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After a brief recap, where we were reminded of Ettie doing her best Vera Lynn act, cheering up the troops with a good old sing-song to keep their chins up and pass the time till another one of them gets shot in the head. I was also amused to watch Inspector Grace with his predecessor-to-mobile-phone type walkie-talkie, which by comparison to today's technology, seemed the size of a small fridge.
He also seemed to have changed his whole image overnight. The quick-to-judge-wrongly cop who decided Dennis was a serial killer, and put Jenny Hartley down as a granny-basher, now seemed to be the hero who might just save the day (so long as the Feds listen to him, of course). Rather than bursting out with dubious theories, he was just bursting out. (If his scarlet polo shirt was anything to go by.) Well, he had the SOGS (I presume these are SAS type soldiers, and not the clay animation puppets they sound like), the ammunition, the coffee, and the Benny Hill-style comedy binocular shots looking through an 8-shaped hole.
Joan had not only suffered at the hands of Ballinger's men, but also at the hands of a disgruntled make-up lady it seems, with what looked like half a pingpong ball glued to her face and painted red.
Loved the scenes where the tension was obviously starting to affect those involved. Not only were the women arguing at times, but the cops were too, and so were the terrorists. I also loved the look of horror on Myra's face at the realisation that someone really would have to die - very subtle, but very powerful. As a follow-on from this, the scene where Tammy was dragged into the corridor and shot was very exciting, shocking and moving. And the cliffhanger - Myra to chose the next victim - with the expression on Myra's face.. Excellent stuff!
"They think there's a dozen of us out there, all with machine guns," said one of the gun men to the women. Obviously with powers of telepathy, because I can't imagine how else he would have known the cops knew that, unless they'd been telling him all their plans and assumptions. I was a bit confused for a moment, when two SAS-types burst into the rec room, and announced "Hi, where're the terrorists?" This sounded so much like "Hi, we're the terrorists," that I thought they'd gone and washed their face paint off and come back in a cheery mood.
Naturally, they bungled about trying to unlock gates as noisily as possible without looking around properly or being particularly careful, and got killed straight away, leaving the women to get on with their own plans. Several attempts to overpower the baddies failed, and I was particularly impressed with Lexie's plan to scald one of them with hot cooking fat and eggs. Although we had a close-up of a couple of eggs spitting and frying nicely, when she made the switch from 'frying eggs' to 'flying eggs', a hellova lot of liquid seemed to come from somewhere, suggesting the pan must have been full almost to the brim with water. Perhaps she'd a change of plan and decided to do poached instead. Meanwhile, poor old Julie was crawling around nervously in the air conditioning ducts. Luckily, the prison seemed to have removed those filter things that got Suzie Driscoll trapped and almost killed when she tried that short cut route. The look of fear on her face, the claustrophobia of the duct, and the occasional eerie light shining in through vents, reminded me so much of the Alien films. I was on the edge of my seat, waiting for the hideous reptilious Queen to appear and finish her off.
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