AP:

Masked soldiers deployed on domestic soil and an air of conspiratorial paranoia give Adam Wingard’s not-quite-grindhouse siege film Onslaught a contemporary pulse, even if this lean, B-movie thriller doesn’t deliver much more than a flicker of its throwback promise.

Wingard, though, does seem freshly liberated in this return to his low-budget thriller roots ( You’re Next, The Guest). He has since spent the last decade in more IP-managed releases: the 2016 Blair Witch sequel, a Netflix adaptation of Death Note and a pair of Godzilla vs. Kong movies.

But the 92-minute Onslaught, written by Wingard and his regular collaborator Simon Barrett, is intentionally straightforward — to the point, you could say, of brainlessness. It’s aiming for a very simple slasher setup in the mould of John Carpenter: A single mom and PTSD-riddled former Army sniper, Celeste (Adria Arjona), living in a desert trailer park, defends herself and her young daughter (Blake Kennedy) from an invasion of three highly programmed super-soldiers who have sprung out of a nearby military contractor facility.

Even though Onslaught begins with a clock that’s already ticking below 12 hours, the movie takes its time leading to a bloody finale that isn’t quite worth the drumbeat. But Wingard is in no great hurry, and he lingers in the anticipation, for better and for worse.

So early on we get Dan Stevens (deliberately hammy) as a suspiciously old, white-haired Nazi scientist crawling across the room to lick the stiletto-heeled foot of his wife and co-conspirator (a queenly Rebecca Hall, suggesting great depth in her few minutes on screen). From the bodies of dead soldiers, Stevens’ mad scientist has engineered three elite killing machines. They are devoid of personality, with beady lights for eyes. Still, he’s given them nicknames: the Butcher (Alex Pereira), the Cockroach (Dave Campbell) and the Crybaby (Tyler Hall).

They get out, of course, and begin causing trouble. Onslaught likewise lingers on the quickly dispatched operative, Cyrus (Drew Starkey), sent to clean up the ensuing mess. Wingard delights in introducing the character, who’s more drugged up and charmingly laid-back than your usual cleanup expert. It’s a lot of set-up for a guy who, ultimately, doesn’t do much.

But what’s the rush? Wingard also takes his time surveying the female bodies at the S&M club Cyrus is attending when we meet him, just as he does looking over some of the bloody wreckage left by the super-soldiers. He even, momentarily, takes one of their perspectives in a random killing at a gas station convenience store — a point of view that’s hard to justify, considering there’s no other attempt to consider the inner horrors of the brain-dead soldiers.

They start unleashing mayhem across a Western plain that looks like it could either be where Wile E. Coyote chases the Roadrunner or the setting of Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland.

Onslaught has a bit of both. The movie is best in its leisurely depiction of life at the Windy Oasis, the trailer-park remove where Celeste has found some rough-hewn sense of peace — away from society and with plenty of room for target practice.

Reginald VelJohnson and Eric Wareheim gamely play Celeste’s neighbours, adding to the eccentric ensemble. But Onslaught is most of all a chance for Arjona, a supporting standout in Hit Man and Splitsville, to show some leading-woman grit. And she does that in Wingard’s quirkily contradictory movie: gleefully violent despite its military satire, curiously unhurried despite its title.

Onslaught, an A24 release is rated A-18 for strong bloody violence, some gore, sexual material/nudity, and language. It is coming soon to theatres.

Running time: 107 minutes.

Rating: Two stars out of four.

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Hollywood has given us some classic mismatched buddy cop movies, like Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy in “48 Hrs.,” Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker in “Rush Hour” and perhaps the most iconic pair — Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in “Lethal Weapon.” Now, make room for Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Mark Wahlberg.

The latest duo stars in “By Any Means,” an opposites-attract movie with real historical heft, set against the racial and political violence of the American South in the late 1960s and told with blood-splashing power and blunt elegance, courtesy of director Elegance Bratton.

