Serpent's Tooth: the Dark Horse era of James Bond comics begins

 In this season of The James Bond Cocktail Hour podcast, we are covering the six year gap between Licence to Kill and GoldenEye, covering everything James Bond-related, from books to comics to video games, to non-Bond properties which tried to fill the gap.

On the latest episode, I am joined by special guest Mike Scott (of the Adkins Undisputed and Action For Everyone podcasts) to discuss Dark Horse Comic's entree into Bondage, 1992's Serpent's Tooth!

Check out the episode at the link below:

No Time To Die (review)

No Time To Die (commentary)

Pierce Brosnan - The Bond In Waiting 

GoldenEye & Spymaker - The Secret Lives of Ian Fleming

Nikita

Total Recall

Fire, Ice and Dynamite & Bullseye!

The Russia House

BrokenClaw

Lethal Weapon & Die Hard

If Looks Could Kill

Hudson Hawk

The Rocketeer

Black Cat

Timebomb

Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country

The Man From Barbarossa

James Bond Jr 

James Bond Jr. and other lost adventures, with Mark Edlitz 

Timothy Dalton's Bond 17 (Mark I) 

Permission to Die

Memoirs of an Invisible Man & The King's Man

Live Wire 

Sneakers 

Blue Ice

The Harry Palmer Trilogy

Freddie as F.R.O.7 

Death is Forever

Timothy Dalton's Bond 17 (Mark II), Part 1

Timothy Dalton's Bond 17 (Mark II), Part 2 

Serpent's Tooth

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NZIFF 2023: #Manhole ( Kazuyoshi Kumakiri, 2023)

 When a salaryman (Yûto Nakajima) falls into the sewer, he finds himself trapped.

Unable to figure out where he is (or tell the authorities), he comes up with an audacious scheme to draw attention to his plight…

While it starts out as a high concept thriller, #Manhole pushes its concept so high it ends in outer space.

At first, Shunsuke Kawamura seems like an ordinary guy in an extraordinary situation. As the film progresses, any assumptions about who our protagonist is have been destroyed.

The unique hook - our hero draws attention by creating an online persona as a beautiful young woman - is the catalyst for a blackly comic skewering of online engagement, and the ways in which it can grow and mutate into something unrecognisable. 

His deception gets him attention, and helps him figure out his location, but it also creates a microcosm around the central character, where he is forced to confront his past: he was a nobody who stole another man’s identity.

The location itself is no mystery to our lead, but the site of past trauma, with our hero coming literally face-to-face with his original sin. It is the return of the repressed as farce, karma by way of Rube Goldberg.

The film’s tone is increasingly delirious and darkly comic as these revelations pile on each other. 

Over-the-top barely captures its essence.

While it starts as a small, claustrophobic thriller, by its deranged climax, #Manhole has transformed into a maximalist surreal horror comedy.

It is a hell of a lot of movie. And a hell of a lot of fun! 

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Sisu

Bad Behaviour

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NZIFF 2023: Bad Behavior (Alice Englehart, 2023)

Former child actor Lucy (Jennifer Connelly) books into a retreat with guru Elon (Ben Wishaw), seeking some kind of spiritual resolution. 

Meanwhile, her daughter Dylan (Alice Englehart) is a stuntwoman working on a film in New Zealand.

Eventually their respective paths are forced to intersect…

Written, directed by and starring Jane Campion’s daughter Alice Englehart, Bad Behavior is more of a movie of tone and vibe than narrative.

 

Connelly is on great, deadpan form as an emotionally-stunted woman on an internal, sisyphean quest for inner peace. The parent-child dynamic is not that interesting, but the film’s droll sense of the absurd keeps the film watchable, if not compelling. 

But once the two leads are united, the film loses itself.

The movie is more confident when it is just anchored to Connelly as she slowly disintegrates at the retreat, a comically pleasant facility seemingly designed to challenge the tightly-wound Lucy at every turn. 

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Men of War (Perry Lang, 1994)

Mercenary Nic Gunner (Dolph Lundgren) and a small team of other hired guns are sent to an obscure island in the Pacific Ocean to strong-arm the locals into selling the rights to their home to some unscrupulous businessmen.

But once on the island, the conflicted Gunner is forced to question the purpose of the mission, and why he is going through with it...

“We have a legend. It tells of a man who came from far across the ocean to save us from great danger.”

“Really?”

“No!”

After decades, Dolph Lundgren is starting to get more mainstream respect.

I have only watched a couple of his films, but every time I do, I wonder why I have not seen more. After watching Red Scorpion, I was keen to revisit this 1994 joint.

