National Affairs: Bangin', Gangs operate with Impunity, while Police seem merely Puny

Kingston.
Spanish Town.
Montego Bay.

Father.
Son.
Holy Ghost.

The above is more than a Christian/spiritual reference. On a more obscure scale, jazz lovers know it refers to John Coltrane, Pharaoh Sanders and Albert Ayler, the trio of saxophonists who -among others - helped push a less harmonically constricted version of jazz (call it "free", I don't particularly like that term) into main stream consideration from the late 60s into the early 70s (Sanders, the "son" in this particular trinity, is still going strong, the other 2 having passed - within 7 years of each other).

By my own stretching, it also refers to the three main urban areas in Jamaica where gang activity has been wreaking havoc and grabbing headlines. Spanish Town is actually the oldest of the three chronologically, but I don't know anyone who could argue with Kingston as the "father" in this model. Spanish Town

Medieval drains addled

By a 10,000-proof cocktail

Of liquid shit chased with

Exhaust

fit only

For dogs and derelicts

Leavened by plastic bag fruits and

3-day old Chinese food

No resurrection and instead of

‘Crucify him!”

The shouts are

“Cross Roads!”

“Molynes!”

“Half Way Tree!”

“Town!”

The crush of wage slaves

Crammed 5-in-a-row as

Hell drivers play shuffle-and-deal

With State goons on

Wheels

Churches like ships

At anchor

The collared Conquistadors

Delivering the believers into

Varied stages of

Ecstasy

As they search for gold

Of their own

Garvey's Ghost

To varying degrees, this scenario is replicated in both of the other two  - wholly inadequate infrastructure exacerbated by  politically-biased "development" and massive rural-urban drift, as agriculture diminished in importance (or, more accurately, fluctuated), sent farmers scurrying out of rural bases into "Town" for promised jobs in factories that did not always materialize to the level in which they were hyped.

Jamaica has been constantly ranked as one of the country’s with the highest levels of crime. Both petty crimes and murders have fluctuated over the years. Mostly increasing by large percentages and decreasing by smaller numbers.
In 2005, Jamaica had 1,674 murders or a murder rate of 58 per 100,000 people, the highest per capita rate in the world that year. The certainly was a factor in the November 2008 Parliament decision to retain the death penalty, which is performed by hanging.

There were 1,682 reported murders in 2009 and 1,428 in 2010. Since 2011 the murder rate has continued to fall following the downward trend started in 2010. In 2012, the Ministry of National Security reported a 30 percent decrease in murders.

The decrease has been attributed to increases in police patrols, curfews and more effective anti-gang activities. Can this this really be accepted though? In a climate where both extra-judicial killings by the Police and  the slaying of Police officers has increased, are we really dealing with violence in the society simply by providing more cars and personnel?

Recent flare-ups of gang- driven violence in downtown Kingston and sections of "Spain" (as the old capital is often called) suggest the answer is "No". Commissioner of Police Karl Williams has put the number of active gangs throughout the country at over 200; that's active, meaning their operations are occupying law enforcement and show up on Police blotters. This is way too high a number for a country with a population of about 3 million; I seriously doubt the cities of Los Angeles or Houston in the US, notorious for similar activity, have that many.

And then, we have to ask, what is sustaining these gangs? As in the case of outlaw groups around the world, its a case of  frustration, minor to zero positive parental models, and the siren call of notoriety and even profit that "the gangsta life" has been seen as offering. This latter reason is certainly a major factor in the ongoing Lotto scam activities in Western Jamaica. With large sums of money being generated - thanks to the gullibility and greed (yes, I said it!) of US citizens, scammers have been turning on each other in an attempt to "grab all the marbles" as the phrase goes.

And don't believe that drug-running has faded into oblivion. There are still rendezvous taking place between Jamaicans and Colombians bearing coke, with that coke in turn being offered, along with marijuana, to Haitians (and Americans), in exchange for firearms - guns which, as the Commissioner has shared, are often in pristine condition.

Without putting am major dent in this operation, there will be little or no let-up in gangland killings, including of the Police, whose presence now poses little, if any threat to the gang recruits. Full legalization of marijuana (growing, consumption, distribution and export), could go a long way to toward diverting the current drugs-for-guns trade, provided the erstwhile "druggists" can show a clean police record (not that difficult). But even that is a ways off, given the glacial pace of certain legislation in Jamaica.


