Charlies Angels (2000)

 

Angel Delight

Charlies Angels (2000)
USA 2000 Directed by McG
Columbia Blu Ray Zone B

I remember when I first saw the first Charlie’s Angels movie at the cinema back in 2000. I’d remembered I half liked the TV show as a kid back in the 1970s but nothing had prepared me for this particular experience, which is easily one of the greatest American action movies of the decade coupled with art design which elevated it far beyond the expectations of its target audience. I think I saw it about five times at the cinema and, I’m glad I did because, you can’t see that cut anymore, it turns out. I’ll get to that later.

Okay, so the film opens with an earlyish example of company logo vandalism where, after the Columbia torch lady comes up, the camera pans to the side and around her into the sky next to her, before transforming into the sky around a passenger aeroplane to establish the setting for the first scene. Now cinema adaptations of old TV shows were not always successful and hadn’t quite gotten into their stride in terms of the new ones around at this time. We’d had Mission Impossible at the cinemas (which I didn’t see for at least another fifteen years, you can read my review of it here) but director McG obviously knew there would be a certain amount of cynicism attached to a remake of Charlie’s Angels, loved by so many people back in the day.

So he deals with it all right out of the starting blocks, in one of the most riveting and silly opening sequences of the year, completely winning over this audience member and, judging by how successful this first movie was, quite a lot of people. He cleverly starts it off in a slow journey with the camera around the interior of an aircraft with not an Angel in sight. Then we follow a character played by L. L. Cool J, who makes contact with a minor villain for this segment. The rich colours of the aircraft include a lot of red and the look of the film is all important in terms of bombarding the audience with some eye popping designs. Then the script does a very clever thing, after the villain reveals he has a time bomb strapped to him which is counting down... he starts watching an inflight movie which is a fake remake of the old TV series T. J. Hooker and, the two chat briefly about how they hate stupid movie remakes of TV shows. So, yeah, McG already undermines any audience reaction that the film is not, at the very least, self aware and then, he suddenly speeds everything up and piles us into an action sequence... as L. L. Cool J opens the plane doors, throws out the villain and jumps out after him. He’s joined by Lucy Liu’s Angel character called Alex mid air and, the two of them manage to get the bomb off the bad guy and then drop him, with themselves, into Cameron Diaz’s waiting speedboat, Diaz playing Angel Natalie. 

It’s at this point that L. L. Cool J takes a voice changer out of his mouth and pulls his face off, to reveal it was a mask used for the third and, behind the scenes, most important of the Angels, Dylan, played by Drew Barrymore. It was Barrymore who had already bought the rights to the show before the film went into production and it was her who stood to make a fortune from the success of the movie (and its sequel, which she did to the tune of $40 million for the first one and, although not confirmed, $80 million for the less successful but, equally fun sequel).

Then, in a brilliant move to get fans on the side of the movie even more, we hear the voice of John Forsythe, the original voice of Charlie, who is reprising the role for this and the next one, as McG takes us on a parody remake of the original TV show title sequence, including some nods in scene reconstructions from the original show. It’s brilliant, uses a new version of the original theme music over some of it and, yeah, this is the way you overcome a reluctant audience... with sheer brilliance. 

And then the film somehow manages to keep going even stronger, as it reveals the new Bosley (played by Bill Murray), a red herring villain played by Tim Curry, a brilliant action henchman, The Thin Man, played by Crispin Glover (his real life dad tried to kill James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever, reviewed here), Luke Wilson, Matt LeBlanc, Tom Green, Kelly Lynch and the truly brilliant Sam Rockwell. 

And it’s a nice enough story of industrial espionage disguising the true intentions of the villanous antagonists of the film, who really were a fairly good twist reveal about two thirds of the way through the movie. It’s another old story but any weaknesses in the script (which went through at least thirty drafts by numerous writers because they wanted to get it right... there’s a reason why this film seems so polished at all levels), which are few and far between, are more than carried by the combinations of criminally good acting, imaginative fight choreography, some amazing dance sequences and some beautiful set designs with every different scene bringing in a strong, themed colour palette significantly different from each preceding scene. 

It’s also quite innovative in terms of what they do with the camera in this one... so, for instance, those amazing high speed push/pull Vertigo-like zooms during the off circuit racing car chase or, during that same sequence, the way lorries rushing in front of each car in a side view are used as very fast transitions to cut between the two cars. It’s amazing stuff and the film is full of little jolts of brilliance like this, giving the whole production a very highly stylised feel, almost like a comic book. The director himself, if I’m remembering correctly from the time, said the film takes place in ‘Angel time’, a kind of heightened, beautiful alternative to real life... which would explain, I guess, why opening the plane door to save all the passengers at the start didn’t result in all the passengers getting sucked out to their death.

