Con’s Score: 3 Blow waves
Charlie’s Angels hasn’t had as many reboots as Spider-Man yet, but the question: “Why?” is raised. I sat in an audience wondering if I was amongst the few who will have seen all three generations of Angels.
Charlie’s Angels was amongst the first tv series that showcased girl-power, although they were working for men. Bosley was their portly, lovable case manager who acted for the secretive Charlie. But the driver was the triumvirate of women: the sensible, the active brunette and the deceptively dumb blonde who were all hair, high kicks and smarts to overcome their fiendishly dumb males. The Drew-Lui-Diaz trio took the comedy and action to another level. Elizabeth Banks – who wrote, directed, produced and acts in this – drops a lot of the comedy and takes this into sixth gear.
It opens with an action scene in Rio where Sabina (Kristen Stewart) and Jane (Ella Balinska) capture a crime lord Aussie John, played by Asian actor, Chris Pang (nice twist Miss Banks). The action sequence is the first pleasant surprise. It’s pretty good.
Enter Bosley, Patrick Stewart, who represents the original Bosley through some tacky photoshop and gives knowing nods to their predecessors. He’s retiring and in the next pleasant surprise we realise Townsend Enterprises is now an international organisation with angels all over the world, so it’s not a reboot, but an extension of the original concept. He’s being replaced by Julia Banks, who gives herself a much more of an important role.
Of course, the world is being threatened. This time it’s by a clean energy alternative called Calisto, which has with an in-built flaw that can accidentally-on-purpose kill anyone remotely. Only Elena (Naomi Scott) can fix it, but she’s almost killed when she tells a German Bosley (Djimon Hounso) her fears in Hamburg.
Enter the assassin, Hodak (Johnathan Tucker) who looks a lot like the Terminator 2 and is just as indestructible. The two Angels, Sarina and Jane fight him off, but this is the first of surprises in this action sequence. There are lots of bullets, and good guys die.
The action switches to Istanbul where they find Fleming (Nat Faxon) who’s trying to sell it Calisto from under his boss’ Brock (Sam Claflin) nose. And then back to London for the final showdown – so the multi-city location box is resoundingly ticked. We also have the technical genius, Saint (Luis Gerardo Mendez) who is also their cook, nutritionist and psychologist and will bring herbal shakes across the globe for them. So the ‘M’ box is also ticked. A lot of this is by the numbers.
This version of the Angels is a bit grittier than others. There are more guns and gruesome deaths, and not as many comic quips. Or maybe it’s because they misfire. The action sequences veer from resoundingly good to farcical and back. The double-crossing gets a bit much but we’re not really here for the clever plotting. It’s an action film, by women, for women. It’s not really breaking new ground, apart from the female presence. Anyone looking for anything more is searching for meaning where none ever existed. There were already strong female characters when the original tv series launched – it was just a female twist on a well established genre. This is no better or weaker than many other action films being produced.
Kristen Stewart is pretty good and Banks does well. It’s well shot, stylised and has one too many twists. I miss the camp dialogue of its predecessor, but it doesn’t go as camp as those two last films. It’s an enjoyable couple of hours that doesn’t bore. And stick around for the cavalcade of cameos during the credits. You’ll be as pleasantly surprised as you are by the film.
Con Nats – On The Screen