And this is not simply an issue of getting a handle on murders. The country's rapes per capita  rate was listed as the 6th highest in the world for the period 1998 - 2000, at 0.4766 per 1,000 of the population. South Africa tops that table with 1,1954, with the Seychelles 2nd on 0.7883. Corruption is another prevalent crime with 45.56% of business managers identifying its influence in business, the 17th highest rate in the world.

Clearly, officialdom, big business and indeed community members are all complicit to varying degrees. Among the people stepping in community marches "for peace and safety" are some of the folks harbouring and tipping off their criminal relatives, lovers and friends as to the movements and intentions of the Police, and there's no shortage of anecdotes about the Police themselves being the informers. Big business, partly out pragmatism, also stays cozy with gangsta types (out of public view of course), often looking to cut deals to divert certain activities away from their offices, or in some cases, to help "launder illegitimate proceeds.

Simply, this problem is beyond money being thrown at it. We also have to throw in some genuine intervention on the social side - sustainably fund organizations that have a track record for community-building and plow even more into extra-mural education and sports across urban and rural centres. The returns on this investment may be slower, but over time, I believe, they will be greater than  doubling the size of the  police force or quadrupling the number of vehicles.

We also need to show more concern for enacting justice. The current flap concerning a judge's decision to "ban" social media comment on the ongoing X6 murder trial is already casting a dark shadow over the perception of the justice system as haven for the monied class and hell for those without significant material resources.

Our urban centres can become models of safety and progress, so long as we don't allow ourselves to fall into the old stale thinking patterns of more enforcement = lower statistics = safer communities.

There is, after all, another "trinity" to consider:

[Real] Development;
Justice
Safety

Culture and Society: Lest We Forget, Recalling Coral Gardens

The Rastafari Coral Gardens Benevolent Society invites everyone to the 53rd Commemoration of the Coral Gardens Atrocities on Friday, March 25, 2016 at Jarrett Park, in Montego Bay. 

As a result of the acts of a few persons in Coral Gardens in April 1963, the entire Rastafari community was officially targeted by the State of newly-independent Jamaica, which led to extreme brutality, imprisonment and the death of many Rastafari sons and daughters across Jamaica by the police, army and other citizens of Jamaica. The Rastafari community has never received any apology or compensation for those atrocities committed by the Government of Jamaica. We continue to demand that the Government of Jamaica apologize, pay compensation and make other reparations to the individual victims and the Rastafari community for the Coral Gardens atrocities and the denial of fundamental human rights and freedoms.

The purpose of the Commemoration event is to highlight on-going efforts in the process of agitation for compensation, salute those victims of the 1963 atrocities who are still alive, and raise funds to assist and care for the Ancient Elders in Montego Bay and its environs.

It will be a day and night event starting at 10:00 am with a health fair for patrons as well as the Ancient elders. This will include blood sugar, blood pressure eye tests and naturopathic advice. Gerontologist, Dr. Paul Rhodes, will give a talk on best practices for eldercare. There will also be a fun day for children to include storytelling and workshops in drumming, poetry, bead stringing and pastry making. Other forms of entertainment for children will include bounce-about, slides and trampoline. Popcorn, snow cones and cotton candies will be on sale.

At 4:00 pm, the Society will treat the Ancient Elders in the form of a banquet. During the banquet, survivors and witnesses of the 1963 atrocities will give their testimonies. At the end of the banquet Matriarchs and Patriarchs will be given certificates of recognition for their pioneering work in the Rastafari movement. At 7:00 pm we will host a symposium to discuss the Public Defender’s report and recommendations for compensation of victims of the 1963 atrocities. The Public Defender will participate in the panel discussion along with Attorney at Law, Miguel Lorne, Dr. Clinton Hutton, and Dr. Leroy Binns. 

At 9:00 pm there will be a cultural presentation for family entertainment with clean and positive expressions. Artistes include Mackie Conscious, Paul Elliott, Terry Ganzie, Mikey General, P Zed, Mister Views, Marley Fire, Jah Spiryt, Ras Jaja, Pinkie Dread, Major Lloyd, Tenshan Invasion, Rankin Punkin, Jah Ranks, Changa Changa, Rasta Village, Iwad, King Chavez, Visaya, Asante Amen, Prof I, Rock Top Chanters and many more. Sound by Pulse Sound System and Mutabaruka Blackk Music. MC‘s will be Isha and Steppa.

