freydis-e

I used to think that the truly imbecilic James Bond film Skyfall had the stupidest plot I'd ever seen. I still think so but this was definitely a challenger for the crown. I'm not going to mention the variable-quality acting (including Pratt's usual wooden turn), the OK SFX, the seen-em-before monsters, and the dull clichéd father-daughter AND son-father relationships in the same film. I don't care how good other stuff is (in this case not very) if you can't manage to employ writers to produce a story that begins to make sense, why bother? So I'll just have some fun with the stupidity of it. There's so much of this, if I don't restrict to a tiny fraction, this review will turn into War and Peace.

So, future folks have invented a wonderful super-magic transporter to take people through time. For some reason (which got a long explanation that made no kind of sense) it isn't actually that wonderful at all and will only go from A to B (B being a single relative point in the past, let's say 28 years ago) and back again. Invaded and overmatched by (weaponless but quite toothy) aliens, these future folks have decided for some unknown reason that the best use of this machine is to transport untrained civilians from the past (let's again say 28 years ago - well, why not?) to fight against an enemy which has already destroyed almost all their highly trained, professional troops and apparently all their ships, aircraft and armoured vehicles (no clue how they did this with just teeth and claws). Why can the civilians not be trained before going, why do they get dumped at random into a rooftop swimming pool and why are they not offered the protection of e.g. Tanks which the aliens have no way of penetrating? Just a few of the obvious questions that occur. The writers have given up explaining stuff by now but never mind - these are the least of our stupidities. Why in fact do ANY of this stuff, rather than sending their well-trained, well-armed troops back to the time when the threat emerged (they know pretty well exactly when and where) and nipping it in the bud when there are hardly any budding aliens to nip? Guess what, still no explanation - there couldn't be unless you employ decent writers to make one up, in which case you might as well have them write a sensible plot in the first place.

Moving on, the whole movie revolves around developing a toxin which can kill the aliens. This is done in the future, presumably because their tech is better (as it no doubt would be) but for some reason these future tech giants cannot then synthesise larger quantities - this has to be done by us Neanderthals of 28 years ago. So far so not entirely stupid, but the toxin THEN is supposed to be transported back to the future (by which time almost all humans have been exterminated and the whole planet surface is knee-deep in aliens) before deployment. Why? (No explanation.) Alas when our brave hero gets that toxin back to the past, the magic time machine breaks, so nothing can go to the future any more. Doom. Despair. Much wringing of hands, glum expressions and tearing of hair. But hang on, why not just stockpile it and use it when the threat first emerges (which should have been the plan in the first place)? (And, by the way, when Earth's population is still around to appreciate not being exterminated.) Then they realise, ooh they CAN!!! (or, this plot being what it is, they can do something stupid which will have a similar effect).

Turns out the government budget won't cover the couple of thousand dollars required to do this (of course not - after all they'd only be saving pretty well all humanity) as the money's already been spent sending people forward in time to be dropped in swimming pools and slaughtered. So it's all on the shoulders of our wooden hero, his dad and a handful of others, charging to battle on snowmobiles. A silly chain of deduction leads them to locate the alien spacecraft. (How do they know there's only one rather than a fleet? - of course they don't and yet again no explanation.) At this point, almost all the aliens are destroyed by planting a bomb on the craft. But hang on, what about that magic toxin which the movie was all about? Got to use that, right, so before deploying the 100% effective bomb, they go into the craft and use toxin to kill a handful of sleeping aliens, which results in lots of others waking up, escaping and having to be excitingly shot. OK, so now they got that out of the way, they can plant the bomb, which they do very heroically indeed.

Do not watch this if you value your mental health. If you are already a moron, you should be fine. In fact quite a lot of them have already given this rubbish a high rating.

Everyone knows something about the rise of ISIS and their temporary establishment of an Islamic state on the borders of Iraq and Kurdistan. We probably know that they operated by radicalising vulnerable young men, some from Western countries, to be their soldiers, and hoped for territorial expansion but were quickly defeated and consigned to the dustbin of history. Being radical Islamists (like the Taliban in Afghanistan) it's no surprise that their regime was a patriarchy, treating women as objects to own, use and abuse, and the effect of that regime on the lives of various women is the subject of this film.