I have one big criticism with the movie plus, a fair few criticisms of the home video releases of the film. Let me get started on the thing which totally popped me out of the film and my seat when I saw this the first time at the cinema. There’s a big, bold cue at one point in the film and it’s composer Akira Ifikube’s Godzilla leitmotif. As soon as I heard this my mind was like, “No way” and I was expecting a sophisticated joke based on one or more kaiju eiga. Instead, it becomes clear after about five seconds that it’s just been used as an opening and sample base for a piece of modern techno music, which the director was using from one of many (probably no comparison for an original score where this movie goes) needle drop musical selections. So yeah, that was disappointing.

Now, the 15 rated version of the movie as released in UK cinemas is longer than any other country’s versions and stuff like a full on sequence involving nunchucks never made it to home video, which is a damn shame and should not be censored, especially since the UK always had a ban on the weapons being included in films until around about this period (yeah, you can guess what looking at a UK home video version of Enter The Dragon was like before this point... this is why God invented mulitregion players). I also happen to remember.... although nobody else I know seems to (perhaps they didn’t do multiple cinema trips like I did) that the drive through hamburger scene near the start of the movie included an exchange of dialogue with a bit of a put down by the Angels directed at the burger seller... I remember it being the only false note/crack in the ‘nice gal’ facade of the Angels and felt it was just out of place. Well, if I didn’t imagine that scene (and I’m pretty damn certain I didn’t), then I guess somebody on the film also realised it didn’t promote empathy with the angels and, the scene is significantly shorter on the home video version, for sure. 

Those minor grumbles aside though... I’d have to say that Charlie’s Angels by McG is still a pretty great art/action spectacle with some beautiful, innovative sequences which I think a lot of today’s modern film students could learn a lot of lessons from. An absolute classic which is maybe a little dated already in some of the attitudes on display but, yeah, who cares about that kind of stuff when it’s put together so well. My one warning to viewers is... don’t waste your money on the cheapo, UK Blu Ray double pack edition as I did... as the version of the sequel, Charlie’s Angel’s Full Throttle, is not the proper, full on unrated US cut of the movie, but the standard theatrical, ‘sans blood spraying every time someone gets hit in the face’ version of the film. If you want the full, unrated version of the sequel on Blu Ray, you need to pay out the extra for the US edition of the film which clearly states it has both cuts on there (as I have just done, once I discovered which print of the film was on the second disc). This is disgraceful behaviour by the UK distributors based, I would suspect, on the fact that they don’t want to shell out the cash to resubmit the longer cut to the admittedly evil UK film censors at the BBFC.

Angels Of Music

Eric’s Angels -
Full Throttle

Angels Of Music
by Kim Newman
Titan Books
ISBN: 9781781165683

Warning: Some mild spoilers for some literary references and cool jokes in this one.

Once again I find myself lured into the fantasy world of one of the UKs greatest literary storytellers, Mr. Kim Newman. This novel is one of a number of this great writer's works I’ll be reviewing on the blog this year (if my health doesn’t finally fail me), either by revisiting past classics or catching up to what he’s been doing over the last ten years or so. I was up for reading this novel when it was first announced because I already had read some of this tome under the guise of short stories that Mr. Newman had published in Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier's annual publications, the Tales Of The Shadowmen collections (for reviews of a number of those books, head over to the book section of my index page and take a look). Indeed, there is a dedication to these two publishers at the opening of the book and, although Mr. Newman is certainly known for his popular genre mash-ups such as the Anno Dracula series of novels, I can’t help but think that the many famous characters in this novel, which spans 40 years in the history of Paris from the late 1890s to the early 1930s, are partially inspired by those Shadowmen collections, which take that modus operandi as their central mission statement, so to speak. Although this, of course, could well be inspired by Mr. Newman’s past works as much as anything else (or Philip José Farmer's Wold Newton universe, for that matter).

Either way, I’m glad that the writer has decided to expand the adventures of his Angels Of Music in the form of a novel and, it’s so much more than I was expecting from it. It is, in its basic structure, a collection of short stories regarding the various ‘waves’ of the title characters over the history of a specific agency I shall detail in a minute but, where some writers when attempting similar tricks of expansion seem to come up with merely the sum of their many parts, Newman manages to weave these stories together in self referential form so well that, when we get to the final tale, everything presents itself as one perfect story arc... and so this book, in this way and many others, is a triumph of this form of structural building, I would have to say.