Small Screen, Big Stories Pt II: From Boardwalk to (South) Beach via Renaissance Rome

Impossible as the above route may sound, it summarizes the continuing overachievement of cable TV as the new home of cinematic splendor, especially in the city-specific period crime drama. firstly, we anxiously await the coming of the fourth instalment in the Prohibition-era classic, Boardwalk Empire, with no less than Martin Scorcese and Mark Wahlberg as exec producers. Season 3 was the darkest, most layered yet, with several story lines unspooling and gathering narrative steam. Even more, the addition of the incomparable

Geoffrey Wright, as Harlem kingpin Dr Narcisse, is further

inducement, as if any were needed. Then, with elements of Boardwalk, Mad Men and the Godfather II comes the STARZ channel's  Magic City, set in late 50s Miami, with Fidel Castro still just a pesky but growing revolutionary and Cuba a model for Miami's vices.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan, of the TV series Grey's Anatomy and the Watchmen movie fame, stars as the owner of the Miramar Playa, a club where anything goes, and all manner of persons come for the booze, the girls and the drugs. All those things, of course, bring violence and intrigue.

In between those, the group billed as "The Original Crime Family" continues its machinations in 16th Century Rome. The peerless Jeremy Irons is well settled and still unsettling, as Pope Alexander VI, forging alliances, bringing down powers and fomenting war, mayhem and passion. Incidentally, the notes to the series say that the dynasty originated in Spain.

These three are just a sampling of the great original series on cable, but they feature here because of their subject matter and general format. Pick a period and a city, stock up on the refreshments and sit back to your cinema-quality narrative experience on the small screen.

Nigga - Pleeez!: Django Unchained

So, it probably wouldn't surprise you if we said that Quentin tarantino is something of a pyromaniac -in fact its a spoiler alert (hint: its similar to what he did to the Nazis in "Inglorious Basterds") . But for some 2 1/2 hours before that Django Unchained signals a return to form for Tarantino, at least a return to the form of Kil Bill and "Basterds" as opposed to say, Man with The Iron Fists.

Jamie Foxx is Django, a black slave in the Deep South two years before the Civil War (according to the film; our informations says the conflict began in 1861, whiuloe the film's opening scene says 1858, but we wont nitpick)  and Waltz taking on the role of Dr King (get it?) Schultz, the sharp-shooting ‘dentist’ who so unexpectedly frees him from his chains and offers him a deal.

If Django will help him track down the Brittle brothers, notoriously brutal plantation overseers and now wanted men, he will give him his freedom. As these are the same Brittle brothers who branded and humiliated Django and whipped and then sold his beautiful slave wife, he doesn’t take long to say ‘yes’.

Act Two begins with Schultz and Django setting off to find Django’s wife, the gloriously named Broomhilda von Shaft (Kerry Washington). 

This change of gear proved close to disastrous in Inglourious Basterds but works a lot better here, thanks to  DiCaprio’s captivating turn as the charismatic plantation-owner Calvin Candie, who likes to be called Big Daddy by his slaves but Monsieur Candie by his white peers.

A lot of speechifying by fine southern gentlemen and the growing suspicion that the actors might be having more fun than we are will be a test for some, but the verbal pyrotechnics are a Tarantino trademark, DiCaprio has never been better and, best of all, there is, of course, some serious shooting to come.

This is a film about revenge, and when the bad guys get what’s coming,  as they do ever more frequently, they certainly deserve it.

Tarantino’s screenplay, which has already secured him an Oscar nomination and won him a Golden Globe, is as terrific as his direction in the first half, filled with all the clever dialogue one would expect such an unusual situation (an ex-slave as a bounty hunter) to conjure up. 

A scene in which a Ku Klux Klan lynch-mob have to rethink their murderous plans because they can’t see out of the eye-holes cut in their hoods is straight out of Blazin Saddles in ternms of the madcap ultimately deprecating humour. Samuel L Jackson, virtually on contract to Tarantino since Pulp Fiction, is also a standout as the house "nigga" all teeth bared and slyly malevolent smiles. 

Of course, some will be u[ in arms over the use of thr so-called "n-word" but its obvious that's what Balcks were universally referred to in that period so this writer, admittedly geographically removed from that complex, doesn't see the fuss.

What I do see is a very enjoyable revenge fantasy (the type Tarantino seems to do best). Violent, yes, almost vulgar in that regard, but also quirky smart and hip - he's even got Franco Nero in there. Look that one up.