There are three stories, all true. The small amount of information here is incorrect and confusing. It says the stories are "intertwined". I was expecting the woman soldier to maybe fight against the radicalised son or rescue the slaves, but I didn't see any direct connection between the stories. Also, only one of the three women is "living under ISIS".

A woman in Spain loses contact with her son as he is radicalised and travels to the Middle East. A young Kurdish woman flees when ISIS takes over in her city. Concerned for relatives who didn't escape, she decides to become a soldier and fight against the invaders. Another woman, enslaved with her young family, is regularly raped by her 'owner'. When he sends her pre-teen son away for indoctrination and threatens to rape her young teen daughter, she is forced to act.

The acting is great, the pacing is good and the movie makes its fairly obvious points very well. This kind of subject can scarcely be entertainment but, unlike similar films I've seen recently, there is something for viewers to hope for in each of the stories and not all of the outcomes are bad. It might have been better to tell the three stories as separate segments, but it's a good film and works fine as it is.

I'm not surprised to see a lot of high ratings and super-good reviews for this because it's a brilliant film, the best I've seen for years. I'm also not surprised to see lots of one-star ratings and hating reviews, for two reasons. One, it's difficult and painful to watch in places and no wonder some couldn't cope. The second reason is simulated animal cruelty. There are lots of people out there who can watch scenes of others, even children, being slaughtered or tortured, but any hint of cruelty to - gasp! - a cat, and they switch off and give it one star. Be warned though, this aspect does provide some of those hard-to-watch moments and if you're sensitive to this, it's probably not for you.

So what's good? Everything. The child actors are superb, giving a stark lesson to many of those mannered Hollywood stars getting paid a gazillion to sleepwalk through. The three girls are stunning, especially the autistic, the boy not quite so good, but he has a difficult and complex role to play and handles it better than many adult 'actors' could. It's perfectly paced at all times (definitely not slow - not sure what reviewers who said this were waiting for) building to an exciting and painfully dramatic climax. The camera gives us a super-clear view of the rather ordinary world which forms the background for the children's terrifying adventure. There's no need for big budgets or FX - everything here is in the acting and direction. Remember when films were like that?

But what sets this apart from other films which are just good? Well it's a superhero movie and a western revenge movie all in one, but not set in some fantasy Marvel Universe or a fantasy Old West. This has fantasy elements but everything is very real (it seems too real for many) based around the near-universal reality of childhood cruelty. A group of children playing make-up games discover that some of them have fun psychokinetic powers, at first modest, which allow them to move objects, read others' thoughts and, in one case, to normalise the behaviour of a severely autistic girl. But things start to go wrong as one of the children grows gradually more powerful and becomes more cruel and heedless along with that. I'm not giving spoilers. It's what I said above and probably the best of either type of film you can watch right now.

My only negative. I liked the way the drama and very real danger was understated all the way through, as the powerful climax gradually builds. But I would have liked the director to make more of the final 'shoot-out'. There was definitely room for a bit more "Harmonica vs Frank" in there.

This is one of the best films you can see. If you can cope with what is sometimes a painful ride, find it, rent it, download it, WATCH it.

This is a perfectly competent movie, apparently loosely based on real events (though we never know quite what that means). The acting, direction, camera-work, etc. Are all OK, but something more is needed in a story like this and it wasn't there.

A young woman is horribly murdered, there is no evidence at the scene and precious little useful information to be had from family and friends. With no leads, the police investigate her many former sex partners, each one more unpleasant than the last. You have to wonder how she managed to find such a succession of total creeps. This is a very male film. Apart from some hysterics from the bereaved mother and an interview with a best friend, it's men talking to other men almost all the way through. And it's a talky film.

The problem is, it goes nowhere. Along the road some very obvious questions are asked and answered, equally obviously. Does a woman deserve this because she dates lots of nasty men? - obviously not. Why is this all about men anyway? - because most murders are committed by men, as are most of the police who investigate them. Almost at the end there's a kind of postscript which is a bit more interesting, with a female detective and a female magistrate getting involved, but still it goes nowhere and there is never any kind of payoff.