The story element of these, if you are unfamiliar with any of theses works, is basically The Phantom Of The Opera meets Charlie’s Angels. That is to say, a retrofitted version of Charlie’s Angles, run by Eric, the famous opera ghost and assisted by their Bosley stand in, known only as The Persian. The first three angels in the first story are Irene Adler (‘The Woman’ from the Sherlock Holmes stories), Trilby O’Ferral and Christine Daaé. And it’s here that I have to admit that, just as when I read the Tales Of The Shadowmen collections, I don’t always know the characters and situations the various references are pointing to... although I do know a reference when I read it and there are so very many in these stories. A quick poke in the eye with a name, for instance, was all that was needed for me to realise that the Carlotta Castafiore, mentioned early in the first story, was an obvious ancestor of the Castafiore in the TinTin stories.

The story is made up of a number of tantalising vignettes split up into acts... Act One: The Marriage Club, Act Two: Les Vampires De Paris, Entre Act - The Case Of Mrs. Norton (in some ways, the most tragic segment in the novel), Act Three: Guignol, Act Four: The Mark Of Kane, Act Five - Deluge and then... After The Curtain (I’ll get to this last one in a minute).

As some readers may have guessed, some of these titles are giveaways to a few of the characters you are going to meet within the section and, up to a point, each set of angels is a completely different team although, later in the book, older angels return to team up and smite their enemies together, in the best crossover tradition.

The first act deals with a bunch of improbable but wildly entertaining... let’s say ‘non-human’ enemies (not too many spoilers desired) and the evil Joséphine Balsamo (who turns up a lot in the pages of the Shadowmen collections, it has to be said). The second one brings in Les Vampires of the famous Louis Feuillade serial (and the later Olivier Assayas Irma Vep movie and show) but, curiously, Vep herself doesn’t show her face with a proper mention until much later in another segment. One person who does pop up in this is Newman’s Vampire Genevieve, although I couldn’t work out which incarnation of her it is. At first I thought it was the one I know and love from his Anno Dracula books and the time setting of this story indeed seems to favour that the events of the first book might well be taking place around that point but, later on, with his Kate Reed character also turning up as one of Eric’s Angels, I am more inclined to think it is the other version of Genevieve from his Warhammer books and, thus, another version of Kate Reed, separate from the Anno Dracula novels, who is also working for the Diogenese Club (and I’ll be reading Mr. Newman’s short story collection The Man From The Diogenes Club sometime very soon so, I may find a little more enlightenment there).  

The Entre Act concerns the return of a former angel as a client and, in some ways, best demonstrates what Edgar Allan Poe once called The Imp Of The Perverse. In that it’s somewhat a tale of obsession where the victim has brought everything down on themself. This is followed by another wonderful story where Kate Reed, among other angels, finds herself embroiled in a torturous murder spree being committed around the area of the famous Grand Guignol, although I was surprised to find that the legendary Paula Maxa did not turn up as a character in this one (unless she was alluded to and I just didn’t recognise her... which might well be the case).

Act Four is a tour de force as the next lot of angels go to the French commercial tourist trap version of Xanadu (a kind of Euro Xanadu), to do battle with newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane (yeah, from Citizen Kane). Kane is attempting to, as William Randall Hearst once said, ‘provide the war’ by uniting a whole crew of famous villains such as Dr. Orloff and Julian Karswell, by paying them off with wins in his casino (there’s even a character popping up from Its A Wonderful Life, reviewed here, in here, if I’m not mistaken). The angels obviously scupper his plans but I was glad to see that there is one definitive winner in the story segment... Bret Maverick, as played by James Garner on TV and at the movies (check out my TV and film indexes for various Maverick reviews). Plus this section has an obligatory ‘armadillo’ mention, relating to the Tod Browning version of Dracula (reviewed here)... gotta have one, I guess and I always enjoy when people mention that damned armadillo.

The last act deals with the infamous floods in Paris and reunites some of the former angels, who turn up to bear witness to a very sad event, only to find themselves trying to stay alive long enough to see if it really is Fantômas trying to kill them all, or someone from their past. This story includes a really great joke scene which refers back to the first Star Wars film but, yeah, I can’t bring myself to reference the joke here, you’ll just have to read the book.

It goes without saying, perhaps, that Newman doesn’t let all the many references get in the way of a good story and, even the genuinely ridiculous bits are held together without risking the credibility of the fantasy world he creates in this one... sometimes you just have to roll with the whimsy, I guess and, life is generally all the more enjoyable for having done so.

And then, when all is said and done, we get a Newman manifestation of a thing which has ben occurring (perhaps plaguing) modern cinema since the first time it happened in the first of the Matt Helm films (The Silencers, review coming relatively soon). That is to say... we have a genuine post credits scene in the book which, if you skip through what looks like the ads at the back, many will miss. Yup, after Kim’s afterword and, even after a couple of pages of ads for some of his other books, we get a final mini chapter entitled After The Curtain, where we will learn the fate (hopefully not the final fate) of one of the more important characters in the book. One hopes for a sequel to this one, set over the next forty years perhaps but, I guess time will tell if Mr. Newman wishes to revisit this literary territory in the future.

