Blood: The Last Vampire – Film Review

Blood: The Last Vampire
Dir. Chris Nahon
Running time: 91 minutes

Saya, a half-human half-vampire, hunts demons on behalf of a covert government agency. When an American airbase suffers a spate of unexplained deaths Saya is sent undercover, but just how many demons are masquerading as pupils?

Adapted from the anime of the same name, Blood: The Last Vampire doesn’t really bring many new ideas to the table. With elements of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Blade, the film struggles to match the same subdued tone of the source material.

That said Blood is a lot of fun. Peppered with flash backs to create the origin story, whilst simultaneously advancing the main story line, Blood manages to be engaging despite some of the worst computer graphics and monster effects at a cinema this year. The fight scenes are well choreographed and will appeal to martial arts fans, but the dialogue is uneven and occasionally terrible.

The anime storyline is expanded upon with the addition of Onigen, a vampire matriarch. This is handled well until the final confrontation, which feels hackneyed and predictable. Wisely, the script writers shy away from any sexualizing a young Japanese girl in a school uniform and focusing on what Saya does best – killing demons.

An ambitious attempt at a live action version of the source material. Unfortunately the low budget and occasional script and dialogue missteps prevent this from being much more than a b movie with especially fine fight choreography.

6 /10

Chris Wooding – Book Review

Retribution Falls
Written by Chris Wooding
Gollancz

Captain Darian Frey isn’t so much a Captain of a crew, as a collector of outcasts and ne’er do wells. He’s not much of a pirate, and is looking for that one big smuggling job that’ll means he can retire, once and for all.

Retribution Falls has the sort of name and cover art that puts you in mind of serious, beard stroking SF. It’s for this reason that it comes as a bit of shock to discover around, say chapter five, that you’re actually reading Steam punks Of The Caribbean.

This is no bad thing.

Retribution Falls is neatly plotted, fast, fun and (whisper it) even a little feel good. It’s also shamelessly begging to be made into a film it’s so cinematic. The prose is straightforward and easily readable, and there aren’t any moments where Wooding beats you into submission with the exposition club.

Wooding also avoids long passages describing the setting. The world building here is minimal, and never steals the limelight from the characters. It’s not as evocative as other works of SF, but this is a character driven story after all.

Perhaps the novel’s main pitfall is the fact that none of the characters are immediately likeable, and with good cause. However, it is essential that characters be sympathetic during the opening stages of any story. Compounding this is the fact that, at first glance, the characters are fairly two dimensional, but the crew of the Ketty Jay are quickly fleshed out and a third of the way in to the book you have forgotten any previous doubts you harboured.

There are some missteps, and tables covered with empty flagons, in a book where airships are the main form of transport feels forced at best. It’s as if Wooding is saying, ‘Look, they’re pirates! Cool, huh?’

An enjoyable romp, full of blazing gun fights, flashing cutlasses and tense air battles. Retribution Falls is an adeptly written novel that will no doubt spawn other tales of the Ketty Jay.

8 /10

Terminator Salvation – Film Review

Terminator Salvation
Dir. McG
Running time 115 minutes

Following the events of the nuclear holocaust known as Judgement Day, John Connor finds himself watching events unfold that have been foretold by his mother. However, something is amiss – the Terminators are developing more quickly. Overshadowing this is the fact that John has yet to find Kyle Reece, the man he will send back in time to rescue his mother from the T-800, and ultimately, become his father.

Terminator Salvation had a lot of problems leading up to its release. Firstly, there was the unusual choice of attaching Mcg to the project as director, a man best known for the Charlie Angels films. Hardly the cache fanboys were expecting.

In addition to this, a leaked on set rant did much to dent the reputation of Christian Bale, who until that point had been rejoicing from his successes on the Batman franchise reboot. Much has been made of the tirade, that verged on farcical.

So what is the film actually like?

The opening credits and accompanying fanfare (from Danny Elfman no less) are rather underwhelming. The opening of the film focuses on Marcus Wright, a convicted killer, and provides a little bit of mystery (assuming you haven’t watched the trailers, which were loaded with one very large spoiler).

Early on in the film, an assault on a Terminator outpost provides some pace and tension. The rousing sight of the choppers landing squads of troops among the skeletons of satellite dishes conveys the war ravaged world and the difficulty mankind faces.

The film continues to build with Bale’s trademark ‘intensity’ shining through to make John Connor a little prickly. Whilst he is certainly sympathetic there remains an edge that makes it difficult for audiences to engage with him. He is far and away outshone by Sam Worthington playing Marcus Wright, which has the effect of re-focusing the movie around a secondary character. Kyle Reece (played by Anton Yelchin), whilst important to the film, is little more than a plot device designed to make Connor break ranks with the Resistance and go looking for his future father.

Terminator Salvation is also somewhat restrained by it’s 12A rating. For a film dealing with the extinction of the human race by ruthless killing machines, it feels subdued. The action is suitably ferocious, but the horror and hopelessness of the post-Judgement Day world feels underplayed.

In spite of this the film still manages to be entertaining, with some superb set pieces (mainly the Moto-terminators chase), and looks gorgeous. Huge amounts of attention have been lavished on the machines themselves, and the scene of the T-800 walking along the gantry is a great homage to Ray Harryhausen’s famous skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts. The much talked about ‘Arnie likeness’ is extremely well done, and is a high point of the movie.

As the film draws onto to it’s epilogue there seems to be a misfire (which I won’t mention here), and the victory against Skynet feels hollow somehow.

A capable, if subdued film that would have been served better by a higher certificate and a softer performance from Bale. The Terminator franchise will continue, but it needs to up its game to compete with other summer blockbusters.

7/ 10