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Monday, April 30, 2007
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'Lady Magdalene's' is a fun movie that deserves audience
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Movies
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Lady Magdalene's
Starring: Ethan Keogh, Nichelle Nichols, Alexander Wraith, Susan Smythe,
Claudia Lynx, Mark Gilvary, and J. Neil Schulman
Director: J. Neil Schulman
Seven of Ten Tomatoes (  )
When Jack Goldwater (Keogh) of the IRS's criminal investigations
division is assigned to manage a small brothel that's been seized for
non-payment of taxes, he knows he's in for a difficult job; two other
agents previously assigned to the task ended up resigning over it.
However, he was still unprepared for what a handful the brothel's
madam--Lady Magdalene (Nichols)--and her girls would be... and he never
dreamed that he'd find himself in the position of unraveling an al-Qaeda
terrorist plot.
"Lady Magdalene's" is a fun, fast-paced action comedy that's the latest
movie I've seen this year that's still in search of a distributor. I
hope it finds a home soon, because this is a movie that deserves a wide
audience.
"Lady Magdalene's" is a film populated by likable characters placed
within two major plot threads. One deals with Goldwater and the brothel,
and the other with Yassin (Wraith) and the mysterious al-Qaeda plot he
is forwarding with the help of American-bred operatives. They converge
in the movie's third act. Structured like a movie from the 1940s and
1960s, the story features a couple of twists that make me wish Schulman
was writing for big-budget films instead of his own low-budget
productions; there are any number of big movies in recent years that
would have been better served if they'd had scripts even half as clever
as what we have here.
If writers of the modern thrillers could come up with twists and
misdirections even a quarter as clever as Schulman does here, I wouldn't
find myself wondering if the thriller is a dead genre. (I can't go into
details without ruining part of the film, but there's a mystery aspect
to the film's story that Schulman gives the viewers all the keys to
solving, but which few are likely to guess until he does his Big Reveal
as the film is building to its climax.)
"Lady Magdalene's" at its funniest when dealing with the terrorists,
particularly the "terrorist summer camp" that Yassin has to get his
agents from when he arrives in the United States on his mission from The
Director (Gilvary). The al-Qaeda campfire song has got to be one of the
most hilarious bits of satire ever put on film, and the use of the
classical piece "Dance Macabre" as the "terrorist theme" in the film
heightens the comedy surrounding them greatly.
Wraith, playing the only terrorist with brains in the movie, shows
himself to be a very talented actor, managing to be the straight man to
the morons at the "summer camp" and the al-Qaeda Director, and to swing
between charming and chilling at other points in the film.
I've spent alot of time talking about the terrorist plot, and not much
on where I think the filmmaker felt the movie's heart was--with Lady
Magdalene's and the "girls" working there. Generally speaking, there's
not much here that I haven't seen in other films. The idea of an
al-Qaeda sleeper agent hiding out in a brothel is interesting, and the
cartoon version of a whorehouse that the film presents is fun, but
there's not much else here for me to comment on.
(ADDED LATER: An exception to "not much to comment on" can be found in
the "Comments" section for this review. The producer/director of the
flick called me on an embarrassing oversight.)
Despite my enjoyment of the film, "Lady Magdalene's" isn't without
flaws. There are some scenes in the first act that could have done with
some trimming, there are times when the dialogue is a little clunky, and
there are others where the film's low budget is painfully evident in
the sets. (Still, even when the dialogue is clunky, the scene advances
the story. My most common complaint with low-budget productions is the
abundence of padding and pointless, meandering scenes. I can't make that
complaint here, and when I say some of the scenes in the first act need
some trimming that's all I mean... just a few seconds here and there,
and I think the scenes would have have been near-perfect.)
However, there are far more instances where the film is equal to
counterparts with budgets ten times the size of what this movie was made
for. Even at its weakest, the film is far better than most of the
product in a similar budget and production-value range.
Despite the high quality of the film, I fear that Schulman faces an
uphill battle when it comes to placing it with a distributor, because no
attempt is made to make the film "politically correct" or do anything
but call a spade a spade.
By simply portraying Federal law enforcement agencies and American
politicians accurately (even to the point of getting details about the
Internal Revenue Service's CID correct), he points out the flaws with
the domestic "war on terror."
Similarly, Schulman's portrayal of terrorists as primarily moronic dupes
or self-centered, hypocritical sociopaths who blame everyone but
themselves for their own shortcomings is far closer to the truth that is
acceptable to say in the current popular culture.
This is not to say that "Lady Magdalene's" is overtly political--in
fact, I think Schulman takes steps to keep it neutral as far as that
goes--but in an age where common sense and even basic facts seem to have
been politicized, I'm sure there are those out there who will say that
it is a political movie. Unfortunately, it's not the kind of politics
that will go ever well with many in the film biz.
"Lady Magdalene's" is presently being submitted to film festivals
throughout the United States. If it shows up at one you're attending, I
encourage you to make every effort to check it out. You will find that
your time was well-spent. (And I hope that the rest of us will be able
to pick up the film on DVD, or perhaps even catch it on cable.)
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| 11:34 PM |
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3/10
6/10
