Terribly Entertaining
Summary
Red Sonja is a generic fantasy picture lacking any memorable set-pieces and clearly doesn’t have a huge budget. After so many years of rewrites and development issues it’s a miracle the film is even watchable. The cast do their best and there are a few solid fight scenes in it, but it could have been so much better.
Plot: Captured. Chained. Forced to fight for survival. Red Sonja must battle her way through the blood-soaked pits of a tyrant’s empire and rally an army of outcasts to reclaim her freedom and take down Dragan and his ruthless bride, Dark Annisia.
Review: Let’s face it, the original Red Sonja with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Brigitte Nielsen was hardly a classic; it was entertaining but wasn’t a patch on Conan and only really watchable due to the presence of Arnie.
I’ve been looking forward to this reboot as I always felt the character of Red Sonja deserved an awesome movie. This isn’t it, but it’s still enjoyable and has the campy feel of the old-school 80’s sword and sorcery flicks.
Matilda Lutz takes on the role of Sonja and I liked how she was vulnerable while also being able to take care of herself in a fight. Some of the acting is a little clunky, but it always was in these kinds of movies.
On the action front there are plenty of fight scenes and some violence however, it’s never quite the splatterfest I was expecting and hoping it to be. It’s all just a bit bland feeling more like an extended episode of Xena or Hercules with some ropey CG too. The film had been in development Hell for so long it’s amazing that it’s actually watchable at all; I just wish it wasn’t so tame as earlier drafts of the script promised lots of graphic bloodshed and nudity… of which there is none in this.
One of the highlights is the main villain Draygan played by Robert Sheehan; rather than being a one note caricature he thinks what he is doing is good and his story doesn’t go quite the way I expected.
I liked the music score which was a bit Gladiator-esque and the supporting cast was solid too including Michael Bisping, Rhona Mitra (whose role is far too small), Martyn Ford and Strike Back’s Philip Winchester. They all do the best they can with the material and director M.J. Bassett was brought in to salvage the movie after the original helmer left the project. I think a documentary about making this movie would be more entertaining than the film itself.
Overall, Red Sonja is an enjoyable swords and sorcery picture for all the wrong reasons; the effects are already dated and some of the acting is wooden at best. It still has some entertaining action, but I feel like there is nothing that really stands out and I think this will be forgotten within a matter of months. It might be fun to do a livestream soon comparing the two movies as I haven’t watched the Arnold movie for a while.