange because co-writer David Firth, famous for his weird internet animations Salad Fingers and Burnt Face Man, has made some hilarious, disturbing and brilliant short animations. Kuso feels like it’s in the same vein of weirdness but without the quality. Hopefully Firth finds his place again and goes back to what made his work so great.

Maybe it’s the kind of thing you’d find funny if you were eleven. The poo jokes, the swearing, the general weirdness, attempted grotesquery and its infantile nature. Maybe it’s trying to be boundary pushing. It’s pretty up front about sex, despite having nothing worthwhile to say about it, but it barely even pushes the boundaries of bad taste.

Is it destined for cult status? This writer doubts it. It will probably just disappear off in to the ether like so many films that are released every year.

Despite its love of toilet humour, and attempts to be disgusting and oh-so edgy, Kuso is nothing but a humourless and tiresome trudge, destined to be watched only by young teenagers with poor taste in films.

KUSO / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: FLYING LOTUS (STEVON ELLISON) / SCREENPLAY: STEVEN ELLISON, DAVID FIRTH, ZACK FOX / STARRING: IESHA COSTON, ANDERS HOLM, TIM HEIDECKER, ZACK FOX, BETHANY SCHMITT, SHANE CARPENTER / RELEASE DATE: UK RELEASE TBA

Frank Pierce (Kevin Interdonato) leads a seemingly normal life in a small town. However, when he helps his friend Travis (Brandon Heitkamp) out on a shady deal, things go wrong and soon Frank is in trouble with crime boss Mickey Duro (Tom Sizemore), which might cause his suppressed violent urges to rise to the surface.

Bad Frank doesn’t win any awards for originality for its premise. It’s something seen time and again, changed former criminal falls back into the old world when one last job goes wrong, the best variation of which was David Croenenberg’s brilliant A History of Violence. However, there is a lot to like for the most part in Bad Frank.

For a debut feature, it’s a solid calling card for writer/director Tony Germinario. It covers any low budget issues well and doesn’t stretch its ambition to breaking point. Interdonato is good as the troubled Frank, a man with a shady past living in regular domesticity. He has given up drink but something inside him is trying to break out, to the point where he smacks his own hand with a hammer. He’s ostracised his self from his family; he has a mother who won’t return his calls and a father who lives close by but who seems to not want to talk to him. The relationship between father and son is nicely drawn and played by Interdonato and Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini. Tom Siezemore turns up as crime boss Mickey Duro, playing that mix of aggressive crazy and loud pal that he does well. The film is entertaining and quite compelling as we watch Frank try to repair fractured relationships and wonder what he did to make them that way.

It’s in the final act that Bad Frank falters. When everything kicks off, battle lines are drawn and people get kidnapped, the film starts to feel sluggish and loses what it had going for it. It needlessly lingers on Frank and an important character in Mickey’s life, only for a disappointing payoff. Frank becomes the violent guy that has always been hinted at and immediately becomes less sympathetic and interesting. Instead of Frank being a creation of his environment, he turns out to just be a bit of a dick. Attempts are made to make you feel like his actions can be justified because of the poor decisions of those around him but it doesn’t come off, and Interdonato doesn’t get to do much more than be aggressive. A shame as all the subtlety goes flying out the window.

With strong performances and some solid direction, Bad Frank is enjoyable and compelling through its first half but starts to fall apart in the final act.

BAD FRANK / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: TONY GERMINARIO / STARRING: KEVIN INTERDONATO, BRANDON HEITKAMP, TOM SIZEMORE / RELEASE DATE: UK RELEASE TBA

Sometimes you just don’t know what you are getting. When family animations fly around as fast and furiously as they do nowadays, often you end up with stuff that is simply intolerable, other stuff that is magical and then the usual bog standard offerings in-between. However, there is another category, away from Pixar, Ghibli and Academy Award nominations, the films that reside here make home on un-groundbreaking but unshakably charming foundations. Films like Igor, The House of Magic and A Monster in Paris. These films often borrow elements from other bigger hits and are what many would chastise as cliché, forgettable or vastly inferior to the more sophisticated outings that they draw inspiration from. However, in there own little way, they are little crystals to be found and enjoyed by certain family audiences, flaws and all, amidst the stream of the genre and now the surprisingly delightful Rock Dog joins this crowd.

