Death List
Directed by: Ara PaiayaStarring: Ara Paiaya, Robert Tai, Raquel Paiaya, Bey Logan, Vinnie Wilson Synopsis: Ara Paiaya stars as “Night”, a modern-day assassin who uses a samurai sword to despatch his targets. After botching a job in which his boss’s rival drug dealer managed to escape, Night is shot and left for dead by his boss. He barely survives, although has complete amnesia, and he is rescued by Master Tai, who puts him through a rigourous training regime, teaching him deadly hand-to-hand combat. Once he is ready, Night hits the streets as an urban vigilante. Death List Trailer from Ara Paiaya on Vimeo. Review:Having recently impressed by Ara Paiaya’s Maximum Impact , I’ve decided to look over his other low-budget films. Death List, it turns out, is basically a “sizzle reel” of scenes from his previous films with some new footage to try and gel it into a cohesive story. The results are mixed: the story as a whole kind of hangs together - just don’t look too closely at the stitching. What Death List does provide are two things – Ara’s high quality stunts and fight scenes, and – something I wasn’t expecting – a real feel for physical comedy.Death List doesn’t start out very well – a ponytailed, poncho wearing “Night” arrives on horseback to a forest to despatch his foes. The scene is at best a top-end, “let’s make a movie at the bottom of the garden” kind of home-movie. However, mixed in was a nifty “flashback” showing his potential victim’s crime, shot on super-8 camera to give it a real Grindhouse look and feel. Things improve infinitely when Night undergoes a tortuous training regime by Master Tai. Ara does a good job of selling the progress from novice to acrobatic, lethal fighter. Not only that, but the sequence is an excellent homage to Drunken Master, and contained a really funny scene where “Night” has to learn how to eat his meal using chopsticks, that genuinely made me laugh out loud. I was much more impressed with both the camera-work and the editing in Death-List, than I was with Maximum Impact: no Paul Greengrass/Blair Witch style shaky-cam here. A scene where Night is thrown into the boot of a car was very well edited together as well. Where Death-List shines is in the fight-scenes, which are divided into two camps. The first are set in the forest, like the training scenes. I was initially going to write these off (see my “lets make a movie at the bottom of the garden” comment) but most of these work really well – especially the ninja fx, which reminded me of the excellent “Duel to the Death”. Also, there is one death-scene involving a guy being impaled on a broken tree branch which was really well done. The second set of fight scenes are the urban vigilante fights. A fight where Night takes on three muggers in an Underpass is a great appetiser for the bigger showpiece in a chop-shop. Here Ara really shows that he can put together a great fight sequence, using the setting and props to maximum advantage. Ara also mixes in some Tony Jaa – style elbows to the head in amongst the more traditional HK fight moves. Verdict: Running at just over an hour in length, Death List should serve as a good introduction to the talents of Ara Paiaya and his team. If you can get past the badly delivered dialogue and bare-bones plot, there is a hell of a lot to admire here: Ara is producing a little bit of Old School HK magic right here in little old England. 6 out of 10 (MikeOutWest)
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