Sheroes (2023) Review

From Jordan Gertner, the producer who brought you The Virgin Suicides and Spring Breakers, comes an action adventure crime movie starring Isabelle Fuhrman, Sasha Luss, Wallis Day and Skai Jackson. Instead of a prestige picture or a highly commercial action blockbuster Jordan decided to give us the spiritual successor of one of those nineties Andy Sidaris cinemax skin flicks but for the modern days of streaming services, and without the sex. 

Four lifelong friends (Diamond, Ezra, Ryder and Daisy) go to Thailand and arrive at a vacation estate belonging to Diamond's father. They have an unpleasant encounter with local criminals and back at their home they find a bag with cocaine, instead of getting rid of it they decide to snort it. The next morning they realize one of their friends was kidnapped by the drug dealers the coke belonged to, this leads them to a search for their friend throughout Thailand. 

The film gives out desperate attempts at trying to "be cool" and crass, filled with gratuitous profanity and fake "girl talk" with irrelevant slang and forced party scenes that feel awkward because of the stiff acting and rather underdeveloped characters. It's all kind of arbitrary and unfocused, there's no true center to the narrative, not much of an emotional core to the story, it's simply a bunch of cardboard cutouts, very stereotypical characters, going through the motions of a pseudo-comedic action storyline without caring all that much. 

The comedy is sort of lazy and stale because the film never gives proper time for the characters and the ambience to set in, it goes by so quickly that the actions are put forward instead of the characters, which negates a lot of the comedic potential the script could have had if it wasn't so premature at dishing out jokes. 

Having said all that, I sort of enjoyed this one. Yeah, it's dumb as heck but it's also so incredibly childish and juvenile that it genuinely feels like either an immature and unimaginative 14 year old girl wrote this movie and decided to put everything she thought was cool in it or a 50 year old white guy wrote it, no inbetween. It's the kind of silly movie that doesn't feel afraid to be so and sticks to its cheeky and unapologetic tone, sort of like a very low budget version of the Charlie's Angels movie mixed with Taken references and a Hangover-like premise. It's charming if you are open to that sensibility in a more vulgar and direct fashion than before.

I think the cinematography is very worthwhile for a production of this kind, there´s solid compositions here and lot's of very good-looking primary colors that shine in the refined scenery. The protagonists all have distinguishable looks that inform their characterization and give you a good grasp on who they are just based on their appearance. It's not badly shot but it also doesn't look very much like a polished A-grade flick, so don't expect blockbuster tier technical proficiency, proof of this is the somewhat rough echoing sound design and some awkward or flat directing choices from time to time, not to mention the cheap graphics and CGI special effects. 

Another interesting aspect is how much it alternates between being an exploitation film and not delivering the exploitation elements one might expect. Just when you think it's going to get misogynistic it turns it around into a subversive counterattack. Like when the blue haired girl faces a seemingly unstoppable fighter who initially puts up resistance but eventually she defeats him, or when the movie promises a crude lapdance only to abruptly break it with a "cutting-the-dick off" type of threat on a bad guy. It's so strange how it deals its cards, it knows what it's doing and how to turn it around just enough to be seen as both sleazy and slightly more grounded and pseudo-feminist in the shallowest sense. It’s hard to tell what the intentions are.

As I mentioned before, it's simply likable as an amateur attempt at making a Spring Breakers type of movie by the way of Andy Sidaris. Not bad on that front. It's sort of dull at moments but one can find it mostly entertaining because of its constantly impudent attitude and self-aware angle. Horribly shoddy in some aspects, which may alienate some viewers, but if you like trashy films then this is for you. 

It’s a good kind of dumb sleepover movie like DOA (2006) or Charlies Angel’s  (2000).

Golden Queen´s Commando (1982) Review

I have a classic one for you today. Golden Queen´s Commando is a 1982 Taiwanese action movie directed by Yen-Ping Chu, prolific director known for this movie, its companion piece titled Pink Force Commando (1982), Fantasy Mission Force (1983) and several other entries in the genre. It was co-written by the infamous Godfrey Ho, who did movies such as Undefeatable (1993), Honor and Glory (1993), Princess Madam (1989), Lethal Panther (1990), Angel´s Mission (1989) and the previously reviewed Angels Enforcers (1989).

Like a lot of these asian action movies Queen´s Commando is known by several alternate titles such as Hong fen bing tuan, Queen´s of the Pink Commando, Seven Black Heroines, Amazon´s Commandos and Jackie Chan´s Crime Force (it has nothing to do with Jackie Chan). Also, most copies online have a terrible picture quality, so don't expect HD versions of this one. 

At its core, it's a rag-tag movie about a bunch of women in a deadly secret mission, think female Dirty Dozen, Guns of Navarone or any other movie with that storyline but the execution sets this one apart. 

It could be best described as four or five movies in one, the ultimate genre pastiche, particularly in the action woman category. It begins as a character roll call (that in itself encompasses many genres), it turns into a women in prison movie, then into a war film, a western and finally into a (wo)men in a mission movie, it's also a comedy, an action film and a seedy grindhouse movie. 

The roll call goes as follows:

1- Black Fox

The leader of the group, played by Brigitte Lin (Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain, The Bride with White Hair, Dragon Inn, The Maidens of Heavenly Mountains, Fantasy Mission Force), this eyepatched assassin gets herself thrown in jail in order to recruit the rest of the warrior girls, who aren't surprised to see her there because of her reputation.