And that’s that. Once again, with Angels Of Music, Mr Kim Newman delivers another spectacular set of yarns that are totally immersive (despite the constant referential writing that is etched into the very DNA of the tales) and gives his readers a wild and very entertaining ride. Definitely check this one out.

Charlie's Angels 2019

Charlie-vous Fancy?

Charlie's Angels 2019
2019 USA Directed by Elizabeth Banks
UK cinema release print.

Wow... before I say anything else, the new Charlie’s Angels movie is not without some minor problems but, honestly, it’s a great movie and I can’t understand why it’s got so many negative reviews from people. It’s frankly a little weird that there are just so many one and two star reviews on the IMDB, for example. Seriously, enough people hated this thing so much that they decided to take the time to vent negatively about it? Well... it almost seems like there’s some kind of bizarre secret agenda against the movie but I’m here to say that the naysayers are dead wrong about this one. I had a blast with it but... now I’ve got that out of the way, like I said, there are a few problems, albeit minor problems... so I’m going to go right in here and tell you about the issues I had with it. But first, a little emotional context...

I remember when the original Charlie’s Angels TV show came out in the UK around about 1976. I would have been twelve and I think I was one of the few boys who watched it. I don’t know why... I already wanted to sleep with some of the Angels at that age so I couldn’t quite figure out why the other kids at school of my sex weren’t all over this one too but, well, it was just mainly a girl thing, somehow. Pretty bizarre. I watched odd episodes here and there, didn’t follow it religiously but I did like the shows I saw.

Cut to the 21st century and McG’s two Charlie’s Angels movies. I loved these and think they’re absolute masterpieces of cinematic magic. The beautiful and constant colour palette changes from scene to scene, the sense of fun and the chemistry between the girls was all absolutely brilliant and I’ve never been able to figure out why we didn’t get another three or four of these.

So, I would have to say my expectations were a little low on this new one because a) I knew it couldn’t top the sheer artistry and perfection of the McG movies and b) the word of mouth on this one was awful. The one thing which did give me hope is that one of the, relatively, younger generation of Hollywood composers who I like a lot... Brian Tyler (see my review of his first concert here) has done the score for this. Indeed, I had the CD in my hands before the movie even opened over here... so I at least knew the music was probably going to be pretty good. I’ll get to that later.

So there I was, hopeful that the film could be okay but really not expecting much from it. And, for the first ten minutes of the film at least, that expectation was sadly on the nose. The opening scene which is the usual ‘conclusion of an adventure’ sequence that the Bond films pioneered and popularised back in the 1960s is here as expected and, although it gets the male chauvinist stuff out in the open fairly on, the action in this lead-in looks like it’s either been too aggressively edited so you can’t see what’s going on or it's maybe cutting around performers who can’t fight in the hopes it may look like they’re kicking ass (which is something a fair few Hollywood movies have done in recent years, unfortunately). Then, when I was expecting a revamped old school homage to the Charlie’s Angels TV show opening like in the McG movies, I instead got a terrible dose of imagery which, may, have been origins of the leading characters... or maybe not. It was going way to fast for me to process and there was some terrible, blary, loud pop singing going on behind the visuals. I was pretty fed up by this point.

However, against all the odds, the film then proceeded to win me over fairly hastily. The three main girls in this... Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska are all pretty amazing and have some really good chemistry. They are ably supported by various people playing ‘Bosleys’... among them Patrick Stewart, Djimon Hounsou and the writer/director Elizabeth Banks as the ‘main Bosley’ of the movie. And a special shout out to Luis Gerardo Méndez playing a ridiculously cool guy named Saint. For every comment I see that the film is trying to make men look stupid all the way through... well, yeah, maybe that’s a bad agenda but, honestly, this character more than makes up for any of the bizarre, ‘man demoting’ sexism perpetrated by the writers here so... yeah, not a problem.

Okay, so the film by this point is stepping up the pace with some really cool action sequences and some nice humour in the right places. Once again the film purposes itself as being a sequel to all incarnations that have gone before it and not a stand alone reboot. In fact, there’s some terrible and obviously 'deliberately tacky' photoshopping of Patrick Stewart with various incarnations of the Angels through the years, which is a nice touch.

Let me sort out some of the bad now.

