Girl Fighters

For the last action double-bill of my solo viewing weekend, I went with the trieds and true female-lead type: Sri Asih (2022) and Becky (2020).

Shri Asih is a bit of an oddball - a comic superhero movie, but based on an Indonesian comic. It starts with a tourist couple visiting an Indonesian volcano (Mt. Toba?). The volcano explodes, and more than that, we see an evil face in the ash cloud. The couple flee, but are killed in a car crash. She is pregnant, and manages to give birth before she dies.

In the orphanage, the daughter is a strong willed girl. She has a friend who is a mild and bullied boy - and she always fights for him. But she is adopted by a nice woman, who starts training her in fighting arts. Now grown, she is played by Pevita Pierce. She is a strong fighter, but has trouble controlling her anger. 

When she meets up with her friend from the orphanage, she finds him as part of a semi-underground group trying to protect his apartment complex from gangs and corporate goons, who want to tear it down and [some corporate plot I don't really remember]. So she becomes there defender.

But then she learns that she is part of an ancient race of heroes with super-powers (good!) but that the evil volcano demon is trying to possess her, for evil (bad). To avoid this, she'll have to learn to control her temper. 

The action here is very much sub-Iko Uwais. But it's still a lot of fun. 

I wanted to watch Becky because I had seen some good reviews of its sequel, Wrath of Becky. It's about a defiant teen girl, Lulu Wilson, who has recently lost her mother. Her father, Joel McHale, is taking her to their lake house to grieve (good), but has also invited his new girlfriend, Amanda Brugel and her young son (bad - especially because they announce that they are getting married).

While she is out in her playhouse/treehouse brooding, a small gang of White Supremicists invade the house. Although McHale and Brugel try to hide the fact that there is one other member of their group, the Nazis figure it out and send one of the crew out to get her. She is ready for him, and kills him with a broken ruler and a bundle of sharp colored pencils. 

That's sort of what this movie is about - a teen girl Home-Aloning a bunch of Nazis. It's pretty brutal - a dog gets killed, McHale gets killed, etc. The lead Nazi is played by, of all people, Kevin James, and not in a funny way at all. His enforcer, Robert Maillet (pro wrestler Kurgan), is pretty scary, but in the end, a little more sympathetic.

But it's all based on Wilson feeling that she has nothing to lose, especially after her father is killed. The gang offers to let her go in the custody of her new stepmom, and she essentially goes fuck that, never liked the bitch (Brugel is not a bitch, she is very understanding, but you know how girls are).

However, I felt the movie spent too much time on the teen angst, not enough on the Nazi-killing. The kill are all right (lawn mower to the head, for ex), but they just take too long to get to. I think I would have preferred something campier and more off-the-wall. I think I'll skip the sequel.

So this long weekend was a bit more successful than the last. I took fewer chances, went with more crowd-pleasers (me, I'm the crowd). Ms. Spenser even caught part of Equalizer 2, and thought she might enjoy it. Well done, me.