What are movies for? Surely they should either entertain, or inform, or at least make you think. There's no entertainment in a subject like this and all the 'messages' were so obvious. We've seen all this so many times before in much better movies and no new angles here. I wasted my time and I wouldn't advise anyone to do the same.

Conscientious and put-upon Ines does most of the work in an office alongside the most ghastly bunch of chauvinist idiots imaginable (not quite all male). Melody, an intern working her first day, sees Ines' boss acting even more grossly than usual and intervenes in her defence, triggering a series of events which prove very unfortunate for the idiots.

Filmed in a couple of rooms on zero budget, this isn't the slickest comedy you'll ever see. In places it's quite clumsily directed, but the two women, particularly the deadpan Melody, are hilarious, and it's laugh or cheer out loud time as, one by one, the idiots get their just desserts. Most of the roles are played as caricatures, which may put some people off, but if you find it as funny as I did, you won't care. I'd have liked to see a bigger reward for Ines at the end but it's still very entertaining.

This is pretty good. The three significant actors are all subtle and excellent, the shots of the Bolivian high altitude desert are stunning and the view into a completely different world is fascinating. As for the pacing, it would be easy to say it's slow, but this is not a long film and when dealing with issues like these, it's not dramatic events that count, but the slow changes caused to the daily routine by weather and health.

An old couple farming llamas for wool among the Bolivian Andes are struggling to survive because of a prolonged drought. All their water must be fetched in buckets from a river miles away. The old man's health is failing and their grandson comes to stay, hoping to persuade them to return with him to the city. Like their children, many neighbours have given up the grim struggle and departed, but how can they bring themselves to leave the remote and beautiful wilderness which is all they have ever known?

It could have been better done by giving a fuller picture of their daily life, particularly the woman's tasks, to replace some of the many shots of llama herding. What do they eat? Where does it come from and how is it prepared? And so on. Also I found the ending improbable, given what had gone before and this was likely just a symbolic repetition of a message which had already been made very clear. Something more practical would have worked better for me.

The idea is an ingenious combination of the classical Electra legend with Yojimbo. Rosa wants revenge for the murder of her mother and takes it by turning two small-time rural Mafia families against one another. The young actress, who certainly looks the part, plays most of the movie with a fixed smouldering stare, but her subtle variations of expression are cleverly done and it would be interesting to see how well she'd handle a different type of role.

That's where the good stuff ends, alas. The director is desperate to be clever, enigmatic and arty, at the expense of both his actors and his story. The actors do manage despite this and the Calabrian scenery plays a major role, but everything runs at a funereal pace - even the (very few) action scenes seem to take place in slow motion. Yet another long and baleful stare is followed by a lingering shot of a picturesque but empty street, then someone is walking along, then another baleful stare. This is over two hours long and, if it had been anywhere near sensibly handled, there's enough plot in there to fill most of that time. But as it is... There were only three reviews when I wrote this and one called the film: "a must-see for crime drama lovers" - thus luring me into watching on TV. In fact crime fans will all be asleep or will have turned off long before the end. I'm not sure who would appreciate this as two of those reviewers did, but if you like your movies slow, obscure and pretentiously directed, this may be for you.

My title partly relates to the plot of this short (80 minute) film, but mostly to the only 35 ratings with a pretty low score (a 5 from me means decent and watchable), no reviews and no information at all. I'll do my best to provide some.

Following a mass shooting in France with apparent neo-nazi motivation, a group of people are hosted by an American for a working dinner at a remote country house. Guests include a female politician, who seems to be based on Marine Le Pen but is apparently a shoe-in to be the next president. Main problem: I wasn't clear what the meeting was about. It had both far left and far right participants and I never figured out who the guy with the beard was. Maybe I should have watched the opening setup more carefully. The servants are dismissed and all arrangements are left to super-efficient housekeeper, Alice. Unfortunately Alice has an unsuspected connection to the massacre and is planning something very different for the guests.

Second problem: while most of the movie is in English, maybe 25% of dialogue is in French and I had no subtitles, which didn't help with my general confusion level.