The action editing in some scenes still looks like it’s trying to hide a lack of fight training... unless, as I said earlier, it’s a deliberately choppy style which doesn’t quite come off. This is unfortunate but it’s not evident in all of the action scenes and they’re still quite exhilarating to watch, nonetheless. Like the previous incarnations, there’s a big emphasis on fun in this movie, even without the ‘colouring book’ cinematography. There were other sequences in the movie which didn’t quite make sense in the edit to me... however. I felt I was being asked to make certain leaps in understanding which I could have done without in simple things of the ‘how did that person suddenly wind up in that vehicle?’ variety. It did look like the editing was trying to make up for some accidentally un-filmed footage now and again but, thankfully, these moments were few and far between.

The only other problem I had was the horrible and ‘mixed in way too loud’ pop songs which punctuate the film at quite a steady lick. They seemed to be the driving force behind some of the montage sequences when, frankly, it should have been the other way around (I mean, McG’s sometimes terrible needle drop music choices were at least supporting the scenes they were being used in, I thought). Again, though, this is countered with... oh , wait, I’ll save the genius of Brian Tyler for a little later.

One thing which, briefly annoyed me was a stupid plot twist which was revealed halfway through the film. I knew it was coming, the audience knew it was coming and... it was so obvious that it enraged me when it happened. Except... turns out the audience are being ‘played’ at this point. Not going to say anymore about that because it would constitute a spoiler but lets just say I so fell for the writer/director’s art of distraction that I was pleasantly surprised (yes, I know, I was surprised... it happens now and again) when the truth of the situation was finally brought to the foreground.

And all this with... oh yeah... Tyler’s score. He’s great at creating the soundscapes for these kinds of films and, though I was hoping for more of the original 70s Charlie’s Angels theme in it... it only makes a brief appearance in an ‘homage’ closet scene... I have to say that the score for this one really knocks it out of the park. It’s got a strong melody line and it mutates into good solid action scoring on a dime. To hell with Brian Tyler, though, for giving me a score which wouldn’t leave my head after the film had finished and wouldn’t let me sleep that night because my brain kept playing it back while I tossed and turned under the sheets. In fact, I’m still humming it as I type. Absolutely first class work from this composer and I can tell this is going to get a lot of spins on the CD player this month. Nice composing from someone who has fast become one of the ‘greats’ of Hollywood scoring.

So, there you go. Not much more to say on this one. Brilliant cast, good chemistry, fast pacing, some mostly good action and a brilliant score... if you can get through the opening ten minutes without turning off, I think you’ll find the new incarnation of Charlie’s Angels is a cinematic delight. And if you want to see a cameo from an old character from the original show, not to mention various other cameos, stick around for the six mini scenes which play out during the end credits. This is a definite Blu Ray purchase for me when it comes out and... well... I just wish I had time to fit in another cinema screening of this one but it’s the wrong time of year for that. Go see it if you can though. With a few tweaks it could have been a masterpiece... instead it's just a really fun, entertaining movie. And who can argue with that?

The Doll Squad

Squadrophenia

The Doll Squad
1973 USA 
Directed by Ted V. Mikels
Vinegar Syndrome Blu Ray A/B/C

Warning: Spoilers but, meh, not really that kind of movie.

This movie is terrible.

It’s brilliantly terrible.

Like... just the kind of “OMG WTF? terrible” all good movie enthusiasts should be exposed to every once in a while.

In fact, it’s so terrible, I’m going to show it to loads of people so they can share my joy in discovering it.

The Doll Squad is not a movie I’d heard of until the very recent release, by the Monstrous Movie Music label, of a limited edition CD of the score (buy it from them here). I listened to the samples, which are in the amazingly groovy and typical 60s/70s spy jazz mode, and knew I had to get the score. And as usual, as an after thought, I then looked the film up on Amazon and saw there was a relatively inexpensive double bill of this and another Ted V. Mikels film called Mission: Killfast on Blu Ray. So I had to check it out.

It’s been said that this brilliant but awful movie was the inspiration for the hit TV show Charlie’s Angels from a few years later and, watching this, I can well believe it. Even the leader of The Doll Squad is named Sabrina. Sabrina Kincaid to give her the full name, as played by Francine York. There are a few memorable “Doll names” scattered throughout the movie with that kind of vibe to them... like Kim Luval, as played by Jean London and Lavelle Sumara, as played by the legendary Tura Satana of Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! fame (reviewed here). She also appeared in some of this director’s Astro Zombie movies, including this one reviewed here. 

The film starts off as it means to go on... with some ludicrously bad acting, for the most part. They even have the main villain in this, called Eammon (yeah, ‘cause villains called Eammon sound really threatening, right?) played by Michael Ansara and, with apologies to Mr. Ansara... even his acting seems quite bad and hammily overplayed in this.

