R | 1h 44m | Drama, Action, Suspense, Thriller | 2024
In October of this year, the 51-year-old British actress Kate Beckinsale starred in “Canary Black,” an action-thriller modeled after “Taken.” It was subpar in every imaginable way, and it was clear Beckinsale was out of her depth. A veteran of English period pieces and low-budget art house dramas, Beckinsale’s biggest failure was in failing to pull off a convincing American accent.
This week sees the 44-year-old French-born British actress Eva Green starring as the American Jake Jones, an army officer charged with rescuing seven teen girls kidnapped from a school in Pakistan by an ISIS terrorist group.
Not only does Green, another actress with an art house background, play a convincing American service member, she performs as if she’s been doing action flicks for decades. To be fair, Green has appeared in another action movie (“Casino Royale”). As a James Bond love interest, she pulled off the role, which required little in the way of anything really physically demanding.
A scene from “Dirty Angels.” (Lionsgate Films)Bond Alumni
Here Green is reunited with “Casino Royale” director Martin Campbell, who also made the 1995 Bond movie “GoldenEye,” my favorite Pierce Brosnan-era Bond flick. Campbell is one of six men to direct more than one Bond film. Knowing this going in gave me hope that “Dirty Angels” wasn’t going to be just another cheap, assembly-line, unimaginative action movie. Thankfully, it’s not.The movie opens in 2021 Afghanistan, where Jones and four male service personnel are being held captive in outdoor dog cages by an ISIS terrorist faction led by Afshin (Hadi Khanjanpour). Jones is thrown onto the ground and rocks are given to the four men, who are ordered to stone her. At first they refuse, but Afshin forces their hand by killing a civilian onlooker.
Once the first stone is cast, it’s followed by dozens more delivered by an angry mob. It’s not made clear why this is happening, but the biblical overtones are unmistakable. Jones is “behaving” like a man and needs to be punished. A partial rescue by U.S. forces interrupts certain impending death, yet the four men perish in the process.
The Enemy of My Enemy
Jump ahead to the present day at a Pakistani girls high school attended by both Caucasian and Middle-Eastern teen girls. All are herded up by Afshin and his band of goons who are looking for just one of them (May Kurtz as Badia). Badia’s father is an ISIS cleric currently being held prisoner by the Taliban. In the film, the Taliban isn’t presented as either good or evil, but rather as a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” sort of deal. The Taliban might be bad, but ISIS is worse.Trying to help Jones from making a dumb internal affairs decision, army subcontractor mercenary Travis (Christopher Backus) approaches her with a job. He’ll provide her with a team of female tactical specialists, and together they, Jones, Travis, a doctor, and a pair of Pakistani brothers will rescue Badia and six of her classmates.
Right off the bat, the premise struck me as a hybrid of “Von Ryan’s Express,” “The Dirty Dozen,” “Inglourious Basterds,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” and, oddly enough, “Charlie’s Angels.” Although not directly stated, it’s implied that some of the mission participants won’t make it to the end, and that is indeed what happens here.
In addition to the two Bond films, the New Zealand-born Campbell also directed the 1998 and 2005 “Zorro” movies, so he’s no stranger to this particular milieu and his experience shows. He knows how to deliver exciting set pieces that never overextend their welcome while simultaneously developing the narrative.
In tandem with his co-writers Jonas McCord and Alissa Sullivan Haggis, Campbell realizes that while gunfire, bombs, and car chases are integral to this type of movie, it will fall apart without an interesting, compelling main story, and a few surprise subplot twists along the way.
Towards the end of the first act, Travis hands Jones a fake ID with the name “Jessica Rabit;” that’s Rabit, pronounced “rah-BEET.” It’s the first of way too many times when other characters compare this to the animated Jessica Rabbit character in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” A little tension-breaking humor of this sort in a movie such as this can go a long way. Yet, the screenwriters simply go overboard with it to the point where it becomes beyond annoying and somewhat cheapens the more important messaging.
Other than this sizable faux-pas, “Dirty Angels” delivers exactly what fans of smart action-adventure want and even hints at a possible sequel without being too obvious about it.