However, the last half of the movie is a fairly straightforward and unusually realistic actioner, well-paced and, I thought, pretty well done. If everything had been made a bit clearer from the off, this could have been a good movie. Even as it is, it's not that bad.

This is a word of warning mainly. It's not a bad film, competently made, but I found it very grim and depressing. The kind of story where no-one wins anything and everyone loses big. OK, it gives an insight into life in Iraq, in particular the university entrance system. But if relentless negativity with no shred of hope is going to bother you, I'd give this a miss.

Rojin, whose miserable life has already driven her to a suicide attempt, is desperate to get into university, not for any stated positive reason and there's no sign of any enthusiasm for her studies (or indeed of the studies themselves) but only because it will allow her to avoid an arranged marriage with a man she dislikes. Her approach to this, or rather that of her concerned sister, is not for her to work hard (for some reason this never gets considered as an option) but to cheat - apparently lots of candidates do this. Neither Rojin nor any other character is given much depth - she looks miserable throughout, cries a lot and nothing she ever does drives the action in any way. Fair enough in the circumstances but none of this makes it easy to sympathise with these two sisters.

Then again it's impossible not to sympathise with women doing anything they can to manipulate the vile patriarchy which pervades Islamic and similar socially primitive societies. Such women have no rights nor protection by the law, depending entirely on their fathers and husbands. In turn many of these fathers and husbands (like Rojin's father and brother-in-law) are selfish and arrogant, regarding women as their property and caring nothing for their wishes or happiness. If you already know about this, I can't see much reason to watch. If you don't, you will learn something - nothing shown here is even unusual for the desperate women in these ghastly places.

I have to add my voice to several other reviewers who point out that this film has almost nothing to do with Emily Bronte. A few background facts are correct - the Haworth setting and her struggle to cope away from it, the later brief time in Brussels and the publication of a novel (though even there the author name is wrong). But almost all the scenes, peeping in windows, disputes with Charlotte and the entire romance sub-plot are ridiculous inventions. The danger is, of course, that people will believe this clichéd heroine is anything like the real Emily whereas history paints a different and much more interesting picture.

Why do people do this? Fine to make a rather dull drama, worth 3-4 stars for Whitehead's acting and some lovely location shooting, which well conveys the bleak beauty of Haworth. But why stick in a by-the-numbers, poorly acted romance with a random, fictitious and rather unpleasant male? Of course it can only be the dollars. Romance is popular, ditto sex scenes. And pretending this is about a famous-name real person (rather like casting a past-it but famous star) should pack them in to the theatres. Shouldn't it? In fact this abomination got what it deserved, a worldwide take of $4M, and, judging by the small number of reviews here, few people have seen it.

Finally, why repeatedly belittle Charlotte and virtually ignore Anne? It can only be the dollars again, but the suggestion that stuck-at-home Emily was the family visionary is not supported by the important bodies of work produced by all three sisters.

I expected to see an immigrant woman fighting for her rights and hopefully winning, as it says in the description. (There were no reviews to guide me.) In fact the hospital incident referred to there hardly features in the film and is never clearly resolved. Instead I found very familiar main themes: an immigrant damaged by abuse, apparently during her journey to Switzerland (it's never made clear) and friction between an over-protective mother and her adolescent daughter. Rather too familiar and there's nothing outstanding or different here. It's just OK rather than particularly good in any respect and the ending resolves nothing at all, which makes me wonder why they bothered.

One aspect I found particularly disappointing and needlessly pessimistic. The Eritrean mother wants to assimilate into Swiss society and urges this on her Swiss-born daughter who, for no clear reason, prefers the company of other Eritreans. "Look at me," daughter says. "How can I be a typical Swiss?" This presumably because her face is brown and never mind that everyone welcomes her, she has a white best friend and neither mother nor daughter ever faces prejudice of any kind. That hospital incident is the only negative and there is no suggestion this is due to the woman's race. Does this director really believe that the many immigrants entering Europe will fail to integrate even when they want to and when everyone accepts them? Does she see asylum seekers forever trapped in splinter-groups and ghettoes? - hardly the lesson of history. There's no particular reason to watch this and for that negative message alone, I would avoid it.