This Chinese-American production is hitting select cinemas the same time it debuts on Sky Movies Cinema in the UK and in other territories is heading straight to disc. Now this may give off a certain impression about the film and while the more discerning viewers may crave something more ambitious, Rock Dog is a splendidly upbeat and colourful little offering. Based on the graphic novel “Tibetan Rock Dog” by Zheng Jun, the film tells the story of Bodi (Luke Wilson) a Tibetan mastiff who is expected to take over from his stern father Khampa (J.K. Simmons) in guarding the sheep village of Snow Mountain from wolf attack. However when an accidental occurrence rekindles Bodi’s youthful love of music, he aspires to make his own music, unimpressed his father allows him a trip to the city but expects he’ll come running back as failure is all but certain. Indeed rocking is not as easy as it seems and gaining an audience with international rock legend Angus Scattergood (Eddie Izzard) is even trickier a task but Bodi doesn’t know the meaning of the words “give up”.

 

Reviews have been rather mixed to sour for this rock infused animated outing and in many ways some criticisms are valid. Writer/Director Ash Brannon and co-writer Kurt Voelker’s screenplay is a heavy blend of plot elements from Kung Fu Panda, Zootropolis and Kubo and the Two Strings, with dollops of Sing on the side. It is a scrappy offering at times and those with heightened expectations will likely shun this perceived “mongrel” in favour of other animated pedigree. However in-between all the familiarity – like the aforementioned The House of Magic – this lower budgeted animation has its heart firmly in the right place and family audiences will have a lovely time in its company.

 

The visuals are not pushing any new boundaries but are impressive at points, with many moments that feel really comfortable on the big screen. The themes of striving for your art and shaking away cynicism with a smile and a wilful determination are valuable to a young audience, as are some of the other themes of conscience, passion and compassion. It certainly has more going on in its head and music loving heart than the likes of the unlikable The Nut Job, forgettable Norm of the North and big budgeted disappointments like Cars 2, Shrek The Third and Shark Tale. In fact it is brilliantly sweet and enjoyable.

 

Rock Dog works to amuse and engage its audience for its well paced duration, with moments of mayhem, humour (at the expense of the music industry’s ego and artistic hissyfittery mostly) and most important of all, heart. It is likely that many audiences were expecting a hollow knock-off here but flaws notwithstanding, Rock Dog is a great afternoon’s viewing for kids and adults alike. The characters are warm (Mae Whitman’s rock fox Darma), goofy (the wolf henchmen) and charming (Bodi) and Eddie Izzard is great fun as the feline rock god prima donna Scattergood (with his self-loving portraits, robot servant and house-sized waterbed.

 

Impressively cast (Sam Elliot plays a character called Fleetwood Yak!) and start to finish charming, this is hardly a competitor to the animated lords (nor does it try to be) but it deserves to join the aforementioned exclusive crop of animated movies that deservedly garner a dedicated audience and fill their brief but welcome running times with an unexpectedly entertain experience. Who doesn’t love seeing an underdog succeed, especially one this kind hearted and fun. A welcome surprise.

 

ROCK DOG / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: ASH BRANNON / SCREENPLAY: ASH BRANNON, KURT VOELKER / STARRING: LUKE WILSON, EDDIE IZZARD, J.K. SIMMONS, LEWIS BLACK, MAE WHITMAN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW (SELECT CINEMAS; SKY CINEMA)

Universes are becoming the next big thing in cinema; no longer is the word ‘franchise’ enough, instead a ‘cinematic universe’ is where it’s now at. Arguably spurred on by the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its continued success, the trend continues as the DCEU (this year receiving its best entry in the glorious Wonder Woman), The Conjuring universe and Legendary’s Monster-verse (which has gone from strength to strength thanks to the brilliant Kong: Skull Island) are all expanding. And so the original universe now returns – Universal Monsters! However, the studio is starting afresh and Alex Kurtzman’s The Mummy is the first instalment in what Universal are calling ‘The Dark Universe’, so how is it? In a word… disjointed.

