Nesian Scribe

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Mary spends most of the movie looking sick as a dog and yet still manages to survive numerous attempts to kill her against overwhelming odds while she wipes the floor with mostly Japanese baddies. It's a film about redemption and guilt and a life wasted on killing, obedience and blood. Woody gives his usual excellent performance basically playing himself as a menacing yet fatherly Puppet Master who also seems to teeter right on the edge. I couldn't work out why Mary's character never pinned him as her nemesis - I knew within five minutes of screen-time, or maybe I've just watched way too many similar movies and series. There's some great, tight cinematography, especially of Tokyo at night with its claustrophobic alleyways and sake bars, interspersed with some solid stunt work. Refreshing not to have explicit sex scenes forced upon me, but I guess the innovative ways to damage and kill Mary's pursuers would be sexy to fans of this genre. Not enough meat or star performances to make me watch again; unfortunately the plot and characterizations, even the trauma and baggage of dying whilst having to keep an inoocent safe, has all been written about many times before and is oh-so-familiar. 3/5.

Brutal. Bloody. Tragic. Tense. Unmissable. I knew it was going to be messy. Don't take drugs, kids. But I didn't count on the writing and the characterization engaging me to the point where I binge watched the whole series in two nights. Nearly all of the characters are awful human beings, but just as you've gone to die on a hill certain that this or that character is irredeemable, the series shifts into family mode, showing the character's softer side with loved ones or family, and exploring the original reasons why these people use others the way they do; or why they jockey so brutally for power, murdering whoever gets in their way because it's all about survival, at the end of another blood-soaked day. You truly see the human condition and frailties; their weaknesses, and courage and absolute balls. Anything involving 2000 kgs of Cocaine is bound to end in tears though, not triumph. Riseborough steals every scene she's in, but she's also helped by the rise and swell of the music and the slow-mo scenes. She's not conventionally pretty, reminding me of actress, Tilda Swinton, but she is hella strange looking, which really works for her role. Worth a watch.