Anyway, in the first scene of the film, leading into some not so hot, psychedelic, posterised credits, we are presented with two government officials watching their latest space rocket take off. Unfortunately, a badly superimposed explosion over the TV image shows the rocket destroyed (fairly unconvincingly, it has to be said) and a voice on their TV warns them they should have given the bad guy (that would be Eammon, then) the “nuclear device” he has asked for. This is obviously only the beginning of a reign of terror, curiously and unexplainedly targetting rocketship launches, which will not be stopped until our unlikely government representatives have given evil Eammon his nuclear device. What can be done?

Well, what is done is that, just like at the start of Our Man Flint, but without the budget or resources of a film like that, the “facts” are fed into a computer in the office to find the best people to end this reign of secret terror. And, of course, the name that comes up is... Sabrina Kincaid of The Doll Squad, an all female group that one of these two guys just happens to be the boss of.

Sabrina, who is at least a better actor than these two and, certainly, one of the least wooden performers in a film filled with arboreal talent, then goes to contact the two of her secret squad that the computer has recommended. However, it soon turns out there is a mole in the government agency... although this mole is not too hard to spot due to the dearth of possible suspects who we’ve met in the film so far. Anyway, Sabrina recruits two of her brightest and bestest, a scientist and a martial arts expert and it’s here that we find ourselves in the realms of a 1970s movie which seems, in some ways, to be totally sexist but, in reality, if you look beneath the surface, is actually a really great movie for depicting women in a variety of roles which are anything but those normally associated with the “so called” fairer sex. So that’s good, right?

However, after Sabrina has recruited these two, it then becomes obvious there is that aforementioned mole in the office because the two girls are bumped off by the bad guys. And here’s another interesting curiosity about this film, which may or may not be a Ted V. Mikels stylistic hallmark. Midst the almost Batman-camp atmosphere (on a clay pigeon shoot, Sabrina casually uses her gynormous cleavage to keep spare rounds of ammunition in), when someone is killed or injured in this movie... it tends to happen in the most brutal fashion. These two girls, for example, are both shot in the head and there is some bloodiness in here... one of them, as others later in the movie do, even has an exploding blood/flesh squib going off on the back of her noggin. So it’s a curious blend of fun with enormously sexy, eye candy women pitched against a level of violence which would earn this movie either a 15 or 18 rating these days. Very odd.

When one of the bad guys goes to take out Sabrina, she uses one of her secret agent box of tricks gadgets we have already seen her alluding to in an earlier, kind of “reverse Q briefing” scene. That means she uses her handy flame thrower cigarette lighter to burn the said bad guys face off in a restaurant full of people. Actually, it turns out later in the film that he only got away with a half burned up face and an eye popped out but, in a scene near the end which I would imagine was a big influence on Tarantino and something he did with his Kill Bill movies, Sabrina stabs out his other eye too, for good measure.

Soon after dealing with an undercover “bad girl” who has infiltrated The Doll Squad, Sabrina gets a new team and, after quickly finding out where the villain keeps his secret, desert island lair, she... and a load of deadly agents (including the aforementioned and quite watchable Tura Satana)... land on the island, split up and then find various ways to either infiltrate the villain’s lair or become prisoners there (which more or less amounts to the same thing when you’re watching spy movies... especially ones of this kind of pedigree).

Lots of spy gal hijinks ensue such as kicking, stabbing and shooting at people. One of the more ingenious being that the girls have their secret agent exploding spy drink, which they feed to two guards in a laced bottle of vodka... two guards who obviously don’t have enough sense to be too suspicious that they can’t be tempted by the ladies’ gorgeous bodies and, more importantly, their impressive picnic hamper. However, the ladies back off when the guards start rubbing their tummys in pain and, before you can say spontaneous human combustion, our easily duped guards both explode.

Except, when I say explode, they seem to have the exact same stock footage shot of an explosion superimposed over them, then the film is stopped on the footage in the layer behind so the guards can quickly walk out of frame, and then when the explosion is faded back out, the guards have mysteriously gone, leaving no messy aftermath or human debris behind after them. And if that sounds like an excessively cheap ass way of doing things then a) it is and b) it’s the way every explosion in this film seems to be handled... building, rocket or human being alike. In fact, I think it’s the exact same stock footage explosion used every time, too. At the end, one of the girls pulls out a fortuitously stashed bazooka to take out a man with a flame thrower and, although the end of said bazooka is conveniently placed off the side of the shot so we can’t see anything actually being fired from the muzzle, the exploding man who is victim to this handy, dandy, portable instrument of mayhem seems to be suffering from the exact same stock footage demise as everything else. How bizarre?

