The good news is that Cynthia Rothrock (The Last Kumite, Fyre Rises) has a new film, Lady Scorpions. The bad news is it is from Tiger Style Media and the word ‘Tiger’ is enough to send shivers down my spine. It was that company that gave the world the insipid Art of Eight Limbs and The Lockdown. The good news for you is that I’m willing to be shot, or kicked in the head, to see whether the third time is indeed a charm.
As she reaches her car, Lacy (Caitlin Dechelle, Chinese Zodiac, Furious 7) is attacked by two assailants, but she dispatches them almost effortlessly. Not that she needed to put herself in any danger, that was a fake for her self defence class. She has problems coaxing her mom Alena (Cynthia Rothrock) to take the phone call when she wants to remind her that it is her granddaughter Ariel’s (Sofia O’Brien) birthday tomorrow.
Perhaps that is due to the fact that she is a Fed who is in the thick of the action filming Jose Manuel (Sonny, Dispatched, The Fist of the Condor) trying to scare a few Russian Mafia members. She is exposed and has to stave off a number of rather brutish bodyguards until Sonny’s father Lucien (Jeff Fahey, The Long Night, The Lawnmower Man) arrives. All Lucien wants is to conduct one final transaction and retire, but Sonny does not seem to allow it. He communicates this to her while they are discussing how good it is to be a parent. Instead of the sensible option of killing her, he and his men leave her in the desert and drive off.
Lady Scorpions is the debut feature of Bruce Del Castillo, who has previously worked as a grip on various films including Kill Bill and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra , He has also co produced Del Castillo Productions’ other films with Stephen Carolan (Ticket to Ride). H. Daniel Gross is credited as a writer as well but only for the original story and since he doesn’t have much screen since he doesn’t stand a chance to mangle it like he did for Tiger Style Media’s previous films.
It is not like Castillo and Carolan require assistance with respect to the usage of clichés in their raw paper writing. Sonny comes to Ariel’s birthday party, where he literally kidnaps the girl so that Alena does nothing stupid. Well, we all know how it’s going to end. Mother and grandmother will ignore their quarrels and will go through crunching bones of mobsters and corrupt officials in order to reach their child. Call it a mother’s love.
The story can be said to have been rehashed again, they do have a legit shot at being different under other segments when it comes to presentation of Lucien and his crew for the first time who had a murderous look and a sound similar to westerns of 60s. Or the one where over some horrific and violent act where our heroines are pouring hot sauce inside a person’s eyeball in a split screen, a music band playing upbeat songs, this happened a lot in the show. These touches had been used so scarcely that there was no chance they could evoke anything other than a feeling of a pettiness.
Finally, the score by Joe Wong (Carol & The End of the World, Ballmastrz: Rubicon) must be listed as one of the film’s biggest weaknesses as well. Many of the loops seem to consist of the same few notes strung together within a synthesizer and credited with being part of the score for too many scenes and it surely does not help that it is one of the louder parts of the film. The cherry on the top is the use of a more upbeat pop song during the finale.
One thing Lady Scorpions does have going for it is better fight scenes than its predecessors. The creative instincts of Angel G. Brophy (Eggshells, Blackout) and DP Ernesto Lomeli (Muse, Stan Lee) make a scene with a lot of great elements, such as swordplay and shoot outs, torture, and interesting looking fights. Sadly, it is not a case of ‘more successes than there are missteps’ in Lady Scorpions. Also, the reason why Alena is so obsessed with the destruction of Lucien’s empire. Yes, it makes complete sense and everything, it’s just hard to understand why Lucien would let her live in the first place if he already knows what she’s going to do.
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