No. 354 : Who Is Erin Carter? (TV) (2023)

 

Who is Erin Carter at the IMDb

If you are going to give your TV series an interrogative title it would probably makes sense that you ensure that after enduring 7 episodes your audience is likely to give a shit; but I didn’t.

This by the numbers and cliché-ridden Netflix drama could be seen as a harmless pastime but the lazy writing and terrible acting made it feel like a complete waste of time.

The timeline of the series jumps around a bit but basically you have a woman living with her husband and child in Barcelona – but there are secrets! Things start to unravel when she stumbles upon a supermarket robbery and takes down one of the baddies who recognises her. We’re meant to be impressed by her fighting skills, but the bad guy goes down like he’s in the WWF and all our girl does is some high-level shoving. One robber escapes and Erin is worried her cover may be blown.

What cover you ask? Well, a long flashback shows her at police training college and quickly kicked out when she beats up an annoying fellow cadet. The predictable shady man from black ops invites her to join his division and within five minutes she’s infiltrated a gang and helping with a bullion robbery. You’d think someone with more that a week at training college would be a better option, but a quick training montage puts that concern to bed.

The robbery goes tits up with one woman bank robber seemingly getting killed leaving her annoying daughter at a loose end. Erin confirms her recruitment was a total arse up when she flees to Spain with the child and sets up a new life.

Unfortunately, the supermarket robbers, who wear the same animal masks as at the bullion robbery – they must have gotten a job lot, - know Erin was the rat in the crew and soon the mysterious ‘Mr Big’ is after her.

Fortunately, Erin has a gullible husband and a helper in the shape of Emilio, who is a cop and who is happy to get involved in Erin’s manipulative schemes. Elsewhere a local bitch is making Erin’s school teacher ambitions difficult, but fortunately local businessman Duggie Henshall is on hand to exert some influence. I don’t think Henshall ever got over being outsmarted by Supercrew in ‘Common as Muck’ as he’s absolutely dreadful here. He looks like someone reading lines in a language he doesn’t understand who’s also late for a dental appointment. It gets worse when you get the predictable big reveal!

The meagre plot is spread wafer thin over the 7 episodes with the annoying daughter’s visions and drawings of people in animal masks and her behavioural issues being a complete bore. You do get the lovely Susannah Fielding from ‘This Time’ – A-ha – but she is given precious little to do apart from being a busy body at Erin's school. 

The whole farrago is meant to be like a female Jason Bourne with our heroine displaying mad skills – in truth the fighting and action are very poor and lacks the visceral punch of those movies. There is one decent car crash, but you can tell the budget went on that as the flashback sequences in ‘England’ show a sun baked paradise where they forgot to put down road markings – a bit like Barcelona really!

Evan Amhad does OK in the lead with poor material, but she didn’t convince whatsoever as a pocket dynamo superspy with multiple layers and a complicated past. She is better than her husband Jordi however, who looks like he wandered onto set looking for a lost dog.

The whole production seems by the numbers with no doubt a Spanish language version shot at the same time. There are a lot of subtitled sequences and it looks like an international audience was the plan from the start. I’m sure this made fiscal sense for the bean counters at Netflix but the result is an unsatisfying offering that will doubtlessly play equally bad in all markets.

The finale was unsatisfying, not least because it suggests a sequel may be in the works. If you want a Lady Bourne straight from Wish.com this may be the offering that you seek, but otherwise I’d suggest the answer to the question posted by the title is ‘couldn’t care less’.

Best Bit: The police car chase was ridiculous but a good smash up at the end.

‘W’ Rating: 9/23

No.253 : Waterfront (1944)

Waterfront at the IMDb

Here’s a bit of an oddity - a 1944 American film that barely scrapes past an hour and is essentially a propaganda film. Still, we’re a broad church at the ‘W’ Movie Blog so let’s have a look.

The film opens as a man is being wrestled down at the docks after dark. No, not like that. Some passing drunks alert the cops but the man denies he’s been molested despite the drunks’ protestations. It turns out he’s the local optician and after getting in a predictable ‘they should get their eyes tested’ line he’s sent on his way.

It quickly transpires however that he was indeed robbed and the reason he couldn’t tell the policeman is that he’s a Nazi spy and all that was taken was his code book. Soon he’s joined by Marlow (John Carradine) who is also a Nazi agent keen to get his orders deciphered - a task rendered impossible by the loss of the code book. The two plan to shake down some local suspects but not before Carradine has scored himself some lodgings a guest house, having threatened the landlady’s family with a concentration camp back in the homeland.

The landlady’s daughter is stepping out with a young insurance agent who is near a life changing deal and he works for a German American who runs the insurance company - keeping up? Carradine doesn’t believe that the code book theft was a random robbery and he’s proven correct when the thief makes contact seeking $5000 for its return. The remainder of the film is taken up with cross and double cross as the code book remains elusive. Will it be recovered and will the nest of spies be rounded up?

As an oddity this film was OK but it lacked any credibility or tension. There was never any doubt that the spies were going to get caught and the method to make it so was somewhat drawn out and convoluted. There was plenty to aid the war effort not least the German American writing a confession to the FBI so that others wouldn’t make the same mistakes he did.

Carradine was always watchable but as a spy he was rubbish - no one notice the foreign chap with the large floppy hat down the docks then? Did his excessive tips not draw attention or his subtle plan of buying editions of every newspaper before throwing them away in frustration in front of the news vendor seem unusual?

He was quite brutal with three enemies dispatched in the same way - his Mauser raised (note : don’t use a German gun for your murders!) and fired while the victim died off camera - ‘Reservoir Dogs’ this was not.

Despite being just over an hour the film managed to tack on an unnecessary romantic subplot which added nothing apart from some wholesome values for the folks back home.

I wouldn’t go and seek this one out but if it shows up on TCM or somewhere, it will pass an hour without too many demands being made of you.

Best Bit : Why are you hanging about the docks?
‘W’ Rating 12/23