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'Qayamat'. Several people were kind enough to identify one of the bollywood clips on my MPEG page. So here is a full review for the film concerned 'Qayamat'. The first thing to note is the resemblance between this film and the Hollywood film 'The Rock'. However this is a lot longer and if the truth be told not as tight and not as good. The story has the premise of a group of super criminals taking over a small island fortress and using it as a base to launch a rocket - this time loaded with a deadly viral agent. In the Bollywood version the criminals are in the employ of an enemy government and one of the main criminals is Laila, played by the delectable Isha Koppikar.
After the initial mayhem, during which the trio of super criminals kill off a fellow arms dealer, the Indian government respond to the threat by sending out a group of their best special operatives, a convicted criminal and the film's heroine who are all prepared to risk life and limb to stop the attack. What follows is the usual cat and mouse game between the goodies and the baddies.
Of course the evil plans of the criminals are thwarted but the fun is seeing how they do it, not too subtly in this case. Isha Koppikar is gorgeous as one of the trio of super criminals and gets plenty of chance to take on the good guys in the sewers of the prison fortress. Whilst she never quite achieves the highpoint of her initial entrance she is still a delight to watch. Unfortunately the film is too long and the story seems to drag and the action scenes are not too convincing. But it certainly beats the usual western B movie action flick even if it doesn't match up to the original. Film Rating 6/10 and Killer Koppikar rating 7/10.
'The Death Merchant'. This is a cheapo film. That should not necessarily count against a film but on this occasion it does. There are certain things which suggest to me that the production run out of money before it was fully completed but more on that later on. The story starts off promisingly enough with a hostage situation in a warehouse where the chief baddie and his gang are holding an archaeologist's daughter in order to force him into handing over a top secret micro chip (don't ask). The rest of the film attempts to explain how this situation came about. The chief baddie is an arms dealer who has promised a microchip to a foreign power but who has yet to steal it. When it falls into the hands of an archaeologist (don't ask) he decides he should send out his most trusted henchwoman Natasha (Melody Munyon) to kill off a few navy pilots (again don't ask). However the American government are having none of this and the Department of Culture (!!) are soon on the case together with the drunken hero they employ to help them.
You get the impression that the director was trying to get a 80 minute film out of 50 minutes of script. To fill out the time we have the same scene repeated twice, once at the beginning and once at the finish, an extended but pointless desert scene and some totally out of context sex scenes which seem to be there merely to pad everything out. The unfinished feel of the film is evidenced by incomplete sound effects, poor editing, cheapo sets and what appears to be a complete scene missing from the end - a few screens of text explains what happens to the second bad girl (Martina Castle). Seeing what happened to her would have been MUCH better. The acting is not as bad as it could have been given the cliched characters and the poor script but that is not saying much. The two bad girls look great but can't really act and are not given enough screen time. All in all a brave attempt by a cast of unknown actors to try and save a confused plot doesn't succeed. Film Rating 3/10, Bad Girl rating 4/10.
'The Last Man on Planet Earth'. Take a world where the male race has been virtually eradicated by a virus and the world is run by women. That is the premise of 'The Last Man on Planet Earth'. However despite a corresponding decrease in crime and war some of the women want the old balance restored and one of them, a genetic scientist, decides to create a man to help do this. He is called Adam (what else?) and he soon finds himself on the run in a woman dominated society where the few remaining men are treated as sex objects or outcasts.
So Adam is hunted down by the FBI (wonder if that stands for Feminist Bureau of Investigation?) whose best agent Kara Hastings (Tamlyn Tomita) pursues him through brothels and the male outcast sub culture. Adam's bewilderment at what is happening and Kara Hastings pursuit of him irregardless of political interference is the be all and end all of this film.
Regular readers will know I like a good science fiction film. Regular readers will know that I don't mind schlock providing it's good schlock. Unfortunately 'Last Man on Planet Earth' matches neither of these criteria so I'm afraid it gets the thumbs down from me. The only thing one can say in it's favour is that it doesn't treat its subject matter in an overly sensational way and the finale is quite touching. I'm sure there was some feminist sentiment somewhere in the script at some stage but if it ever was there it got lost in the process of making it to celluloid. However Tamlyn Tomita is worth watching even in pap like this. Film Rating 3/10, Fatal Femme rating 3/10.