The film continues in this vein for a while and never gets boring. The villain's plot, it is revealed, is to unleash the bubonic plague on the rest of the world by infecting them... I wasn’t quite sure how (or even if) that related to the nuclear device bandied about as the plot set up at the start of the movie but I’m sure it must make some kind of sense somewhere (no, actually, I’m really not sure of that at all... this thing seems to be veering in all directions at once). The acting ranges mostly from bad to... um... worse and I noticed that occasionally someone will stumble a line and there was no reshoot... I’ve no idea why, unless the film stock was really that expensive.

More of the strange tone of the movie comes out when the “new girl” agent, who the other members of The Doll Squad are trying to protect, gets shot through the head while being rescued and is then barely mourned (or even remembered) by her hardened colleagues. Curious stuff.

This is partially made up for by a flirtatious game of cat and mouse between Eamon and Sabrina which soon turns into them trying to kill each other. Sabrina throws a bottle full of Martini over Eamon and then throws the end of a lamp cable on him in an attempt to electrocute him... which, as you may imagine, isn’t really something which works a whole lot. In retaliation, Eamon then starts to strangle Sabrina from behind and, it has to be said, the sounds and reactions Sabrina makes in this near death portrayal are... not going ot win anyone any oscars. Luckily, however, Sabrina has her special Doll Squad ring which she uses to spray mace into Eamons face and, while he’s rolling around, trying to recover, Sabrina pulls what looks like an ancient Greek sword from the wall and stabs Eamon to death. I did notice that she then picks up her pistol and I thought she was going to further put a few rounds of ammo in him just to make sure but sanity prevails here... for a good few minutes.

After this, we just have the escape from the island compound and the usual, debriefing scene at the end to sort out before going into what can only be described as one of the worst “spy songs” I’ve ever heard in my life. Now I usually love cheesy spy songs... I even use them on Valentines Day compilations for people I really like (Your Zowie Face from In Like Flint is a natural for Valentines... and also explains, maybe, why I hardly ever get the gal)... but even my eyebrows were raised when I heard this one. Shockingly bad end title music which I can only say I was deliriously happy  to hear again, as it’s on the new CD together with the score.

So there you have it. The Doll Squad... an all girl team of sexy(ish) secret agents done on a considerably low budget, with some outrageously fun stuff going on and a nice, jazzy spy score by Nicholas Carras. Definitely something which can only be appreciated these days as part of the “so bad it’s good” category but that’s okay, I can get behind that. Definitely one to watch if you have a passion for the camp and terrible.

Three Days To Kill

Running Up That Kill

Three Days To Kill

2014 USA/France/Greece/Russia

Directed by McG

Playing at UK cinemas now.

Three months ago my cousin, who lives in Australia these days, saw Three Days To Kill at his local cinema and told me to go see it. To be honest, that’s the only reason I went because the trailers for films of this nature tend to look dire, whether the movie’s good or not, and the marketing on this one was no exception. I wondered why it had such a delay getting a release over here but now I’ve got a flavour of some of the reviews I’ve skimmed I see that... well, it’s not a very well thought of movie. Even Mark Kermode had a lot of bad things to say about both the film and its director which... well... this kind of reaction explains the delayed release to some extent, I guess.

One of my goals in writing this review is to partially dispel some of those ideas because, frankly, like my cousin, I had a fun time with this film.

Okay, so I much prefer Luc Besson when he’s sitting in the director's chair but, over the last ten years or so, he’s turned his hand more to writing action stories and then producing them for other directors, for the most part. He’s had a string of hits with these and I have to admit, although they are pretty much exclusively big, dumb action movies, they are almost all done extremely well and, as long as you go into the auditorium knowing the kind of film you’re going to see up front, you’ll probably have a fair time with the majority of the films he’s produced in this fashion.

This one is put together by a director who seems to have fallen from grace in his native Hollywood in recent years but he’s an artist who I happen to like a lot. McG is perhaps best defined by two action movies which, for me, ticked all the right boxes, Charlie’s Angels and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (and if you’re going to watch that second one right, watch the US unrated extended edition rather than the toned down version we got in the cinemas). These were both absolute masterpieces and if you’ve never seen either of them and you’re a fan of colourful, escapist fair with no hint of realism clogging up the story and getting in the way, then you really should make an effort to go see those two. Similarly, and I know this is going to be an unpopular statement, I think his Terminator: Salvation is about the only decent sequel to James Cameron’s original movie... there, I’ve said it, think what you will.

One of the reasons I like this director, and I see it here again on this film, is that I think he’s ahead of his time (or possibly just in tune more with his time) than a lot of people who go to modern action films tend to expect or make allowances for in the current cinematic climate. And I am talking about technique here rather than anything else because, you see, Three Days To Kill follows exactly the same path as all the previous Besson written and produced films... it’s big... it’s dumb... and in addition it has a fair few shortcomings in scripting, or at least what ended up there on the screen. It is, however, contrary to a review of it I quickly glanced at prior to seeing this myself, far from dreary or boring.