Cultivating Truth in The Soil of Corruption: The Agronomist

Broadcasters!

Think your job is hard? Try talking while your station is being shot up by high-powered rifles. Try remaining on air when the Government is bent on shutting you down, bent in fact on silencing you - permanently.

Such were the travails of the late Jean Dominque, the erudite, charismatic and ultimately fateful lead character in this prickly yet highly engaging documentary from long-time Haiti-watcher Johnathan Demme. The "Something Wild" director melds face-on interviews with footage in a manner that goes straight into the issue - Haiti's legacy of oppression and revolt - and never lets up. Also featured are Dominique's widow Michelle,who was herself integral in the harrowing process of establishing and maintaining the radio station, as well as other family members, former staffers and other personalities. we also see the arc of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, from influential priest to eventual President and then pariah.

Not all the interviews are in English and the director makes no attempt to either dub or sub-title the French and Kreyol segments. This might seem an irritant to the uninitiated, but watching the movie patiently, one will see the wisdom in this step as the over all spirit of the film will emerge even over the language difficulties. Also, the film seems to skim a bit on the Duvalier years, though we plainly see that at the beginning of his broadcasting career, the former agronomist (hence the title) is drawing the ire of both Papa and Baby Doc, and we are shown the latter ouster, aided and abetted as it was by the US.

The story that does emerge is one of massive unfulfilled potential, of promises unkept, and of a people held in suspense as power-seekers of various persuasions (of course the US is a constant shadow) carve up resources and suppress dissent.

Deserves to be viewed at least a few times, even now, roughly a decade after it was first released.

The Girl From Naked Eye

So, its a Saturday night (we just picked that one randomly), you're home, you're bored with trolling and tweeting and haven't found anything new to "like".

You decide you're in the mood for a movie, but nothing too "heavy"; sure, you want some action, a couple of good, hyperkinetic fight scenes, some gunplay, a little T & A, you know...the usual.But not too much in the way of "story' no brain-twisting conundrums, no slowly unfurling relationship complications, no Byzantine revenge and political schemes. Just a "regular" guy, with a taste for the seamy side, but who's gotten himself in debt to the wrong kinda people and who has lost his taste for the fast lane.

And just to spice things up, you can throw in a not-so-innocent young girl, still in her teens, with long-shelved dreams of becoming a poet, and now content to offer herself to all manner of losers who just happen to have money to pay for her favours. Stir in a ruthlessly crooked cop and a somewhat principled nightclub/escort service owner, set somewhere in contemporary L.A. and watch sparks fly.

Martial arts champion Jason Yee takes much of the blame (or the credit (depending on your perspective) for the above, doing triple duties as writer, co-producer and star. he's enlisted some obscure but strangely likeable talent to help him deliver this potboiler, but none more winningly than Ron Yuan, as the bald-headed club owner, pimp and wanna-be gangster mentioned above. The interplay Yuan and Yee, particularly in a near humourous initial conflict that features one of the "girls" as a hapless (but vociferous) third wheel, almost lifts the movie.

But Girl From Naked Eye still bears too much of the modern B-movie funk to be more than just a throwaway. it doesn't wear out its welcome, but like a burger from a late-night greasy spoon, you won't miss it after its gone through your system.

One rough Chop: The Grind (2009)

If the first fifteen minutes of a film are the film in microrcosm, then you might just be able to spare yourself excessive torture in the case of this free-wheeling but ultimately tedious thriller, set in the moral wasteland that is suburban Southern California.

In he opener, a man (C Thomas Howell) has had his hand run through a kitchen sink disposal; another man has been stabbed to death by a young woman with whom he has just had sex, and  the previous man - who also doubles as a kind of infrequent narrator - has had himself set up in the Internet reality soft-porn business (hotgirlzoncamera.com), courtesy of a teenage apprentice and his black associate, both of whom have various degrees from the proverbial school of hard knocks.

The rest of the film maintains this lurid trajectory, even as the "protagonist" struggles to get enough returns from the business to make good on his outstanding obligations to the men who tried to grind his hand up. Those guys are led by a fearsome figure, none other than Danny Trejo - who following this release would go on to such glorious roles as "Machete". Another well-known Hollywood miscreant, Tom Sizemore, rounds out the rogues' gallery.