The Mummy sees military man – and black market dealer on the side – Nick Morton (Tom Cruise), happen across the tomb of an ancient long-forgotten Egyptian Princess (Sofia Boutella) in present day Iraq. However, if he and archaeologist Jennifer Halsey (Annabelle Wallis) are correct in thinking this is the same lost princess Ahmanet that legends speak of, then there is a very good reason she was cursed to a fate worse than death all those centuries ago… as they will soon find.

A far cry from the Boris Karloff pictures and likewise a completely different take on mummified mythos to the Brendan Fraser-led Mummy trilogy, this film looks to blend dark horror with action. Sadly, despite admirable intentions, the tonal shifts that come with this genre-blending sit uneasily alongside too much worldbuilding for the movie to comfortably – and coherently – translate to the screen. Reminding at points of a mad mix between Marc Forster’s energetic World War Z and Stephen Norrington’s The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, alas, the film doesn’t maintain the former’s pace or even the latter’s watchable mayhem and the third act especially falls into forgettable pandemonium, with Sofia Boutella’s villain getting ultimately wasted in a special effects sandstorm.

The opening is filled with dark myth and there are touches of that throughout, but sadly hints at darkness are clobbered senseless not much sooner with 12A style action sequences. Undeniably there are some effective moments but most of them were in the trailers and released clips (indeed, if you haven’t seen any footage, you may want to boost our score up a point) and the story feels haphazardly assembled, with too much franchise-building work for one film to handle and questionable editing that leaves transitions feeling confusingly absent of any sense of time or structure; this all results in a messy blockbuster that compensates for its plethora of shortcomings with an overload of CG action. It is a real tragedy that the moments of horror are not more regular, as these sequences are far stronger and more engaging, and so it would have been great to see Kurtzman go for broke in that dark direction. 

There’s nothing wrong with a bit of popcorn-munching fun, mind, and this movie may service that ambition for some, but in that ballpark it cannot maintain the knowingly giddy energy (and graphic darkness in the first film’s case) of Sommers’ Mummy films, the charm of Van Helsing, the atmosphere of the rather underrated The Wolfman or, most importantly, the mythical thrill and chill of the studio’s classics. This being said, it is not all a loss, as we say there are some darkly efficient horror beats, Russell Crowe is game as Dr. Jekyll (this universe’s Nick Fury figure) and the references to Universal’s monster lineage are a treat. Additionally, while the characters and humour often fail to hit the mark, but Cruise does sell some of the comedy moments (one bar scene in particular).

Not terribly terrible or terribly good, it is a terribly all over the place start to the Dark Universe; the ideas are there, they just needed coherently forming rather than throwing together. That being said, we hope to see it, oddly, do well enough not to kill this universe, because with some thought, care and learning from the mistakes here, this could be a thoroughly interesting world (plus they went and spent money, prematurely perhaps, on an admittedly cool ‘Dark Universe’ ident at the start of the movie). If they recruited directors like Guillermo Del Toro, Tim Burton or J. A. Bayona, they would seriously knock it out of the park and we hope they get the chance to in the future! Sadly, such is not the case here in this untidy and very unmemorable offering. Very disappointing. 

THE MUMMY / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: ALEX KURTZMAN / SCREENPLAY: DAVID KOEPP, CHRISTOPHER MCQUARRIE, DYLAN KUSSMAN / STARRING: TOM CRUISE, ANNABELLE WALLIS, SOFIA BOUTELLA, JAKE JOHNSON, RUSSELL CROWE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Expected Rating: 7/10 

Actual Rating:

Irish horror films have been enjoying increased exposure over the past few years, possibly heralding a new wave of independent Irish cinema. Films like The Hallow, Let Us Prey, US-based/Irish-directed I Am Not a Serial Killer, and – more recently- Without Name have been showcasing new genre talents left, right and centre.