In a small town in Tibet, Skalbe wants to marry Lhamo, the most beautiful woman around, but not the sweetest natured. She's fine with this, but they cannot get the necessary certificate because of Skalbe's (somewhat unclear) involvement with another woman, years earlier. Meanwhile Lhamo is starring in the local drama production, the young nephew she looks after has big problems leading to disruptive behaviour at school, and Skalbe's activities on the local horse-racing circuit aren't going smoothly. Will the two be able to work through their problems and marry?

The main positive for me was a fascinating glimpse into a very different society. The story moves along at good pace and never fails to engage. There were a couple of musical interludes relating to the drama, but these too were interesting. The acting is fine, the shots of a rather bleak landscape are evocative and the little girl at the convent is hilarious. My biggest problem was the ending. Symbolic messages are suddenly being given for both of them but I didn't fully understand them.

Not a lot happens in this. An amateur racing driver has died in a crash and his cousin Abel, a farm boy, moves in with his parents and gets interested in racing. That's about it, at least as far as I got. It was a struggle to get involved with this as Abel wanders through different scenes and I didn't have a lot of sympathy for the guy nor interest in his very ordinary life. Then, when the weirdness happened for no reason, just over half way through, I couldn't go through it all again and I gave up. Hence I don't know how it ended and don't care.

It's technically OK. The best thing was the shot composition with some interesting use of colour, especially sunset skies. However, I wish I hadn't wasted my time (it was on TV with no reviews but a reasonable score) and I suggest you don't either.

It's a short slice of life about a couple of rather ineffective debt collectors. The main character, Dongzi, shows no wisdom about streets or anything else, does odd things for no very obvious reason and I had no sympathy for him and precious little interest. The other, Jun, is bland and rather stupid. There's no story flow, just a succession of loosely connected incidents.

The ending is random, messily done and unsatisfying. The acting and other technical aspects seemed OK but I couldn't get into this enough to care and I can't see any reason for anyone to watch it.

I was asked to add more characters to meet the arbitrary limit.

There are plenty of tough women in Chinese kung fu films from Chia Ling and Angela Mao on down but often their gender isn't a big deal in the story - people just accept them or are mildly surprised. In this one Yi is the daughter of a teacher who holds the secret of the Eight Diagram Palm style but won't teach her because she's a girl. So she learns by hiding, watching the boys getting taught, and her mother shows her the ultimate move which no-one else knows. Once her father sees how skilled she is, he realises his mistake and appoints her his successor as head of the school.

The head of a rival school, who wants to steal the secret, poisons Yi and her parents. Yi manages to escape but is close to death. At this point the semi-humorous physician character turns up to save her so she can get on with sorting the bad guys. There is a romance between the two but this never gets in the way of the main action.

The acting is fine, both main characters are likeable and the jokes are pretty funny in the usual slightly crazy Chinese way. The story makes sense and is easy to follow, the characters well-differentiated, the pacing is good and it's an enjoyable watch all through. I liked that they did make the feminist point for once, and that, once healed, Yi uses her secret knowledge to take on the bad guys with total confidence.

This is really awful and sheer awfulness drove me to do a review - not sure why I'm bothering. The acting, Bruce Dern apart, is awful. The main character indulges in a pregnant pause, every time he speaks, no idea why - is it supposed to add meaning to the dull and clicheed dialogue? Others do likewise. Everything is totally clicheed and ridiculous. It plays like a handful of episodes from the most useless imaginable TV western series, with a boring hero, hackneyed plots, low budget and no connection other than pregnant-pause guy.

The guy is tediously invincible, just like a series star who has to be back for next week's episode. When he fights, we know he's going to win. When he's captured, we know he'll get free. If you're waiting for the showdown with Wes Studi which just might be of some interest, don't bother. It isn't.

Whatever is the point? Enough said, I think.

This is not the Mulan legend (where she substitutes as a soldier for her aged father). It's just a bit of Chinese wuxia with invading hordes vs a female hero called Mulan (supposedly a kind of sequel to the original story). Some loved it, some hated it - maybe it depends if you like Disney-Chinese better than actual Chinese. I prefer the original stuff, but this is far from the best. Also the plot here largely copies that of the 2009 Chinese film: Mulan, Legendary Warrior, which IS a version of the original legend and better than this.

