Dirty Angels

Source

• IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23872640/
• Platform: AppleTV+

Rottentomatoes Rating

The movie stars Eva Green as Jake, as tough Army Ranger leading a team of female soldiers on a mission to rescue kidnapped schoolgirls in Afghanistan, aside from Eva Green been on the movie I also had some expectations given Campbell's track record with the James Bond movies GoldenEye and Casino Royale but at this very short part of the post you already know my opinion so let me dissect the movie a bit instead of you giving a bad review right from the front gate.

Campbell is still grinding away at making action movies which is impressive at his age of 81, even though he might be on the same age of some other directors say Eastwood, he is not that much recognize now days but if it was the early 2000s would be different. His record as a director is a mixed bag, ranging from those excellent Bond films to The Mask of Zorro and even the not so great Green Lantern with Ryan Reynolds, to put it gently, Dirty Angels goes to that extreme of Green Lantern so lest not sugar coat it.

Aside from everything else one thing I don't complain that much is the cinematography that get to capture the harsh landscapes well enough and the action scenes, when they finally happen, but there is something missing here and truth is that this is a movie, it needs to generate feelings and reactions that needs a good dialogue. I kept waiting for the movie to give me something to generate those feelings, say example a character I cared about, a moment that surprised me or even just a bit of fun, but instead we got a movie that feels hollow and the only focus is trying to show off female soldiers, like we didn't know Eva Green can take a beating, she have played though has nails characters before so there was no need to exaggerate it.

What's particularly frustrating is that there's potential on the idea, if they could put up something closer to Lone Survivor and The Kingdom of Heaven, when it comes to script but the same concept of the movie, even if they want to push the female soldiers team it would work, but I guess that's me asking to much or putting things into the perfect scenario. The idea of an all female special ops team going undercover in Afghanistan, a place where women's rights are severely restricted could have made for a compelling narrative with something meaningful, the ideas are not the problem since some of them are bold and tentative its the fkn dialogue, there is also the lack of context and character development, never digging deeper into its characters or themes.

Something that really really trigger me is now Jake; role played by Eva Green, refuses to learn her team members' names, instead referring to them by their functions, The Bomb, Medic, Shooter and Geek, who does that? who was the military advisor to this movie?.

Eva Green is given much less to work with here as Jake, she spends most of the movie in two emotional states, grumpy or glum. She is clearly trying her best with the material, bringing determination to the role but the character is so mentally weak and weird written that there is not much for her to grab onto. It's only in the final rescue sequence that she really comes alive, showing a ton of intensity that makes her such a great actress. It's hard for me to believe this is the same Artemisia I love from "300 Rise of An Empire".

The violence during the movie is very graphic and doesn't hold back, with people getting shot in the head or stabbed in the neck in brutal fashion, got to love those moments, but this violence doesn't seem to serve any purpose beyond shock value, this is not a slasher movie, we wanted more tactical action. The film doesn't have anything meaningful to say about the conflicts against ISIS Militantes, that it try to describe or the people caught up in them, it truly feels like its violence for violence trade, without any style or weight to it.

The pacing is perhaps the film's biggest issue, it takes far too long to get to the action and when it does arrive, it's competently staged but lacks any real excitement, there are a few nice kills that gets that dopamine flowing but never a real rush. The moment they finally storm the compound where the girls are been hold, I'm at the point of the movie of "its finally over.

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