I had watched it a couple of years ago, and I remember being rather taken with it.

Part of what makes it special might have to do with its creative pedigree: independent filmmaker John Sayles co-wrote the script and, like Sayles’ other genre efforts (Piranha, Alligator), Men of War plays with genre cliches and conventions to create something more unique.

Nick Gunner is set up as a white saviour, yet the story undermines every cliche.

He does not even foil the villains - it is BD Wong's Po, the island’s deceptively amiable translator. The team goes through a disgusting ceremony in which they have to consume old bird’s eggs - only for the tribe to laugh, revealing it was a practical joke.

Nick and the other mercenaries are presented as trigger-happy and out of their depth.

The action is plentiful if a little less inventive than the script.

While Lundgren, Wong and Charlotte Lewis play it straight, the rest of the squad are archetypes.

Trevor Goddard adds some flair as Keefer, a loose cannon who terrorises the team. His obsessions with Nick and near-orgasmic love of carnage are reminiscent of Vernon Welles’ Bennett from Commando (1985).

Benefiting from lush photography from Rohn Schmidt, in gorgeous Thai locations, Men of War feels bigger than the canvas probably was.

As for the star, Lundgren is well-cast as a burnt-out ex-super soldier seeking redemption. If he ever comes off a little stilted, it fits the character - a killer struggling to reconnect with his humanity.

Well-acted (Wong is fantastic), Men of War often feels like a meathead cousin to the socially conscious thrillers of the decade, like the Jack Ryan films. In some ways, this little action flick might be their superior.

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OUT NOW: Moscow Mission (Herman Yau, 2023)

Following a violent robbery on a Sino-Russian train, cop Cui Zhenhai (Hanyu Zhang) is sent to Moscow to hunt down the perpetrators, led by the mysterious ‘D’ (Xuan Huang).

While the Chinese agents arrive in Moscow, D is preparing for his next heist, and enlists the help of his old mentor, Vasily (Andy Lau), to prepare for it. 

As Cui closes in, a showdown is set in motion that could turn the city into a warzone…

The title is the only thing that is slightly underwhelming about this movie. 

Directed by Herman Yau, Moscow Mission is a relentless action thriller that never outlasts its welcome.

Filled with well-choreographed and shot action, Moscow Mission is one of the best action movies I have seen this year - the variety of locations and set pieces alone is one of the film’s strong points.

It is a grim affair - women are used and abused, the villain is a few shades off revealing himself as Satan, and there is no sense of humour to be spied. However, the film never feels oppressive. There was no point where I felt bored, or like the movie needed to end. This is an earnest action movie that does not waste its time, and escalates in terms of scale and originality of staging. 

The final sequence is pretty melodramatic, but it is in keeping with the movie as a whole.

The cast are solid: Hanyu Zhang as veteran cop Cui Zhenhai; Andy Lau as Vasily, a Chinese exile and black market wheeler-dealer; Xuan Huang as the villainous Miao Qingshan; His accomplice/brother Miao Ziwen (Jason Gu); and Janice Man as Li Suzhen, a female member of Miao’s gang, and Ziwen’s lover.

One of the more fascinating elements of the film is the Sino-Russian relationship, depicted through various dynamics: Cui and his best friend, an FSB agent; Miao’s relationship with blonde femme fatale Marina (Zina Blahusova); and even the rapport between the Chinese agents and the local police. 

 

Perhaps it is a bit of 2023, but the Chinese presence in the former USSR feels lopsided in terms of power - Russia is a chaotic environment which the more sophisticated Chinese cops have to navigate and figure out. 

Taking place in 1993, amid the chaos following the end of the USSR, the Russia of this movie resembles the ‘wild east’ depicted in Hollywood movies from the period - the state is corrupt and in semi-collapse, crime is rampant and money is to be made.

A genuinely exciting potboiler, Moscow Mission is worth a look.

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The Perfect Weapon (Mark DiSalle, 1991)

After his mentor (Mako) is murdered by a local gang, local hellraiser Jeff Sanders (Jeff Speakman) goes on the trail of the killers…

A starring vehicle for kenpō practitioner Jeff Speakman, The Perfect Weapon is a solid addition to the early nineties action catalogue.

Aside from Speakman, the film is notable for featuring an allstar Asian American cast: Mako, James Hong, Cary Hiryku-Takagawa and Professor Tanaka. One qualification with these big names is that they are all playing Korean American characters.

Speakman may be a bit blank as an actor, but his martial arts skills are terrific, and the filmmakers ensure they are displayed to the full (in clean wide shots) with rapid (but judicious) cuts.

