Sweet Karma

"Sweet Karma" have, what sounded like, an interesting storyline. Karma's sister Anna travels from Russia to Canada under the impression to work there as a housemaid. Karma never hears from her sister, never receives any money, and decides to go to Canada and look for her sister. Signing up with the same company that sent Anna to Canada, Karma discovers that it is in fact a human trafficking ring supplying prostitutes and erotic dancers. Bent on revenge, Karma takes down the ones responsible, one by one, and with every weapon at her disposal.

Sounded great, didn't it? Yeah, unfortunately there was nothing new or innovating to be seen in "Sweet Karma". It had all been seen in movies before; a woman out for revenge, an undercover cop in too deep with the bad guys, the woman bringing down an entire cartel all by her lonely self, and women being suppressed and forced into shady work. With those things lined up, "Sweet Karma" didn't really rise above mediocrity.

Don't get me wrong, the movie is actually quite good and manages to keep you riveted to the seat until the very end. But lacking new ideas and execution in movie style, then "Sweet Karma" was a bit tame.

The people in the movie were actually doing good jobs with their roles. And the lead role of Karma was played by Shera Bechard was particularly well performed, especially because she didn't speak a single word throughout the entire movie.

One of the things that I really liked about "Sweet Karma" was the feel you got from the scenes and scenery. It was gritty, dirty and foreboding. And that worked really well, because you had the sensation of being in a bad and low place; which the women also were. So thumbs up on the way they used that to the movie's advantage.

Personally, I just didn't fully buy into the story, that a woman singlehandedly could manage to unwrap the human trafficking ring all by herself and take them down the way she did. Some of the violence scenes were actually quite well executed, though, I will give them that. But in general, I just didn't see the storyline as that plausible.

"Sweet Karma" is good entertaining for an evening of movies where you don't have to use your brain. This movie invites you to just disable and sit back in the couch and watch it for being entertained. Now, I know that things like what was portrayed in the movie actually does occur all around the world, but still, the movie didn't leave me with any lingering afterthoughts in any regards.

The last few years have seen many an attempt at emulating the 'grindhouse' style of the 70s and early 80s, with the aid of retro graphics, editing and music, plus computerised filters applied during post production to give that cheap, grainy drive-in look and feel. Sweet Karma employs none of these fancy tricks, and yet it proves to be one of the more satisfying exploitation experiences in recent memory: the film-makers tell their cool revenge tale with the requisite levels of sex and violence, but without any of the artificiality or pretension that has spoilt many a similarly themed movie. For once, this feels like the real deal rather than an OTT tribute or parody.

Playboy playmate Shera Bechard plays the titular character Karma, a beautiful mute Russian girl who goes looking for her sister Anna (Patricia Stasiak), who travelled to Canada in search of work only to find herself forced into Toronto's underground sex trade by ruthless criminals. Using both her brains and her scorching hot bod, Karma sets about dispatching the low-life thugs, sparking a gang war in the process, and it's not long before Toronto is knee deep in dead scumbags. This plot clearly owes a lot to classic exploitation films such as Ms.45 and They Call Her One Eye, but it still manages to carve its own identity, helped by some believable performances, well executed brutality, and a few unexpected plot turns, including a cool twist ending that genuinely caught me by surprise.

Karma is a mute woman whose sister has been found murdered in the woods, apparently by some Canadian Russian Mafia types. Strike up the theme from the Godfather, we are in for quite a ride.

Revenge is on the mind of Karma, and so she goes undercover, posing as a stripper to seductively weave her way into the evil and corrupt underworld of really mean criminals. Of course she manages to obtain a plethora of weapons and with the assurance of a military trained sniper, blows away a long line of extremely harmful people.

Shera Bechard is sufficiently sexy and seductive as Karma, but the story is silly and wears thin very quickly. As diversion for an hour and a half on a rainy day, Sweet Karma is passable mind candy.

I saw the world premiere of this movie at the 2009 Fantasia Movie Festival in Montreal. I went in with an open mind, not necessarily hoping or dreading anything. But I have to admit, my initial thoughts were that the "rape revenge" thing has been done to death. It seems like an easy way to have sex and violence in your movie and draw the most typical movie-watching crowd (ie. an easy way to make a fast buck).