Here we get Abdul-Mateen as a by-the-book, Southern-born, wet-behind-the-ears, Black FBI agent teamed up with Wahlberg, a jaundiced New York Mafia hitman, two characters crossing the racial, North-South and polite barriers.

Unable to crack the 1966 firebombing murder of Mississippi NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer Sr., the FBI turns to Wahlberg’s Gregory Scarpa, letting him loose off the books to solve the case. The Ku Klux Klan is everywhere, especially in law enforcement, and that means Scarpa’s got to crack some skulls, no warrant, no problem. “Nobody can know,” the pair are warned.

Bratton and scriptwriter Sascha Penn artfully straddle the various divides and historical animosities while delivering a propulsive, muscular and unvarnished action thriller, a sort of “Mississippi Burning” for a new generation. And, it must be noted, at a time when white Christian nationalism has once more reared its ugly head.

“By Any Means” is one of those “based on true events” movies that gives the filmmakers the chance to have their nonfiction cake and eat it fictionally, too. While it might seem historically fanciful that J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI ever called in a hitman to hunt the KKK, Scarpa was a real guy, an FBI informant enlisted amid intense pressure to solve the murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi. It’s his FBI buddy who never existed, a “composite,” as the press materials note.

So full credit to Abdul-Mateen, who has created a complex, charismatic character from thin air, taking his agent Wayne Strider on a slow-burn trip from all tucked-in, waiting-outside respectfully to car-chasing, gun-shooting revenge-fantasy hero.

Wahlberg, meanwhile, grips every external item we know of Scarpa and holds onto them for dear life: An ever-present toothpick in mouth, a prosthetic nose, a mop of ungainly hair, a white tank top, sunglasses even at night. Wahlberg has apparently rewatched “The Sopranos” a lot.

The movie is buoyed by an amazing supporting cast, like the terrific Nicole Beharie as Strider’s wife, LisaGay Hamilton as a key witness and Giancarlo Esposito as Dahmer. The pastel costumes and bulging, chrome cars are gorgeous. The soundtrack features Nina Simone, Ray Charles, Dinah Washington, Curtis Mayfield, and an anthemic title jam by Diane Warren, performed by the Isley Brothers and David Kushner.

It’s the interaction between the hitman and the FBI agent that’s at the heart of the movie, along with the lingering question of whether violence can ever be a corrective. The Mafia guy’s methods — smashing skulls, breaking bones with a baseball bat, putting guns into mouths — stun his partner. And while the violence gets a bit excessive, it’s kind of thrilling to see gutless KKK members beaten to a bloody pulp over and over.

Scarpa is a fascinating alien in rural Mississippi, a slab of Italian American muscle who stands outside the racial divide. He’s just there to do a job, nothing more. But when asked what he’d do if he ever faced such racial animus, he replies: “I’d kill them all, every last one of them.”

Our FBI agent isn’t impressed. He despises his Mafia partner so much that, if forced to choose between him and the KKK, he knows which way he’d lean: “At least they believe in something.”

The tension between the two men boils over into a “48 Hrs.”- style, knock-down fistfight. At this point, the movie veers off the rails a bit, culminating in a very bloody conclusion. But that doesn’t dim the introduction of a very effective new movie cop pairing — Abdul-Mateen and Wahlberg.

“By Any Means,” a Paramount Pictures release in theaters starting Sept. 4, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “violence/bloody images and pervasive language.” Running time: 107 minutes. Three stars out of four.

