枪下新娘

　　缇娜（安娜·哈金森 Anna Hutchison 饰）带着十二岁的女儿贝斯（特丽莎·贝特曼 Talitha Bateman 饰）于午夜走在回家的路上，遇见了一群小混混，小混混们强暴了缇娜，贝斯作为目击证人将施暴者们的面容牢牢记在了心底。在法庭上，贝斯当庭指认了凶手，然而，被告方找来了一位毫无道德底线并且巧舌如簧的律师，他们联手栽赃缇娜，颠倒是非黑白，而法官也只想息事宁人。　　约翰（尼古拉斯·凯奇 Nicolas Cage 饰）是一名从业多年的老警官，虽然表面风光，但实际上他正在遭遇人生的中年危机。缇娜的案件激发起了约翰内心里熄灭已久的正义感，他决定挺身而出帮助这对可怜的母女。

　　在物欲横流的社会里，高利贷公司CowCow Finance的事业继续蒸蒸日上。然而，随着某日突然来访的，将社长丑岛馨称呼为“小馨”的中学同班同学竹本的出现，丑岛的过去逐渐被揭开。丑岛与盟友戌亥、得力下属柄崎和高田不得不面对来自知晓丑岛过去故事的最强敌对者鳄户三兄弟、与丑岛旧恨未了又添新仇的女性高利贷者犀原茜、欲要毁灭丑岛的十分有手腕的律师都阴以及立场无法判明的竹本的多重挑战，CowCow Finance史上最大危机来临……

　　Set in an underground dungeon inhabited by bundled, ragged human beings, after the nuclear holocaust. The story follows the wanderings of a hero through the situations of survival. People wait for the Ark to arrive and rescue them while their habitat falls apart.　　Delving deep into the dusty and long abandonded vaults of b-cinema in search of lost gems always leaves me with a bittersweet taste. On one hand the discovery of unexpected gems where no one would think them possible is a rewarding experience. On the other hand though it makes one wonder how many of these remarkable low-budget oddities, personal love affairs of directors never quite famous and now all but forgotten, have almost forever slipped from memory?　　n any case what we have here is a little post-apocalyptic gem from Poland that is really better than it has any right to. The dystopian near future of O-BI, O-BA finds a group of survivors of the nuclear war that ravaged the Earth inhabiting an underworld concrete bunker and biding their time as they wait for the mysterious Ark, an air ship of some kind that will come and save them. The Ark proves to be an elaborate hoax, carefully designed to give hope to the malnourished and desperate denizens of the bunker, while in the meantime the dome that separates their miserable existence from the nuclear winter outside is slowly caving in.　　What first striked me about the movie is the design of the bunker and the depiction of the survivors. The survivors are gaunt, filthy and terrible-looking penitents, dressed in rags and aimlessly wandering the neon-lit halls of the bunker like automatons. The bunker is a rundown, seedy place, with bright neon lights peering from all sides like the eyes of malignant beasts.　　On one hand it is a slightly 80's depiction of the dystopian future but the movie never stoops down to MAD MAX cheese. Instead it combines biting political satire with the bleak outlook of a world with no future, black comedy with barbs on apathy, religion and power. The survivors, for example, are fed some kind of flour dropping from a tube that hovers in the air - later on we discover the food supervisor uses books and the Bible itself as filler for this meagre meal. There are many such short symbolic touches, perhaps not life-changing or faith-restoring, yet playful, clever and inspired.　　One thing is for sure; O-BI, O-BA is not your run-of-the-mill sci-fi schlock. It overcomes its modest budget with creativity and has genuine artistic aspirations both from a writing and directing perspective. My opinion is that it should have been filmed in black and white instead of colour though. The director uses atmospheric light and shadow to great effect and it would have registered even better in stark black and white. The blue-green neon on the other hand outstays its welcome after a while. Just a minor gripe in an otherwise solid b-movie with its heart set in all the right places.　　Imagine a less bleak THE ROAD (Cormac McCarthy) being injected with the satire and humour of DR.STRANGELOVE and you're getting there. See it if you can find it.