3 stars
Bad guys kidnap innocent girls and hold them hostage. Outraged good guys ride in to rescue the girls and kick bad guy ass.
Even those who don’t spend as much time at the movies as professional critics do can name a half-dozen action movies that use the same basic plot as a framework for a lot of gunplay and explosions. Some are only good enough to be background noise as you do other things, and some make you stop everything to settle in and watch. Dirty Angels falls into the latter category.
Directed by Martin Campbell, the film features plenty of well-choreographed action sequences, something an audience can expect/demand from the guy responsible for two of the best movies in the James Bond franchise: Goldeneye and Casino Royale. There’s more to it, though. Campbell is a strong enough director to let the story breathe between things blowing up and smart enough to let both the bad guys and the good guys enjoy the respite. More time is spent with the good guys, who also get the better backstories, but that’s to be expected.
Dirty Angels stars Eva Green as Jake, the damaged good guy leader whose last mission went so terribly wrong that all her team was killed, some of them executed at point blank range while she made her escape in a helicopter, all the time kicking and screaming against her rescuers to let her go back. Green has done her fair share of action movies, most notably playing Vespa Lynd opposite Daniel Craig’s Bond in Casino Royale. While there has been a certain level of glamour in her past roles, it’s all been stripped away for her performance as Jake. She looks rough. Really rough. Jake is damaged and angry and doesn’t care what her fellow soldiers, her commanding officer, or, to be honest, the audience thinks about it. All that matters is the mission. And maybe, if it’s successful, her reputation as a soldier.
Unfortunately, the rest of Jake’s team is so underdeveloped that it’s hard to care what happens to them when the bullets and bombs start to fly. It’s telling that Jake doesn’t want to know their names, only the skill set they bring to her team. Emily Bruner’s character is Shooter because she’s a sniper. Ruby Rose is Medic because she’s a medic. Maria Bakalova, who played Ivana Trump in The Apprentice so convincingly, is The Bomb because she’s a demolitions expert, although it could also refer to her lack of believability in the movie. Watch any scene where The Bomb is clumsily holding a rifle, and you will understand.
George Iskandar is the top bad guy, Amir, and is convincingly creepy, especially with his disturbing announcement that he will let his hostages go if one of them – the one he thinks shows “spirit” – becomes his bride. It’s a weird twist that doesn’t work or get developed in the story, but it cranks up the bad guy levels in Amir to 11, giving the audience more reason to cheer when the good guys, as expected, triumph in the end,