Dennis Bartok’s Nails belongs to this new crop of horror films, but doesn’t boast the overt Gothic or folk-bound aesthetics of its contemporaries. Instead Bartok (a veteran broadcaster) goes for a classic ghost story in a contemporary setting, depositing Dana (The Descent‘s Shauna Macdonald), his mute paraplegic heroine, in Ireland’s most miserable hospital for our chills and thrills.

When you think back to the film’s sale at Cannes 2015, things have come a long way. Originally the film was called P.O.V. and had Bond girl Bernice Marlohe pinned to star. Two years is long time in the film biz, so things have naturally changed. Macdonald makes a solid lead and Bartok’s vision seems relatively undisturbed by the production process.

For the most part, Nails is a classic haunting with a modern twist. Aside from the jolting instigatory car crash and some modern trimmings, Nails could be set in just about any decade. There’s a timeless quality to the classic horror beats, but that ends up being surprisingly detrimental. In a wave of films desperate to find new ways of scaring, Nails is a blast from the past with its jumps, haunted hospital hallways, perceived female hysteria, and mundane supernatural threat.

Bartok does best when he keeps the scares on the periphery and really explores Dana’s physical and mental isolation. Nails himself isn’t a particularly original monster, but his stature is used well in those early, heavily shadowed sequences. There are some genuinely chilling ideas around restricted movement with well-considered camera work to boot. It’s just a shame that a lot of it feels a bit loose-brained.

Shauna’s husband for instance is an absolute arse, i.e. showing his depressed paraplegic wife pictures of his new super hot assistant at work. Characters frequently fail to react like credible humans but as McDonald is giving 100%, oddly it shows up the relative dopiness of the film. Nails‘ foundations shake under the weight of her dedication to her character. Ross Noble does fine as a lovable orderly, whilst Robert O’Mahoney’s creepy resident doctor lends a bit of gravitas to the film’s classic horror influence.

Altogether it’s a simple, but relatively satisfying, horror film. Bartok clearly has some genre awareness but Nails feels too old school to properly fit in with the Irish New Wave. It’s a mixed bag of popcorn spooks and gutting emotional trauma, led by a distractingly engaging performance from Shauna Macdonald. Bartok might not have his finger on the pulse of contemporary terror, but he does fine with Nails.

NAILS / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: DENNIS BARTOK / SCREENPLAY: DENNIS BARTOK, TOM ABRAMS / STARRING: SHAUNA MACDONALD, STEVE WALL, ROSS NOBLE, RICHARD FOSTER-KING, ROBERT O’MAHONEY / RELEASE DATE: 16TH JUNE

Expected Rating: 3/10

Actual Rating:

The potent poster for writer and director Kurando Mitsutake’s Karate Kill is dripping in Cannon-era hyperbolic imagery promising that ‘He is no Mr. Miyagi’, a wealth of 1980s references that for fans of the era ticks so many boxes you hope it will hit even half of its marks. In Japan, Kenji (the uni-monikered Hayate) hasn’t been able to get in contact with his sister Mayumi for a month. Mayumi is over in America having gone to study acting. Kenji quits the four jobs he’s been working to put her through classes and heads to LA to find her. Since their childhood Kenji vowed to protect his sister and it’s not long after his arrival in the US that he discovers she needs him more now than ever.

 

A crazed cult-like criminal gang called Capital Messiah headed up by the maniacal Vendenski has kidnapped Mayumi. They run a website that hosts real snuff footage of murders and executions amongst other heinous acts, so Kenji doesn’t have much time left if he’s going to save Mayumi from a sad and miserable fate to please the highest bidders.

