Dirty Angels
Martin Campbell's latest is an estrogen-infused rendition of "The Delta Force."
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Now is probably either the best or worst time to release a movie about strife in the Middle East. “Dirty Angels” (available in select theaters including Indianapolis-area locations Emagine Noblesville in Noblesville, Ind. and VIP Legacy 9 in Greenfield, Ind. and on VOD beginning Friday, Dec. 13) doesn’t bring anything particularly interesting or new to the conversation, but it is a muscular and entertaining-enough women on a mission picture.
It’s 2021 and the United States is withdrawing from Afghanistan. Jake (Eva Green) is a spec ops soldier who’d been taken hostage and was the only surviving member of her unit to be exfiltrated. As soon as she’s rescued Jake’s offered another mission by her handler Travis (Christopher Backus). She’s supposed to go undercover with a group of fellow female fighters posing as relief workers in order to save kidnapped schoolgirls from the clutches of an ISIS faction led by Amir (George Iskandar).
Jake reluctantly accepts the assignment, but keeps herself at an arm’s length from her new team. She wants to know their functions; not their names. There’s explosives expert The Bomb (Maria Bakalova), Medic (Ruby Rose), techie Geek (Jojo T. Gibbs), sniper Shooter (Emily Bruni) and hand-to-hand specialist Rocky (Rona-Lee Shimon). There’s a male contingent as well in doctor Malik (Reza Brojerdi) and drivers Abbas (Aziz Çapkurt) and Afshin (Hadi Khanjanpour). We shouldn’t get too attached to any of these folks as they’re all gonna get placed directly in harm’s way.
“Dirty Angels” is helmed by veteran workmanlike director Martin Campbell and scripted by Paul Haggis’ daughter Alissa Sullivan Haggis and Jonas McCord (he was a writer and executive producer on the late 1980s/early 1990s Western series “The Young Riders”) from a story by Campbell and McCord.
Campbell has made a lot of movies – some of them good (“No Escape” (1994), “GoldenEye” and “The Foreigner” spring to mind); some of them bad (the less said about “Green Lantern” the better) … “Dirty Angels” falls somewhere in between. The man knows how to shoot and stage action and is ably assisted in doing so by his frequent cinematographer David Tattersall and editor Jim Page (who also cut the recent Christmas classic “Violent Night”). While a lot of the action is awesome; some of it’s awfully icky. I could go the rest of my life without seeing terrorists throw schoolgirls to their deaths from rooftops, but sadly sick shit such as this still happens.
“Dirty Angels” is a reunion between Campbell and his leading lady Green 20 years after they first collaborated on “Casino Royale.” Obviously, this film isn’t up to snuff with that one, but the pair appear to work well together. The movie much like Jake doesn’t have time for its supporting players and the focus remains primarily on Green’s protagonist. She’s up to the task imbuing Jake with equal parts badass and smartass.
“Dirty Angels” is a Millennium Media production and is further evidence that they’re the modern day Cannon Films. This is little more than an estrogen-infused rendition of “The Delta Force.” There’s a lot of good and bad that comes from this. The action is largely fun and more practical than a lot of what we get these days, but the picture’s geopolitical commentary could be accused of being absent, dated, misguided or altogether tone-deaf.