2- Amazon

Played by Chun-Chun Hsu (Pink Force Commando), she is a fur bikini wearing strongwoman who murders enemies with her hatchet and bare hands. The muscle of the group, gifted with great strength and a ferocious attitude. She murders her opponent during a Mongolian wrestling match and is jailed because of it. Being Mongolian and an expert warrior and wrestler she reminds me of the real life princess Khutulun to some extent.

3- Black Fox 

Played by Hui-Shan Yang (Phoenix the Raider, New Pilgrims to the West, and the previously reviewed films Woman Revenger and Deadly Silver Angels), she is a talented gunslinger carrying a black bible and a trickster who murders a man after winning against him in a card game, possibly by cheating.

4-Brandy

Played by Hao-Yi Liu (Pink Force Commando, Shaolin Chastity Kung Fu), she is a drunken master, a trope that began with the popular 1978 film of the same name, which means that she's a fantastic martial artist but only when she is drunk, as her body becomes more fluid and loose in that state. She is introduced in a reenactment of a scene in Rio Bravo, she gets abused and harassed by some drunk military guy but once she gets her hands on some alcohol she kicks his ass, cuts off his hand, slashes some other soldier´s face and then beheads another military guy.  

5-Quick Silver

Played by Hsueh-Fen Peng (Pink Force Commando), Quick is a young thief who is caught stealing a great amount of money from the french consulate. She even snatches a watch from the guards on the way to her cell.

6-Sugar

Played by Joyce H. Cheng (Pink Force Commando, Golden Doll, The Cabbie, Country of beauties), she is an ambitious prostitute who always asks for more money, when a guy doesn't want to pay she stabs him in the back. She's obviously taken to jail because of it.

7-Dynamite

Played by the prominent Sally Yeh (Peking Opera Blues, I Love Maria, The Killer, Pink Force Commando), she is a bomb expert who asks for her piece of a presumed robbery she helped a gangster with, when the gangster doesn't wish to give her the money, she blows them up. 

Cool girls dont look at explosions.

Actually, not only does the film have alternate titles but it also has a few different cuts, the fullest version is the original Mandarin version as far as I can tell, it opens up with the introduction of Black Cat. The version titled Jackie Chan´s Crime Force opens with soldiers escorting a prisoner and then changes into the Mongolian wrestling scene with the Amazon lady. The Mandarin version is 91 minutes, while the Crime Force cut is 86 minutes.  

I can't recommend the original version because the subtitles are hard to read but you are gonna have to put up with the typically dreadful dubbing these movies have in the english version, it doesn't really ruin the fun but it's still something to consider.

The girls are taken to prison, where they meet each other and engage in different shenanigans like smuggling cigarettes into the prison, stealing from inmates and finally having a food fight that gets them locked together for starting it. It was all planned by Black Fox who recruits the girls in order to put their special skills to good use: a suicide mission that involves destroying a chemical lab. 

Using their special skills to beat up the guards and wear their uniforms, the gals escape the facilities by horse and they are attacked by some paramilitar group and taken to their camp, where they engage in more cheeky tests, which they beat in ingenious ways. 

Brandy humiliates some warrior men.

Skilled knife-thrower

After the girls leave the group, the independent guerrilla is attacked by enemy soldiers and they defeat everyone but the leader, who seeks the aid of the Golden Queen ́s Commando.  They realize that one of them is a traitor, Black Fox can't bring herself to eliminate the vain Sugar, so Black Cat takes a shot at it, literally. 

The girls then face off against the mounted enemies in an extended action sequence that steals the music piece Ecstasy of Gold from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Brandy is shot down right after the battle ends. After the funeral, they move on to the chemical lab section of the movie. They enter a secret facility and defeat more bad guys, by the end of the movie, none of them survive. Making it one of the few movies of it´s kind where the suicide mission actually lives up to the name. 

The spit of victory.

The film succeeds at presenting nonstop action set-pieces filled with charisma and ingenuity, not only do we see a lot of shootouts and fights (which are very dynamic and stimulating) but they are also executed with tons of personality, making the characters react according to their characterization and employ their special skills while battling, something a lot of the other movies in the subgenre forget about altogether since often the girls in these groups are kind of interchangeable. 

The quick shifts in tone and the disjointed structure that incorporates different sections with a completely dissimilar objective and setting actually work really well here. In any other movie of this kind, these would be deviations that are there to fill time because Joseph Lai had another movie he added footage to in order to make it more marketable, but here the eclectic sections set up one inventive set-piece after another, the film develops swiftly and with ease, always in constant movement and focusing on astounding spectacle, mini-vignettes that charm you with their simple creativity. 

Endlessly entertaining, Golden Queen´s Commando is one of the high points of the dirty, ultra low budget, asian action flick field, offering amazing fights and gunplay, sort of a messy story overall but it's all in service of pacing, rhythm and potent images. Totally check it out if you are even slightly interested.

I remember reading back in the day that apparently Quentin Tarantino was influenced by this movie to create Kill Bill (2003-2004) but I dont think thats a fact, seems like the person writing that was mostly speculating because you can say the same thing for Lady Snowblood (1973) and The Doll Squad (1973) which are pretty much confirmed. However, Quentin has referenced more obscure movies, I do believe he has at least seen Queen´s Commando.

At any rate, this is probably a cult film that needs a cleaner home media release in order for it to fully become the classic it was meant to be.