‘Catch the Fair One’ Review: Boxer Kali Reis’ Big-Screen Acting Debut Is a Knockout
variety.comPeter Debruge Chief Film Critic“Catch the Fair One” is activist filmmaking at its most compelling. 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.Collaborating with Native boxing champ Kali “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 the George C. Scott role, or an inversion of 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 attention to Native rights.) Such movies can sometimes feel overly nihilistic, as unflinching filmmakers set a self-destructive individual plunging into the darkest corners of the American dream.
But they can also be liberating, eye-opening and cathartic. By now, the genre is so familiar, audiences crave some fresh variation on the formula.Reis supplies that lightning bolt of originality here.
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