Sweet Karma surprised me. Right off the bat, the movie has a very dark and gritty feel to it that draws you in. Shera Bedard is awesome as Karma, avenging the death of her sister. Having the "heroine" be a mute added a great dimension to her character. She does a great job of expressing emotions and intentions through her eyes and body language. She's really believable as a shy young woman who has nothing left to lose and forces herself to take out her anger on those who're responsible. This also adds an unexpected complexity to the movie, since Karma can't tell her story herself. There are sporadic "flashback"-type scenes early on which help to clarify things, and these do a great job of helping us understand what's going on.

Most of the rest of the cast is great too. The Russian accents don't sound forced or fake. The main "bad guys" are especially despicable, and I found myself wanting Karma to succeed in her self-appointed mission. One exception is John Tokatlidis, who was neither believable nor very interesting. In fact, when his character is focused on about halfway through, the movie's quality goes down a couple notches. He manages to bring it down all by himself.

One of the big draws for me about Sweet Karma is the fact that it's a purely Canadian movie. The story is based in Toronto, and it was entirely filmed there. Everything was financed by the crew, apparently with no outside help. Unfortunately, it seems like the story could've happened anywhere just by changing a few words in the script. There were almost no recognizable Toronto landmarks, and very few Toronto-specific scenes except maybe the airport. There's a scene near the beginning of the movie where the bad guys are joking about forming a hockey team, but it feels tacked-on and out of place. Almost like someone said "Hey, this movie doesn't feel Canadian enough, let's add some hockey dialog!" Despite this, it's great to see a purely Canadian production that's so engrossing and entertaining. Maybe the fact that it doesn't really "feel" Canadian is a good thing since the movie can appeal to a bigger audience outside the country... if they cut out that scene with the hockey dialog.

Obviously, sex and violence were portrayed. But not in an over-the-top way, only in a realistic way that fit with the theme of the movie. This definitely isn't PG-13 stuff, but it's not gratuitous either.

The rest of the audience really seemed to enjoy the movie too. There was loud applause after the credits, and the questions that people asked the crew during the Q&A session showed a lot of interest.

I'm really glad I went to see Sweet Karma, it's an excellent take on the old "revenge" theme. For me, nothing will ever beat High Plains Drifter as the best "revenge" movie, but Sweet Karma comes close, and ranks right up there as one of the best movies I've seen recently. For a purely independent film, the production values were really high, even matching or exceeding some of the stuff coming out of Hollywood these days... especially the ones that pretend to be "nitty gritty".

Caught this film on Prime late at night (seems apt; right?). As a movie it is at once better than most of the poor reviews and worse than it has to be. I expect I am a sucker for any 'poor vulnerable girl left alone gets even with all who've mistreated her' stories and that's basically the plot here.

Shera Bechard does a pretty good job as Karma, an innocent mute girl from Russia attempting to avenge her sister's death at the hands of Russian sex traffickers in Toronto. It takes a bit of concentration to follow the timeframe as there are several flashbacks and the mute girl isn't explaining her backstory for you to understand her motivation. But that may be part of the grand design here.

Note her name: 'Karma', which in spite of how Anna explains her sister's name is really what her mission is. It's literary irony in the vein of Edgar Allan Poe. Don't tempt Karma!

Other than Shera Bechard the other actor of note is John Tokatlidis who plays the only other character with a substantive backstory - part of the twist ending so I won't reveal it here. Suffice to say the viewer should mind the other characters, even the baddies, because they do flesh out the picture somewhat.

Caveats: the violence is gory at times; the sex scenes are unpleasant; the club dancing is almost boring; the outdoor scenes are cold, dark and bleak; the language is crude and unimaginative - all deliberately so, to maintain the theme of the story, which is that the sex trade has absolutely NO glamour or nobility to it even if you think it might seem interesting, as a story theme, in just some macabre way. So it's easy to dismiss this as a 'bad movie' when it's really just a pretty good movie about really bad people in a really bad business doing really bad things (most of whom meet really bad ends).

Watch it late at night when nothing else is on - and pay attention. Maybe you'll see what I mean.