An adaptation of the comic book, Red Sonja, a vengeful warrior known as a “She-Devil with a sword”.
Chuck says:
It becomes evident while watching M.J. Bassett’s “Red Sonja” what a difference having an A-list director and budget makes. The script by Tasha Huo isn’t half-bad as it recounts the origin story of Robert E. Howard and Roy Thomas’ creation before sending her out to seek vengeance on the barbarians that wiped out her tribe. The writer also weaves in a pro-ecology subtext, making the titular character a sort of eco-warrior in opposition to a self-serving emperor with designs on razing the landscape for personal gain.
It’s not spectacular but serviceable for genre fare such as this and deserving of far better treatment than it gets here. But what dooms the movie are the pedestrian sets, cheap special effects and bland direction. Having been completed and sitting on the shelf for nearly three years, it’s obvious the producers were far from pleased with the end result.
With her Marvel Comics debut in 1973, Red Sonja soon became a mainstay in the “Conan the Barbarian” title. A fierce warrior with a wardrobe of questionable practicality, the character’s first appeared on screen in 1985 with Brigette Nielsen in the title role, an underachieving production that has since garnered cult status. Efforts to bring the character back in a feature film have been ongoing for over 15 years, talent attached the project only to leave, lawsuits also delaying it. If only it had been stymied once more…
Matilda Lutz dons the chainmail bikini for Bassett’s production, and it soon becomes apparent, the enthusiastic actress is in over her head. Required to engage in hand-to-hand combat as well as sword-fighting derring-do, she simply doesn’t have the physicality or conviction to pull off her big action scenes and with a film of this nature, that’s a big drawback. Yet, she soldiers on as Sonja is captured by the malevolent Draygan (Robert Sheehan), who wants to conquer the world, and then forced to become a gladiator, fighting others who’ve been taken for sport.
The sequences in the arena of battle are a chore. The CGI effects of the cheapest quality, while Bassett only shoots the most basic coverage, leaving her editors with few choices to work with. The results are rote, repetitious action scenes that fail to obscure Lutz’s awkwardness. And don’t get me started on the poor cyclops they’re forced to battle. The monocular brute must have escaped from a middle school video project.
Of course, Sonja’s too good a warrior (HA!) to stay captured long. She escapes once she finds there are survivors from her original clan living in a forest Draygan wishes to raze in his effort to find the other half of a magical book. Once she finds them, she realizes that she and the would-be emperor are connected in a way she could have never predicted.
The score by Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli, employed to bring a charge to the lackluster action, is grating, its constant presence a distraction. Had Huo’s script been lensed by a seasoned action director, cast with veteran performers, and been given a $100 million dollar budget devoted to first-string special effects, “Sonja” would have been a solid start to a would-be series of films. Unfortunately, Millennium Films simply didn’t have those resources at their disposal, and it shows. What with superhero films on the wane and no one clamoring for a “Conan”-like franchise, it’s hardly likely we’ll see the She-Devil with a Sword grace screens anytime soon.
2 Stars
