Dirty Angels

Dirty Angels (2024) is an action thriller movie directed by Martin Campbell and I found it to be very mediocre.

Positives for Dirty Angels (2024): The directing in this movie by Martin Campbell is pretty okay for the most part. Eva Green does a decent enough job with her performance in the movie. That are some okay action sequences. And finally, the movie's pacing is okay enough and it doesn't overstay its welcome.

Negatives for Dirty Angels (2024): The movie feels like a generic action thriller movie that could've been directed by anyone, not Martin Campbell. The story feels like things are being made up as it goes along. I didn't care about any of the characters with the exception to Eva Green. And finally, things are just happening for the hell of it.

Overall, Dirty Angels (2024) is a standard generic action thriller movie that you would find in the bargain bin of any store and nothing else.

Jake (Eva Green) is a U. S. Army Ranger still dealing with the fallout from having been forced to abandon her team during the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. When ISIS storms a girls school in Pakistan and takes hostage several teenage daughters of high ranking officials, Jake is assigned to lead a team of mostly female soldiers masquerading as a NGO medical relief effort in order to find out where the hostages are being kept and rescue them.

Dirty Angels comes to us from independent production company Millennium Media, a company whose foundation ties back to 80s Cannon Films and has worked their way up from producing direct-to-video films to more mainstream fare like The Expendables and Has Fallen series. Dirty Angels comes to us from noted action director Martin Campbell (of Goldeneye and Casino Royale fame) and marks his second time working for Millennium following his assassin film The Protege with Maggie Q. With a low key VOD release Dirty Angels has more 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 turgid affair.

In keeping with the company's Cannon lineage, Dirty Angels doesn't really have any aspirations on Afghanistan, ISIS, or the Taliban other than using them as interchangeable goons that are cannon fodder for our protagonists. While the withdrawal from Afghanistan has yielded plenty of media trying to tap into the prescience of the event, the movie lacks the emotional core of The Covenant or the intricate details of Kandahar and instead feels like a crude redress of 80s relics like Missing in Action or other Vietnam War "this time we win" revisionist fantasies that were so popular during the Reagan administration. Despite the cast featuring some good actors like Eva Green, Marla Bakalova, and Jojo T. Gibbs, their characterization is very flat down to the fact the movie insists on knowing them more by their roles like "Medic", "Shooter", "The Bomb" and etc. Rather than actual names. Honestly the most likable characters are two local brothers named Abbas and Malik played by Aziz Capkurt and Reza Brojerdi respectively who mainly serve as comic relief foils to Jake, but as a result they're the most endearing and likable ones in the movie because we actually get to know them beyond their role in the mission.

In terms of action, Martin Campbell has shown himself time and again that he's a reliable staple of the genre and is comfortable behind the camera framing spectacle (Legend of Zorro and Green Lantern notwithstanding). While Campbell doesn't escape unscathed from Millennium's budget scissors (such as some shockingly bad CGI blood in one scene) for the most part he still shows that he knows how to frame an action sequence even at 80+ years old. Unfortunately despite the action being decent, Dirty Angels' lack of commitment to a tone ends up making it all for not and it becomes a rather dull ride that just isn't engaging. While the opening with its brutal stoning sequence and the ISIS attack on the girls school feel like they're aiming for something heavy and serious, other sequences involving the characters showing off laconic swagger or a running gag of Jake's alias being "Jessica Rabit" (pronounced ra-beet) create a distracting tonal clash that never meshes into a fully formed vision. With a name like Dirty Angels and some of the humor on display you get the sense the film wanted to play itself more trashier and with a more exploitative edge than it actually wanted to, but coupled with the lip service to real world events just makes the film feel like a misfire.

Dirty Angels ranks as one of Campbell's lesser entries in his career and despite the action being decently handled (albeit with Millennium's typical quick and cheap mindset) the film doesn't come together into a cohesive whole as it's too glib to make any sort of statement on the real world events it focuses on while also being to leaden and overly serious to make for entertaining exploitation.

Those reviews which point out the absurdities in this story are likely right. The characters are about as thick a sheet of newsprint, the plotline often suspends belief and the acting frequently trends towards the sound of an American football hitting one of the uprights.

However, if you're an action fan (I am), you will find it pleasurably entertaining to look beyond all of the above and just enjoy a film of the genre that rarely rests for expositional development - character, or otherwise. Campbell's foot is on the gas start to finish and that pleased me. I would agree the final result is fairly wooden, but less than an IMDB 5? Not in this reviewer's opinion. Relax everyone, not every movie these days aspires to 'rosebud' status. That's why you smuggled your own snacks into the theatre, right? Eat, watch and be entertained. Still not sure? Make it a matinee showing and you are likely to agree not only with this review but the price of admission as well.

The only reason this movie got two-stars is because it manages to equally insult every nationality depicted, and because it has Eva Green and Ruby Rose, among other promising actresses.

Eva Green: I read that she wants to return to theater. Ok, but maybe have your agent find better projects. I don't understand why she ever agreed to do this awful film. It was such a miscast.

Ruby Rose: As an actress she's best suited for the sarcastic, tough character roles, and so it's perplexing that here she gets a different role which doesn't really suit her specific, narrow-ranged talents.

Pretty much everything with this move is bad. Both Martin Cambell (director) and Jonas McCord (writer) should be ashamed of themselves. Alissa Sullivan Haggis (writer), too. Atrocious.

"Dirty Angels" (2024) is a film that fails to deliver on nearly every level. Monotone pacing drains the energy fron the narrative narrative, leaving scenes lifeless and dull. The acting is uninspired, with performances that lack depth or believability, making it difficult to connect with any of the characters.

Worse yet, the script is riddled with clichés and underdeveloped ideas, providing little substance to sustain interest. The dialogue feels contrived, and the plot seems hastily stitched together, leading to a final product that feels more like an afterthought than a genuine creative effort.

Mention to the CGI that is on the very next step after the "amateur level"...

It's hard to understand why this movie was made, as it neither entertains nor innovates. Unfortunately, Dirty Angels offers little more than frustration for those who invest their time watching it. Mostly a waste of time.