His character - a loose cannon ostracised for both his temper and his lethal skillset - has potential to be a little more interesting than his logline. Everyone treats him like a violent lunk, just as dangerous as the gangsters terrorising the community. And despite growing up alongside this community, he is still an outsider - to the extent that, unlike most white martial arts heroes, he does not possess any special knowledge (or even speak the language).

And despite his prowess, villains can still get the jump on him. Speakman takes a lot of hits in his fight sequences, which follow a pattern of him taking a beating, figuring out his foe, and then unleashing. It is a refreshing narrative arc which prevents him from coming off as invulnerable but still highlights him as an exceptional fighter.

Running 86 minutes, The Perfect Weapon does not waste time. Mariska Hargitay appears as a childhood friend, but she gets no scenes or even dialogue. Clearly, edits were made that removed her subplot.

The film’s no-frills action plotting works in the movie (and star’s) favour.

It is a pity Speakman was not able to build on this film. 

One could see him taking up position alongside the other action stars of this period, like Seagal and Van Damme.  

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NZIFF 2023: Sisu (Jalmari Helander, 2022)

As a group of Nazis retreat out of Finland, they decide to screw with an old gold prospector (Jorma Tommila) with a giant nugget.

Big mistake.

Styled as a western in narrative and iconography, Sisu is a straightforward underdog action movie. 

Jorma Tommila’s Aatami is your unstoppable hero, with a deadly skillset and superhuman will to survive.

The villains are a company of bandits, killing anyone who gets in their way for the hell of it.

 

There is nothing to Sisu.

This is not a historical movie - it is not interested in digging into Finland's involvement with the Axis. This is a movie about cutting a man’s throat and sucking on his exposed airpipe to grab a mouthful of air while you hide underwater from machine gunners on the surface. 

It is what it is - and it does what it does without wasting time.

Packed with gore and a deadpan sense of humour, it is a solid little genre flick.

Its familiarity is meant as a feature, not a bug - but I did find its familiarity, and simplicity, a little tired after a while. 

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Phantom

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NZIFF 2023: Phantom (Lee Hae-young, 2023)

It is 1933, decades into Japan's colonisation of Korea. After a failed assassination attempt on the new Japanese resident-general, five suspects are kidnapped by the Japanese authorities.

Imprisoned in a seaside hotel, they are pitted against each other as the Japanese try to figure out which one of them is the spy/Phantom who is trying to bring the regime down from within.

Set in 1933 Korea, Phantom is a fun mess of a movie. 

After a frustratingly elliptical opening sequence, the film begins cycling through different genres, premises and character dynamics. 

The second significant section is a locked-room mystery - a group of suspects are secured at a hotel while the Japanese try to force the Phantom to reveal themselves. With broad, archetypal characterisation, this sequence has the most tonal consistency, and feels a little listless - we are following so many characters, and it never feels like the tension is building.

 

When the movie turns into a buddy action flick, it is more fun.

While the film is rather stylish, and the action is well-shot and choreographed, the biggest issue is the script - the movie feels like it is ending several different times.

The most interesting element is Junji, a former cop who is tortured by his mixed Japanese-Korean heritage.

While he starts out  as a suspect, when the film’s initial villain dies, he takes his place - he sees this as an opportunity to prove himself to the regime.

The film explicitly becomes an allegory for the Korean peninsula, with Junji as its colonial past, and Park Cha-kyung and fellow Phantom Yuriko as its future in North and South.

There is probably some nuance and context I am missing - including some homage to Joseph von Stenburg’s Shanghai Express, which I have not seen - but subtlety is not this film’s interest.

As far as characters, Sol Kyung-gu manages Junji’s transition to full-on villain

Interestingly, he becomes the voice on Korea’s past and future, offering a monologue on how the future state will only succeed as part of an overseas empire. The fact that he is - shortly thereafter - defeated by representatives of the peninsula’s dual future - is a slightly hopeful rebuke. Whatever the peninsula’s future, it will not be dictated by fascists like Junji or the Japanese Governor-General.

 

While the cast are solid, Park So-dam (Parasite) is the standout as the gun-toting vamp Yuriko. Even when she is playacting the entitled shit, she steals every scene she is in. When she reveals her true colours, going Rambo on a hotel full of soldiers, she proves herself as an action star.

A movie that is better-made than it is written, Phantom gets more enjoyable as it goes along. I am usually more onboard with these kinds of maximalist genre exercises, but it is just a little too long and unfocused to fully get behind in its entirety.

I am curious to revisit it, to see if its narrative flows smoothly on the re-watch.

If any Korean readers would like to point out anything I have missed, drop a comment with your thoughts

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