Production values are pretty good, effects not so much. We have panoramas of huge armies deployed but whenever fighting is going on, it feels like there are about a dozen people involved, if that. Fairly competently done though. The actors are OK, Mulan played as a bit too wise, passive and passionless for me, support average and the bad guy is certainly unpleasant. It mostly keeps moving along but has too many static prison scenes and too many where the princess arrives to shout 'Stop!' just in time to put an end to various cruelties. Didn't always make a lot of sense either - why does Khan, knowing he's under threat, have almost no security?

But it was reasonably entertaining, if not as good as the animated Disney Mulan. (I don't know about the live-action version of that. Not in a huge hurry TBH.)

This could be pretty stock wuxia. The clever idea which makes it different and interesting is making Sun Bin (real life military strategist and author) a kind of idiot-savant character. I'm baffled that the handful of other reviewers, positive and negative, didn't seem to pick up that this was the idea. Sun is played brilliantly by Honglei Sun, and his performance makes the movie.

Otherwise a fairly standard and well-made re-telling of historical events which sticks unusually close to the real history, without a whole lot of fantasy-battles and swordplay. The romance strand, however, is complete fiction, though it's never cloying and is odd enough so it's not too off-putting. I didn't like the ending though (also complete fiction). Someone's been watching too much CTHD.

This is a fairly complicated plot with various factions involved, but as long as you pay attention to the introduction, it's quite easy to follow. There's a treasure map, a code-book to decipher it and a kind of female Robin Hood who wants to use the treasure to help the poor, as well as investigate the mysterious disappearance of her father. And of course lots of bad guys.

The acting's fine and the story moves along well. Hard to tell about the script as it's subtitles, not always perfect English but easy enough to follow. Action is fairly routine, but quite well done. There's nothing wonderful here, but it's 90 minutes of decent entertainment - available on Youtube at the moment (thief heroine)

Watts performs OK and there's some nice scenery, but the events seem so odd, it didn't work for me. I have plenty of experience of walking in snowy landscapes in this kind of weather but none of search and rescue.

The character, supposedly a member of S&R, walks a familiar trail despite dire weather warnings. When a blizzard arrives she: continues to walk without gloves or any headgear; walks in footmarks which would have been covered by the blowing snow; falls down an odd hole in the snow; climbs out and then falls down it again.

She then finds a man inappropriately dressed and chilled. Her first response is to strip him - I imagine to apply some kind of heat direct to his skin but this is not shown. She talks about putting him in a bag, but next we see he's dressed again and walking with her - no bag. For no known reason, rather than taking him back by the safe trail she knows, she takes a different route involving various difficulties including a perilous river crossing.

OK, all this stuff is put in to make it exciting but it just makes her look ridiculous. On top of which there's a weird back-story about an unlikely-sounding accident which apparently is entirely made up. What is interesting here is the guy's motivation (hers is obvious enough - if she's S&R, saving people is what she does). We do eventually get to that but if they'd focussed on the characters here rather than fake drama and back-stories, this might have been a decent film.

When I came to this 12-year-old film it had 75 ratings and no review. It cost 700K euros and grossed 3K, so looks like no-one watched it but just in case you do happen across it...

The first five minutes are fine. Ever-reliable Rutger Hauer picks up a young woman hitcher. When he won't let her smoke in his car, she brattily gets out again. That's the end of the good stuff. Hauer is gone to be followed by a series of short and random 'scenes' with little dialogue and no connecting plot. It's impossible to tell if the acting is any good since there's no way of knowing what is happening, nor what emotion is supposed to be portrayed.

This thinks it's arthouse, and the director no doubt thinks she's making important statements amid the chaos. It's her first movie and she hasn't understood that, to keep an audience interested, you need established characters moving in a discernible direction. (I managed 30 minutes more of total boredom.) Since then she's made one documentary and I doubt anyone will be hiring her for features. I'd advise avoiding this as incompetent and unwatchable rubbish but it's so obscurely uncommunicative that I can't even be sure of that.

