The Alien Girl

TedFlicks Rating:

$11.50 ticket on a scale of $0 to $13.50.

“The Alien Girl,” a shoot-em-up in Russian with English subtitles, delivers for those who like violence, action, bad language, and good looking naked girls.  Press materials say that the title is a reference to Ridley Scott’s “Alien” with Sigourney Weaver.  It’s bull — or at the very least mistaken.  Pic is the first feature helmed by TV director Anton Bormatov.  It’s an impressive feature debut.

Based on a graphic novel (Chuzhaya) by Vladimir “Adolfych” Nesterenko, a man who knows the territory (he belonged to Ukrainian organized crime in the 1990s), pic moves at a good clip, helped in large measure by an economical, 100 minute run time.

Set in the 1990s shortly after the Soviet collapse, plot is simple.  Angela (Alien Girl), played by newcomer Natalia Romanycheva, is at the center of a war between a Kazakh and a Ukrainian gang.  Depending on how one reads pic’s “Rashomon” aspect, she either was duped into or deliberately poisoned some top Kazakh gangsters on the territory ofUkrainian gangster Rasp (Eugene Mundum).

Her brother, now in police custody, is about to spill his guts on Rasp, who knows that his only leverage to shut the guy’s mouth is his sister (Angela), whom he has dispatched to Prague following the unpleasantness with the Kazakhs.  There she is owned by gypsies after refusing to work as a prostitute.

Rasp sends a crew under the command of Kid (Kirill Poluhin) to kidnap Angela and return her to his custody.  Once sobered up, Angela quickly reads the situation and figures out that neither she nor her brother will survive if they end up under Rasp’s “protection.”  Just in case anyone thinks that the crew has scruples, a scene in which they use their car to terrorize a farmer hauling hay puts the notion to rest.  They do it just for fun.

Angela quickly sizes up the crew and identifies Whiz (Eugene Tkachuk) as most likely to be seduced.  It’s hardly Carey Grant and Eva Marie Saint in “North by Northwest” and the train from Prague to Bratislava is not the 20^th Century Limited, but it works — more like Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider in “Last Tango in Paris.”   He is under her spell but he is conflicted about murdering his mates.  She suffers no such problem, delivering the coup de grace with abandon.  Her plan is to get back toUkraine, kill Rasp, spring her brother from prison, and murder anyone who gets in the way.  Whiz signs on.  Pic then becomes a chase.  Fortunately for Angela, she knows where Rasp’s stash of cash is.  She’ll need it to ransom her brother from the cops.  The reel in which she gets it is actually, and probably unintentionally, funny.

Pic’s ending is equivocal.  Just when one is sure that Angela lacks the slightest shred of humanity, she risks her neck, albeit tentatively, for a stricken Whiz.  The final reel screams “sequel.”  The shot that nails the boy is one of pic’s few predictable moments.

Pic benefits from economical writing (Sergey Sokolyuk) and editing (Julia Batalova).  Lensing by Dmitri Kuvshinov and Anastasiy Michailov is film noire in color — a nod to the klatch of TV executives behind the production.  Bormatov’s direction also belies his TV roots:  He wastes no time.  He also succeeds in making a number of murderous criminals into sympathetic characters — no small feat — and we are not talking “Bonnie and Clyde.”

Pic is not rated by the MPAA, but your critic imagines it would get at least an “R” or an “NC-17” for sex, violence, drug use, and nudity.  A Russian radio host in the screening audience tells your critic that the English subtitles significantly softened the Russian slang.  If that is the case, “Alien Girl” may have the strongest language of any picture your critic has reviewed, because the subtitles are not exactly appropriate for Catholic school.  “Alien Girl” is not deep, but it has depth.  For adults with strong stomachs, it’s a pleasant diversion from the formulaic comedies, morality plays, and 3-D trash that Hollywood has foisted on auds in the past couple of years.

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