 

Enough of the time these days a nostalgia-tinged marketing campaign suggesting a return to the purely enjoyable likes of ‘80s horror or action gets something of a little buzz and nobody really feels like spoiling the fun when the finished film turns out to be just alright. When they don’t work it’s through being too much of a homage to inspirations, not doing anything new at all or being pale imitations of their more lurid exploitation forbears. Karate Kill is certainly trading on films gone by and that era in particular but fortunately for the viewer it lands its punches more often than not.

 

Often cheesy, tasteless and overblown, it is decidedly over the top but all done with tongue in cheek. It’s a knowing film that frequently borders on parody but keeps enough of a straight face to not tip too much that way. Hayate makes for a likably laconic hero and makes a convincing badass. He leads a film that isn’t in any way original but at least has enough character of its own to stand out from those inspirations. Mitsutake ramps up the punishment everyone involved experiences in a film that’s remarkably silly nonsense but still hard not to like and enjoy while it’s on.

 

Gory, violent and exploitative, it’s certainly not subtle about anything and whilst it’s unlikely to become your favourite film any time soon, it’s not without popcorn charms. It was never going to be as entertaining as that poster promised, but it has a damn good go at trying to be, enough to recommend.

 

KARATE KILL / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: KURANDO MITSUTAKE / STARRING: HAYATE, MANA SAKURA, KIRK GEIGER / RELEASE DATE: UK RELEASE TBA

Finally. ‘Finally’ is a word we imagine many have found themselves thinking and/or saying when it pertains to Wonder Woman. Finally the DCEU have a critical hit. Finally Wonder Woman makes her live-action big screen debut. Finally we have the first well-scripted female led hero caper. However the biggest usage of this climatic adverb surely must be that finally we have not only the first female directed superhero blockbuster but finally we have a film that remembers why we need a hero. In arriving on the big screen, Wonder Woman has gone through many changes, suggestions and clueless execs backing out due to the fact heroic lady movies Elektra and Catwoman – badly written superhero flicks – were cack (shocker). In Batman v. Superman Diana finally arrived onscreen but in this vastly superior in literally every respect origin movie, Patty Jenkins (Monster) forgoes universe building in favour of telling not only an entertaining story but a necessary one.

The film starts off with a young Diana being in awe of her fellow Amazonian warriors on the paradisal island of Themyscira, however her allure to their battle-ready way of life is cautioned by her mother Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen). That is until, years later, the battles of mankind come to her home, as crashed WWI Captain Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) tells tales of the state of the surrounding world. Unable to ignore the injustice, a now adult Diana (Gal Gadot) ventures into the world to end the conflict but in the process realises more about the world and herself than she ever prepared for. Wonder Woman, in its invigorating structural simplicity, evokes the days when superhero movies were coherent and uncluttered and, as such, reminds of the likes of Christopher Reeve’s classic Superman in its sense of pure morality and effective narrative approach.

 

However Heinberg’s streamlined screenplay should not be misinterpreted as light, far from it, because while this has been compared to the likes of Captain America: The First Avenger, its war setting is not just a backdrop it is a core, to which Jenkins’ generous and caring direction wraps a thematic lasso around. Working as much as a war movie as it does a superhero blockbuster, the film uses history to highlight the modern day issues of infectious hatred inspiring endless battle. Throughout the film, there are countless moments of compassion and love, which only serve to – in the most timely fashion – remind us of just how corruptible we can be in face of evil or how evil can be overcome by understanding (if not avoided completely). Serious sounding but done not at the expense of much charisma and comedy, the film is a tonally balanced and inspiring piece of work that feels like it comes from the heart of a filmmaker and not the cutting room of an interfering studio.

