Just when I was down in the dumps concerning the gonzo-led death of watchable pornography, Britain's Dick Bush brings "Monarch", a well-made and exciting mix of explicit sex and spy movie derring-do. It's hiding out (in plain brown wrapper?) as a miscellaneous new release from Digital Playground.
Styled like so many porn features of the past year or so as a serial that clocks in at a whopping 220 minutes long, "Monarch" is the name of a British spy organization, not the government but perhaps a reflection of the current privatization craze. It's wonderful to see Sensual Jane in an acting role as super-spy Holly Chase who in the back-story gets hold of a secret device (capable of giving its holder a shot at world conquest) by which she downloads all of her memories and expertise into her daughter played by Yank actress Eva Lovia.
Eva emerges as the star of the film and does a wonderful job in all departments: beauty, acting, sex, even patter with the movie's ringer in a non-sex role, "Fred Passion", who plays Agent James London as an interesting cross between Daniel Craig and Jared Harris (!). He's good enough that I suspect it's a real actor hiding behind a pseudonym as starring in porn ain't great for one's mainstream career.
The fight scenes and shoot-out set pieces are convincing for a change, and the film looks rather big budget -not on the level of Digital's huge hits (and catalog money- spinners still a decade later) "Pirates" and its sequel, but more than adequate. Porn veteran Nacho Vidal is excellent as an actor (also getting plenty of humping in too) as Prof. Skywalker who the various villains force to do bad things for them, while Amazonian Ava Koxxx steals the show as a hench-woman who is even more impressive than the recent eye-popping TV performance by Jennifer Cheon as a similar hench-woman on "Minority Report". Let's put it this way: Cheon is the much taller of the two but Koxxx has the 38G's.
Villainess is Franceska Jaimes, fast becoming the most interesting anal specialist who can both act and hump and chew gum at the same time in a growing string of new movies. Most recently she was also impressive in Bush's "League of Frankenstein" while merely hot in his "The Doctor" riff on Dr. Who.
