A title such as this one practically screams “guilty pleasure.”
Indeed, it’s a pleasure.
Albeit extremely guilty.
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| With all manner of vicious thugs hot on their heels, Scarlet (Lena Heady, left) guides Sam (Karen Gillan, right) and young Emily (Chloe Coleman) through a secret escape route. |
These backdrops are populated by outré characters laden with ’tude: burlesques who couldn’t possibly exist in the real world (and thank God for that). Then there’s the most important element, which sets this film apart from grim, joyless cousins such as John Wick and its sequels: The script — by Papushado and Ehud Lavski — has heart.
The hyper-violence is mitigated by our lead character’s virtuous decision to Do The Right Thing.
Fifteen years ago, 12-year-old Sam (Freya Allan) learned — in the worst possible way — that her mother Scarlet (Lena Headey) worked as an assassin for a ruthless crime syndicate known as The Firm. That day also was the last time Sam saw Scarlet; the girl subsequently was raised by The Firm, and has followed in her mother’s lethal footsteps.
She has become coldly, mercilessly efficient: the go-to “handler” dispatched to clean up The Firm’s most dangerous messes.
As the film opens, Sam (now Karen Gillan) has been a little too thorough with her most recent assignment, much to the chagrin of Nathan (Paul Giamatti), her handler and surrogate parent figure. The blowback is likely to enrage the local Russian mob, with which The Firm has an uneasily cordial understanding.
While Nathan frets over how best to handle the repercussions, he sends Sam on an easier assignment: to kill a man (Samuel Anderson) and retrieve a bundle of cash that he stole from The Firm. During this confrontation, she learns that he took the money in order to ransom his 8-year-old daughter Emily (Chloe Coleman), who has been kidnapped by a quartet of mopes concealed behind monster masks.
This triggers Sam’s memory of her own younger self, orphaned under similarly dire circumstances. In the blink of an eye, Sam’s loyalty to The Firm evaporates; we see the shift in Gillan’s gaze. No matter the consequences, she intends to protect that little girl.
Consequences prove plentiful.
Hoping initially to save the situation, Nathan sends his second-string persuaders — Yankee (Ivan Kaye), Shocker (David Burnell IV) and Crow (Jack Bandeira) — to “reason” with Sam. There’s also the matter of the aforementioned Frankenstein gang, and — yikes! — an ever-expanding hoard of Russian thugs supervised by Jim McAlester (Ralph Ineson) and his nasty-looking nephew, Virgil (Adam Nagaitis).
Happily, Sam is not without resources: most notably the world’s most unusual library, staffed by a crisply efficient and deceptively mild trio of librarians — Madeleine (Carla Gugino), Florence (Michelle Yeoh) and Anna May (Angela Bassett) — who recommend books with truly useful contents between their covers.
The resulting mayhem is set in the heightened reality of a major city deliberately left unidentified (actually various locales in Berlin). The various settings alternately amuse and dazzle.
Important meetings take place in a note-perfect replica of a 1950s American diner, a “neutral zone” where the crisply uniformed waitress (Joanna Bobin) politely asks patrons to check their weapons at the counter. It’s also where 12-year-old Sam shared a final milkshake with her mother, so many years earlier.
A brawl in a deserted bowling alley — where stunt/fight choreographer Laurent Demianoff reveals his fondness for Jackie Chan’s work — takes place amid a swirl of color washes. A fracas in a sterile hospital corridor is a masterpiece of comic mayhem, thanks to the manner with which Sam has been, ah, disarmed. That gag is milked even further, with young Emily’s assistance, during a vehicular fracas in an underground garage.
This bond between Sam and Emily, once they’re on the run together, is handled marvelously by Gillan and Coleman (the latter easily remembered from last year’s My Spy, where she similarly matched wits with Dave Bautista). Gillan is all business, stoic and resourceful; Coleman, feisty and plucky, does what she’s told.
But Emily becomes a typically tearful 8-year-old, when worrying about her father; Sam can’t quite be nurturing, although she tries, and it’s poignant to watch Gillan convey that struggle.
The best running bit is Sam’s incongruous effort to “protect” the girl from the violence, by telling her to close her eyes at key moments, or by giving her headphones and a player, and turning up the volume to mask the screams, shouts and gunfire.
Rest assured, the librarians also get an opportunity to shine; Gugino, Yeoh and Bassett — all veterans of their own action flicks — bring considerable sass and snark to the increasingly brutal third act.
Things do get extremely (albeit gleefully) vicious and gory. This is not for the faint of heart.
The production notes reveal that Papushado is inspired by directorial idols including Charlie Chaplin, Quentin Tarantino, the Coen brothers, Jean-Pierre Melville, John Woo and Jackie Chan. All share a fondness for blending violence with often dark-dark-dark comedy, sometimes sliding on the wrong side of tasteless.
Papushado skillfully navigates that tightrope, and the result is a vicarious treat. Since the conclusion clearly leaves room for a sequel, I hope this isn’t the last we see of Gillan’s Sam.
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