Story: Bani (Taapsee Pannu) and her husband Gokul (Ishwak Singh) are shell-shocked when their five-year-old daughter Mishty is abducted in broad daylight from Joypurra, a fictitious town in West Bengal. Consumed by guilt over her perceived negligence, Bani joins Gokul in a desperate search for their daughter, which eventually leads them to a child-trafficking racket. Things take a dramatic turn when Bani loses her eyesight. Can she still find her daughter and bring her back?Review: With its Bengali backdrop, missing-person mystery, woman-on-a-mission narrative, revenge angle and vulnerable protagonist, Gandhari seems designed as a spiritual successor to Sujoy Ghosh‘s terrific Kahaani (2012). But while Kahaani drew its power from atmosphere, restraint and a riveting central performance, Gandhari keeps reaching for bigger and louder moments without earning them. Vidya Balan‘s performance in Kahaani immersed you in the world of an unsuspecting woman driven by fear, grief and determination. Taapsee Pannu, meanwhile, is pulled in too many directions here. The film turns her into a full-fledged theatrical action hero, complete with elaborate fight sequences, but in doing so, it loses sight of the actor and the emotional complexity she can bring to a character.The biggest problem is the writing. Gandhari seems determined to incorporate every thriller trope in the book—abduction, child trafficking, revenge, a mysterious woman, a morally ambiguous antagonist, a physical disability and an action-heavy climax. Instead of enriching the narrative, these elements compete with one another. The story moves at such a frantic pace that it rarely gives tension, fear or emotional turmoil enough time to breathe.The twists feel engineered rather than organic, and several developments are far-fetched enough to weaken the emotional investment. The film wants the audience to feel the desperation of two parents searching for their missing child, yet the writing never quite creates the empathy or anxiety that the premise demands. You remain aware of the mechanics of the plot rather than becoming emotionally consumed by it.Ambiecka Pandit’s recent crime mystery-thriller Babita Singh Reporting, starring Nimisha Sajayan, is a terrific example of how a female-led drama can explore multiple conflicts while remaining firmly rooted in its central theme. It finds nuance in its characters without sacrificing the thriller elements. Gandhari, by contrast, seems so determined to be an all-rounder that it keeps moving away from the very story it should be telling. The result is a predictable chase thriller that occasionally feels like a throwback to 1990s cinema. The dated villain close-ups, the exaggerated face-off and the south-style action climax sit awkwardly against the film’s otherwise contemporary premise. Female-led films have come a long way in recent years, and you miss that contemporary sensibility here.Among the cast, Swastika Mukherjee makes the strongest impression. Playing a silent watcher with ambiguous motives, she brings an unsettling stillness to the film that it desperately needs. There is something sinister and intriguing in her presence, even when the screenplay refuses to fully capitalise on it. Chhaya Kadam does what she does best, but for an actor of her calibre, the role offers little challenge. Taapsee Pannu handles the physically demanding action sequences well, but you miss the performer beneath the choreography. She is capable of far more, and this feels like a performance she needs to break free from. Mita Vashisht lends the film gravitas simply through her presence, while Ishwak Singh, Jatin Sarna, Prashant Narayanan and Priti Shroff are all grossly underused and deserved considerably better parts. The title Gandhari carries an obvious metaphorical weight, so it doesn’t take long for the viewer to connect the dots. But the metaphor never acquires the emotional or thematic depth it promises. The central abduction ends up frustrating you more than frightening or angering you, partly because the screenplay keeps reminding you that you are watching a constructed thriller rather than allowing the situation to feel genuinely terrifying.Writer-producer Kanika Dhillon has previously created fiercely rebellious, complicated characters in films such as Manmarziyaan and Haseen Dillruba. Her collaboration with Taapsee here, however, feels surprisingly forgettable and generic. Director Devashish Makhija stages Gandhari like a 90s revenge drama, complete with an over-the-top action finale and a theatrical villain confrontation. There is a potentially powerful film buried somewhere inside Gandhari, one about parental guilt, female rage, helplessness and the lengths to which a mother can go to reclaim her child. Unfortunately, the film’s need to constantly escalate the drama prevents it from finding that emotional core. The production also lacks a sense of authenticity. Despite being set in West Bengal, the film often looks unmistakably like it was shot in Mumbai, never convincingly recreating the texture or atmosphere of the region. The cops’ angle, too, feels like a missed opportunity, introduced without enough purpose or payoff.Gandhari has the ingredients of a gripping thriller, but not the restraint to let them work. It tries too hard to surprise, too hard to entertain and too hard to turn its protagonist into an action icon. In the process, it forgets the simplest thing a thriller needs: a reason for the audience to care.