Of all the tarnished stars, Howell appears to have come closest to getting his act together. He appears to have clawed his way out of the child-star abyss that he fell into after the classic, "E.T." and has roles in several big-budget action features, including the forthcoming summer blockbuster, "The Amazing Spider-Man".

In the meantime though, bills have to be paid, so there'll be modern-day B-movies like this one, with its soft-core girl-on-girl scenes, views of seedy Cali, and hardcore violence. it adds credits all around and provides minimal employment threaded by the thrill of near illegality, not unlike the venture undertaken in this story.


tom Sizemore

C Thomas Howell

Danny trejo

Hungry Like A You Know What: The Grey

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: what Harrison Ford was to the "smart action thriller" of the 90s, so ahs Liam Neeson proved to be in this decade, at least over the last four years or so. Unfortunately, as action movies go, this one is a bit threadbare storywise, odd given the presence of writer-director Joe Carnahan ("Smokin' Aces", "Narc") and co-writer McKenzie Jeffers.

John Ottway is an oil company employee (specifically what he does is not clear, at least not to me) in Alaska, and a broken man. In the film's beginning we have a flashback to him about to blow his own brains out with his rifle, largely because eh and his lady are (seemingly) no longer together. Fortunately, he does not complete that act, as he will be sorely needed through the rest of the film. he instead boards a plane, filled with other oil outpost roughnecks. Said plane goes down amid really bad weather (as in really bad even for Alsaka standards) leaving only Ottway and five others.

They may be the only live humans on the scene, but unfortunately for them , not the only mammals. it doesn't take long of the real stars of the feature to emerge, although in Carnahan's hands, they are mostly shadowy, all glinting eyes, fangs, snarls and flashes of fur. The carnage that they leave is, however, far more more obvious, forcing the crash survivors into a "trek for your life" across the unforgiving, frozen wilderness, the wolves in howling, snarling pursuit.

There are, of course, casualties on the lupine side, but from the time the group first strikes out from the crash site, its an easy game of subtraction for the viewer; "and then there were..." Thee's even a token black guy (Nonse Anozie, a easy pick-up from last year's atrocious Conan The Barbarian remake) and he does die (sorry for the spoiler), but he, at least, doesn't get eaten.

So, while it has its moments of drama (especially in the final 30 minutes) and poignance, The Grey is a bit of a retrograde step for Neeson in his ongoing quest to be THE  mature action hero. He's got the crown, he just needs to make some better choices from here on in, lest it slip off.

Small Screen, Huge Stories: Boardwalk Empire & The Pillars of the Earth

Time was, not that long ago, when the uncompromising dedication to narrative was left to (some) feature films, while television - read network television - followed the path of least offense.

The purveyors of cable TV had a different idea though, and certainly over the last decade, cable channels have surpassed both  their network cousins and much of the feature film world in showing compelling programmes in both comedy and drama. Showtime has "Homeland" AMC has "Mad Men", STARZ has "Spartacus" and Ken Follet's "The Pillars of the Earth" and HBO has, among many others, "Boardwalk Empire".
Prohibition was likely intended as a political solution to a social problem, but its hard to argue with the contention that is created far worse problems than it ever solved. By shifting the supply side form legal to illegal sources without addressing the demand, it aided the growth of mobsterism and corruption, with the attendant ills. Such is the premise of this series, which has gone through two very popular and highly acclaimed seasons. The setting is Atlantic City(which provides the "Boardwalk" of the title), 1920, and the focus is primarily on one Enoch "Nucky" Thompson, nominally city treasurer, but de facto the Big Kahuna; nothing goes down - or up - in the town precincts without him knowing, and collecting on it. from his suite in the Ritz-Carlton he presides over bootlegging, prostitution and a host of illegal and legitimate buisnesses, aided and abetted by his brother Eli, the sheriff, and the city aldermen, his confederates.
But uneasy sits the head that wears the crown, and it will take all the skill and wit he has to manipulate and fend off enemies from without and within.

Medieval England may seem a long thematic jump form Prohibition-era America, but the elements are quite consistent: power, intrigue, lust, violence mistrust - and the desire to build something greater than what has previously been. Ken Follet's blockbuster novel gets the period treatment from Scott brothers, Ridley and Tony, who serve as executive producers, overseeing a cast and crew drawn mostly from Britain, but spanning the Continent. A humble master builder has dreams of building a great cathedral, but to do it, he must outwit some powerful forces with their own outsize agendas.

