Love Hurts

 A valentine's day action vehicle for Ke Huy Quan that's sadly too half-arsed to work well, despite some decent ideas and action provided by the 87North crew.

 Quan plays a real estate agent who's forced to to come out of retirement as a hitman when an old flame (Ariana DeBose) comes out of hiding to cause problems with a local kingpin. Bloody mayhem ensues, and some pretty unconvincing romance.

 It's fun enough, though rarely funny, and it can look surprisingly good. But while the fights are well staged they're not particularly great  - this is a shame, because director Jonathan Eusebio has decades of stuntwork and has been a second unit director in films with some outstanding action.

 Most of the problems can probably be laid down at the feet of its script, but it's possible production constraints also played a part in the film's almost ramshackle feel. The protagonists are excellent taken individually, but there's not a lot of chemistry between them, which is pretty big flaw for a film that, to its credit, takes its romantic side very seriously.

 

M3gan 2.0

 M3gan was a lean, very 90's throwback PG-13 techno thriller. Director Gerard Johnstone and scriptwriter Akela Cooper set out to sequelize it almost immediately, and their new story (Johnstone has sole scriptwriter credit) leant bigger, louder, dumber at every turn. The result is a two-hour monstrosity that leans closer to one of the latter Mission: Impossible franchise installment than to M3gan, an action-comedy that unfortunately indulges in all the worst trends of modern blockbuster scriptwriting.

 The plot rather cleverly threads two separate loose ends from the first movie - an unnecessary industrial espionage subplot, and the implication that M3gan (still embodied by Amie Donald and a boatload of special FX) had uploaded itself to the cloud. The industrial espionage has resulted in Amelia (Ivana Sakhno), a M3gan clone out in the wild, doing black ops for the US government. She goes rogue almost immediately in the prologue (handily setting up the film's action aspirations), then starts making her way back to the US, murdering everyone involved with M3gan's creation on the way.

 Cue the re-introduction of M3gan's creator Gemma (Alison Williams) and her niece/surrogate daughter Cady (Violet McGraw), who enjoy a somewhat closer relationship, still fraught due to Gemma's tendency to put work over her personal life.

 After a seriously ridiculous act of government overreach that sets the tone of just how stupid things will get later on, M3gan reaches out to Gemma and they form a sort of alliance to defend Cady against the new android that's hunting them all. Later on, they discover that of course the whole world hangs on the balance.

 The script for this thing is seriously overcomplicated, contrived, and dumb as all hell. That wouldn't necessarily be a problem, except that it's the sort of plot that sucks the air out of everything else, making characters into puppets and driving them to make all sorts of stupid choices to line up all the pieces. And to comply with the modern blockbuster feel it also includes several mandated, very fake-feeling emotional beats to try and give it an approximation of a soul.

 Luckily it doesn't take itself very seriously. The comedy is not all that great, but the script retains a sharp ear for M3gan's ironic detachment (and Jenna Davis still hits it out of the park with her delivery). The original film's campiness also makes a comeback, predictably amped up - expect an expanded dance sequence, fabulous new outfits, and another song. On the plus side, there are a surprising amount of Steven Segal references in the finale, up to and including a very familiar-looking arm-break.

 Oh, and Jemaine Clement pops up as an amoral tech bro, and his performance is a joy to behold. I love it when you can see an actor clearly having a blast.

 There are quite a few action scenes, most of them with decent-to-great choreography. Unfortunately the action filmmaking is not nearly up to the task of capturing it properly, with piss-poor editing and blocking - there are several points where some of the moves seem to be edited out of sequence, or are at least poorly set up enough to be a bit disconcerting. There are some cool superpowered manoeuvres in the mix as well, although nothing that compares with excellent first fight in Upgrade. To top it all off, a fairly strict enforcement of the PG-13 rating (which, for example, forces a beheading to be played out off-screen*) robs the action of much of its potential impact.

 It's a huge shame; Early on a reconstructed M3gan trains against a kung-fu training dummy, setting up some expectations that the film will take its cues from Hong Kong movies. I wish Johnston had paid more attention to how they're shot.

 As a whole, M3gan 2.0 is just OK. I admire the shift in genre and the ambition behind it, but the overwritten, soul-less, messy story plus the way the action is shot killed it for me. That it's overtly campy and tongue-in-cheek raises it a notch above your Mission Impossibles, Jurassic Worlds or Fasters and Furiosers, but at two hours it becomes really hard to swallow.

*: It also leads to a very funny curtailed "fuck" after they use up their one allotment.

Freaky Tales

 You had to be there, man.

 The very specific there in discussion is Oakland, California, and the when is 1987, on the night where basketball player Sleepy Floyd set some sort of basketball record. That game really happened; Everything else is a fable about rallying together, saying enough is enough, making amends... and getting even. Always aided by a mysterious green energy that threads four interconnected stories.

 The first tale is a straightforward public service announcement that it is always ok to punch (and slash, and stab, etc) nazis as a bunch of punks decide to band together to protect themselves against the marauding gang of skinheads that has taken to bullying them. The second one is about two young women (Normani and Dominique Thorne) who go on a rap battle against Too $hort (DeMario Symba Driver), overcoming insecurities and the prevalent misogyny in both their lives and in the music they enjoy.

 A mob enforcer (Pedro Pascal) tries to make sense of his life after a family tragedy in the more contemplative third entry, while Sleepy Floyd himself (played by Jay Ellis) steps in to wrap things up with a blood-soaked revenge story that has extremely satisfying nods to both martial arts movies and Scanners.

 The narrative and thematic threads that bind the stories could have been developed better, but the way a couple of the developments are brought back (including a certain someone's habit of stalking people) made me laugh appreciatively. The structure clearly owes a lot to Quentin Tarantino.

 Freaky Tales is a willfully ridiculous confection played mostly straight - a simple, crowd-pleasing exercise in nostalgia, wish fulfilment and myth-making that's just strange and playful enough to give it a tiny bit of heft. If I have to be honest, I was unsure about it for a while - but it slowly, steadily won me over.
 That is, I suspect, mostly down to the writing/directing team of Anna Bowden and Ryan Fleck. They fill their version of that night with specificity, making what could just have been empty nostalgia feel personal and lived-in, and give their characters enough depth to make it worth getting invested in them. In any other hands, it all might have felt cynical, but Boden and Fleck imbue the whole project in a sort of well-natured, joyful yearning that I eventually found irresistible. How could I be down on a movie where a crowd of kids celebrate a bloody success with a Black Flag concert?

 The acting is excellent across the board (Ben Mendelsohn puts in an appropriately despicable appearance as the main antagonist), the grainy cinematography (by Jac Fitzgerald) is often gorgeous, and the action, when things get serious, is surprisingly good (the film has two major action scenes - the first one is definitely not serious, the second one is... well, it isn't serious either, but it is a joy to watch).

 What a strange movie. I don't think it's anywhere near as good as any of Boden and Fleck's previous films*, but it's a cool little oddity with a power all its own. It might be pure calories, but sometimes that's exactly what you need.

 

 *: I'm not going to count their Marvel entry.

Fight or Flight

 When renowned 'blackhat terrorist' The Ghost is detected after pulling off a job in Thailand, a shady organization led by a hardened operator (Katee Sackhoff) mobilizes its only asset in the region to stop them. That asset is Lucas Reyes (Josh Hartnett), a burnt agent who was cut off because he had too much of a conscience; He spends his days getting drunk at a Thai dive bar and avoiding hitmen. Despite his misgivings, the chance of getting his old life back is too good to pass up.

 So Reyes boards the same flight to Los Angeles The Ghost is on, with the mandate to bring them back alive at any cost. The bad news is that the news have leaked that the ghost is on the flight - along with a sizeable bounty for their death. And that, basically, is the whole movie; Reyes duking it out against a colourful array of assassins while at first trying to figure out who the ghost is (he only knows that they have a gunshot wound), and then protect them from all the other killers.

 I do wonder if it's intended to be a John-Wick-like world where every other person is a world-class assassin and they all found out about the job while on the flight, or if all these assassins managed to get to Thailand in time to board the flight in the scant hours since news of the Ghost got out. Yes, I know I'm overthinking it, especially since the script (by Brooks McLaren and D. J. Cotrona) is almost showboatingly dumb. Wait until you find out what the McGuffin is; Precious little makes any sense in hindsight.