A couple of minutes in, the irritating and unfeasibly cute male lead tries to attack the venerable white-bearded ship's captain, only to be (literally) decked by a random unfeasibly cute yellow-clad woman. No-one will be surprised to hear that these two cuties will pretty soon be romantically involved - nor by anything else about this cliché-ridden nonsense.

A reviewer compared this with the latest Startrek films but it's more obviously related to Battlestar Galactica with humankind threatened by powerful aliens and everything depending on a single battle star/ship. In this film the eponymous craft may be absurdly based on a WW2 battleship, but it's crewed by the same stock collection of hotshot pilots, sober officers, yawn, yawn. In fact the original anime series of SBY inspired BSG in the first place and the main problem here, I suspect, is that any quirkiness or originality which might have existed in that 26-episode series has been lost in condensing the story to a 2-hr movie.

Leaving what? I'm not entirely sure but the first hour of dull cliché, ordinary script and acting and lack of any kind of interest was enough and I couldn't see a reason to watch on. Fairly sure there is none.

I never understand why people go on making mediocre films about the same old stuff, cops, drug-lords, endless shots fired off at anything that moves. None of the characters here are interesting or likeable and nothing unexpected ever happens. The acting and technical stuff are OK, just about, but the story is useless, even though we've seen it so often before. Why would drug runners, depending on secrecy for their big delivery, travel across Europe in a motorcade, with cycle-outriders, thus drawing maximum attention? And you will never see a more ridiculous escape from custody. One cop is a woman, the drug-runners have two on board for no known reason, and none of the three ever does anything - only there for the purely gratuitous sex scenes.

I'm not wasting more time on this. If you like people driving around and shooting lots of guns, however little sense it makes, this might amuse you. Otherwise avoid.

At time of writing, only 21 people had rated this and there are 3 reviews. It's from 2019, so obviously never got put out there. Two reviewers give this 10, but they have both reviewed the same 2 films (both by this director) and nothing else, so must be his friends or family. The other reviewer wants to give it zero, but it's not that bad.

In fact the acting and script are OK, it's very low budget, the central-idea music is used well and that idea, hiding in there somewhere, is good and original. The big negative: I really struggled to follow. I'm not always the quickest in picking things up and I kept thinking, 'It's good, I'm just not seeing it'. I didn't have a problem getting to the end anyway (and it's not short) but I'm still not much the wiser.

Conclusion: This 2-movie director wanted to avoid being too obvious and clunky in explaining everything and went too far by explaining almost nothing. A real shame - if it had been more accessibly presented, there's probably a good film in there to discover. I wouldn't pay for this, but if you have it for free on some platform why not give it a try? And looks like the guy has other movies on the way. I hope he learns from this and I'll be interested to see what he comes up with.

This is on Youtube but I wouldn't recommend it. Wuxia movie plots are often somewhat lacking but this is just ridiculous. For example, it's called Assassin because the good-guys' female fighter is sent to kill the Mongol leader. Plan is to substitute her for a local girl chosen by the leader for his amusement - it seems no-one's bothered to tell the girl as she prepares to kill herself, but our heroine arrives in nick of time to save her, puts a cloth over her head, and is taken to the leader. Despite carefully frisking her, they don't look under the cloth because 'the leader is waiting'. Arriving at his place, she's told he's asleep - hang on, I thought he was so impatient they couldn't pause to lift her veil. Sent into his bedroom alone (seriously?) she produces her two long daggers - but hang on, I thought she'd been frisked - and guilelessly stabs his empty bed. Some assassin. It's silly like this throughout.

I have to admit, I'm a Chia Ling fan and put off because she's a bad guy. This goes fine with her standard Queen Boxer confident contemptuous persona, but her character is not a great fighter - that's left to the warlord himself. The heroine woman is OK, the main hero annoyingly bland and boring, everyone else instantly forgettable. The fights aren't too bad, which is why it gets 3 points, but they're never original and depend too much on jumping about, too little on precise use of fists and weapons.

Final nail in this coffin, the shot-framing in this version anyway is terrible. If two people are talking, most of the time half their heads disappear off the side of the screen. Really, don't bother.