On the whole, the Boardwalk story is more compelling to watch, but Pillars should hardly be dismissed out of hand. For one, its more restrained. The in-your-face style of "Boardwalk", with its blood-spattered killings, frontal nudity and soft-porn sex scenes can become tiresome with repeated viewings, even though the writing overall redeems each episode. Another important difference is that the 'Pillars" series has a lone director for all the instalments, as opposed to the "revolving door" employed by "Boardwalk" creators Terence Winter, Martin Scorcese and Mark Wahlberg. Not saying there are any obvious aesthetic gaps, but it does jar a little bit.
Such nitpicking aside, both shows make excellent viewing, whether seen as a marathon, or at your leisure. They represent two ways of exploring the issue of man's enduring quest for power and personal aggrandizeement, a fascination that hardly ebbs, and for which cable TV is the ideal medium.

Indie producer brings "Gangsta Comedy" to life: Blind Shotta

When one door (or many) closes, especially if you're a Jamaican, you open a few more.

In the case of  Diavallan Fearon, who had built a career in music against the odds (his music enterprise is aptly named Builders Music), the doors to radio airplay were repeatedly being shut on him and his ever-expanding stable of artistes. Some of them, like the DJ Predator, had already achieved some level of notoriety in the dancehalls and even on radio, but it proved to be of little effect.

Unable to continue to find space for his productions on tightly controlled local radio, Fearon, who had long harboured ambitions toward a career in film, started taking matters into his own hands, and created his own vehicle. Thus, we have "Blind Shottas" which he unofficially bills as a "gangsta comedy".

" I was inspired by some serious events" he recalls. " Living in [the Lady Huggins area of] north-central Kingston's Grants Pen community, I would frequently hear gunshots. On one occasion, I was awakened by a very long barrage of fire, but after the shooting stopped, no one, it seems had been injured or killed. so I said to myself, it must be a blind shotta, and the idea just grew from there."

Even so, a short preview of the film reveals shades of the kung fu/martial arts franchise, The Blind Swordsman (not to be confused with the One-Armed Swordsman) but switched to a contemporary innercity setting. Fearon says he spent a little over 8 months in production and post, about half of that in editing. That process, done at a friend's studio in California, carried some film-worthy drama of its own, including some unwanted domestic conflict (not involving him directly)

He's over that now and is presently in negotiations to have the movie exhibited on the local Jamaican circuit before taking it overseas. "We had a meeting with Palace Amusement recently, and we're seeing if we can have the movie shown to a Jamaican audience, and build from there. We provided employment to a number of persons and we want to play our part in building the entertainment industry, and provide even more opportunity."

On the personal front, he's looking to get married and to continue doing all he can to establish his music/entertainment complex and to keep pushing the boundaries for what can emerge from the innercity. "Ghetto people keep getting fought out by the system, but I'm here trying to represent for them so that everybody can uplift."

A Little Gem from Down Under: The Hard Word

For those of us largely fed on myopic Hollywood fare, this 2002 gem from Australia is a rare and welcome treat. That fact that it effortlessly blends a bunch of conventional genres (heist thriller, prison drama, social commentary, psychological exercise) without tiring the viewer is further to its credit.

Three brothers, Dale (Guy Pearce), Shane (joel Edgerton) and Mal (Damien Richardson) are mysteriously sprung from jail on the orders of the state governor. Their new-found freedom procvesto be short-lived however, and they discover that they are pawns in a game of greed and deception (what else?) that also involves Dale's wife (Rachel Griffith) and a crooked lawyer (more on him later.)

First-time director Scott Roberts shows a deft hand in bringing his own script to life. Both violence and a considerable level of raunch are delivered without the lurid edge that often attends the features from the big-budget guys. Its almost done matter-of-fact.... almost.

The cast is superb, but three really stand out. Pearce, as the unofficial but unquestioned leader is the kind of career criminal to almost give the "profession" a good name; he blends gut instinct with literary appreciation and accepts that violence is a part of his chosen life, but without courting it. Griffith, as his wife Carol, is equally smart, feisty, and strong-willed and guided by her own moral compass, which entails sleeping with Frank (Robert Taylor), the greedy and amoral lawyer and fixer who's been stringing everybody along for his own ends. The few scenes in which the three of them are together are really priceless.  