 This gleefully moronic tone renders all the time the film spends on its conspiracy elements somewhat insulting, but it pays off with character moments and action beats that try, and often achieve, low-key inspired lunacy. Sure, a lot is lifted almost wholesale from Bullet Train, and individual elements - like Reyes hallucinating fireworks instead of blood while tripping balls in a climactic big brawl - mirror other movies (in this case, Harley Quinn substituting violence with flower petals in Suicide Squad); But hey, most of the comedy actually works, which  is not something you can say with regards to Bullet Train.
 It also includes a lot of oddball details that give the movie some personality and a whole lot of batshit energy. I love, for example, that it finds an excuse to put three Chinese martial artists straight out of a wuxia movie - they're led by JuJu Chan, and she finds time to use a deadly hairpin and everything. The film also managed to get the great Marco Zaror, who doesn't get nearly enough to do but at least manages to deploy some of the effortless charm he showed he had in spades in Mandrill, and breaks the ice with Reyes by showing off his dance moves.

 The action is OK. Director James Madigan is hampered by a non-martial artist star, which drags down (for example) the big fight with Zaror. The editing skews towards shots that are a little too short, and the cameras are pulled a little too close to the action, but the choreographies are simple enough and the blocking is decent, so it's honestly not too bad. The film goes for a sort of Jackie-Chan style prop comedy using everything an airplane can offer - those pivoting arm rests, seatbelts, the metal drawers the cabin crew stores everything in... they all get a turn in the spotlight. Aside from an inspired use of an overhead baggage partition, there's nothing hugely inventive, but it's all good fun.

 All the performances are very game, especially Hartnett - his physicality is great, and while he may not have the moves, his deranged, committed performance is central to much of the film's joyful madness. The special effects are iffy - in that sense, the film's low budget shows through early and often. All the CGI blood fits the cartoony nature of the action well, but other than that... well, it kind of looks terrible.

 No matter; The blood splatters may be inconsistent. the action may not be all that thrilling, but it is funny, it's crazy enough, and it mostly avoids all the bloat that, say, David Leitch tends to attach to his efforts. It probably won't stick around in my brain for long but, while it lasts, it's a good time.

The Killer's Game

 Joe Flood (Dave Bautista) is a nice guy. He's also a contract killer, but that's ok, because his agency, managed by Ziv (Ben Kingsley doing what he loves best: putting on another accent), only kills criminal scumbags.

 While killing a Russian mobster at a high-scale avant-garde musical performance, Joe saves a dancer, Maize (Sophia Boutella), from the aftermath of the assassination. Maize turns out to be a nice gal, too, and after a couple of dates (and a very fun montage intercutting their dalliance with Joe going about his day job) they fall in love.

 Things get pretty serious - enough that Joe approaches his handler to get out of the game; And hey, it turns out Ziv is a good guy too! He gives Joe some advice (quoting Dolly Parton, who of course almost immediately pops up in the soundtrack) and basically blesses his star assassin's retirement.

 But there's got to be some conflict somewhere, and it ends up coming from Joe being diagnosed with a degenerative brain disease; he's only got three months to live.

 Now, there have been a few movies in the last few years about hitmen struggling with dementia and whatnot... but this film's a comedy, so the script (credited to Rand Ravich and James Coyne) opts for that old 'patient samples swapped' chestnut instead. So here's the rub: while convinced he's going to die, Joe breaks up with Maize and goes to another assassination agency - one where the boss (Pom Kiementieff) hates his guts - to take out a hit on himself (the justification is that if he kills himself he won't get life insurance, which raises all sorts of fun questions about what the insurance company thinks he does). 

 The confusion with the test results is quickly sorted out, but the boss of the hitman agency Joe contacted hates him so much she doesn't just refuse to cancel the hit - she goes all in and brings in multiple teams to take him out. Colourful teams, of the sort that necessitate an introductory vignette where their names are spelled out in neon, or blood, or whatever.

 So the second half of the movie turns into a glibber version of Smokin' Aces, as a bunch of themed hitmen try to take out poor Joe. This movie is nowhere near as good, or as coherent, as that one, but it does have a few cards in its sleeves. Namely, in that it's directed by J.J. Perry, a former stuntman and all-round action connoisseur, and in that the man has enlisted an impressive number of action talent for the antagonists. Well, maybe not that many: "just" Marko Zaror, Scott Adkins and Daniel Bernhardt. But they go a long way.

 The rest of the killers are fine, even if their fights aren't anywhere as impressive. Terry Crewes plays the main antagonist (one wonders if maybe the original choice was Michael Jai White). His schtick is that he's a suave blaxploitation throwback, and he's forced to partner up with an Ali G impersonator (George Somner). It's... fitfully funny, but Crewes is great as usual. Elsewhere there's Shaina West and Lucy Cork (who both have pretty decent action credentials) as a pair of fun-loving killers who use stripping as their cover, a bunch of Koreans, a couple of people who use bikes as murder weapons... it's a solid, fun mix of ideas.

 So far, so good, right? The problem is that - as counterintuitive as it may seem - the first act, the romantic part - is the only part of the movie that truly works. It makes a convincing case for the couple, and both stars are more than able to sell their romance. Honestly, they're both adorable, which is not something I'd ever thought I'd say about Bautista.

 As the script goes on and the action gears strain to, say, keep Maize in the picture, things get more and more implausible. And not in a good way (though there's plenty of that, too). I mean that things become a morass of dropped threads, missed opportunities, and shitty contrivances. Pom Klementieff gets a little sword-swinging introduction... and that's all she fucking gets, for example. Bernhardt, West and Cork's appearances are very underwhelming - and, honestly, so is Crewes, who gets a ton more time verbally sparring with his idiot hanger-on than with the protagonist.

 Entire interactions and plot elements seem to be there just to pad the runtime (a whole deal is made of Joe needing to come clean to Maize about what he does, just for it to be waved away). Some jokes feel improvised - that's the only explanation I can find for an extended gag where wrestler Drew McIntyre shits himself.

 Worst of all, the entire third act is a complete disaster, even as it gives Dylan Moran a pretty substantial role; Talk about wasted talent. All the plots get resolved in insultingly perfunctory ways.

 The action is not as great as it could -should- be, either. Adkins and Zaror fill the screen with impressive acrobatic action, but the choreography doesn't fully work with Bautista's more static fighting style. The guy's a certified badass and has a great presence, but he can't really be described as gymnastic. So there's quite a bit of awkward editing to cover the gaps. His persona in this film is also a little too drab to pull off the Arnie-like one-liners and stupid little jokes the script throws his way.

 Shit gets violent, and there's a lot of blood spilled. But aside from someone getting their teeth knocked out, it doesn't feel particularly violent. It's all blood, and no gore - CGI blood. If I were feeling kind I would say the cartoon blood is there to keep things from getting too dark, but... fuck that, it looks terrible.

 The camera movements are energetic, at least, and later scenes at a sun-drenched church prove that the film can look good. (Cinematographer: Flavio Martínez Labiano)

 The Killer's Game is one of those movies that's been in development hell for decades - the script was first written in the mid-90's and it's gone through endless iterations since. It shows, and the end result bears the marks of a troubled production on top of that. A shame, because a lot of it does work. Even with all these problems, the movie remains enjoyable - lightweight and dumb, sure, but also very likeable, slickly directed, and, despite the non-ideal editing scheme, it manages some great action.

 I'd still recommend it, caveats and all. As long as you know what you're getting into. I hope Perry gets to make another one; his one's a huge improvement over Day Shift, and the guy's obviously got chops.

Shoot 'Em Up

 It's hard to argue against the greatness of Shoot 'Em Up's first five five minutes. It starts with a very close shot of our protagonist Smith (Clive Owen), his face filling most of the foreground as he eats a carrot. Violently. Chewing with a sort of rageful gusto, angrily masticating the fuck out of it.

 Then he sees a very pregnant woman stumble along, passing in front of the bus stop he's sitting at, turning into an alley way. Nearby a thug gets off his car - trash and takeout cartons tumbling out in the process - and follows the woman into the alleyway. As he goes in, he pulls out a gun and gives Smith a nasty look, as if daring him to do something about it.

 And because this is Clive Owen starring in a very silly-ass movie, he of course does do something about it. He kills the thug with a (surprisingly sharp) carrot, while delivering an Arnold-worthy one-liner ("eat your vegetables"). Then, as Nirvana's Breed kicks in, he gets into a shootout with a horde of faceless goons; There are  a few memorable action gimmicks like using an oilspill to slide on his back while shooting, or shooting the legs of a table to turn it into a ramp so he can dive through a window to outmaneuver and shoot a few surprised ne'er-do-wells.

 All the excitement ends up sending the nameless woman (Ramona Pringle) into labour, so then we're treated to a scene where Clive Owen delivers a baby while shooting a bunch more bad guys. The kicker? He cuts off the umbilical cord by shooting it.

 I cannot stress how fun it is. In game design people talk about the 'verbs' that any given game allows its players; Things like Jump, Run, or sometimes more abstract concepts like Explore, Tinker or Subject Yourself to Reams of Poorly Written Dialogue (AKA the 'talk' button).

 This film takes its title from an ancient (in gaming terms) genre where you, as a spaceship, kill loads of other spaceships - you know, like Galaxian. But its form is, as you might have fathomed by how many times I've written the word Shoot so far, well... a shooter. And it's kind of awe-inspiring just how pure the result is. Shoot shoot shoot, like a player mashing on the triggers on his gamepad, and the film gets a hilarious amount of mileage from it. Or else the film puts obstacles before the act of shooting, like small puzzles that get in the way of Smith getting to use his favourite mean of self-expression. The reward? Why, more shooting!

 Somewhat surprisingly, videogames are not the main inspiration for the movie, at least according to writer/director Michael Davis; That becomes apparent when the mother dies, soon after that initial scene, leaving our laconic, supremely killing-proficient protagonist to look after a baby that's being hunted down by what seems like hundreds of hitmen.

 Yes, the main inspiration here is explicitly John Woo's masterpiece Hard boiled. And that's a great inspiration! but therein lies the main problem with the movie... because Michael Davis has a long way to go to get to John Woo levels. He covers some of the distance by filling the film's many, many action scenes with a ton of fun ideas... which he then mangles by keeping the camera too close to the action, cutting far too many times, not establishing geography properly, and generally just not getting what makes Woo's classic... well, a classic. It's a huge shame.

 But it's not nearly bad enough to sink the movie - things never get to Crank's hard-to-parse levels, and it's relatively good for '00s action standards. Just a wasted opportunity, is all. This is not a movie that, like Smokin' Aces, uses action sparingly and focuses on specific moments or beats - here there's an attempt to carry you through every step of a whole gunfight, but it still ends up fragmented and disconnected. Clarity matters, especially when you're inviting comparisons with some of the all-time-best action filmmaking.

 Plot-wise... it's relentlessly, knowingly silly and over-the-top, with overt references to old Looney Tunes cartoons, preposterous plot developments and some really fun lines. The script devotes a lot of energy to finding more and more outrageous ways and places for Smith to shoot buttloads of people, which is just as it should be; A great time.

 The stacked cast really, really helps. Monica Bellucci plays a lactating prostitute with a heart of gold; She doesn't get a lot to do other than to be a love interest, but at least we get a very funny Paul Giamatti playing against type as a deranged hitman - a great character and performance. Clive Owen is perfect as the grumbling, antisocial Smith, and though some of his lines are a little overcooked, that's on the script, not him.

 The film has a great eye for character actors with memorable faces or voices, too, featuring the likes of Julian Richings and the great Stephen McHattie.

 Unfortunately its look hasn't aged very well - it shares a desaturated palette with other 00's films, giving the film an aggressively artificial look and not much else. Unlike (again) Smokin' Aces, it never develops it into an aesthetic. The CGI effects don't look great either, but it lets the film get away with some inspired lunacy on a tight budget, so I'm happy to let that slide.

 More seriously, there's also a whiff of misogyny to the proceeds. Even if you ignore Giamatti's sexual menace (that is not a phrase I ever thought I'd write), which is intentional, some of the jokes, added to the callous treatment given to most of the film's female characters (all beautiful, al either victims or whores) come off as a bit mean-spirited. I don't think it ever goes overboard, but it's noticeable. Definitely a lad's film all the way through.

 Still - some iffy content and action problems aside, it's an excellent action comedy. Despite becoming a bit of a cult movie, it was a bit of a commercial failure; Sadly, Davis hasn't been able to release any other films since then. 

Smokin' Aces

 For a while there Pulp Fiction had an outsized influence on the 90s. Sometimes it was incidental - a few flowery exchanges, some mixed up chronology - but most of the time, it was pretty clear when directors and writers, consciously or not, got a little too indulgent in their borrowing; Even movies that staked out a fairly distinct feel from that film -like, say, Get Shorty- ended up feeling like they owed maybe a little too much to Tarantino.

 Smokin' Aces came out in 2007, nearly ten years after that trend had mostly died down, and it felt like a weird relic - but here's the thing: it might be the most honest one of them all. Bizarrely, it's not particularly similar to any of Tarantino's movies; It just feels like a continuation (and escalation) of the stylistic efforts of all his imitators.

 I say it's honest, because time's given us more than enough chances to come to grips with writer/director Joe Carnahan's sensibilities, and as it turns out this might be their purest expression: a sprawling, over-the-top action movie, an ode to operatic excess and manly, manly men and women which happens to be shot through with a rich vein of deeply batshit strangeness. More than yet another attempt to do Reservoir Dogs, it feels like a smartarse, coke-addled take on a John Woo epic filtered through some of Tarantino's writerly tics.

 The plot is simple: A wannabe mobster (Jeremy Piven) has holed up at the penthouse of a hotel, surrounded by flunkies and whores. He's about to turn informer for the FBI, and his old comrades have put a million dollar bounty on his head.

 So a bunch of disparate hitpeople converge on the hotel, while a couple of FBI agents (Ray Liotta and Ryan Reynolds) and a host of footsoldiers do their best to keep their ward from getting his ticket punched. There's a ton of exposition - way more than the movie can comfortably sustain - and a pretty cheesy (and very easy to guess) mystery at its heart, but really there's not much of a plot here; Just the chaos that results from all these people bouncing off each other.

 And it really is chaos, because the killer cast (rimshot!) is about as diverse as it could be. Every group of assassins seems to come from a different genre. Among other, you've got: a suave master of disguise (Tommy Flannagan), the Tremor Brothers, a bunch  of refugees from a Mad Max film (led by Chris Pine!), a duo of professional contract killers (Alicia Keys and Taraji P. Henson, the most Tarantinesque of the lot) and an Elmore-Leonard-esque crew put together by a hapless bondsman who somehow got wind of the bounty.

 Death comes quickly, and it's treated surprisingly seriously. In the film's best, most bizarre scene, one of the Tremor Brothers tries to get forgiveness from one of his victims by, uh, finger-puppeteering the corpse's face and acting out both parts of the conversation.

 Elsewhere one of the killers tenderly shepherds one of his victims into the next world, and another shows a surprising amount of mercy when she runs across two dying men. It's a running theme, in other words, and it anchors a film that can otherwise come across as excessively flippant.

 It's flawed as all hell - all the exposition takes a heavy toll on pacing, and as good as Carnahan's script can be in the moment-to-moment, he writes himself into a corner far too many times. Plot threads are unceremoniously dropped, characters are forgotten, and some situations get a little too ridiculous even for this film. And since it's aping some of the worst excesses of the post-Tarantino era, there are a few bits which seem to be straining to be a little too hard to be all In! Your! Face!

 But mostly, I think it works. I like the movie lot. The cinematography (by Mauro Fiore) is surprisingly good, the action, which is mostly intended to be confusing, has plenty of cool moments and concepts, and Ryan Reynolds - who can indeed act when he is asked to, instead of being his usual Canadian-whimsy-and-dad-joke-dispenser - anchors the film with a surprising amount of gravitas.

 Time's been mostly kind to this movie; It didn't review too well on release, but seems to be fairly well regarded these days. Sounds about right; It's not a classic or anything, but compared to the movies in its DNA, it might as well be. I mean, the closest thing to it is the fucking Boondock Saints, right?

The Debt Collector

 OK. it's really bothering me now. I've watched this movie three times, and I still can't work it out; Who is The Debt Collector?

 Is it French (Scott Adkins)? Could be - he's our point of view character, a very British martial arts instructor and independent gym proprietor whom we meet as he greets a bunch of predatory douchebag rivals who are trying to run him out of his dojo. He deals with them in the best possible way: by offering to take them all on before he'll consider their offer. "Like in a martial arts movie" "Yeah, that's right, mate, like a fucking martial arts movie."

 He handily kicks their collective asses, but that doesn't solve the fact that the gym is struggling financially. To try and make ends meet, he convinces an friend and student (Michael Paré!) to give him a job as a debt collector. His friend doubts he's a good fit for it, and for good reason: French clearly lacks the moral flexibility the gig requires. But after some wheedling, and meeting the collections boss, he steps into the titular role. Or does he?

 Because therein lies the problem: On his first day, he's partnered up with another debt collector - Sue, an old, bleary-eyed and hungover veteran played by the great Louis Mandylor. At no point do they say "there can only be one!" and fight each other, nor does one recognize the other as the one and true Debt Collector. No crown or sash is ceremonially donned. It's maddening.

 The film follows them both as they do the rounds that first weekend. Sue's way of showing the new guy the ropes consists of dropping him into the deep end and hanging back to enjoy the fireworks; French, for his part, does relatively well - he's been established as a soldier as well as a mixed martial artist, so beating up a bunch of thugs is something he turns out to be surprisingly good at.

 Not that he enjoys it. This is a buddy comedy, after all, so the characters need to be at odds for a while before they warm up to each other. And the way it works here is that Sue basically takes the piss, always hanging back and letting French take on all punches; Meanwhile, French complains. He does come off as a little whiny, but what makes it funny is that all his moaning is justified.

 They're both great characters, and the actors have good chemistry together. Veteran VoD director Jesse V. Johnson is predictably good with the action, but more importantly for this movie his script (co-written with Stu Smalls, whom he'd worked with before on the excellent Accident Man) is funny, full of great lines and colour (and off-colour) detail. It's charming as hell, with a tone that remains breezy even as it gets into murkier waters.

 Because as everyone keeps warning French, debt collection's not for those with a conscience. And, to be fair, despite showing some scruples, he does get up to some pretty heinous shit over the course of the movie. While the film remains episodic, there aren't any major issues. But a plot eventually emerges (driven by a gangster played by Tony Todd) that will lead to places where he - and maybe even callous, burnt-out Sue - are not willing to go. Predictable, but satisfying.

 There are quite a few fights, and Mandylor gets to show off his boxing skills. But it's mostly Adkins's show, and he gets a real workout; The brawling is a little grittier than, say, Accident Man - it's way more grounded, and it feels like a few of the victories are very close -  but it still finds the time for someone to get thrown clear through a wall and quite a few comic beats. A climactic shootout, meanwhile, doesn't have much in the way of choreography or excitement, but it has an excellent use of squibs. Very juicy ones.

 One thing that cracked me up: there's this one guy who, when hit, makes a basketball-like sound on every impact. Cracks me up every time. Someone give the foley artist responsible a raise, please.

 Cinematographer Jonathan Hall captures the shittier corners of LA in all their dusty, sunny, neo-noirish glory, and the actors really elevate already good material; Adkins has never been better in the dramatic department, and Mandylor is a revelation: soulful, funny and with just the right mix of badass and vulnerability. In a just world, his part here would have made him huge. Johnson is a great director whose movies tend to look much better than their budget should allow, and this is no exception. There are even a few avant-garde like flourishes; They're slightly jarring, but after a few watches I now find the epilogue of sorts they lead to sweet and affecting. This is a really great fucking movie.

 French and Sue will return, improbably, in a very inessential sequel that nonetheless retains much of the charm. It doesn't answer who The Debt Collector is in this one. It's also nowhere near as good, but who'd refuse to spend more time in these guys' company?

Baby Assassins

 Baby assassins is about two assassins that act like big babies, not assassins that go about assassinating babies - If that's what you're after, you'd be better off hiring The Killer instead. You monster.

 The two titular assassins are Mahiro (Saori Izawa) and Chisato (Akari Takaishi) - two girls just out of high school under the employ of one of those shady assassin agencies we keep hearing about. To keep their cover after graduation, the agency suggests they both get an apartment together, and get a part-time job as a cover (as their handler explains, the agency is more scared of tax men than law enforcement). Very low-key hijinx ensue.

 The movie is bookended by two excellent fights, but spends most of its time indulging in low energy slice-of-life comedy that honestly feels too slight to even qualify as a sitcom - it's more like filler updates on a web comic.

 There's a plot of sorts where the girls inadvertently start a fight with the Yakuza, but it's an afterthought; just the bare bones to give a little structure to the proceeds and provide a big brawl at the end. More is made of the assassin's attempts to get a job, or the very polite, very mannered squabbles resulting from their convivence. For, you see, Chisato is bubbly, outgoing, and quirky (in a very specifically Japanese way that I find pretty fucking annoying), and Mahiro is an antisocial wallflower who can't be arsed with anything that doesn't involve killing (and she even moans about that). Both are complete sociopaths too, which makes their matter-of-fact handling of their assassin duties a pretty funny running gag. Especially when the actress playing Mahiro also happens to be an accomplished stuntwoman, and she can move; The movie really comes to life whenever she gets the chance to flex her muscles.

 Baby Assassins is a pretty anime-damaged film - both girls are pretty trope-filled characters, as is the type of stuff they get up to. Still, there's a lot to like here - they have a lot of chemistry together, as proven by the dialog where they start making fun of the type of unsolicited wisdom a certain type of man might spout. The film frames their job as distinctly un-glamorous and not very well paid, which is a relatively novel take, and there are some pretty solid jokes sprinkled here and there.

 Unfortunately the film spins its wheels for far too long and delves into Japanese cultural aspects that set my teeth on edge (namely, an extended plot point that involves a stint in an extremely childish maid café.) It frequently splits the line between cute and cutesy, amusing and annoying... and the proportions are not always flattering to director Yugo Sakamoto's very loose script.

 Ultimately, though, I think it's successful, just about. The fights, though definitely not the focus of the movie, are a big part of that: they're quick, brutal, and feel hard-won. Izawa is a terrific, scrappy performer who athletically weaves in and out of holds - her fight against the heavy (Masanori Mimoto) easily makes the movie worth a watch; The action director is Kensuke Sonomura, who directed Bad City, so that tracks. There's a lot of blood, all of it digital and distractingly bad, but the rolling around is so good it's easily forgiven.

 More importantly, despite all the stuff that grated and the cultural differences, both actresses are pretty good and their characters ultimately come off as at least somewhat charming (one much, much more than the other; Sorry, Chisato).

 I mean, it's a movie where both assassins ride a single bike on their way to the climactic battle - and once there, they fret about whether it's ok to leave it out in the street. Weebs will lap this stuff up, but there's just about enough here for the rest of us too.

The Fall Guy

 Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) is the go-to stunt guy for huge Hollywood megastar Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), one of those vacuous, insecure types. But that's all right, because at the same time Colt is dating beautiful camera operator Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt); He's doing what he loves, working alongside someone he's starting to suspect he loves - until a crane mishap gives him a minor injury and a severe case of self-doubt and depression. In a deep funk, he drops off the map for a year and a half, ghosting Jody in the process.

That funk ends when a producer (Hannah Waddingham) calls him out of the blue, saying Jody is getting a shot at directing a huge sci fi vehicle with Ryder in the main role, and asked for Colt by name. So Colt goes over to Australia, shoots a car chase that ends in a pretty sweet cannon roll (which, incidentally, got the Guinness world record for most spins in real life) and starts reconnecting with Jody in a pretty funny scene where Jody makes him explain himself very very publicly. As in, with megaphones. Suddenly, all's good in the world. The twist: Jody very much did not ask for him by name.

 But there's more. Ryder's missing in action, and when Colt goes out looking for him at the producer's request, he finds a corpse in an ice-filled bathtub. Shortly afterwards he's getting chased around by beefy PMC-types all over Sydney in a plot that gets sillier and dumber by the second, all the way to a contrived and, frankly, pretty fucking stupid final gambit; But that's ok, because the film has an infectious sense of fun... and more importantly, it gives director David Leitch and stunt designer Chris O'Hara free reign to come up with all sorts of the sort of craziness studio 87North shines at, this time with an emphasis on vehicular and falling stunts (though there are some really good fights in there too). Just to be clear, the movie earns essential status just based on the stuntwork. It's truly amazing.

 The script... the script (by Drew Pearce) is all right. It's big, loud and dumb by design, and even its (shockingly frequent) clever conceits, like a discussion on split screen that takes place in split screen where Colt and Jody talk around the way they split, are a bit too self-satisfied. Same problem as Bullet train, except that here a lot (not all) of the jokes work; and that makes all the difference. That split screen scene, for example, is immaculately executed, and it gets some big laughs because Jody is testing out some of the costumes at the time; so for a lot of the conversation, she's naturalistically gesturing with a giant alien hand. By the time she ends up leaning her chin on it pensively... I haven't laughed so much in a long time.

 It really does try to shine a spotlight on the world of stunt workers, with a pleasing emphasis on technical details (like the impact of the density of the sand on a beachside car chase) as well as on the eye-popping stunts themselves. If you want to be mean, it also feels like they're taking some pot shots at a certain actor who shares Tom Ryder's name and puts undue emphasis on doing his own stunts. There's a lot of fun references to a ton of other stunt-heavy movies, direct and indirect - I laughed when someone produces a Miami Vice stunt team jacket and then gets involved in a motorboat chase at Sydney Harbour. Of course they jump over a huge explosion. My favorite, though, has got to be a surprisingly high-profile nod to a forgotten 1983 trashy sci fi movie.

 On the whole it's a mixed bag, but I mostly lean positive because enough of the jokes work, and also because it's... well, cute. It's a cute movie. What with its central romance - one that has very little passion (seriously, when are we going to get love stories that feel like they aren't made for thirteen year-olds?) but one in which the stars share a huge amount of chemistry. What with its earnest reverence for stunt work in all shapes and forms. Despite a lot of cruft and artifice, it feels sincere.

 Also, I respect that they don't do that stupid, formulaic romantic comedy thing where they pretend that the couple has any real difficulties in their reconciliation. And I really do like the reason Colt gives for ghosting Jody - Yes, it's an easily avoidable mistake, but it feels real and relatable in ways a more convoluted explanation wouldn't.

 I know I've already done my share of complaining, but if you'll indulge me, let me whinge a little more: The movie-within-the-movie Jodie is making looks like flaming garbage - when they show a trailer for it, it reminded me of an even lamer version of that Zak Snyder Star Wars thing. Wouldn't it be cooler if it looked like, well, something you'd actually want to see? It's far from the only instance in which they let comedy get in the way of good story choices or actual coolness. For example, making Tom Ryder a complete clown - wouldn't the movie be more interesting if the guy actually had some chops? He'e enough of a buffoon off-screen.

 A lot of the scenes drag on for a little too long, too; The film's only two hours long, and to be honest that's a good duration for the amount of stuff that's crammed in there... but it still feels a little bloated. This should be a lot breezier than it is, especially towards the end.

 And fuck the fact that they explain away the initial accident that drives Colt away from being a stunt man. That's the worst kind of stupid and manipulative script decision.

 Don't have any complaints about the action. Maybe that they make a lot of fuss about doing an early brawl as a oner, and then when you see it it's all chopped-up and kind of messy? The rest of the movie more than makes up for it.

 The acting is excellent all around. I sometimes miss Gosling's serious side, but he's a very gifted comedian. Blunt gets the thankless role of being the straight man person, but she gets some good lines and gags in, and is basically adorable. I didn't know Hannah Waddingham (turns out she's mostly done TV) but she rehabilitates some really clunky lines and makes them funny. And in what seems to be becoming a sort of studio 87North's trademark, there's a very good boy in there too. A very good boy indeed.

 On the visual front, cinematographer Jonathan Sela captures the action well, but that's about it. It's not a particularly atmospheric movie. The music is fine, too, with several fun classic rock needle drops - no Journey, though.

 That actually brings me to an interesting point - there's a lot that's missing in the movie from the trailers. I'm actually more than OK with that, because based on them this just looked like an unfunnier Bullet Train (I went into the theater kind of expecting to hate this based on its marketing). But most of the terrible, terrible jokes from the trailer are nowhere to be found in the finished product. I do think Any Way You Want It would have fit the film's silly, generous, overindulgent ethos to a T, though.

Boy Kills World

 We live in a decade that's given us a ton of high-energy, high-budget action movies with carefully choreographed combat - all with an excellent level of quality that's got to be a statistical anomaly.
 I guess that's where Boy Kills World comes in; Something's got to balance the scales.

 Boy (Bill Skarsgård) is a deaf-mute dude who lives with a Shaman (Yayan Ruhian!) in the middle of the jungle. He was taken in as a kid after the evil head of the totalitarian city nearby (Famke Janssen) killed his mom and little sister; The shaman knew his mother, so he subjects boy to a brutal training regimen to turn him into a killing machine with the sole objective on getting revenge against this Van Der Koy family who run the government or... something; this a very, very thinly drawn dystopia that insists on portraying its ruling family more as hacky Hollywood parodies than anything political*. The movie makes a token show of establishing what a bunch of dicks they are - casual oppression and mass murder, a yearly televised culling of known dissidents, being a very superficial caricature of celebrity culture, that sort of thing. 

 One of the film's main gimmicks is that while boy is deaf mute, his inner voice is provided by none other than Bob Belcher himself, H. Jon Benjamin, with a near-constant stream of smartass comments that aim for humorous and consistently, sometimes catastrophically, miss their mark. This is an extremely, uncomfortably unfunny movie that telegraphs all of its piss-poor punchlines. You know that lame Marvel-style joke where someone starts saying something cool, the music swells, and suddenly they fall down or fuck up or whatever? Yeah, that's the sort of thing you can look forward to here.

 Making H. Jon Benjamin not funny is some kind of feat, but writer/director Moritz Mohr makes it look easy.

 Anyhow. Boy fights his way up the Van Der Koys (Sharlto Copley, Jessica Rothe, Michelle Dockery, and Brett Gelman) on his way to the matriarch in a series of fights and shootouts that mimic the progression of a videogame - I'm going to say that's intentional, since Boy's inner voice was taken from an off-brand Street Fighter clone. It's absolutely the sort of game I'd be desperately hitting buttons to skip cutscenes.

 There's a deeply stupid, nonsensical twist near the end, and even worse, the movie seems to get ever-so-slightly more serious - suddenly it clearly expects us to give a shit about its plot and characters! The moment I realized this provided the only laugh I had during the entire movie;  For context, this comes right after a scene in a televised show where innocents are "comically" murdered by people dressed up as goofy cereal mascots.

 The tone shift at least leads to a pretty brutal final fight which is still spoiled by poor filmmaking, but it's much, much better than all the faff preceding it.

 Just about nothing in this sorry mess works. It's meant to be a style over substance affair, but the style fails to look interesting. The comedy aspects... there are a few bits that are funny on paper - like a guy (Isaiah Mustafa) whose lips Boy can't read, so he keeps spouting Pootie Tang-style nonsense, a fight at least partially inspired by a famous Monty Python and the Holy Grail scene (he's got issues), and a wince-inducing tactical use of cheese graters - but the execution is botched at every turn. That's when the script bothers with actual jokes; a lot of the humour is a sort of incidental, really forced wackiness like the mascot fight.

 And the action! What a fucking waste. The choreographies (action coordinator: Dawid Szatarski) are involved and seem fun, but are ruined by disorienting camerawork and choppy editing that rarely let us get a good long look at what's going on; some of those camera moves are interesting (a couple takes, for example, use drones to zoom through a pretty busy brawl), but this showiness comes at the expense of momentum and clarity. It's really frustrating, because there are some really good moves and stunts in there; But I can only remember one short part of a longer warehouse fight where the camera didn't seem to me to be at odds with the action.

 Blood is mostly CGI, providing another layer of artificiality to the proceeds. I tend to roll my eyes at CGI blood in the best of cases, and this movie is a really a good argument in favour of squibs and practical effects; In that surprisingly non-jokey final fight, you'll often see a huge burst of goopy, comic-style blood, followed by a shot showing a floor that's completely free of any splatter.

 At least the acting is pretty good, even if it's in the service of these non-entities. Rothe is cool when she's not donning a stupid, unfunny helmet the movie insists on saddling her with (You know you're in trouble when you're ripping off a character from a Ubisoft game), Copley is... well, he's one likeable weirdo, and seems to be having fun. But the movie belongs to Skarsgård; His full-on action hero debut is impressive, and the mix between his comical idiocy mixed in with what's basically peak human form is almost - almost! - enough to make some of the material work. Let's get the man a better John-Wick-like next time.

 *: You could say that's a solid satirical point these days, but there's no way I'm giving this movie that much credit.

Cop Secret (Leynilögga)

 Bússi (Auðunn Blöndal) is a renegade, a lone wolf, a loose cannon. Fortunately, unlike Chuck Steel, he doesn't need to tell us that- we get treated to a scene where he chases a criminal down the streets of Reykjavik by way of introduction, culminating in a scene where he shoots his ineffectual partner (Sverrir Þór Sverrisson) in the arm to get a clear shot at his target.

 Icelandic comedy Cop Secret exists in a heightened action movie world where Bussi's stunts are tolerated as long as he gets results; his misadventures in the introduction just get him a stern talking-to. He's Reykjavik's star cop, well-liked by the masses and popular enough to have sycophantic TV spots with presenters falling over themselves to tell us how cool he is.
 But things aren't going so great lately. He's been unable to dig up any leads on a case where people break into banks but don't steal anything. And there's a new star cop in town: Hörður (Egill Einarsson), a cop from the neighbouring posh area who's just as good as Bússi is, but also more traditionally handsome, rich, and intelligent.

 Because the case involves both precincts (and his former partner doesn't want anything else to do with him) Bússi is partnered with hunky, hunky Hörður to figure out what's going on. Soon they're in a shootout, bonding as they kill a bunch of people, and later they start going at it like bunnies. Record scratch!

 Yes, they fuck. That's the premise of the movie - it's a hyper-masculine 80's (well, more 90's) action movie spoof spliced with a gay romantic comedy - a buddy-with-benefits cop movie.
  Together they face the dastardly Rikki (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson), who insists on talking in English and making lame animal-based two-liners and whose evil plot will result in thousands of innocent deaths. Because he feels like it, not because it's actually needed.
 Rikki's fun; The movie tries a little too hard to make him funny, but his barely restrained urge to shoot his underlings is kind of amusing. It's his second in command (Vivian Ólafsdóttir) who makes the biggest impression, though - even if she doesn't get to do much, she's got great presence.

 The movie is fine. Just fine. The action is OK, closer to DTV than the movies it's emulating, and the humor... well, it's likeable. There are a few good lines and funny conceits, but you constantly get the sense that either something's getting lost in translation or that it's not nearly as clever as it thinks it is. Most of all it's buoyed by a deadpan tone, a pretty solid knowledge of action clichés, the cast's easy chemistry and a general likeability.

 Some things are spot-on. The movie starts with a pan up from the water to the Reykjavik skyline (just like Robocop!) accompanied by butt-rock guitars and brassy blasts - the music is pretty excellent, if a bit obvious. The script (by Nína Petersen,Hannes Þór Halldórsson and Sverrir Þór Sverrisson) honorably avoids falling into the common trap of confusing references for punchlines. Hell, the one overt reference, in which Bússi says of a plot point: "Just like in Die Hard 3!" is one of film's biggest laughs.
 Unfortunately its jokes aren't that good. Not bad, necessarily, but more amusingly goofy than funny.
 The action is not bad, either. Director* Hannes Þór Halldórsson does admirably with a low budget and, like his writers, he evidently knows the genre well. There's a good mix of (John-Wick-Influenced) shootouts, vehicular action and punchouts (in which our protagonists notably don't do very well); It's not going to win any awards, and isn't memorable in any way, but the fact that it's a spoof elevates it somewhat - it's way better than, say, the action in The Other Guys.

 Faint praise, maybe - it's a very slight movie, an extremely gentle subversion of the formula. But it's cute, doesn't outstay its welcome, gets a few laughs. And despite some of the worst-looking digital explosions in recent memory and a few severe script issues in the finale it manages to leave a positive impression mainly due to its fundamental sweetness. Doubt I'll ever feel the need to revisit, but I found it enjoyable.

*: And ex-footballer - explains the surprising amount of football in this movie.

Becky

 One way to make me perk right up: reference the Into the Void opening credits in your movie's opening credits*. Do it on a notebook with animated teen doodles, as Becky does, and we're in business.

 Becky Hopper (Lulu Wilson) is a sullen thirteen-year old girl who's still mourning her mother a year after bereavement. She's a troubled girl, introduced as she's bullied at school and seemingly implied to be somewhere in the spectrum on some of the early scenes. She's bright and pretty funny, but you can imagine how hard it would be to live with someone as a parent.

 Pity her dad, then, for trying to move on. He takes Becky on holiday to a beloved lakeside cabin, and spoils everything by inviting his new girlfriend Kayla (Amanda Brugel) over... and telling his daughter he intends to re-marry. It goes as well as you'd expect.

 After Becky's run away to her hiding spot to brood, a murderous neo-nazi gang freshly escaped from prison and led by one Dominick (Kevin James) takes over the cabin looking for a key they'd hidden before they were put away. A key (marked with a proto-germanic symbol) that, of course, Becky has found and taken for herself.
 Kind of a Die Hard situation, then, with a (record scratch) thirteen-year-old girl wearing a cute woven animal hood in the McLane role. And it works brilliantly! Mostly because the character of Becky reminded me more of a latter-day Liam Neeson action role more than a Bruce Willis one, but on the opposite end of the unlikely-age spectrum.

 It's a stew of genres and influences: an indie drama frequently checking in on Becky's memories of her mother, a thriller with some very effective, tense scenes, a sprinkling of extremely bloody action. Home Alone and the aforementioned Neeson vehicles are a reference point, and it invokes the ghost of a slasher movie with its bloodlust and music (a cheeky, lively Friday the 13th-ish mix of music and breathy panting). I think my favorite thing about it is that despite having a rich seam of bloody gallows humor, the film plays all of its elements dead straight.

 The premise may be silly, but it's mostly rendered plausible by the way the script (by Nick Morris and Ruckus & Lane Skye) grounds its elements. The protagonist's shift from terrified teen to deranged killer feels earned, and the progression of events makes sense. The action is brutal and takes into account Becky's physical disadvantage at all times; She does spring back a little too quickly after being brutally manhandled, and also ignores a convenient gun at one point, but that's well within genre conventions.

 There are a few instances of overt humor here and there (the most obvious a rambo-2-referencing 'suiting up' montage that involves a star-shaped mirror) but that's pretty rare; most laughs come instead from how extreme things get.

 The filmmaking is great, with the cinematographer (Greta Zoula), editor (Alan Canant)  and directors (Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion) staging some elaborate scenes that cut between, say, the thugs escaping and some fragments of Becky's school life, or getting creative when Becky and Dominick talk over walkie-talkies. The film gets more traditional as it progresses, but things are always cleanly staged. The music (by Nima Fakhrara) is a good mix between ambiental Indie music and crazy mix of vocals and instrumental weirdness.

 And while all the actors are good in this, both Lulu Wilson and Kevin James do an excellent job with their characters; Wilson really sells both Becky's pain and her psycho determination, and James displays the sort of cult-leader charisma you'd expect out of his Manson-like character. The guy's deluded enough that he thinks he can win Becky over with a "we are not so different, you and I" spiel near the end.
 I also really liked his second in command Apex (Robert Maillet), who has a significant role as the lone thug with a little humanity. 

 Cap it off with some extreme levels of gore - wet, chunky, and detailed, more so than most horror movies (the FX crew clearly pulled out medical reference texts for this one), and we've got something special on our hands. It's a simple movie, but a wildly, viciously entertaining one.

*: Or maybe they're more indebted to Spiderverse, but I choose to think otherwise.

Polite Society

  Lina Khan (Ritu Arya) is going through a rough patch; She's dropped out of art school and is living with her British/Pakistani family while she figures things out. Meanwhile little sister Ria (Priya Kansara) knows exactly what she wants: to be a stuntwoman, a dream she pursues with all the manic determination a teen can muster, despite a complete lack of support from everyone except her sister.

 Complications soon arrive in the form of Salim, a hunky rich dude who sweeps Lena off her feet at a soirée hosted by his mother (Nimra Bucha). Ria is understandably upset at the changes this wreaks on her life and her sister; Who's going to help her do her martial arts youtube videos? She also disapproves of the relationship (she accuses Lena of Jane Austening it, happily marrying herself off to a rich dude,) and balks at her new wardrobe (She's wearing cardigans now!)

 Not the type to give up without a fight (or ten) Ria enlists her schoolmates (Seraphina Beh and Ella Bruccoleri) on a campaign to rescue her sister and/or sabotage her wedding. While her plans start out being comically inappropriate and only get worse, Ria soon starts to suspect there might actually is something sinister in her prospective brother-in-law's seemingly perfect façade, and runs afoul of his sinister mother. Things quickly get out of hand, but saying more would mildly spoil this movie's considerable pleasures.

 Polite Society is a silly, extremely likable comedy that's soaked with loving genre asides. The film mines a lot of laughs by from repurposing classic action beats and horror movie staging - a waxing plays the part of the requisite torture scene, for example, and Ria throwing Salim deranged dirty looks from the shadows like a pissed-off ghost is never not funny.

 It's a universe where everybody knows Kung-Fu and Jiu-Jitsu, and things get exactly as ridiculous as they need to to get a laugh from one moment to the next while still remaining (mostly) coherent. Great stuff.

 The fight scenes are frequent and fun - the fight choreography (by Rob Lock) is (intentionally) derivative with homages all over the place. It's not as good as a specialist action film, but it does a respectable job - and there's a lot of work done to adapt traditional moves to unusual wardrobe choices that result in some really stunning-looking scenes.

 The drama is effective, targeting ethnic and social conventions and traditions, while Ria and Lena's relationship is relatable and genuinely sweet. Don't expect a huge amount of subversion in the story department - early on one of the characters says something like "Tropes are tropes because they work," and the movie stands firmly by that.
 But there's real invention and smarts in writer/director Nida Manzoor's enthusiastic, genre-literate application of a melange of inspirations as they're carefully woven into the story she chose to tell. They feel natural, honest and affectionate even as they turn more mundane situations humorous. Turns out even the hoariest of clichés ("We are not so different, you and I!") can be really funny when delivered by a matronly woman to a wisp of a wild-eyed girl in traditional Asian wedding finery... as a prelude to a martial arts showdown.

 Priya Kansara is really great as Ria: genuinely funny, athletic and very, very expressive. There's a lot of laugh-out-loud-worthy mugging going on here, from her and the rest of the very game cast; It works great with the exaggerated nature of the script.

 Just about the only problem I had with this is that I kind of expected something a bit thornier out of it when it’s very much a crowdpleaser. Tough luck: it's proud to be a crowdpleaser. I was wrong, Polite Society is right, and repeat with me: tropes are tropes because they work. Especially when they're applied with this amount of verve and talent by everyone involved.

Mayhem

 So this is one I've had in the backlog for ages - it looked good, but a bit too slick, too glib. It also seemed too similar to The Belko Experiment. I shouldn't have worried; I mean, it *is* way too slick and too glib, but that's ok, it's also a lot of fun. And it's not that similar to The Belko Experiment.

 A would-be abrasive horror comedy that plays it extremely safe? That dares cast corporate execs (at a law firm!) as evil? Well, yeah, it's not going to win any points with those looking for originality or edgy stuff. But once you get past all that, there's a lot to like here.
 The premise, for one: as a fun narrated intro explains. a mysterious pandemic is raging through the world (have in mind that this came out in 2017.) Called Redeye because it causes ocular hemorrhages, its main effect is to lower inhibitions, enabling "emotional hijacking" - so that's cool, it's basically a petty weak rage virus, or like the Crazies if the Crazies were more Mildly Hysterics.
 So when it strikes it's closer to a drunken mob/orgy than a massacre. BUT: in a landmark case, a dude who killed another dude while infected was exonerated of all charges.

 This is all just the background. Our protagonist Derek (Steven Yeun,) a once idealistic young lawyer who's abandoned his principles to rise in the firm's hierarchy by basically becoming evil, is caught up in a political ploy and unceremoniously dropped to the wolves like an ugly baby.
 But just as he's being escorted outside, SWAT teams arrive escorting medics and health workers and cordon off the building: There's an outbreak of the Redeye virus, and for the next eight hours everyone needs to remain inside.

I like this shot, zooming in on their 'infected' eyes (for some reason, people only get one red eye)

 You can see where this is going, right? Derek, acutely aware that he can literally get away with murder while infected, decides to go up to the penthouse and kill everyone who wronged him. On the way he meets a ridiculously beautiful lawyer (Samara Weaving) whom he'd previously screwed over in a family home foreclosure (in a scene designed to establish just how low he'd sunk kowtowing to the corporate overlords.) He gets her on his side by promising to undo the foreclosure, and off they go, armed with a bunch of maintenance equipment, to paint the cubicles red.

 As an aside, it's easy to imagine what, say, Sam Raimi would have done with this setup, the amount of comeuppance Derek would have piled upon him in his hypocritical quest for revenge. But nope, this movie settles on the much more simplistic tack that he's actually turned a new leaf and is now a good person (who's basically using the virus as an excuse to commit a bunch of killings.)
 It's still a good premise, but with no follow-through. Seriously, don't expect any sort of depth here. It's a dumb movie with a plot that soon settles on "Get to floor five so you can beat the head of HR, to get his keycard that will allow you to get to floor 7, where you can beat up this other person you wanted revenge on and get her keycard, which in turn..."
 Yeah, basically a bad videogame plot. But it moves at a clip, providing enough incident and inventive and colorful carnage... which, honestly, is all it needs to do. It also gets a lot of mileage out of the titular mayhem, like a bunch of office nerds gone feral trying to cash in the bounty on our hero's head, or a lot of incidental background nuttiness.
 My favorite: a dude going around the office, saying "fuck you! fuck you! FUCK YOU! You're cool. Fuck you!" That made me laugh out loud.

 Samara Weaving is a highlight - she's very much a male fantasy designed for the hero to get with at the end. But she has a lot of fun with her character, a lawyer who lists "Motorhead, DRI and early Anthrax" as her favorite bands and decides to go along with the ride, laughing like a complete knucklehead at random acts of brutality.

 The script does have its good moments, but aside from its lack of balls it also gets little too cute with the narration, including a pretty didactic ending complete with a message not to be an asshole. It's a shame the movie doesn't do anything more with its subversive premise, but, well, being entertaining goes a long distance in this sort of thing.

Violent Night

  Hell, let's call it a Christmas miracle: Tommy Wirkola, who's been doing clever, likeable but not-quite-all-there Hollywood-adjacent genre work like Dead Snow and Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, has finally hit it out of the park and made a very respectable Killer Santa movie.

 Only instead of taking its queues from, say, Silent Night, Deadly Night, it's an action comedy pastiche that pulls elements from a whole lot of influences.
 Die Hard towers over everything else, as well it should. There was a period after it came out when everyone joked that the elevator pitch for every other action movie was "Die Hard in a [blank]". This is absolutely, deliberately true here: "What if Die Hard but Santa?". But you also get a bunch of elements from other Christmas and action movies of yore, a generous helping of ultraviolence, and some random pulls from other movies the team watched and liked.

 Santa (David Harbour) is having doubts about humanity deserving a holiday like Christmas lately, what with all the ungrateful, cynical fucks out there. He still does his job, but he's an alcoholic, mumbling mess and he's seriously thinking of calling it quits.
 At the same time, a precious little moppet (Leah Brady) is spending Christmas with her family in a secluded mansion, caught in the middle of various shitstorms; Her parents are separated; Her father's family is a bunch of rich sociopaths straight out of Knives Out, grovelling at the feet of their matriarch (a very funny turn from Beverly D'Angelo); And, worst of all, that same Christmas eve a group of well-coordinated criminals targets the house, kills all the security and kidnaps the family, trying to get at a shitload of money hidden away in an underground vault.

Bah humbug

 You could say that Santa's the wrong guy at the wrong place at the wrong time. There's even a plot twist straight out of Die Hard 2 later on.
 Will Mr. Claus rise to the occasion and fight off the horde of criminals? Restore his Christmas spirit? Get that adorable moppet's parents back together?
 Well, yes, yes and of course. And that's this film's secret weapon: It plays its cards completely straight. It's got a lot of jokes -many of them quite good- and a lot of bloodshed, but these things never undermine what's effectively a very earnest, honest to god Christmas movie. It also carefully sets up its action so that when, say, someone tries to strangle Santa with a string of Christmas lights, you know exactly why he had his hand covering his throat. Props are carefully foreshadowed so that when Chekhov's woodchipper finally comes into play it's an extremely satisfying action beat. The script (by Pat Casey and Josh Miller, who were behind the recent Sonic movie) is very tightly constructed, and you can also see the fingerprints there of production company 87North, who have been churning out some of the best action movies of the last decade.

 So it's a bit surprising that the weak point here is the action itself - as mentioned, it's got great beats and very fun ideas, but unfortunately it isn't as fun to watch as other recent 87North joints. It's clear enough, if a bit dark, and well choreographed, but full of quick edits, slightly shaky, close-quarters shots, and non-martial artists doing the moves. I wouldn't complain that much except I had my hopes up given the distributor's pedigree.

 And yeah, David Harbour is excellent as Bad(ass) Santa. Very funny and believably scary when he's pissed off.

 Die Hard was and always will be essential viewing for the holiday season. I don't think Violent Night will ever reach that status -it's just not as good, which, well, is true of almost every other movie out there- but it's fiercely committed to being a better Christmas movie. It's got more holiday-themed killing and maiming than any three Christmas slashers put together; I think just about the only seasonal objects that weren't used as a murder weapons or factored in the action somehow were mistletoe, advent calendars and eggnog...
 Have to leave something for the sequel, I guess.

Accident Man: Hitman's Holiday

 Mike Fallon, Accident man (the redoubtable Scott Adkins) hasn't had that bad a time after having to go against all his assassin co-workers in his first on-screen adventure. Sure, he's had to leave his native UK behind, but he ends up in Malta, where we learn job openings for an accomplished assassin-for-hire are plentiful.

 Besides some lingering guilt issues, he's fine. He's got himself a nice pad, and has money enough to hire Siu-Ling (Sarah Chang), a kung-fu master, to unexpectedly show up every now and then and beat the shit out of him Cato style.
 Yes, a Pink Panther reference. Accident Man: Hitman's Holiday is a much goofier movie than the first one. But that's OK; enough of the jokes land. It's funny! And the fights are still outstanding.

 Mike's thinking he's got his life sorted, when suddenly Fred (Perry Benson), one of the fellow assassins he betrayed back in the UK, pops out of the blue. Fred's a loveable old geezer who made a living inventing ways to murder people, and Mike had a soft spot for the man that was apparent even in the first movie. It turns out Fred is there on personal business, and after some back and forth they decide to join forces and share the contracts.

 The first act is a bit episodic; There's a montage of the boys testing out random assassination methods, of them hanging out (along with Siu-Ling), and a couple of random hits. The movie's plot only gets started almost half an hour in when someone tries to kill a powerful mobster's son using Mike's disguised-as-an-accident MO.
 Mike successfully avoids being framed, but due to his reputation the mafia boss enlists him to protect her son; She takes Fred hostage, and threatens to kill him should Mike fail and her son die.

 The son turns out to be a jackass called Dante (George Fouracres) - an entitled, whiny man-child whose whole sadly unfunny schtick is to be painfully obnoxious. This is not even a Lethal Weapon 2 situation where he's got a good heart - the kid is a piece of shit through and through.
 But thankfully while Dante himself is not a funny character, it is pretty funny to see him get manhandled and put through the wringer in various ways throughout, and the movie understands this well.

 The meat of the movie is kind of the action movie equivalent of a videogame boss rush; Mike, trying to keep Dante from harm, has to go against a colorful roster of assassins gunning for the nine-million-euros bounty - at one point that's translated into a smaller amount of British pounds, which is a kind of unintended joke given recent events here in the UK. A painful, unfunny joke.
 The fights are plentiful, a lot of fun, and excellently choreographed and blocked. Some are noticeably better than others, but the bad ones don't drag on enough for it to be a problem. The camera is very dynamic, zooming in and out of the action to emphasize blows, and constantly moving around the combatants to show off their moves. I found it a little bit distracting at first, but while I'd prefer a more traditional setup it did grow on me; If nothing else, it's impressive just how much planning must have gone into integrating the camera moves into already busy fights.

 All in all I don't think it's as good as the first one; Directors George and Harry Kirby do a good job, but they're no Jesse V. Johnson. The limited budget is a lot more visible here, some of the humor doesn't quite work, and even when it does I prefer the first movie's smart-ass action movie tone rather than the goofier, more overtly comedic take this sequel chose to go with.
 But damn if it isn't still a great, fun, martial-arts-packed movie, packed with great jokes. Not as essential doesn't mean that it isn't essential as well.

Bullet Train

 It's been a long time since I've seen a movie as desperate to be hip and funny as Bullet Train. It fails on both counts. But more disappointingly, it doesn't deliver a lot of great action, either.

 This is specially disappointing, as it's directed by David Leitch, who with co-director Chad Stahelski led the western action film renaissance with John Wick (Fury Road came a year later and stole their thunder(dome), but that's no slight on their impact).
 Leitch went on to do Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2 -both excellent- but this is far closer to Hobbs and Shaw: unfunny, bloated, and so fucking full of itself.

 Brad Pitt plays an operative code-named Ladybug who is sent to board the titular bullet train in Tokyo to retrieve a McGuffin stored somewhere on board. Brad Pitt's schtick (and everyone has a schtick here, it's that sort of movie) is that he's a kind goofball motormouth with a metaphysical, chronical run of bad luck, and a hard-on for self-help.

 The briefcase, it turns out, contains a buttload of money in bills and bullion to pay for the ransom of your stereotypical badass yakuza overlord's son. As it turns out, there's a few assassins, mercenaries and assorted miscreants on board the train, and most of the movie's overlong second act consists of untangling all the parties' motivations as the fight and make alliances with each other.

 Once the plot is untangled, then the movie finally settles down a little bit. With clear(er) motivations and on-track to a final confrontation against the big bad, the movie gets a lot better and finally delivers on some cool action, but by that point it's too little, too late.

 Because to get there you need to get through a gauntlet of cutesy humor and running gags (that name is doubly deserved here- they are run into the fucking ground!) delivered with an obnoxious grin and wink by a script trying so hard to be cool and clever that you can taste the flopsweat.
 There are some good gags in the mix, and some others that I appreciate on paper, but the miss-to-hit ratio of the jokes is unacceptable. The tone of the movie is even worse - it feels like it's pointing out every little thing it does and singling it out for praise. The script itself is built around fate and luck, which is fine but means that the plot is built around little connections and coincidences that the movie will highlight and then get back to with quick flashbacks when it comes up again. Like an annoying, eager-to-please kid showing you his... fidget spinner collection or whatever kids are into these days. And of course, if you think about details beyond the ones that the plot specifically set up it all comes tumbling down, but hey.

 I personally didn't find the action very appealing; it's gruesome, fun and it's always clear what's happening to whom, but a lot of the connective tissue within the fights seems missing- mostly I assume to focus on funny (or "funny") beats and a quick rhythm. I appreciate they're trying something new a bit outside the 87North signature style, but until some bits close to the end I just didn't think it was memorable at all. 

 There's a lot to like in this movie, even while it's being kind of insufferable. Pitt and Bryan Tyree Henry (PaperBoiiii!) are excellent and often funny even when saddled some truly dire lines, which is a testament to their talent and charisma. Zazie Beetz barely registers. Poor Hiroyuki Sanada (TwilightSamuraiiii!) just gets to look cool with a cane/katana combo and provide exposition, but he hogs all the best action scenes.
 The rest of the cast don't fare so well - Aaron Taylor Johnson is kind of annoying in a kind of James MacAvoy type role, and I really disliked Joey King as a teen sociopath. Happy to chalk that down to the script rather than the actors, as even the conceit for King's character is pretty lame.
 Oh, and we also get surprise Michael Shannon! He proceeds to Shannon things up admirably, but he's been better deployed elsewhere. 

Surprise Michael Shannon! is the best surprise.

 It's a handsome-looking movie as well, overtly artificial looking at times but you can at least tell they were going for an aesthetic. As with Deadpool 2, I appreciate when expensive special effects scenes are used to sell goofy slapstick jokes like Pitt banging his head against random objects in an extended slow motion (and CGI-heavy) scene. 

There are also some genuine moments of cleverness buried in the script - even an extremely cutesy and tiresome schtick where Tyree Henry keeps classifying others as Thomas the Tank Engine characters makes for some surprisingly fun twists in the story, but only after it's been used as exasperatingly as possible. And as mentioned above I did like the final act. Movies that end well are easier to forgive, but all in all this was pretty damn disappointing.