First and foremost, Sean and Claude are celebrating their adjacent birthdays this week. That’s something that neither knew about the other until after they’d started on this project. So, Happy Birthdays to us!
Second, Claude really wanted to call this episode “Girls Kicking Ass,” but he chickened out and didn’t petition Sean to change it. So, “Female Thieves” it was and “Female Thieves” it remained. (Yes, we have used a few of his episode titles. Sean isn’t a total despot about these things.)
But the fact is, the girls do kick ass in these two films, and they don’t even bother taking names, ’cause that’s just going to slow them down in their pursuit of whatever they’re pursuing.
And while both of these films involve women and their capers, it’s interesting to see that they have vastly different approaches to them, based on circumstance and motivation.
To that end, we begin with 2000’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It’s directed by Ang Lee and stars Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yeoh. This is a highly-stylized Wuxia film whose action sequences are simultaneously tough to believe and breathtakingly beautiful.
In Part Two we jump to 2018 and a film called Widows, directed by Steve McQueen. In this film, Viola Davis leads a group of women to steal $5 million, a big chunk of which is needed to pay off a local crime boss. It’s loosely based on a British TV series.
COMING ATTRACTIONS:
In Episode 50(!), we look at a pair of films that somehow managed to inspire television shows, although you may not realize it at first. We’ll start with 1953’s Stalag 17, then move on to 1992 and a film called Singles. Based solely on the plotlines you may be able to guess which series they inspired. However, you’re going to have a tough time drawing the line from A to B regarding plot points and characters.