“Catch the Fair One”This is the best example of activist filmmaking. Before you run away from the notion, consider this: It doesn’t feel like this tough, relentlessly dark thriller is trying to push some kind of political point, even if so many of its creative choices succeed in doing exactly that.
Collaboration with Kali, Native boxing champ “KO” Reis on the script, director Josef Kubota Wladyka has made a riveting vigilante story that can hold its own alongside Paul Schrader’s most punishing payback fantasies. Imagine daughter-rescue drama “Hardcore”With a female fighter in George C. Scott’s role or an inversion to revenge-minded “The Card Counter,” where it’s an above-the-law human trafficker rather than a torture-condoning U.S. general being taught a lesson at the end. (The film also reminds of Taylor Sheridan’s “Wind River,”With its brutal violence, and respect for Native rights.
These movies can feel a bit too nihilistic at times. They show a self-destructive person plunging into America’s darkest corners. They can be eye-opening, cathartic, and liberating. The genre is so well-known that audiences are eager to find new variations on it.
Reis provides the spark of originality. This may be her first big-screen role, but she’s a natural, coming on with all the intensity of a clenched fist: cheeks pierced, arms inked, shoulders hunched like an agitated honey badger ready to attack. The result is a locomotive of pain and retribution, delivered by a character who makes Halle Berry’s “Bruised”Boxer looks like a kitten unweaned by comparison.
Reis is a native Cape Verdean woman who spends much of her spare time reaching out to at-risk young people. “Catch the Fair One” depicts one of the many threats such teens ought to be wary of, and it positions Reis as a kind of hero who’s badass/foolish enough to take on the predators single-handed.
Reis opens and ends the film with a fantasy. Kaylee, her alter ego, is backstage at an upcoming boxing match, tapping her wrists, and preparing for a prizefight. Reis, in real life, is the first mixed Native American fighter to win a professional title. Kaylee’s days of that are long gone. Kaylee recognizes Reis early on as she works at a diner, where she eats uncooked food to survive. Before, Kaylee’s kid sister Weeta (Mainaku Borrero) was her biggest supporter, but after the teen disappeared walking home from her gym one day, Kaylee’s life unraveled. She got mixed up in drugs, lost her girlfriend and landed in a women’s shelter where she sleeps with a razor blade stashed in her mouth.
Kaylee doesn’t fight anymore — not in the ring, at least — but she’s training for something, and Wladyka (who also directed “Manos sucias”A handful of other items are also available. “Narcos”episodes) is strategic in revealing details about her plan. Weeta’s abduction is part of a larger phenomenon of missing and murdered Indigenous women. That’s where the film’s educational/activist streak comes in, if only to raise awareness. It’s been years since Kaylee’s sister vanished, and it’s clear that the authorities have been no help. Kimberly Guerrero (the mom of Kaylee) runs a support group to grieving family members. It is her way of dealing with the loss and moving on.
Kaylee can’t stop herself. Kaylee is stuck. She’s a complicated character who doesn’t speak much, which means that audiences must lean in to make sense of what’s happening as her plan unfolds. Kaylee has done her homework. She’s identified the pimps who pair underage (“off the boat”Native girls willing to pay for the fetish. But Kaylee has a lot less control over the situation than she thinks she does, and it can be agonizing to watch this woman, strong but hardly invincible, sacrifice herself to this underworld hoping for clues to Weeta’s whereabouts.
Wladyka doesn’t sugarcoat anything, assuming audiences are tough enough to take it all in. Sometimes the film feels like a gut punch. can leave you feeling as if you’ve swallowed the anger-honed razor blade of Kaylee’s guilt. Whether it’s justice or atonement she seeks, the tension slices you up from the inside, rendered all the more ominous by composer Nathan Halpern. We are not allowed to have sex, but the director forces us to face the consequences. Instead of cutting away, he twists the knife — quite literally, in one scene. In another, a shotgun blast nearly takes off a character’s head, after which the camera cuts back to the corpse for a few seconds, letting the damage sink in.
In this movie, no one is able to rise from the dead. Bullets are sharp, fast and deadly. It’s effective, but also upsetting — as violence should be. Kaylee’s dream may be to get back in the ring, to have her mom by her side (as opposed to quietly wishing it was Kaylee who’d been taken, versus favored child Weeta). But Reis’ dream is to put an end to this kind of mistreatment, to show audiences a different side of the Native experience. Wladyka and Reis make an amazing team, challenging stereotypes and opening minds through their serious-minded collaboration. In a word, it’s a knockout.