Dirty Angels (2024) Review!!

Synopsis – It centers on a group of female soldiers who disguise themselves as medics to rescue a group of teenagers caught between ISIS and the forces of the Taliban.

My Take – With films like GoldenEye (1995), The Mask of Zorro (1998), Vertical Limit (2000), The Legend of Zorro (2005), Casino Royale (2006), Green Lantern (2011), The Foreigner (2017), The Protégé (2021) and Memory (2022) filling up his filmography, director Martin Campbell has proven himself to be quite the hit and miss kind of filmmaker. When he hits, it’s quite the bullseye, but when he misses, it’s by a mile at-least.

Unfortunately, his latest too is a very surface-level experience that doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. A team-up mission flick without any actual characterization required to keep it interesting.

Sure, as a low key VOD release the actioner has better production polish than you’d typically expect from this kind of film, but a script that isn’t able to pick a tone leads to a rather dull affair. Worse yet, it is riddled with clichés and underdeveloped ideas that seem to be hastily stitched together, leading to a final product that feels more like an afterthought than a genuine creative effort.

While the premise had great potential, the execution simply lacks the impact needed to make it truly memorable. A missed opportunity for what could have been a powerful, character-driven and action filled story.

The story follows Jake (Eva Green), a U. S. Army Ranger who is still dealing with the fallout from having been forced to abandon her team during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. However, she is once again thrust into action when Amir (George Iskandar), an ISIS leader and the man who executed her former team, storms into a girl’s school in Pakistan and takes several teenage daughters of high ranking officials’ hostage.

Recruited by CIA representative, Travis (Christopher Backus), Jake is assigned to lead a team of mostly female soldiers: Mechanic (Rona-Lee Shimon), the Bomb (Maria Bakalova), Shooter (Emily Bruni), Geek (Jojo T. Gibbs) and Medic (Ruby Rose), masquerade as a NGO medical relief effort, find out where the hostages are being kept and rescue them. Keeping in mind that tensions in the area are at an all-time high, with The Taliban and ISIS fighting for control. Making the rescue effort all the more difficult.

It’s a serviceable enough setup to through in some action scenes here and there, even if the politics is all over the place. There are actually sequences that really impress. The opening scene with the brutal stoning which is followed up by the ISIS attack on the Girl’s High School are quite riveting. There’s a moment where girls are thrown off a roof that is also very well shot, that you really feel the impact of the moment.

And of course the 81 year old filmmaker delivers the said action amicably, with lots of bloody shootouts and excellent explosions all executed well enough to make you a little nostalgic for the old ways. The violence on display is also quite brutal, especially when we reach the climax. When you don’t stop and think long on the geopolitics of it all, the story is intriguing enough. But the film can get hampered by trying to make a point while not realizing how tone-deaf it actually is.

The script relies more on violent scenarios and a lengthy build-up to the climactic rescue attempt. In between, we’re given brief glimpses into this group of fiercely dedicated women, but nothing more.

As the lead, Jake manages to evoke intrigue and concern as the character is carrying around a past trauma, which makes for a great backstory. Otherwise, as gripping as the film can be at times, it misses its great potential to be something grand. You get the feeling that the film wanted to play itself more trashier and with a more exploitative edge than it actually ended up with, leaving a tonal clash, especially coupled with the ransom humor and service to real world events.

Performance wise, Casino Royale actress Eva Green is absolutely fantastic as always. She gets to do almost all of the heavy lifting here, and she’s clearly having a blast with the role despite the utter seriousness of the entire proceeding. In comparison, Ruby Rose, Maria Bakalova, Jojo T. Gibbs, Emily Bruni, Rona-Lee Shimon and Christopher Backus don’t get much to do and are mostly there to offer expository dialogue.

George Iskandar follow traditional antagonist tropes and is laughably cartoonish. By comparison, Aziz Capkurt and Reza Brojerdi, who play the two local brothers named Abbas and Malik, are the most likable characters of the narrative. On the whole, ‘Dirty Angels‘ is a by-the-numbers action thriller that will go down as one of Campbell‘s lesser works.