Go See This Now - Crime, Ghosts, and Enormous Balls

OK, you know the drill: this is where I recommend stuff for you to watch. So you're not as locked down as you were before; so you can go to the pub if you want. Will you? Methinks not. I suspect you're still in the market for entertainment, so have a shot at these. 

Assume this is on Netflix, unless I say otherwise.

Time To Hunt

2020, Korea, crime, action, thriller 

Small-time criminal Jun-seok leaves prison only to find that the loot he spent three year incarcerated over is effectively gone, as South Korea is economically devastated and it's now illegal to exchange the all-but-worthless Won for any other currency. He and his pals Jang-ho and Ki-hoon resolve to escape South Korea by knocking over a gambling house, since the house has stacks of US$ in its safe which they can use to relocate somewhere sunny and economically viable. So far so good, but they make a huge mistake; they steal the hard drives that contain the house's security footage, as a safety precaution Unfortunately for them the house could care less about the cash, but it cares a great deal about that footage as it contains evidence of their illicit doings. So psychopathic and extremely well-connected hitman Han is sent to kill them all. 

The Hunt Is On. 

Why see this? If you're a Night's Black Agents Director looking for inspiration, this is it. The Heist, followed by the extended Thrilling Chase. Plus some excellent gunfight and stuntwork moments, especially in the final crimsoned scenes on a deserted stretch of wasteland near the sea.

Betaal

2020, India, action, horror, zombies, TV show

 

An Indian army detachment nominally sent to disperse terrorists, but actually there to wipe out some inconvenient protestors on behalf of a corrupt land developer, finds more than they bargain for when zombies start chasing them down. The risen dead are all members of an East India Company regiment whose commanding officer led them to damnation in search of loot. Now the living soldiers have to hide out in the old fort the dead soldiers used to occupy, hoping to hold out till dawn.  Zombies with guns? It's not going to go well for our heroes ...

A little cheesy but there are some great action scenes, and it's fun to see zombies used in a more imaginative way. Suchitra Pillai as Commander Tyagi is a standout.

The 9th Precinct 

2019, Taiwan, film, action, cop drama, undead

Street cop Chen Chia-Hao finds himself inducted into the 9th Precinct when his partner is shot dead in front of him, only to discover that dead isn't as dead as he thought. The 9th Precinct exists to police ghosts, and to resolve their situation as best as possible so they can move on or at least stop bothering the living. It's a nice mix between Beetlejuice's dark humor and a conventional cop drama, as the Precinct cops realize that the increased undead activity they're dealing with is actually linked to a vampiric entity that's manipulating them all to its own ends.

Great action scenes, unexpectedly funny in places, and the lead actors are very charismatic and fun to watch.  

Ladda Land

2011, Thai, film, ghosts, horror

Businessman Thee gets a promotion and decides it's time to move the family out to the suburbs. He has his eye on a magnificent detached house in Ladda Land, where everything is as perfect as can be. Except he soon discovers the neighbors are less than friendly, and his economic situation takes an unexpected downturn when his boss runs off with the company's funds. Economically trapped in a house he can't afford, Thee soon finds that his neighbors had good reason to be unfriendly - and that there was a lot about Ladda Land he didn't know before he bought a house there.

Remarkably chilling, and it has an elegant answer to the two classic questions: why don't you move away? and, given all the evidence, why do you think this place isn't haunted? Keepers need to watch this; some really brilliant scares, jump and otherwise.

Below Zero

2021, Spanish, film, crime, thriller

Cop and family man Martin has been transferred, and his first job at his new posting is to assist in a prisoner transport. Some of the cons in his truck are high-ranking mafia types, so the idea is to keep the whole process below the radar as much as possible. The truck and its escort will be moving through desolate, snowbound terrain at the crack of dawn, to avoid attention as well as traffic. Except someone knows, and that someone *really* wants to get his hands on one of the prisoners. Trouble begins when the escort is knocked out and the truck ambushed in the middle of nowhere, but things get much, much worse ...

Tense, but not a chase movie. Most of the action takes place inside the stalled transport truck, and if you'd told me ahead of time that this would be the perfect setting for what amounts to a locked room mystery I don't think I would have believed you. It almost makes me want to set a one-shot in one of those vans myself.

Pom Poko

1994, animated, film, Studio Ghibli

1960s Tokyo is expanding rapidly to meet the demand for suburban housing. This spells disaster for the tanuki, intelligent and supernaturally gifted raccoons who, up till now, have led peaceful lives in what was the countryside. Now their homes are under threat, either because those hills and fields are slated for development or because construction companies are illegally dumping construction waste onto whatever green spaces are left. It's time for all good tanuki to band together to fend off the humans, scaring the dickens out of those pesky construction workers with their shapeshifting powers.

OK, it's a Studio Ghibli, which means many of you will have heard of this one already. But have you watched it? Or is this something in your to-watch list, while more eye-catching fare like Porco Rosso and Spirited Away grab all the attention? If the latter, time to move this up in the queue. Brilliant ghost action; my favorite's the nupperibo scene, but there's plenty of options to pick from.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Rats In The ATM (Night's Black Agents, Mumbai)

Only time for a quick one this week as there's a lot on. Among other things I'm directing a play - first read-through today - and making a cheesecake for my birthday, cos I like cheesecake. ;)

This one borrows from Ken Hite's Looking Glass Mumbai as well as this article about an ATM whose contents were devoured by rats.

Now to the story seed:

Making Bank

This broadcast is a one-day silly season attention getter for most media outlets, but for the agents it's a different story. There's enough detail in the Indian press to indicate the involvement of a Bhuta, possibly more than one. Although the Western press have only picked up on the ATM incident it's clear from Hindi outlets that this is the third incident of its type in the last three weeks. It's the first to involve an ATM; the other two were less eye-catching. Interesting side note: all three events have taken place within walking distance of Antilia, allegedly the largest private home in the world. Moreover a 0-point Traffic Analysis or similar discovers that at least one member of the Antilia's staff were near or on the site of each incident moments before it occurred. In fact a senior staff member was the last person to use the ATM before its rodent infestation. Is this Conspiracy action, or something else?

Option One: Unwelcome Guests. It's a curious fact known to few (1 point High Society or similar) but the family that built Antilia don't live in it. They hold parties and events there, but as soon as the last guest leaves so do they. Rumor has it this is because they fear bad luck; experts say the building has bad Vastu Shastra. The experts aren't wrong; the building has become a magnet for Bhuta. In fact the building is so crammed with spirits that some of them are ranging out into the wider world in search of excitement. The staff are very well paid and know better than to tell anyone about what's going on, particularly foreigners; no amount of reassurance or bribery will work on them, though Intimidation mixed with Occult Studies or Vampirology might. It's not the Conspiracy this time - but getting too close might get someone hurt or killed.

Option Two: Shot Across the Bow. The local Conspiracy Node is leaning on Reliance Industries, which is controlled by Mukesh Ambani, owner of Antilia. Reliance is in a range of different industries from petrochem to telecom, retail, and special economic development, so the Director's free to choose which of those lines the Conspiracy is interested in. Reliance also does business with Russian interests, so depending on the nature of your Conspiracy it might be his Russian friends that got him in this fix. Regardless, the Conspiracy is making its position plain: so far we haven't hurt you - but we could. Submit. Rescuing Ambani from this threat could earn the agents a powerful friend, the kind that can grant Excessive Funds.

Option Three: Good Staff is Hard to Find. A senior member of staff (of a total of 600) has drifted too close to the vampires. She might have found a Conspiracy asset or an unaligned bloodsucker, but whichever it was snacked heartily. The staff member didn't quite die, but it was a very close thing. Now her paramour wants to seal the deal - it wants a loyal Renfield at Antilia, and thinks the staff member is ripe for the plucking. However the frightened woman is hiding in Antilia, and there is some Bane or other preventing the vampire from getting in and taking what it wants. The Bhuta are a side-effect of the vampire's presence; it can't get rid of the things, much as it would like to.

Enjoy!

Yo Ho, Yo Ho, It's a Pirate's Life For Me (Night's Black Agents)

Spare a thought for former sniper Ray Tindall and his mates, arrested by the Indian authorities and currently spending what could be a very long while in jail. Tindall is one of six Britons working on behalf of anti-piracy organization AdvanFort, of a total of 35 crewmen of various nationalities sentenced on illegal weapons charges to five years hard time, in the MV Seaman Guard Ohio incident.

AdvanFort describes itself as "a leader in providing comprehensive maritime shipping solutions for the commercial shipping industry." There really is something about corporate speak that sucks the fun out of everything, up to and including adventure on the high seas. However its Frontline Tales from the High Seas is worth a look, even if the writing sometimes descends to Wascally Wabbit High Pulp.

The MV Seaman Guard Ohio is a private security ship. Operating off the African coast, an October 2013 storm brought the Ohio into Indian territorial waters. When the authorities searched Ohio, they found cashes of prohibited weapons that, according to the Indian government, the crew had no permits for. There is considerable dispute about this, and at one point the Madras High Court dropped all charges. However that doesn't seem to have satisfied the powers that be.

The crew spent nine months in jail before being bailed, and have been unable to leave India. It seems that their current dilemma is the result of some kind of legal gymnastics. After the High Court quashed the charges in 2015, it asked the sessions court to determine whether or not the weapons were part of the normal armament of the vessel. If they were, then the Ohio was exempt from India's Arms Act. Things seem to have gone south rather swiftly after that, and now the Ohio's crew face jail time again as a result of the sessions court ruling.

"The [court] ignored every one of their own Indian laws, every one of the international laws, and decided to prosecute and jail us," Tindall said. "There's no grounds for what they have done."

You might almost think that someone with influence in the Indian government was very upset with AdvanFort for some reason.

The area Tindall and his mates were supposed to be patrolling is  sometimes referred to as Pirate Alley, but more commonly known as the Gulf of Aden. It's not cheap to hire a company like AdvanFort to help keep your oil shipments safe; one source has it at $50,000 per journey. That's aside from incidental costs, like the increase in your insurance premiums for starters. India has a vested interest in the Gulf, as it gets $50 billion worth of imports and sends $60 billion worth of exports through the Gulf annually, quite apart from the massive oil tankers that go through the Gulf each month.

Although hiring outside security contractors is a generally accepted practice, it's not a practice everyone's happy with. Many of the people these contractors hire are ex military or special forces, and while they certainly know what to do when it all kicks off, some of them may not be as well behaved in port, which is why many port cities refuse to allow them to disembark with weapons.

Incidentally for those ships too small or insignificant to merit a personal bodyguard - private yachts, small freighters and the like - but also too foolhardy to do the easy thing and just not go to the Gulf,  standard practice is to ship with weapons aboard, often hidden so the customs people don't see them. And that's how you get a very cheap holiday in Somalia, the country you will never be able to leave. Not unless someone pays the ransom, anyway.

It used to be said that Soviet ships were bad news for pirates, because their crews tended not to give a tinker's cuss about customs regulations, or international law, and were often armed with AK-47s which make a very nasty mess out of your average pirate skiff. However this was in the bad old pre-Putin days; no doubt peace and love prevails now.

Piracy doesn't stop with kidnapping and ransom. To illustrate this, consider a very nasty case from China back in the late '90s. A 17,000 ton freighter, on its owners books as the Hai Sin, was sold to a scrapyard in Guangdong. The breakers searched the ship before taking her apart, and found a locked refrigeration cabinet in the hold that nobody had touched in years. When they cracked it open, the stench was like nothing on earth. Eventually, after searching through the slurry on the floor, they found ten skulls, but no personal effects of any kind. Forensic examination showed that the remains were Caucasian, with no signs of violence. Presumably the men had been herded into the refrigeration unit and left to die. The remains were never identified.

In this instance, the target was the ship itself. Whoever had taken it, whenever they'd taken it, had forged a completely new identity for her. Probably the paintwork had been changed and some minor work done to alter its appearance, while the paperwork was diligently forged. Then she was passed on from one syndicate to another, each of whom used her for whatever purpose they saw fit. All the while the original crew were still in the hold, long forgotten, until her last owner decided to make a few bucks by scrapping the Hai Sin.

Often the final fate of a ghost ship like this is some complicated insurance fraud. The rusty old bucket is loaded up with 'valuable' cargo and wrecked somewhere. When the Mary Celeste was still afloat, that crime was called barratry.

Or you could try a bit of sanctions-busting. When South Africa was still under apartheid, for example, one popular pastime was to smuggle South African crude in ships that did not legally exist. It reduces the risk to all concerned if the ship isn't really a ship, since if some interfering busybody does detain her in a foreign port the syndicate behind it all can cut its losses and let the law try to work out which clue, among the vast array of forged paperwork and shell companies, actually points to the ship's true owner.

What about human trafficking? With your own ship, you can deliver bodies anywhere they're needed. Chinese snakeheads have been known to use this technique very successfully. One of the more notorious escapades in this line is the Golden Venture, which wrecked off of Rockaway Beach in Queens, New York, in June 1993. A total of 286 immigrants were rescued, detained, and mostly deported over the next few years. It wasn't until 1997 that President Clinton finally released the remaining 52. The Venture, renamed United Caribbean, ended up an artificial reef off the coast of Florida.


So what does all this mean for a Night's Black Agents Director?

For starters, it's an excellent backstory for a player character. I prefer not going into a lot of detail when it comes to character backstory, as it tends to get in the way. However I do have a section called In One Sentence, where the character's life so far is described in, wait for it ... one sentence. So in this instance it might be something like 'Ex Special Forces who worked for an anti-pirate security company in the Gulf, until his last mission aboard a ghost ship, which ended with the deaths of all his mates.' Blessedly simple, plus there's a touch of Alien crossed with Residential Evil, which has its points.

It's not a bad way to involve extra-governmental organizations, like Dracula Dossier's Edom. Many of the places that are currently affected by piracy, or involved in the piracy fight, are former British colonies, or places where terrorism festers. Edom might have many reasons either for having been there in the past, or for wanting to be there now.

It's an atmospheric means of introducing new clues, in interesting locales. Take the Hai Sin as an example: soon-to-be-scrapped freighter turns up in a foreign port, perhaps somewhere inaccessible to Western intelligence agencies, with a hold full of corpses. Except this time rather than have the bodies completely unidentifiable, leave something useful behind; the Edom flash, for example, or perhaps some other insignia. Now Edom's got to be curious: if it doesn't have any missing people on its books, who are these poor souls? Alternatively, is this all that's left of the team sent out on Operation Ulysses many years ago? What happened, who owns the ship, and where's the Conspiracy's hand in all of this? 

Here's another: Retrieve the Jack. A former Edom hard man, member of A Squadron, takes up with a marine security agency after leaving Edom. The agency may even be a very-off-the-books Edom asset in its own right, perhaps a means of keeping an eye on China's Room 452, or its jin-gui program. Then things go wrong when the Jack, along with his crewmates, is pitched into an Indian prison on trumped-up charges. It soon becomes clear that the Jack is undergoing special interrogation, and the Indian authorities are either cooperating willingly or being coerced. How to get the Jack back, without permanently souring relations with India?

That's all for now. Enjoy!