‘Anek’
This sprawling and incisive action thriller from the Indian director Anubhav Sinha offers a distinctive glimpse into the divergent political and cultural identities found in India’s northeast.
It’s seen, partly, through the eyes of Joshua (Ayushmann Khurrana), an undercover agent who must choose between the love of his girlfriend, Aido (Andrea Kevichüsa), a boxer pursuing a spot on the national team who is unaware of his government ties, and a mission to undermine a rebel group secretly led by Aido’s father (Mipham Otsal). While Joshua gathers intel, guerrilla warriors continue their fight against what they see as an oppressive government.
The exquisite compositions by the cinematographer Ewan Mulligan capture the ensuing destruction across the lush northeastern Indian countryside not through a salacious lens, but with an aching beauty that outlines this rebellion in determined strokes. A one-shot track down a dirt road to a field engulfed in flames is one such rapturous image. A war sequence involving roadside bombs set to a hectic organ score is another that acknowledges the diversity of this subcontinent while noting the unavoidable results of a region not allowed to choose its own identity.
An introverted teenage girl, Mahiro (Saori Izawa), walks into a humdrum convenience store seeking a job. She interviews with the manager in a cramped office and rarely makes eye contact as she offers despondent answers to his tedious queries. Does she actually want to be here, or is this merely a perfunctory act? Before long, Mahiro runs out of patience and viciously murders the manager. Then she faces off against the shop’s young, strapping clerks, frantically stabbing them with a box cutter as an interpolation of the “Psycho” score thrashes in the background.
In Yugo Sakamoto’s wickedly fun crime flick, Mahiro teams with another extroverted killer, her roommate Chisato (Akari Takaishi), as employees of a “Charlie’s Angels”-style, hit-woman company battling vengeful members of the Yakuza. Those crime bosses want retribution for their murdered employee, and they’ll stop at nothing to find and kill the two teenagers. A freeing whimsy powers every second of Sakamoto’s film, where a camera is mounted to a literal piece of cake, a toothpick is used as a weapon and a Yakuza safe house turns into a blood-soaked kill room. It’s a colorful and wild blitzkrieg worth savoring.
‘Code Name: Emperor’
Juan (Luis Tosar) is a fixer in Spain. If you need a problem to go away or require dirt, then he’s your man. When he meets Wendy (Alexandra Masangkay), a Filipino maid for a wealthy man suspected of dealing in dirty bombs, Juan uses her to bug her employer’s home. Juan, however, begins to mix business with pleasure when he falls for Wendy. And his world is further shaken when his benevolent boss tasks him with muddying the reputation of a prominent politician by embroiling him in a sex scandal.
“Code Name: Emperor,” directed by Jorge Coira, is a morally ambiguous tale written by Jorge Guerricaechevarría that manages to test its protagonist’s resolve to his toxic profession. Tosar is rugged and vulnerable in a performance that carries the film beyond your standard John le Carré riff. Instead, it is an emotionally intelligent action flick with as many soul searching scenes as piercing bullets.
‘Nairobby’
In most capers, the tightly calibrated run-up to a heist boils to a thrilling release when the pieces of a well-formed plan fall into place. However, “Nairobby,” from the Kenyan director Jennifer Gatero, takes a path more similar to Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs.” Occurring in the aftermath of the theft, the film follows six politically active college students who are so fed up with the system, they decide to take matters into their own hands by absconding with cash belonging to the dean of their school.
“Nairobby” opens stirringly, with the group crashing through the door of a country shack carrying a duffle bag filled with money and a badly wounded comrade. The primary action takes place in this confined shack and involves the paranoid Oti (Jeritah Mwake) interrogating his friends at gunpoint to snuff out a potential rat. These students-turned-hostages work to make alliances in the shadowy spaces and in the hide-out’s violet neon lights before Oti detonates. It’s a film whose thrills are firmly interested in the consequences of failure.
Within the world of Lee Sang-yong’s “The Roundup,” the brutal and muscular follow up to the 2017 film “The Outlaw,” Ho Chi Minh City is a safe haven for criminals. It’s where a nefarious Kang (Son Sukku) lures Choi (Cha Woo-jin), the son of a wealthy Korean banker, to a remote desert only to savagely murder him. The killing causes the brawny detective Ma (Don Lee) and his superior, Jeon (Choi Guy-hwa) to venture to Vietnam to extradite this sadistic criminal.
In the twisty script by Kim Min-seong, Ma and Jeon defy the local, crooked police to track Kang, who is so greedy, he travels back to South Korea to exact a ransom from Choi’s vengeful father.
As an action hero, Ma packs a major punch: He can send a villain flying through a wall with one left hook and battle an entire army of mercenaries without ripping his suit. “The Roundup” peaks with a broad set piece that begins as a claustrophobic fight and becomes a full-on brawl on a bus. Its precision is as marvelous as it is captivating.