 

Drawing in its early moments on the splendid grandiosity of its comic book lore but never once shying away from it or embarrassingly tucking it behind po-faced gravitas, this is a treat for fans of this culturally iconic character. However, as a writer who knew next to nothing about the character’s history, this film is equally as accessible and loveable for newcomers. We all hoped for a fun ride but this Fury Road sized shock offers far more than surface thrills, it offers a chance for a multi-generational figure to speak to an audience and inspire them with messages of care and understanding. Our hero is not driven by revenge, nor her own gain, refreshingly her motivation is a desire to save and merely do the right thing because it is right. It is not being over the top to say that Wonder Woman is an important film, it is, its much-discussed boundaries of gender genre groundbreaking ensures that but it is not just all about its femininity (though this aspect must not be overlooked), it is as much about humanity as a whole. And this is the most acceptingly human big screen feature you will likely see all year.

 

Yes, we specifically are avoiding any spoillerific info but even as the film can’t resist an effects-filled action cap (in the increasing tradition of this genre) it is still laced with meaning, something a great many third act set pieces are missing. The action is spectacularly captured, with slow-mo used to keep it in-check with the established DCEU works but Jenkins’ sense of purpose elevates these scenes into often spine-tingling moments that engross and get the heart pumping or swelling (see the No Man’s Land sequence, the first Zimmer air guitar riff and the many scenes where Diana sees the gruesome results of a war-torn mankind). The visuals are stunning, using colour (yes colour!) to great effect and, alongside a game score by Rupert Gregson-Willaims, creating some movie moments worthy of ranking among the best super-powered cinema.

 

Gadot’s range as an actor has been brought into question but as the film moves forward her performance gets better and better, as she becomes this hero with all her being and with moments of anger, fear and hilarity, she brings Diana to life on the screen. If there is any justice this will be a career-making performance for Gadot, who is such a warm lead that she elevates the already impressive factors of the film ten-fold. While Chris Pine as Trevor makes an equally likeable supporting player, whose manly charisma is hilariously thrown off guard by the honest and baffled-by-the-human-world Diana and he is brilliant. There are also fantastic supporting performances from the likes of Ewan Bremner, Saïd Taghmaoui, Eugene Brave Rock and Lucy Davis as a cast of characters whose differing personalities recall the attractive crackling chemistry of Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class, a film Wonder Woman shares some similarities with in how it marries fantastic heroic storytelling with real historical events. While the villains of the film are very appropriate to the story, with Danny Huston’s General Erich Ludendorff and Elena Anaya’s Doctor Poison proving particularly violent and effective. While other brilliant turns are offered by the likes of David Thewlis and Connie Nielsen in this well cast and essential blockbuster.

 

Whatever your thoughts on the DCEU thus far, you must watch this incredible piece of entertainment. Wonder Woman not only empowers many viewers it enthrals them, with a neatly structured story that, under the care of such a talented auteur has fully delivered and then some. The acting is excellent, the entertainment is punch in the air effective and the morals are incredibly vital to a modern audience. It is hard to really pick major faults with a film that, like Guardians of the Galaxy, has taken risks and emerged as a piece of spectacular filmmaking that is comfortably at home being ranked in the same league as the likes of The Dark Knight Trilogy, Captain America: Civil War and some of the aforementioned films highlighted in this review. Upon leaving the screening, this writer witnessed a disabled lady in tears with her son, as both excitedly spoke of how inspiring and brilliant the film they had just seen was…this, dear readers, is why we go to the movies and why we need heroes. They inspire, they engage, they encourage.

 

A armoured shoe-in for the most pleasantly stunning feature of the summer (or year for that matter), Wonder Woman is everything you could have ever expected from a Wonder Woman movie, whether the guys will keep the ball rolling now is uncertain and, frankly, irrelevant, as this is more its own movie than franchise building fodder and it is just unexpectedly, heart-enlargingly, genre refreshingly, wonderful and more than that hopeful.

 

WONDER WOMAN / CERT: 12A / DIRECTOR: PATTY JENKINS / SCREENPLAY: ALLAN HEINBERG / STARRING: GAL GADOT, CHRIS PINE, DANNY HUSTON, CONNIE NIELSEN, ELENA ANAYA / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Expected Rating: 6/10

Actual Rating: