3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Ballerina

2025, Len Wiseman (Underworld) -- download

I have recently been watching a lot of movies in chunks of viewing time, often with gaps of days in between. I have also been dealing with a winter bug for more than a week which has left my brain with a permanent low-battery alarm. Both of these have contributed to plots escaping my memory almost as soon as I hit the Stop button on the remote. I don't take notes, leaving that for Hallmarkie Days, so end up struggling as what to say when it comes times to write about it. Back in the old days, that is where "I Saw This!!" emerged, but my newer stub-based posts method generally precludes that. Generally.

Meta meta meta...

So, we all know that this is a spin-off of the John Wick franchise, one that (checks Googles) takes place between 3 and 4. So, this is after John (Keanu Reeves, Keanu) was thrown off the roof, with a thud, but before he's gallivanting all over the world trying to kill the head of The High Table. It specifically involves a tribe (were they always called tribes? I don't recall that word being used for all the ritualistic crime organizations) John used to be part of, the Ruska Roma and a new tribe, that all the others dismiss as just a cult, one to be very cautious when dealing with. In particular it involves Eve MaCarro (Ana de Armas, No Time to Die), who escapes the latter tribe, at the cost of her father, is found by Winston (Ian McShane, Deadwood), and handed to the Ruska Roma for training and family. She ends up not appreciating any of it, and her father stands in for John's puppy.

This is also a Len Wiseman movie, so from the movie perspective, that means his template was a woman (vampire) in a rubber/leather jumpsuit wielding dual pistols while fighting vampires & werewolves in a shadowy European city. That lends itself well, as an adult Eve heads off to find the cult that killed her family, garnering the ire of The Director, as John himself did once. Against orders, she seeks out advice from Winston and is directed to Prague to a member of the cult, a man named Pine.

Pine (Norman Reedus, The Walking Dead) is also "defecting" and also with his daughter, a blatant mirror of Eve's history. Its on Continental ground, but the cult doesn't care for the rules and attacks Pine, and in turn, Eve. They almost make it out, but Pine is shot, and Eve left unconscious. She is forgiven his indiscretions in that Continental, because she didn't kill anyone, and heads off to arm-up, only to have the Prague sommelier (I believe that is what they called the first example of John Wick-ian arms dealer?) attacked by The Cult. The arms dealer sends her to Hallstat, Austria, a small ski village high in the mountains.

And that is where All Hell breaks out, a typical (oh JW movies) "kill every fucking person" fight between the residents of the village, which is made up entirely of The Cult, and Eve. And briefly, John Wick, who is asked by The Director (Anjelica Huston, 50/50) to take down Eve, for fear of increasing the friction between The Cult and the Ruska Roma. We learn the origins of The Cult, in that the village was setup as a refuge for all killers from the other tribes, when they want to leave that life and have a family, but still be protected. It honestly doesn't sound like such a bad ideal, but I guess they evolved into something more cultish, seeking the same level of power & control of its membership as the rest of the tribes. No one really ever escapes this world, except for, much later, John. Eve survives but pretty much ends the entire Cult, leaving behind plenty of children who will probably make it their life's goal to kill her. Tit for tat, I say. And John uses a loophole to avoid having to kill her. Its not like he can piss of his leaders even more than he has in three previous movies.

This movie was competent enough, but it left very little in the way of emotional / visual impact as the "proper" John Wick movies. And no, I am not talking the "you killed his dog?!?!" emotional impetus, but more the connection between us, the viewer, and Eve. This is not Ana de Armas' first OK Corral role, but it just didn't work entirely for me. I couldn't even go so far as to say "popcorn movie" as, with those, I am usually expectant to watch it again some time. I mean, I have even rewatched Sisu lately. Maybe I can blame it on the chunky viewing habit I mentioned above, but this is just not staying with me.

P.S. Its not that movie Ballerina, and yet... it is?

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Canary Black

2024, Pierre Morel (Taken) -- Amazon

I guess there is a micro-trope for assassin movies to begin on the top of a building (in Tokyo, for bonus points) so the killer can rappel down the side and, either enter spectacularly, shattering the window, or just go in all sneaky sneak. Also, bonus points if she wears a very audacious wig. I am not sure why CIA operative Avery Graves (Kate Beckinsale, Underworld) needed to be wearing a wig to sneak into the building-top home of some Japanese Bad Guy, only to drop it on the floor as she was leaving, but sure, she had to do her.

Kate Beckinsale is not an "aging" action/thriller star. She is only 51. OK, sorry, maybe that is long after the age at which an actor is considered "aging" by the status quo ? Either way, she is not presented as aging -- the character could be anywhere from 35 to 45. But either she is feeling it, or she is just not skilled at the running and diving. I know that most of the key scenes are via a stunt double, but there are a few where she has to sprint down a hallway in boots-not-made-for-assassin-work and she just looks.... awkward. At least Keanu's troubled running was explained away by the fact he had just been battered against the side of a car. What I am trying to say is that if Graves is not presented as an "old" character, then maybe not having her doing the "old man run" is a good idea? Give her sensible assassin shoes to run in.

I am power-rewatching thru the Craig Bond films (Bond, Craig Bond, James's lesser known cousin) and as they start in 2006 and end with "No Time to Die" in 2021, where Craig was 53, after a career of being battered against EVERYTHING (Bond, not Craig) at least he has an excuse.

Anywayz, after a job well done she returns home to her Oblivious Hubby (Rupert Friend, Hitman: Agent 47) and talks about her business trip, and his coming business trip and their happy happy love love life. Its their anniversary and she has screwed it up with novelty undies while he got her a really cool leather short coat. She sucks at the lovey dovey stuff. And that's because her mind is always on The Job, especially the tracking down of ultra-anonymous assassin called Kali.

Anywayz, later on, after a debrief about the intel she got in Japan blah blah Kali blah blah, she comes home to find the place wrecked and her husband gone. An altered voice (why alter, unless she is expected to recognize them?) tells her they have her husband and if she wants him back alive, she has to grab a secret file hidden in the tooth of a detainee at a CIA black site. She knocks the tooth out of the guy, which sets off the alarm bells, but alas, there is no file. But now Avery is on the Naughty List.

What was the file? Something called Canary Black, something about a list of blackmail material for all the key people in the world including espionage agents and world leaders. "If it gets out...." Anywayz, Avery has to get the file or they kill her husband. And the CIA is now after her.

What follows is a chase-me, chase-me movie. Since the tooth was empty, which is never explained (or if it was, I was not engaged enough to remember), she has to find it another way. One way is beating up her boss's (Ray Stevenson, Ahsoka) boss and using his access to a Top Secret Computer in a Top Secret Building but once she has the file, she discovers (via "hacker friend" with requisite haircut) the file is not blackmail but a more appropriate spy-movie computer virus that can "take down countries". With the virus the Bad Guys can blackmail the entire world into giving them trillions of dollars/euros/whatnot. Let the chase-me continue!

At least it was not "a list" of the identities of spies around the world as per "Skyfall" but I suppose the fake-out had it as a list.

Its not a "bad" movie, but neither is it a very "good" movie, more stock n trade for Straight To Streaming. Beckinsale will always look good in right leather and it was nice to see the last movie of Ray Stevenson. It tosses in a minor twist for good measure and it does present a nice romp around Eastern Europe for good measure. If I was ever to "rank" my Women with Guns tag, it would be around the middle of the lot, and its most definitely not going to be Morel's new Taken.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Ballerina

2023,  Chung-Hyun Lee (The Call) -- Netflix

The reveng-ening continues.

Not the be confused with the coming John Wick: Ballerina but also to be confused with it. It borrows a lot of style from Wick. Revenge flicks are not high cinema, but they can be elevated... elevating? John Wick definitely did what I wanted standard fare, trope driven movies to do --- do it with style and do something different. It set a bar. But if I am being honest, and when I am ever not here, I am ready for that bar to be moved.... higher? Or even just replaced? Just like there was an era of every movie being compared to / called "the next..." Taken. I am ready for there to be a replacement flick to dominate the action movie trope mindset.

But at least Ballerina picks up that bar and gives me a very different looking & feeling Korean women with guns flick. I have seen a fare share of Korean action & drama & TV, but this one felt unfamiliar in styling to me, almost suggesting it may have picked up some of its visual cues from the romantic genres I don't subscribe to, but are all over my stream services. It just so often looked so very ... pretty. 

Jang Ok-ju (Jeon Jong-seo, The Call) is a violent young woman who built an unexpected friendship with Choi Min-hee (Park Yu-rim, Miraculous Brothers), a young woman hoping to be a ballerina. Ok-ju is the classic character with a violent past, someone likely working as an enforcer for crime syndicates, or as a Rake-style operative for a corporation. With Min-hee she finds what she has been missing -- gentleness, and sweetness. Until she finds Min-hee in a bathtub, a suicide due to shame, shame for being extorted for sexual acts. 

Ok-ju figures out the extortion racket pretty easily. The sex trafficker Choi Pro (Kim Ji-hoon, Rich Family's Son) meets pretty young women in trendy nightclubs, drugs them, shoots videos of them, and then uses the shame of that act, and the threat of sharing it with the world, to extort them into being prostitutes at his syndicate's brothel / love hotel. The younger the girl, the better. You would think this would be a uniquely east Asian concept relying upon a culture's desperate desire to avoid bringing shame to a family, but all you have to do is Google, to find it happening in our back yard.

Ok-ju's revenge plan (pretend to be one of these nightclub girls) works, mostly, and she gravely injures the Choi before being forced to flee, but not before she pulls another girl out of the brothel, a high school aged girl. Now she needs a new plan. She realizes now that Choi's entire gang is out to get her, she needs help, and to be properly armed. The divergence of North American / European crime movies is so apparent here, where she goes back to her old job for help, and is sent to a shady gun dealer, the equivalent to buying guns from the back trunk of a drug dealer's car which we see in all the movies. Except most of his guns are in shit condition. Attaining a gun must require so many layers of bureaucracy in Korea that finding "lost" ones is a challenge. 

Meanwhile Choi has displeased his boss. Not only was his brothel gig on the side, and making him tons of money he kept to himself (explicitly visible via his sports car) but now he has exposed the gang to someone seeking revenge.  Take care of it, or else, is the message he gets from his boss. So he tracks down Ok-ju, but again she escapes. But they take the highschool girl.

Again Ok-ju tracks them down, this time to the entire gang's headquarters, where she completes the final act of ultra-violence these movies rely upon -- the slow, methodical take down of every Bad Guy, starting with the gang's leader. Guns first, dropped when empty of bullets, and then knives and whatever is handy, Ok-ju is a killing machine. Eventually she finds Choi and the girl, who is surprisingly still alive. She subdues the trafficker, and takes him to a beach where she and Min-hee had many carefree hours together. He offers her anything, everything, to stay alive --- she roasts him with a flamethrower., and then his expensive care.

What's with the detailed plot recap? Doesn't strike me as anything out of the expected there?

When I am watching these movies, I am seeking the formula I "enjoy" to play out. I am not bothered by a lack of ingenuity in the story itself. Revenge stories play as revenge stories. But I am looking for something to tie me to it, a visual style, characters that elicit sympathy, an aesthetic that I can admire. I got this in droves here. There is a flair here (and there) that I enjoyed, and it still had an internal continuity and logic that it did not betray. 

For example, when Ok-ju meets Min-hee, the former is dark haired and plain looking, the latter with bleached blonde hair and makeup, a girl who cares about her appearance. But when Min-hee dies, it is she with the dark hair, and Ok-ju sports blonde locks. While the violent girl was coming out her malaise of anger, the ballerina was falling into darkness. Ok-ju has lost her opportunity at peace, normality, gentleness. 

Not sure you answered my question.

Yeah, well live with it. Something about the tale demanded a retelling.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Lou

2022, Anna Foerster (lots of TV including Westworld) -- Netflix

This is how you do a Women with Guns movie about being a mother, exploring both the familial bond and the lack thereof that comes with being a violent sociopath. As opposed to, the other. 

But apparently, the New Hot Place for assassin women to hide is Alaska. Also, retro timelines are FUN! Ok ok, I start off with the snark, but to be honest, I rather enjoyed this one, and maybe it will be a jumping off point for Allison Janney's aging action star career? Can't let Neeson have all the fun. OK, enough snark.

Again, Alaska, the 80s. Lou (Janney, Mom) lives in the woods with her dog Jax. Her next door neighbour, and tenant, Hannah (Jurnee Smollett, Lovecraft Country) is a single mom of daughter Vee (Ridley Asha Bateman, Shattered). Lou is a cranky old lady, constantly harassing struggling Hannah. It doesn't help, as Hannah is still dealing with the abuse from her ex-husband, a man she assumes is now dead. Buuuuut...

Big storm coming, and Lou is making preparations.... well, not for the storm, but her own ending. Obviously she has a past she hasn't quite escaped from, much like Hannah. The storm, or ... someone, cuts the power to Hannah's place, and while she is outside, takes Vee. In desperation, she runs to Lou's place, interrupting a shotgun in the mouth. Instead of explaining, Lou immediately kicks into action, and the two go off into the woods to track the kidnapper, who must be Hannah's ex, despite her being told of his death.

Spoilers?

Surprisingly, as in I was actually surprised by it, things are not as they seem. Lou's past is CIA and that is one thing, but she is also tied to Hannah in ways the young woman could not be aware of. As the two trek through the woods, that Lou is a badass becomes very apparent, but also the details of their connection trickles out. You see, while Lou was in Iran doing Reagan era CIA things (Google it) she became pregnant. To retain her cover, she kept the boy, but motherhood never really... took. So, Phillip grew up... wrong. Lou knows she was responsible so she turned him in, and he instead faked his death. But Lou protected her daughter-in-law and granddaughter secretly, until... well, all this came about.

This is a by-the-numbers thriller but Janney is just steely! That only she, and her character, could have been in a better movie, as despite me enjoying it, I know there was a better... movie there, if only it had the guts to pursue something other than a simple pursuit and revenge movie.

Rewatch: Atomic Blonde

2017, David Leitch (Bullet Train) -- Netflix

Weird, I didn't write about this one. And even though I generally "rewatch" things so I don't have to write about it (i know i know, self imposed baggage & rules about writing something that is supposed to be fun, and not to be avoided) I feel I have to. One, because it was inspired by another rewatch -- Extraction, because the entirely expected sequel comes out this week, and it has an absolutely spectacular chase-fight scene shot to look like a single take but built with from transitions, all handled by the director himself (Sam Hargrave) with a camera strapped to his chest. In watching a little YouTube about these/this scene(s), I learned he also did it once before in Atomic Blonde which I did remember, despite not writing about it, being a spectacular fight. And Two, because I felt the need to include it in the tag "women with guns" after writing about The Mother. 

Of note, I have been gravitating to the extreme end of violence in my rewatches of late. As long as there are guns blazing, I am calmed, as my mind off-screen has been anything but.

Atomic Blonde is a spy thriller set at the end of the Cold War in Berlin, mostly East. British agent Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron, The Old Guard) is relating to a pair of superiors (Toby Jones, The Detectorists), one an American (John Goodman, Treme), about an op gone wrong in Berlin. She bears the barely healed marks of the failure literally on her face. An agent she knew, but denies, was killed before he could get the classic "operative list" MacGuffin out of East Berlin. She is sent there to connect with the station chief David Percival (James McAvoy, Wanted), who has gone mostly native, buried deep in the black market. From the moment she arrives, she is under siege, having to navigate the twists and turns and double-backs between Russia and the Allies, as Berlin builds to a powder keg, which we in the 21st century know ends with the fall of the Wall.

The movie shifts from convoluted spy games, to sexy 80s-music-pumped intrigue to bone crunching violence. Percival is obviously playing his own game, but she still has to work with him, as he is the connection to the defector (Eddie Marsan, Wrath of Man) who supposedly has the MacGuffin list memorized. Lorraine is playing her own game, the way she wants to play it, but weighed down by the exhausting fights & betrayals. 

I want to like this movie more than I do. I probably didn't write about it the first time because I wasn't sure what I wanted to say. Still not really sure. But it is beautifully designed & shot, Theron is phenomenal and in the long run, I am there for the Hargrave fight scenes. The scene in question is up and down stairs, through doors and walls, using guns, knives and the environment as a weapon; Broughton is tall but lighter than the men she is fighting and they allow that to play through. And you can see why she immerses herself in baths full of ice cubes, barely hiding the bruises and cuts under makeup.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Mother

2023, Niki Caro (Whale Rider) -- Netflix

What does it say about my personality that I make an effort (and even tag it, you doofus) to watch action movies focused on Women With Guns? I really cannot feel that bad considering there is already an established trope along the same lines. But wherein I usually dislike most of its male oriented genre, I do tend to see most in this category, even the ones I know will be less than stellar. Do they make more of an effort with the female helmed properties? Maybe? Not likely? Or maybe I should stop dissecting it, and just enjoy what I enjoy.

Also, why do you have to start pretty much every WWG post with a dissection of the tag? "Do I?" you ask? Well... click through the above tag and you will see, I don't. So, mnneyyyahhh.

So, directed by Niki Caro from a screenplay (and story) by Misha Green, mostly known as showrunner for Lovecraft Country, the movie tells a typical tale of a retired assassin who is drawn out of her isolation, back to her old, more violent life. But it begins before that, in a safe house where she is being harangued by FBI agents tasked with protecting her. She relates her recent past from military sniper to enforcer for arms dealers, a typical story of a killer who cannot come back to "the real world", but she abandons it all when she finds they are smuggling people as well as guns. Unfortunately her partners find her, kill all the FBI agents (but one), so she has to make her own safety in Alaska. Buuut before that, she has her baby, a baby fathered by one of her violent partners, but she doesn't know which one, and that is important because it doesn't matter; the child is hers not theirs. BUT she cannot take the child into hiding, so they fake its death and she tasks the surviving FBI agent with her child's protection. And then she leaves.

Of note, she makes use of that magical portal that transports people in stolen vehicles from one US border to the next, conveniently bypassing Canada altogether.

Years and years later. The FBI agent protecting the assassin's daughter has discovered evidence that the arms dealers are aware of the daughter, so she comes out of hiding to protect her daughter. Act two ends up with her rescuing the girl from her captors and secreting her away back to Alaska, the one place she now knows she can protect the girl. And then the Bad Guys come for them.

Despite my unbalanced paragraphs, things do happen, interesting things where we get to see Lopez being all badass despite her age. Despite her age. I hate how that has to be a thing because its not at all apparent. She's over 50, and while not in the ageless zone of Tom Cruise, there is no denying her athleticism. Men seem to be allowed to begin their action careers after 50 -- Liam Neeson was mid-50s when he did Taken and that was not yet part of his aging men of violence era. But let's hand wave all this consideration away and just say she does come across as convincing, even as the sociopath her character is meant to be. 

But the crux of the film, that she has no character name, just The Mother, is the female aspect of it ("female aspect of it" ?? CRINGE), one that was intentional, and while not the experience of all women, is something that must be unique to women (which is honestly coming from a male who has no desire to child bearing). If Neeson's Bryan Mills was protecting his daughter because he could, and because he had failed her so often before, The Mother is compelled because of motherhood. Or that is the implication. Whether it be biology or ritual or societal convention, that is what is portrayed in her, the mother lioness that will do anything to protect her young, even die. But was it successful in that depiction? Was it different than any other aging assassin protecting a weaker person? Other than a few teary scenes, I am not sure. Maybe I have to subscribe more to the societal convention to see the weight this movie wants to portray? In the end, I think I just ended up with a middling to lower-middling action thriller to add to The Tag.

3 Short Paragraphs: The 355

2022, Simon Kinberg (X-Men: Dark Phoenix) -- download

Are we surprised that the director of X-Men: Dark Phoenix directed had a movie flop at the box office? I am surprised that this very mediocre Women With Guns thriller actioner even made it to the theatre. But considering how utterly bland the X-Men movie was, I am not surprised that this one was very much by the books, which means, I was not all that put out by it. Again, just confused that it actually made it to the cinema when it felt more along the Straight To vibe of flicks like MI-5 which had being a spin-off of a TV series to blame.

Jessica Chastain (Ava) is a Mace, a CIA agent who loses her partner Nick (Sebastian Stan, Pam & Tommy) in an op gone wrong, right after she breaks her no-emotional-connection rule and and has smoochy smoochy with Nick.  The op was to recover a McGuffin, some sort of magical HDD that contains a program (with appropriately flash interface) that can interface with any network, any! Now its on the loose. Mace then travels around gathering a crew of other Women With Guns to hunt down the McGuffin and exact revenge for Nick's death. They include Diane Kruger (The Bridge), Penelope Cruz (Murder on the Orient Express), Lupita Nyong'o (Black Panther) and eventually Bing Bing Fan (X-Men: Days of Future Past).

So yeah, by the books. So that means we have some tense chase scenes in exotic European locales, at least one fancy dress party that needs to be infiltrated assisted by fancy tech (pretty much exactly like a recent episode of Picard) and eventually a twisty reveal (which wasn't much of a surprise) and confrontation in another exotic locale. The acting and production values are all pretty tight, if uneventful, but there was not enough of the stuff around the edges (as I mentioned when writing about Ava) to make it... interesting. A better version of this would be gathering women, with guns, from other existing movies and doing an Expendables style flick.

P.S. Are we wondering why it's called The 355 ? No, yeah and the incredibly boring reason is not worth explaining, in the worst (failed) attempt to create a franchise.

3ish Shortish Paragraphs: Kate

2021, Cedric Nicolas-Troyan (The Huntsman: Winter's War) -- Netflix

There was a point in this movie, about a female assassin in Tokyo, where I said out loud, "This is the movie Gunpowder Milkshake wanted to be." But no, that was being a bit too facetious to the screen and to Marmy sitting next to me. This movie, which will have most people saying it is John Wick but a woman given the connection to stunts coordinator Jonathan Eusebio (worked on all three of the Wick flicks) who also worked with the star Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Birds of Prey, is less dependent on an otherworldly style, more so relying on the inherent otherworldliness of Tokyo. In Kate Winstead plays the titular assassin who fucks up a hit after being surreptitiously poisoned, giving her less than 24 hours to figure out who poisoned her, before she succumbs.

The scene I mentioned was just after she flubbed the shot, and is being immediately chased by the Yakuza thugs who work for the Oyabun she failed in killing. The entire movie takes place in Tokyo, but for a brief interlude in Osaka where a hit orphaned a teenage girl; it was Kate's one rule -- no kids. Kate runs into the street, up to a couple of slick kids next to a stylish car, which she takes and launches off, in a scene reminiscent of Speed Racer (which I really have to finish my rewatch of), full of colour and blurred lines of speed and excruciatingly sweet style. It just looked so good, so unnatural, so video game, until it abruptly comes to an end. Afterall she is poisoned, and not all that in control of her body. But for that brief moment, we see what Kate used to be, the clean lines of utter skill, before being muted by the poison. The rest of the movie is that muted tone.

Of note, it is also time for the two The Hunstman movies to be rewatched, as part of my ever desired series from The Shelf.

Don't get me wrong, the movie is not without style, but that may just be our western eyes seeing the unfamiliar back alleys and streets of Tokyo during what is mostly a foot chase. No more cars for Kate. I am not as familiar with recent Japanese crime drama as I should be, considering my Japan-o-file nature, but these narrow alleys full of small bars, pachinko parlours and kiosk restaurants are utterly foreign, pun intended, to the western eye. Kate seems at home though, smashing through doors and falling from heights, taking out thugs one by one, controlled but brutal. You can see the toll it takes on her, even if you miss the dark lines crisscrossing her poisoned body.

As Kate kills her way across Tokyo seeking the final kill, her revenge against who she believes poisoned her, we get more hints that things are not what they seem, to Kate. Varrick (Woody Harrelson, ) is her mentor, her booking agent and creepily, her father figure. This is a trope that I thought this movie was trying to lift from the western adaptation of  Kite, considering the single letter difference, but Marmy points out, it is a common enough trope in Anime, and therefore likely in Japanese fiction. Given the trope, V is likely as much her creator as he is her ... end.

Along the way Kate picks up Ani, the teen age girl from her past, the girl who's family died before her eyes, and is now somewhat raised, somewhat protected by her grandfather's organization, the same one run by Kate's prey. Kate sees her as a tool, but also the single note of regret in her past. Eventually we see a new Kate being created in this world of manipulative men. 

I don't often read fantasy novels for new structures and styles; I prefer reading more of what I am comfortable with. I guess the same mostly goes with my Women With Guns sub-genre, but with film I am less adverse as new and innovative, but I am mostly not expecting it nor disappointed if I don't get something novel from the genre. Kate gives me what I want, with tons of gunfu, an admirable main character and some style to boot. But don't expect it to break any plot or character barriers. It doesn't take advantage of the myriad of plot points to expand on the characters, unfortunately almost everyone is just a trope, not a person. But as I say, I was here for the tropes.

(we agree-ish) Gunpowder Milkshake

 2021, d. Navot Papushado - netflix

This is a rare film that has a pretty weak first act but gets far better in its second and third acts.

I've had a wee li'l crush on Karen Gillen since her first scene in the first episode of the Matt Smith run on Doctor Who.  She's charming.  Toast, in his review, questions if she's a good actress, and I don't ever doubt that (and it's not crush goggle blindness, she's very talented.  I think her performance as Nebula is probably the best in the very stacked Avengers: Endgame).  But she has comfort zones and sometimes it takes time for her to find them.  

The first act here needs to establish her character, Sam, as a ruthlessly efficient hitman/hitwoman/hitperson, one who is completely able to disassociate herself from her violent actions and the pain they cause (including the injuries she sustains).  Sam suffers from abandonment issues after her mother, a top tier hitman (let's just say "hitman" is a gender agnostic term), killed the wrong person and went on the run without her when Sam was a teenager.  I'm not sure that I buy it, not at this stage, and certainly not in how the film sets her up with an off-screen fight and too, too many hyper-stylized shots that look like cut scenes from Sin City. 

But on a character level, Sam's abandonment completely informs her.  Perhaps in trying to understand her mother, Sam dove into the same profession, and worked to be even better than her mother was, and succeeded.  But tasked with recovering a bag of stolen money for "The Firm", she gets a little too trigger happy and kills a desperate man who is just trying to save his daughter after she had been kidnapped.  Sam takes it upon herself to rescue the kidnapped 8 1/2-year-old, in the process losing the Firm's money.  Also unknown to Sam is she's killed the son of a mob boss, an associate of the Firm, and they cut her loose.  Suddenly she's able to relate to her mother's predicament.  But it should be noted the "killing the wrong guy" is independent of her losing the money, and it's one layer too thick in the story.  These should be connected, like maybe one of The Firm's mooks is the mob boss' kid instead of being a part of an unrelated arc.

The first act doesn't really start working until Sam meets Emily (Chloe Coleman), the young girl.  Coleman is a very intuitive young actress, while not always note perfect, reads her scenes well.  Gillen has good interplay with her and Sam's connection to the girl she orphaned is palpable.  The connection between Gillen and her handler, Nathan (played by Paul Giamatti), isn't well met.  We're meant to understand that after she was abandoned, Nathan took Sam in and raised here, but their familiarity is very loose, and it would have worked more had they played into some form of emotional bond (especially when there's betrayal).  The film really gets clicking at the start of the second act when Sam meets her mother again for the first time, and the interplay between Lena Hedy, Gillen and Coleman is especially sweet.

The first major action set piece in the bowling alley (as immaculately lit in neon as it is) is really, really bad.  It was a dire portent of things to come, which, thankfully never manifested.  Visually the sequence is awful to watch.  There's speed ramping used to make it look like the fight is happening faster than it is, but even still the clunky choreography is all too exposed.  I'm not certain why it was allowed to be in this film in its current state, execpt for the fact that it fully informs the next fight sequence which is quite entertaining.

In this second sequence, Sam once again meets the goons she beat up in the bowling alley, only this time they're in the underworld hospital.  The doctor, working with the battered goons, numbs both of Sam's arms so she can't hold a weapon, and once she's semi-incapacitated the goons can set upon her.  Sam has Emily tape a gun in one hand, and scalpel in the other and she sets about fighting a guy on crutches, a guy in a wheelchair and a guy in an arm cast in a ludicrous hallway action sequence.  If this doesn't play to its fullest potential, it's because the performers playing the goons are...well, too much like human versions of the Mon-stars from Space Jam.  Just unbelievable even for this over-the-top reality.

The Library is a setting that is meant to be a world unto itself.  Each book on the shelf contains... something other than words.  Guns, gold, money.  It's impractical, an the film doesn't do the best job at defining what its role is in this world-at-large, but if it's awesome, it's because of who runs it... Michelle Yeoh, Carla Gugino and Angela Bassett... and, wow, are they styling highly, yes!

[Let me just pause and restate that this film has Karen Gillen, Lena Hedy, Michelle Yeoh, Carla Gugino and Angela Bassett in it...together, and they all get to kick some ass.  Is it the best possible use of this quintet of Kent crushes from across the past 30 years?  Sadly, no, but I can't help but be enthused by what's here.] 

The big battle in the Library is completely perfunctory, but it's an absolutely highlight, if anything showing that Michelle Yeoh is still a phenomenal action star.  But the opening moment of the fight with Hedy leaping over the reception table, flinging two guns forward, is utterly badass.

The narrative weight  put into the estranged mother-daughter relationship, as well as the guilt Sam has over Emily's father's death, but unable to ignore the connection she has with both of them fuels the film in the second and third act.  I was very much invested in these connections, and could see how they were reshaping Sam (it is a good performance from Gillen).  The characters (and performances) really connect, and the themes of parenting and abandonment are unexpectedly resonant.  I wasn't expecting any emotional core of of this all-girl John Wick knock-off.

Now, that all said, I do want to like this more than I actually do.  I wish Gunpowder Milkshake were firing within me the desire to rewatch it over and over, but it doesn't inspire me much.  I wanted more out of this, particularly more out of Yeoh, Bassett and Gugino.  I mean, I think we got more out of them than just the glorified cameo I had expected, but even still I want more.  It's a little muddy but I think that Bassett and Hedy were in a relationship before Hedy disappeared, and that Yeoh and Gugino are partners as well.  It's there, but it's not there enough.  I want these characters and their relationships to be more developed.

 Perhaps one of the key elements it was missing was a score that I would want to listen to apart from the film.   What we have here for the score is a spaghetti western pastiche that really, really didn't work for me.  It felt like Dollar Store Morricone, and didn't fit the vibe.  As well, some of the music cues were too on the nose, although some are kind of inspired, like a surprise Stereolab insert.  

3ish Shortish Paragraphs: Jolt

 2021, Tanya Wexler (Buffaloed) -- Amazon

At the beginning of Kate Beckinsale's career, or even later on when she was Americanized via Serendipity, I would never have thought she would evolve to become a Woman with Guns. But once she became Selene the Vampire, that path was chosen. So, not at all surprised to see her here in another of this sub-genre, some would say exploitative, flicks that focus on a woman taking her vengeance out on men who underestimate her, with guns.

Lindy was born wrong, with a deep seated rage that she cannot control -- intermittent explosive disorder. Her parents couldn't handle her, the authorities couldn't handle her, not even the supposed mental health care professionals could help her. In and out of institutions she somehow ends up in the care of Stanley Tucci (I am amused, in writing about some movies, that certain character names are irrelevant, as it is only the actor that plays them that matters) who provides her with a suit of electrodes and a push-button trigger. When she feels an urge coming, she jabs the button with her thumb and ZAP, a jolt of electricity resets her / calms her down. 

We are introduced to adult Lindy and her predicament as she goes on a blind date. Of course, the stress of dating under such conditions would not be easy, despite being as beautiful as Beckinsale, and she wants to bolt. But Jai Courtney is encouraging, friendly and open to understanding her. Despite a setback with the snooty waitress, they do their date and move on to the dessert without any (well, much) violence, back at her barely furnished loft apartment, where Courtney gently removes the jolt-suit. The next day Courtney is found dead in an alley, and thus begins the vengeance act of the sub-genre. With barely any knowledge of who he was, and some detectives dogging her heels, Lindy is going to find his killers and let the full force of her disorder come down on them.

The first thing I noticed about this movie was its setting. This is obviously shot in the UK but for some reason, they Americanize it, setting the movie in this generic, pink neon lit city of shadowy alleys and rustic bricked locations. The even more annoying thing was that Lindy began her monologue in a flat American accent, but as she speaks more and more, the accent slips and she reverts back to native UK, albeit the cleaned up tones of someone living in the US for a long time. That's just sloppy. 

The movie is not bad, for its sub-genre. It dispenses with the darker tones many of these flicks reach for, instead giving us a light almost comedic romp through bone crunching, throat cutting and gun shots, as Lindy explodes her way through any obstacles to her vengeance. There are some twists, and betrayals, but mostly its just stylish violence and scenes shot like she was doing a cover shoot for a European fashion magazine. And yet, I actually enjoyed it more than the last Women with Guns flick, Gunpowder Milkshake.

3+1 Short Paragraphs: Gunpowder Milkshake

 2021, Navot Papushado (Rabies) -- Netflix

There is always those posts about movies that I truly enjoyed, that I want to jump into writing, and once I get there, I find I have nothing to say that gives it credit where due. Over there, just above, or long after, there is a post about the Fear Street trilogy of teen horror movies that is stalled in drafts. So, instead I jump to my To-Be's and find something I was disappointed in. It just seems easier to write when I dislike something or almost dislike-something.

Gunpowder Milkshake is a movie that in promo, I thought I will enjoy. It's a Women With Guns tag flick, it's in the head-canon-universe that spawns John Wick, it's violent and colourful and creative. Too bad it was just so bloody boring. It's not hard to see what Papushado was going for, and its all up there on the screen, it just seems too disjointed, constantly tonally shifting, too Jackson Pollock in approach, without the proven skill. Too bad.

I like Karen Gillen, but I don't think she's a good actor. She shouts at the screen, but that's fine, she can find her niche and play it through. Gun toting assassins is not that niche. She is the daughter of an assassin, one who abandoned her in a picturesque American 50s style diner. Instead of running away from her mom's legacy, out of resentment and anger, she became one, working for the exact people who drove her mother away. And then, like her mother did, she kills the wrong guy, and is put on the hit list and the bad guys send EVERYONE to kill her. She finds support and solace with the Library, this world's sort of The Continental, but a library that hides guns in books because... well, someone thinks its cool, I guess?

In this movie you can see hints of John Wick, comic booky action from Sin City, sexy women killing people in slo-mo ala Sucker Punch. The acting is on-point kitschy, the styles and colours all crisp, the world otherworldly, just like I like it, but the pacing was off and I found myself yawning metaphorically. And yet, not truly hating it. Any movie with Lena Headey, Michelle Yeoh, Carla Gugino, and Angela Basset all playing bad-asses cannot be that bad. But it should have been so much more, instead of just being a decent effort.

3 Short Paragraphs: The Rhythm Section

2020, Reed Morano (I Think We're Alone Now) -- download

What would it be like to lose most of your family, instantly, forever, and through the actions of Evil Men? Utterly devastating, of course, completely soul breaking, especially if you were to learn that these men were still walking around. Especially when you are weighed down by the fact you should have been with your family, but made excuses to not be. It would break most.

Stephanie Patrick (Blake Lively, The Shallows) should have been on the flight with her family, when the flight was downed by a bomb, killing all onboard. As her soul collapsed, she became a drug addled prostitute, until she is approached by a journalist who has information about the man who bombed the flight. She tries to take action herself, and confront the bomber, which only ends up getting the journalist killed. Not long after the journalist's murder, she finds herself led to a disgraced British intelligence agent (Jude Law, Sherlock Holmes), who trains her and sets her up to track down those her caused her grief.

Unlike other movies, where the object of revenge spends months, or years training, to become the agent of justice, the "training montage" (for lack of a better term) is rather brief, rather muddied, very subdued. "B" (Law) knows he cannot take a soft college girl turned addict into a proper agent, but he provides her just enough so he can manipulate her into doing the work he cannot. It is this grim note that defines the movie, giving barely a passing nod to the Bourne movies that so obviously inspired it. This movie is not about the inexplicably capable revenge seeker, but more about how grief can break you, but also help you steel yourself into doing normally unthinkable acts. Lively plays Stephanie sincerely and emotionally, but it felt like the rest of the movie wanted her to be a sexy Women With Guns trope, which ultimately, the conflicting tones, led to an unsatisfying movie.

Women with Guns: Rewatch: Anna

2019, Luc Besson (Lucy) -- Amazon

I (re)watch this movie from last year, yet another box office bomb for Besson, to revisit & build upon this category I label Women with Guns. The trope, commonly called Girls with Guns, spawned from the 60s idea(l) of rebellious, violent women ganging together to claim some sort of violence titillation fantasy; I prefer to update it. Am I titillated? Of course, but I also like the exploration of how they empower themselves, how the characters differentiate themselves in a genre that is all too often about men over compensating for one thing or another.

Sasha Luss is a stunning looking woman, from Russia, all pale eyes and lost looks. Browsing through her IG (that abbreviation bothers me; how can you abbreviate with a middle letter?), I see more of her character Anna than I see her. In a movie that Besson considers a spiritual successor to La Femme Nikita, or perhaps his own reboot of the concept, we are presented a beautiful young woman taken from a horrible situation and placed into an even more terrible one. From strung out to hung out, KGB trained assassin and honey-pot, faux Parisian fashion model jammed into an apartment full of other self-serving girls, and expected to court the sleazy older men who are part of the fashion world. She is promised a way out, but even that is taken away from her. So she has to make her own way. 

The movie flips back and forth through time, as we get an aspect of the plot played out, and then we see it again through a different perspective. Each flip adds a bit more to Anna's story, eventually ending up with her full empowerment, her break from the men (and woman) who control her life, her final retribution against those who wish to only take from her. 

I find it strange that Besson would do this movie, perhaps a weak nod at the #MeToo movement, when he himself is a focus of what the movement strives to end. Besson is known to court young actresses, an extension of the casting couch, but via his focus & (likely unwanted) affection. Anna is manipulated by men who use her, but who lust for her all the same. In the end, she manipulates them in return, which if Besson is trying to state something about himself, I could probably hurt myself rolling my eyes. But taken unto itself, the movie does a fine job turning the tables and giving Anna her freedom.

3 Short Paragraphs: Ava

 2020, Tate Taylor (The Help) - download

I am beginning to watch movies around their edges, as I continue to find myself sitting in front of the more digestible choices these days. Given that I am gravitating towards easy plots, I can let my gaze wander to the edges, the character choices, the settings, the off-scenes. For some, it's just second line choices, or maybe set dressing, or setting. But for others, they are deliberate plot choices, just not the A Plot.

Ava is another Women with Guns movie, another assassin for a shady organization not likely directly connected to a government. She's (Jessica Chastain, The Martian) begun questioning why she is doing these jobs -- literally -- taking the time to ask her victims if they feel they deserve what is about to happen. Her handler (John Malkovich, Bird Box) gently tells her she needs to stop, before their agency takes affront with her less than manageable behaviour and "retires" her. Meanwhile, the current boss (Colin Farrell, The Lobster) has her being watched, and despite the handler's assurances, has ordered her death.

That's the A Plot. But the movie was more about Ava taking a break, returning to her home in Boston and confronting the family she ran away from ages ago. We often see assassins as lacking any family, no connections to be exploited, nobody who can be used against them. But Ava has familial hangups, a boyfriend she abandoned without word, a mother she resents because she sided with the father, against Ava, and a sister who just resents Ava got away. This, while an obvious keenly chosen B Plot, was what I liked the most. Sure, Ava may still be deadly as ever, especially when she interferes with ex BF's gambling problems, but she is also the very fucked up product of a shitty family background that could be anyone.

3 Short Paragraphs: Close

 2019, Vicky Jewson (Lady Godiva) -- Netflix

Maybe someone can help me out with this. This movie was doing the trailer rounds for a while, and part of my recollection, at the time, was, "Haven't this been done already? Didn't Noomi Rapace already play a black-suited bodyguard before?" I swear, I have an image in my head of a TV show that had her playing a bodyguard, working with a partner, a man in a similar black suit, protecting a client in one of those classic expensive houses on top of a hill, all glass and stone. I looked at her IMDB history and no such TV show exists, so the only thing I can think is that there is an actress who is Noomish who played such a character. Maybe we can work together to identify...

Anywayz, yes, Noomi plays Sam Carlson, a character based on real-life body guard Jacquie Davis, a lone wolf figure, low on the EQ scale but reknowned for how good she is at her job. After an almost botched job in Sudan, she is shaken up, but takes on another protection job that seems simple enough -- protect the daughter of a recently deceased mining tycoon. She's a bit of wild one, so hiring a woman (who won't sleep with the client) seems smarter. Of course, almost immediately the compound (said glass and stone house from above) is attacked and the two women barely escape alive.

This movie felt a little like Extraction, in that its a small movie, focused on two people escaping from Bad Guys, in a country unfamiliar to North Americans. Is this now a sub-genre? But whereas the former was more focused on the action, as all Leading Men movies are, this was more focused, more tightly narrowed in on the conflict, the tension between the two women, initially because the client doesn't want to be protected, but later because the two need to rely on each other. This movie also gave a bit more intrigue, the conflict between the tycoon's daughter and her step-mother (it's always a STEP mother), a misdirection on who is responsible for the attack, and also the more vague trauma (body guards / mercenaries always have a dark past) that Carlson carries around. In the end it delivers exactly what it professed to do, which is not bad, but I would love to see Noomi become the next John Wick.

And thus begins, unintentionally, another episode of Women with Guns. Another episode? Apparently almost all the movies I would place into that category were washed away but one hiatus or another. I wonder if it was part unto not wanting to admit my fondness for this genre.

3 Short Paragraphs: Peppermint

2018, Pierre Morel (Taken) -- download

A female led revenge flick by the director of Taken; sounds like the perfect candidate for one of the topics we considered for the re-engineering of this blog into a podcast, a boozy podcast. But I admit, I was rather boozy when I committed to this (re)direction, so I am not sure I am so taken with it now... pun intended. BUT, the topic -- the female empowerment movie in the post female-empowerment era was a fun idea. What? WTF did I mean by post female-empowerment? I mean, in the era when old white men are getting to define what female-empowerment is; back in those days it just meant angry women with a gun, which is basically what this movie is. We hope we are moving into an era where women can get to define what the term means and whether a movie is of it. I doubt we are.

Anywayz, Jennifer Garner is a woman whose family is gunned down in front of her, daughter included. Gunning down the husband is always fine, but once you kill kids, all the cards are off the table. I am not sure what that term means, but they always use it. Not only does she identify and testify but everyone believes her, and knows she is correct -- open and shut case. But dirty judges (and cops and...) get the case tossed out by throwing her anti-psychotic medication in her face. And when it happens, she does go psychotic and is dragged away literally kicking & screaming. Who wouldn't. But she escapes her captors (the state) and disappears.

Years later, lithe Jennifer Garner has returned from overseas where she learned to fight & kill. She begins killing off the members of the cartel who slew her family, while hiding out in an abandoned car on Skid Row. Yeah the famous one, which turns out is not just a term coined by Hollywood but a real place in LA. Things escalate until she confronts the cartel leader and gets to kill him. Yes, the movie is that boring, with only the barest hints of what it probably wanted to be.

3+1 Short Paragraphs: Kite

2014, Ralph Ziman -- download

I have a thing for movies about violent young women. I blame Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita, my first exposure to a foreign language film. Or maybe his follow-up Léon, otherwise known as The Professional. But I am not alone here; its a pop culture character trait for pretty young things with big guns to appeal to men. The trope considers it Small Girls, Big Guns and its a very big thing in Japanese anime (see Gunslinger Girl as an extreme example), so its not surprising this movie is adapted from such. And while I have seen the anime Kite, I am not sure I can include it in my like category.

The original anime holds the core story -- a very young girl observes the murder of her parents and is taken under the wing of one of the investigating detectives. He raises her as a killer, so she can eventually find and assassinate her parents killer. The anime was much more insidious, having the detective Akai also use her as a (underage) sex slave, which is not present in the live action movie. That's not surprising; can you imagine how that would go over with American audiences?

The movie has Akai played by Samuel L Jackson, in one of his typical over the top cop roles, loudly dressed, loudly acted and doing his own branch of insidious. Sawa is played by Selena Gomez lookalike, India Eisley, last seen in an Underworld movie. It all takes place in a world not quite our own, I envisioned it being the strange pseudo-Europe of the Blade and said Underworld movies.  Its the latest dystopia of post financial collapse (also used in The Rover) that allows lawlessness and corruption to go unchecked, lending itself to ultra violence and kids carrying guns.

Its a stylish violence movie, set entirely in filthy streets showing us only violent people or the people abused by both criminals and the system. Sawa and her head exploding bullets, killing her way up a food chain of bad guys that Jackson gets to see eliminated without a trial. *SPOILER* Of course, he initiated it all, having murdered her parents to begin with, so she ends her spree with him.  But no, its not as stylish as Besson, nor sex-ified as it could have been. In another age, this would have been more indie feeling, honing its story and style down to something more meaty. Unfortunately, its really just grade C violence.

3+1 Short Paragraphs: Lucy

2014, Luc Besson (The 5th Element, The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec)  -- cinema

Even if you include Bruce Willis in the mix, you can easily see that Besson loves to have a strong woman as the lead character. OK, she might need a bit of help, but she definitely stands out from the average heroine mindset. Nikita, Joan of Arc, The 5th Element, ...Adèle Blanc-Sec; whenever Luc takes the reins of the movie (as opposed to producing or writing), we should expect the female lead to kick some ass. Hell, even the bio pic of Aung San Suu Kyi, the democratic leader in Burma who spent so much of her adult life in house arrest, could easily join this list.

In Lucy, Scarlett Johannson is a student in Taiwan who dates the wrong guy and ends up detained and forced to be a mule for mobsters. The blue drug, a little more indigo than the stuff in Breaking Bad, is a synthetic version of some chemicals fetuses use to grow their brain. A little is a good high, a lot is ... well, never before seen. We never know exactly why Lucy is delayed from her mule flight in a cell with nasty, abusive men who kick her in the stomach releasing the contents of the bag, but it jump starts her towards the mythical "more than 2% use of her brain". And with more brain, comes more control of one's body. She kicks ass getting out.

Yes, the idea that we only use a small percent of our brain and if we had more use, we would become gods, is a myth but this is specfic and it works here. In typical stylish Besson manner, we track the increase of dosage, the increase of brain function and all the fun that comes with it. Both frightened and inspired by what she has become, she is aware of the time clock in her metamorphosis -- if it doesn't kill her, she will definitely be trans-human by the end, by the time the metre hits 100%. She can control her body, her mind, other minds, other physical objects, see transmissions, understand... everything as the number increases. And in a trippy Kubrick-est, final experience she ... becomes.

Through all of this, Lucy is in control. Of course she is, she is more human then anyone ever has been. But so many of these stories, the expanded is always along for the terrifying roller coaster, never in full control, always fearful of where it will lead. Lucy knows that things will come to an end, a finality, so she has a plan, a goal that does not make her above humanity but its benefactor. Like the AIs in the movies of late, who become one with the technology, become everywhere and everything, Lucy expands beyond comprehension but leaves a bit of herself behind. I imagine, in the end somewhere out there, she will run into Samantha from Her.

3 Short Paragraphs: Colombiana

2011, Olivier Megaton (Transporter 3) -- download

And then there is the movie about a killer where they don't even try to make you sympathize with her but expect you to nonetheless.  Colombiana is a sexy, slick revenge flick with an even skinnier Zoe Saldana as Cataleya, a hired killer who learned the skill so she could someday kill the men who killed her family.  Sounds like something sympathetic, right?  No, because her father was in the employ of a drug lord in Bogota.  Sure, nobody deserves to have their family murdered in front of them but, y'know, you lie down with dogs... Anywayz, she gets away, smuggles herself to the US to hookup with her uncle, a hitman and fixer.  Nice family you have there Cataleya.  She gives her uncle no choice but to train her to become a killer, all so she can take vengeance at a later date.  The problem with such dramatic choices is that the target might just die while you are growing up and learning the needed skills.  "Oh dear, Drug Lord was killed in a battle with another drug lord, guess I will stop learning how to be an assassin and work at the local UPS store."

Anywayz, Drug Lord doesn't die early and Cataleya (I just like saying her name in my head every time I type it) becomes a slinky, sexy killer in a catsuit.  I admit, watching her sneak into the police station in the ultra controlled fashion made me forgive the fact she is so skinny she wouldn't have the muscle mass to perform said actions.  It was sexy.  This is the first kill we see and actually not one for hire. She has been slowly killing off anyone involved with her family's murder (they are all in the US now) and leaving a trademark sign of a cataleya flower.  The FBI are hunting her and her uncle is pissed she is doing pro bono work.

Cataleya never really comes sympathetic.  Sexy to the nines but never really a likeable character.  I guess it's all about audience.  Intended viewers just want to see her slink around in her underwear, shoot bad guys between the eyes and have sex without emotional ties.  Now given that this is probably the Luc Besson / Robert Mark Kamen dregs from their failed attempt to bring Mathilda (Leon sequel) to the screen, I should like it more.  Why do I find the idea of a grown up Natalie Portman character becoming an assassin like her pseudo-uncle much more than this vehicle?  I guess because the whole Leon story is about the tragic nature of what the little girl experiences and that as the plot of a sequel would be even more tragic.  In this we are supposed to ignore sympathies and just enjoy her killer actions.  Stylishly, I did.  Plot-wise, I didn't.