Three Films Make A Post: First There Were Ten…

And Then There Were None (1945): This mystery directed by René Clair is the first of a considerable number of adaptations of Agatha Christie’s best novel (and thankfully uses the US version of the book’s title, for while I’m all for not pretending the past was nicer or better than it was, I’d rather not have to type that one out) wherein ten people isolated on an island are murdered one by one in ways based on nursery rhyme that also mirror some hidden unpunished crimes they committed. Once the plot really gets going and the first characters have been killed, Clair’s direction turns increasingly moody and tense; things take on a feeling of Gothic dread mixed with a rather more modern paranoia.

It would be a perfect version of the material if not for the fact it replaces the grim ending of the novel with a ridiculous happy ending for at least a couple of characters. But then, many of the adaptations that follow will make the same – dubious – decision and this version of it does not ruin the film in any way; it just provokes raised eyebrows.

Righting Wrongs aka Above the Law aka 執法先鋒 (1986): A Hong Kong police Inspector (Cynthia Rothrock) on the trail of a prosecutor turned vigilante murderer (Yuen Biao) uncovers the much worse misdeeds of a colleague. A lot of pretty damn brutal violence ensues.

Despite some painfully obvious stunt double replacements – would it really have killed them to give the guy a Rothrock-style wig? – for some of the most dangerous stunts, the fights in this Corey Yuen Kwai joint are impeccable, highly creative and at times so brutal I felt myself wince on impact of bodies with hard surfaces. In the plot around the action, the film shows a total commitment to let terrible things happen to the kind of people who’d be absolutely taboo in US (or German, if we had action cinema, for that matter) films, providing proceedings a dangerous edge as well as a great basis for its melodramatic elements. Combined, it’s a bit of a classic.

Kill Boksoon aka 길복순 (2023): Boksoon (Jeon Do-yeon) is a hassled single mom as well as a legendary professional killer working for one of these absurd and fun organizations of killers movies about killers adore so much. Eventually, inter-organization political intrigue puts her on the kill list of her employers, which turns out to be a bit awkward for the bunch of killers and killer adjacent fools she’ll have to dispatch.

Byun Sung-Hyun’s action movie is very much on the stylized, comics (manhwa?) affine side of this sort of thing (and most probably influenced by the John Wick films), clearly having a lot of fun creating the underground world Boksoon is eventually going to smash while providing space for ample amounts of cool to brilliant action.