In short: Dirty Weekend (1993)

After her supposed boyfriend breaks up their relationship in the shittiest way possible, Bella (Lia Williams) moves from London to a British seaside town. There, she is at least verbally abused by every man she meets. A neighbour (Rufus Sewell) from across the backyard begins watching her and treats her to increasingly threatening phone calls and behaviour. Eventually, Bella visits an “Iranian Clairvoyant” (so it says on his door), played by the totally Iranian Ian Richardson who also verbally abuses her little, babbles some nonsense about her either having to stay the lamb or become a killer and gives her a switchblade.

Afterwards, Bella first murders heir neighbouring tormentor with a hammer, and proceeds to kill various assholes. On the way, we learn that fat shaming a guy is completely fine with this film’s style of feminism, meet and see killed David McCallum, rapist dentist, and listen in on Bella’s always overblown voiceover narration.

At some point in time, our old enemy Michael Winner must have seen Abel Ferrara’s Ms .45, and decided he can do that too, and proceeded to make what amounts to a feminist (well) remake of his Death Wish, just as a really vile comedy. For yes, much of the film is apparently meant to be very, very tongue in cheek. I wouldn’t go so far as to call the film “funny”, mind you, for its sense of humour is based on the sort of would-be arch, mid-brow sort of thing that’s the bane of all comedy, as expressed through dialogue (the script was apparently written by Winner and Helen Zahavi, who also wrote the novel this is based on) that’s supposed to be terribly ironic, but seems to spend much of the time impressed at its own cleverness; which is the least clever thing to do, obviously.

There’s also the problem that the humour and all the horrible shit Bella is confronted with before and after she snaps really isn’t funny at all. Worse still, the film often seems to genuinely believe this stuff is all very funny and satirical indeed, quickly convincing at least this viewer that he’s in the hand of a monumental asshole. So yeah, it’s a typical Michael Winner movie in this regard.

As it is in others, also, like the shoddy technical filmmaking, the scenes that go on too long in the most self-indulgent manner, and the general air of something made by people who really, really want to shock you but mostly end up being annoying and a bit icky, like flies in the summer.