It has a thriller plot which is fairly standard. Ex-husband and estranged father to his teenage daughter... Ethan Renner, played very competently and amusingly by Kevin Costner, is a CIA hit man who is forced to leave the service after a big job goes sour and it’s found he’s dying of a rare disease. So he tries to make peace with his past errors and reintroduce himself into his daughter and ex-wife's life just when, as will always happen in movie land, he is given an experimental new drug which could get rid of his death sentence in exchange for one last mission for the CIA... a mission run by the lovely Amber Heard, as the improbable but sexily cool creation Vivi Delay (no I’m not making this up and this should tip you off to the kind of movie this is). Laughs and action then ensue as Ethan kills and interrogates his way to the one man he’s after while fighting off weird hallucinogenic side effects of the drug he’s on and trying to keep everything secret from his ex-wife and daughter. 

Now there are some problems with this movie. My main issues were as follows... 

There are a fair few too many “quality time” montages in here. It’s like there’s some extra padding in the movie when it really doesn’t need it. It seems to be pretty good doing its own thing without these extended kinds of sessions... at least that’s how it looked to me. Also, the timelines don’t quite add up. The movie uses the season of Christmas at the end to illustrate certain things about the main character in a shorthand kind of way but... it doesn’t quite tie in with the fact that the main character needs yet another syringe full of life extending drug. Not quite sure what message the writers wanted me to take away from that last bit, to be honest.

One last thing is that it is very predictable but... that’s not so much of a problem with this kind of film. Big dumb movie, remember? On the other hand, there are some very interesting components to the narrative flow which I’m guessing may be what is bothering some people but in reality probably shouldn’t.

The pacing and tone of certain characters and scenes aren’t quite a match for each other. For instance, Vivi Delay is basically coming on like an aggressive diva in full femme fatale mode and that’s kind of at odds with all the other characters and, incidentally, with how she is presented in the pre-credits sequence. However, that being said, this is the way real life works sometimes and I found myself enjoying the juxtaposition of these elements. They didn’t really make anything work less for me. I can see how some people might have found the unexpected contrast as something they’re just not used to having to deal with in a cinematic context, however.

The other thing that might have annoyed some critics/audience members, is the fact that it looks like McG is trying to push the editing a little further in terms of the use of scenes and sounds bleeding into each other. In this case, he carries on conversations while flicking between the scene where the conversation is taking place and a scene in the near past or future, backwards and forwards, and some people may find this hard to take on board, is my guess. It’s actually a natural progression, if you think about it, to the kind of overlapping dialogue techniques that Soderbergh was experimenting with in his excellent movie The Limey, in most respects. McG is just pushing the language of film a little more in, I suspect, an equally experimental manner to see if this kind of editing style can be made to cover more ground and give more insight to things on screen in a faster manner. 

When it first began to happen in this movie I was a little disoriented  for a few seconds because I thought the lip synch was out... in fact, I noticed somebody has added it on the Internet Movie Database in the “goofs” section when, in fact, it’s just the opening salvo in this specific style of syntax the director is playing with. All I can say is... cut him some slack because he actually is achieving a purpose in some of these scenes with this style of working and once your mind quickly trains itself to keep up with the perceived anomalies and process them as a new way of reading the visuals and soundtrack, then it actually proves itself to be a legitimate technique to add to the tool box for film... in a not entirely dissimilar way that dropping a number of frames out of a film to jump characters a little way forward may have been first perceived as a dangerously distracting idea when it comes to editing. 

So there’s that.

Also, it has to be said, the film is not dull, the fight and chase scene choreography is often quite interesting and this is the first film I’ve seen in a long while (or ever maybe?) where guns routinely run out of bullets and have to be reloaded quickly without the director trying to make a big dramatic thing out of that. So that was kinda refreshing actually. Added to this are some of McG’s trademark colourfully lit sets and dream-like shot designs, used to highlight a lot of the Vivi Delay scenes to good effect and in contrast with the slightly more grittier, down to earth, lighting style of Ethan’s standard on-the-job environments. Coupled with some pretty great performances by much of the cast, including a solid job by Kevin Costner, an actor who I kinda lost my way with but am quite impressed with again now, because of his performance here, and you have a cracking little action movie which a lot of people would enjoy if they gave it a chance. I know the audience I saw it with were laughing and making “thrilled” noises in all the intended places at any rate. 

So, in conclusion, a big dumb action movie which works well on its own terms and also has a go at pushing the semiotics of the visual and aural elements of filmmaking. Not the best movie out there by a long chalk but certainly a respectable and, frankly, highly entertaining entry into the form of the modern, kinetic motion picture. Maybe take a look sometime?