By film's end, everyone has pretty much gotten what's coming to them, and at the risk of giving the final scene away, I'll say that if you're looking for any signs of reform amongst the brothers, you'd best look elsewhere, like to the skies. If you're looking for a smart, taut, pull-no-punches thriller, then look Down Under. This one's it.

Good Girls Gone Bad: Colombiana and Black Angel

Hollywood tends to like its anti-heroes male, and neither too old nor too young. Little girls are, however another matter. Whether in the hillside slums of Bogota, or the high rises of Tokyo, the lore of the "little angel" - basically and incorruptibly regardless of the circumstances - persists. Two films, one currently in first run in Jamiacan cinemas, the other part of a Japanese franchise, explore this phenomenon in similar yet contrasting styles.

Zoe Saldana is sexy as hell- with or without a gun.
But in the battle for our affections, she can't hold a candle to the angel-faced beauty who plays her character as a child and who lights up the film's riveting and frenetic opening sequence.

But little angel is forced into violent life from early, and after stabbing her father's nemesis in the hand and dodging killers through the city's streets and sewers, she ends up as part of some CIA Covert Ops program me and thereafter the film goes downhill into the standard assassin-with issues. Saldana tries her best to infuse some emotional substance into her character but director Oliver Megaton (last name adopted in honor of the Hiroshima atomic bomb) handles the action in such a leaden manner that you just want the pace to pick up again, which it does briefly, before once again imploding.

If you love fierce action, and can get over the sloppy subtitling and atrocious dubbing, then the bloody, raunchy Japanese import Black Angel may be just the ticket. Here again, a little girl witnesses the horrific murders of her parents before being spirited away to safety by a mysterious assassin, in whose footsteps she eventually. In stark contrast to the strictures of Hollywood, the Tokyo set have little if any hang-ups about nudity or blood-soaked shootouts and raw, hand-to-hand fighting. Again, the storyline is pretty much standard, but Black Angel is way more engaging for much of it's run than Colombiana, mainly because it abandons wasteful pretensions on which it cannot deliver. When the girl-killer and her gay(?) male sidekick pull a disco dance sequence in a cheap motel, having just ruthlessly dispatched some Yakuza a few scenes earlier, you know this is a creative team that could care less about convention.

And so they shouldn't. Both movies are messy, but Colombiana carries a load of guilt over it's mess, while Black Angel gleefully gives the finger to those who demand a clean-up.

Be good, bad girls!


If you can get over the grinding combination of sloppy sub-titling and atrocious dubbing, the raunchy, bloody Japanese action import, Black Angel, is just your ticket.

Dominic Cooper "doubles"Up

Full disclosure: we haven't yet seen The Devil's Double in entirety, but we hav seen it in sufficient measure (diverse clips, excerpts, interviews) to offer the following:

This is a breakout role for lead actor Dominic Cooper, who essentially plays two cahacters and three personas, namely former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's misanthropic, sex- crazed son Uday, Latif Wahia, the army lieutenant who is "co-opted" into being body-double, or fiday ( translates as "bullet catcher" ) for Uday, and of course, he plays Wahia playing Uday.

This compelling real-life conundrum -the film's based on Wahia's memoirs - becomes an equally compelling, if gleefully over-the-top entertainment in the hands of the experienced yet mercurial Lee (Once Were Warriors); the audience sees the full scope of Uday's "take anything, kill anyone" ethos, and the inner moral conflict that Wahia faces in doing the bidding of such a reprehensible individual.

Of course, there's enough sex, violence and intrigue to satisfy the escapist in all of us, bit this is primarily a story about obsession, and it's limits.

As Uday says to his new fiday, "I will never let you go."

Flashback

No "Wonderful Life" or 'Miracle on 34th Street" for this movie blogger. 


Last night, I re-watched  one of my all-time faves: True Romance.

Directed by Tony Scott (Top Gun) and written by Quentin Tarantino (who of course, went on to deliver Pulp Fiction), this movie features a ton of actors who went on to stardom in either feature films or cable and network TV - Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, an early Brad Pitt, Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, Bronson Pinchot, James Gandolfini, Michael Beach, Tom Sizemore, Michael Penn and Gary Oldman as a pimp. 


Drugs, violence and eternal devotion after a one-night stand - not to mention a slammin' soundtrack. Perfect!


A merry Christmas to all followers and supporters of Mike@the movies, wherever in the world you may be. Be safe, be happy and - more than presents -try to give yourself.