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Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

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A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

'Angel of Vengeance', or 'Ms. 45' as it is better known, this early career urban drama from Abel Ferrara follows a mute woman who becomes mentally unhinged after being raped both on her way home and upon arriving home after startling an intruder. Hardly ever smiling and conveying all emotion through her expressive eyes alone, Zoë Lund is superb in the lead role and the film gets off to a strong start as she initially takes a semi-rational approach to the double rape. Having killed the second rapist, Lund dismembers the body in a darkly comic manner, carrying it out of her apartment in bits and pieces. These early scenes come with some neat horror touches too, like Lund imagining blood and guts coming up from the drain of her bathtub, and as alluded to, the first half of the movie is quite strong. The second half though pushes the boundaries of both credibility and audience sympathy as Lund goes from accidentally shooting a man who followed her down a dark alleyway, to viciously killing all men who try to pick her up, to going out of her way to seduce and then murder as many men as she can lure. Understandably, she is meant to be psychotic by the end of the film, but she also becomes complete unsympathetic as she starts seducing men just in order to have victims, all the while using the one gun with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of bullets (!); plus, she is a perfect shot every time. The final attack scene that the film builds up to nevertheless needs to be seen for itself and there is something to be said for the film giving the revenge thriller formula a feminist spin.

Maybe they couldn't think of something to add into the plot, which is a bit skimpy? The basic theme is great, ie, disadvantaged female gets even with creeps who deserve a good slapping. And does she deliver!A superb performance from Zoe Lund (aka Tamerlis), who doesn't say a word, but manages to say truck-loads just by the looks she gives.But then it seems to go on a bit without really saying (!) much or achieving much. A pity, and I would have liked a better ending.Others in the cast, and the director and producers combine to deliver and interesting, and different movie. One that could have been better. I've given it a 7, and will happily watch it again.

Ms.45 is a low budget flick from cult director Abel Ferrara. We are back to the seedy streets of late 1970s/early 1980s New York where lurking in every corner are rapists, muggers and assorted bad guys.Zoe Lund plays Thana, a mute seamstress in the garment district who gets raped twice in one day and slowly goes mad and goes hell bent on a revenge spree very much in the vein of Death Wish and The Exterminator.The plain looking Thana transforms to a more erotic looking vixen as she actively seeks out men to punish, hence why she is Ms .45 because of her gun.The climax of the movie is a fancy dress party where even men genuinely interested in Thana's well being are in danger as she loses all control.The version of the film I saw had been cleaned up for Blu Ray, although the grimy New York of the time only got cleaned up by subsequent Mayors of the city who realised the value of the tourist dollars.The film is rather raw, some of the acting is uneven. Zoe Lund is a marvel as the vulnerable Thana.Abel Ferrara was well known in the early 1980s for his video nasties but that label is unfair to him. He really did make the best he could with meagre resources, genre films with a feminist bent.

I saw this last night and found it very interesting. But surprisingly, I wasn't very disturbed by it. I've pretty much become desensitized to these kinds of films since I've seen so many. So, looking at it from a filmmaking point of view, I found it visually bland for the most part, even for a low-budget film. Then again, I watched it on youtube. Now that I think about it, though, the sheer rawness of the whole thing actually suited the film better than if it were more visually imaginative, as this is primarily a rape and revenge film. How much more visually appealing can you make it? One of the things I really admired about the film was how dark and perverse it was, and how it leads you through the dark underbelly of New York City. Thana gets harassed left and right and finally decides to fight back, but she goes too far by killing innocent people and even causing one to kill himself. After being sexually assaulted multiple times, it does permanent psychological damage to her, and she essentially kills because she fears she may be raped again. In a way, she reminded me of a female Travis Bickle, as Travis violently lashed out against society because of what he saw and experienced in his community. The ending is bitter irony, as Thana is killed by a female, and one of her personal friends at that. Throughout the film, she had been targeting only males, as they are the ones who harassed her. After she's stabbed in the back literally, she also talks for the very first time in the film, saying her friend's name as she falls to her death.The final sequence where Thana is dressed in a nun costume and guns down several people at a club is one of the film's most haunting moments. But really, all the kills in the film are memorable, and unappealing at that. Thana isn't glorified and neither are her actions.