Horror encounters
The action-horror flick is the preferred choice of HBO asia’s first original film, deadmine.
ACTION-PACKED sequences, treasure hunts and supernatural beings – the necessary ingredients for a Hollywood horror film – can be expected in HBO Asia’s first English language action-horror feature flick, Dead Mine.
Judging from the growing popularity of films and drama series dealing with horror and the supernatural, it isn’t surprising that HBO Asia has jumped on the bandwagon to create such shows that have wide appeal among viewers. Vicepresident of programming Erika North said it was a conscious effort to create the horror flick as movies and TV serials of this genre rated highly among Asian viewers.
“Action horror touches the right buttons with our viewers. The fact that the movie has an international cast and elements of Asian mythology with horror action seemed like the perfect fit for our first feature film,” said North during a phone interview from Singapore recently.
Dead Mine is about a rich young man and his group of experts who venture deep into the Indonesian jungle in search of treasure. Things turn awry when they find themselves trapped in what is seemingly an abandoned World War II Japanese bunker and face the terrifying reality that the only way out is further in.
The movie is directed and cowritten by British director Steven Sheil, best known for his work on black comedy Mum & Dad.
Dead Mine boasts an impres- IT seems bizarre to want to resurrect a story that first received the big screen treatment so many years ago. The Firm, based on a John Grisham book, was a 1993 film starring Tom Cruise. While Cruise has aged in those 19 years (although not as much as the rest of us), it seems the story about an honest lawyer working for a sinister firm remains relevant. Which may be why we now have The Firm, a TV series revolving around the same character, 10 years after the events in the film.
Watching the show, it becomes clear what is irrelevant is a lawyer who seems to genuinely want to be the ultimate good guy in and out of the court room. (Personally, goody two-shoes lawyers are why I gave up Harry’s Law and Fairly Legal.)
For The Firm, the audience is immediately updated on those missing years – Mitch Mcdeere (Josh Lucas) goes into witness protection after he brings down the leader of a mob deeply connected with the prestigious law firm he worked for.
When the said guy dies in jail, Mitch resumes his family name and lives more sive cast from different parts of the world. Britons Sam Hazeldine and Les Loveday take on the role of former soldier Stanley and the pampered lead character, Pryce, respectively. Malaysian actress Carmen Soo plays Su Ling, Pryce’s girlfriend. Also in the cast are cult Japanese action star Miki Mizuno, Singaporebased Japanese actor Jimmy T and Indonesian actors Ario Bayu, Bang Tigor, Joe Taslim and Mike Lewis.
Shot over two months (November and December, 2011) openly, even starting his own law office. Mitch learns later that the leader’s legacy is now in the hands of his son Joey Morolto Jr. So, at the start of the series, Mitch has to look over his shoulder once again.
But the mob threat is something that just lingers in the background ... for now. For the first few episodes, The Firm prefers to concentrate on Mitch as a great family man and as a very good criminal lawyer.
Mitch’s decision to join the witness programme was because his wife was pregnant. Now he has a 10-year-old daughter with his wife Abby (Molly Parker), a teacher and Mitch’s sounding board.
Parker (of Deadwood) is competent in the role of a loving wife and mother, and she does in Singapore-based media company Infinite Studios’ new facility in Batam, Indonesia, the film will be given theatrical releases in regional Asian territories followed by exclusive television premieres across the HBO Asia network in the middle of the year.
North sounded hopeful the film would serve as the start of more original content from Asia.
“The experience working with Infinite Studios on this production has been a first step and wonder- ful experiment. HBO United States, HBO Central Europe and HBO Latin America have been successful in creating productions and the time has come for HBO Asia to follow suit.
“The Asian film industry is in a healthy state and there are a lot of talents from Asia. To produce our own content is therefore a natural progression for us. Dead Mine is a first step and we are keen to produce more in future.”
For Sheil, it has been an immeas- have chemistry with Lucas. Unfortunately, the domestic story of the Mcdeeres is, erm, dull. This very same problem also crops up with the other couple on the show – comprising Mitch’s brother, an ex-con named Ray (Keith Callum Rennie), and Tammy (Juliette Lewis).
Ray and Tammy both work with Mitch at his office – Ray is a private investigator and his girlfriend does all the administrative work. For some strange reason, Lewis seems to be channelling (American environmental activist) Erin Brokovich as Tammy (from the clothes right down to the attitude). Again, the actors playing these characters are great, and individually the characters are all right. But put the characters together, they don’t gel, you just want to tune them out even though And Dad.
Dead Mine also benefits from the involvement of key creative talents such as in-house production designer Ian Bailie, who served as supervising art director on Atonement and Pride And Prejudice, and awardwinning Australian cinematographer John Radel who has worked on feature films, including Gillian Armstrong’s docu-drama Unfolding Florence and The Philosophers.
Stunt and action choreography works are coordinated by Action Horizons, which operates the Waterworld show at Universal Studios theme park in Singapore, and credits include movies The Usual Suspects, Air Force One and Killers.
Bali-based artist Orlando Bassi ( Legend Of The Seeker and Portable Life) helms the prosthetics and special effects division. n Follow Dead Mine on deadminethemovie.tumblr.com. Look out for more information soon on deadmine themovie.com. For more details, go to hboasia.com. their chatter is far from idle.
These not-so-little talks the four engage in are usually about a case Mitch is working on. Here’s another bump: the cases Mitch brings to court resemble cases we’ve seen on other shows. Dirty judges and taking down big companies are two examples done on The Good Wife at a much more exciting pace.
Perhaps the only difference is The Firm shows how a small fry lawyer would approach cases like this, instead of a big law firm. Now, wait a minute ... Mitch does work for “a firm” by the end of the second episode. (Of course, there has to be a shady company in a show called The Firm, right?) On the face of it, Kinross & Clark seems like the perfect place to work in, but one of the the senior partners (Tricia Helfer) is secretly working against Mitch on a case. This case makes up the long-arc thriller part of the show.
Every episode of the series begins and ends with Mitch facing danger sometime in the future as he discovers more and more about this case involving the death of an old woman. It may not sound like the most interesting case in the beginning but this portion of flash-forward is the best thing about the show. It has actor Lucas running, jumping out of the building and looking very confused, and us (the audience) kind of intrigued, but just not enough. After all, we’ve seen the going back and forth between the past and the present in unravelling a criminal case in Damages.
It’s unfortunate I draw a lot of comparisons with other law series. What’s worse is that this show is lagging behind against this stiff competition. In the end, the smart thing to do is to leave the past behind and move on. It’s been reported that The Firm only has one season. n The Firm is aired on AXN (Astro Ch 701) every Sunday at 9.50pm.