Review: Red Sonja – “a fun-enough, bucket of popcorn watch.”

Directed by MJ Bassett
Starring Matilda Lutz, Wallis Day, Robert Sheehan, Luca Pasqualino, Michael Bisping, Martyn Ford, Rhona Mitra

I really wasn’t sure what to expect with this latest take on the iconic, flame-hared warrior woman. Let’s face it, Red Sonja is a much-loved character; since Roy Thomas and the legendary Barry Windsor-Smith created her for Marvel Comics (inspired by Robert E. Howard, of course) back in the 1970s, she has undergone many variations and reboots in film, but mostly in comics and prose. But despite the large fan-base over decades, there’s a problem with how to depict her – that “chain mail bikini” may be iconic, and yes, very sexy, but it does come across as eye-candy for fan service, just another example of “the male gaze”, but at the same time she is also a powerful female figure, not just eye-candy.

It’s a problem with this kind of character – Xena had the same problem. If the character looks too visually sexy, does it cheapen them, or are they allowed to be both powerful women and sexually attractive at the same time? Numerous other female action figures are often drawn into the same debate, which is long and complex and is a bit outside the scope of a simple film review, but I think is also worth bearing in mind whenever considering a character like this (also worth considering how we rarely have these discussions about male action figures, which speaks volumes). I’d also note that, like the aforementioned Xena (a show I loved, not least for its dynamic between the two female leads), Sonja also boasts a significant female fan base too, not least acclaimed comics scribe Gail Simone, who has written the character herself.

Okay, moving on from those considerations, let’s have a wee look at the film. Here we get early scenes of a very young Sonja’s village, an almost idyllic, peaceful, nature goddess-worshipping community in the deep forest, being savagely attacked by a barbarian warlord. The young girl escapes, barely, but loses everyone in the process, spending years growing up in the forest alone, seeking any remnants of her people, her only companion a beloved horse. We discover later that the warlord was in turn overthrown by a former slave he captured on one of those raids, a young lad who found half of a secret book of knowledge from that raid, and with a whip-smart brain, used it to free himself and then overthrow the warlord before installing himself as emperor, expanding his lands using new technology inspired by the texts he decoded, now searching for the remaining part of the book, which will bring him into conflict with Sonja.

The result is fairly predictable, but enjoyable for those of us who have waited ages for a swords and barbarians fantasy flick (I think Spine of Night, the rotoscope animated film a couple of years ago was the last one I enjoyed – you can read that review here). But despite being fairly straightforward on the narrative front, there are a few nice twists and turns thrown in there, using flashbacks to flesh out present day motivations, which means neither the hero or the villain come across as too one-dimensional. Sonja (Matilda Lutz) is powerful and angry, yes, but she’s no superhuman, she is not unstoppable, and Lutz gives her a melancholy and vulnerability that deepens her, while Sheehan’s emperor Draygan is not a simple power-hungry maniac, he genuinely believes he is building a better world, and we later learn some interesting facts about his youth that drove him into this direction. Even Draygan’s partner, the formidable Annisia (Wallis Day), a platinum-haired warrior woman, is given some depth, a woman literally haunted by the faces and voices of those she has killed, making her more than simply a foil to Sonja.

There are problems – apart from being a bit predictable, other than some of those interesting character twists, the lack of budget does show in places. When we have an emperor shouting about ruling the world, we really need something much bigger and more expansive, while this feels more like a small-scale war by a local warlord than a world-conquering empire, and it also feels like some of the blood and gore levels have been dialled down a bit, perhaps to get a lower censor rating. That said, if the makers didn’t get the budget they really needed, that’s not really their fault, so I’m minded to forgive that weakness, and it looks very much like the main characters really do throw themselves into the action scenes they have, while making both the heroes and villains less straight and more nuanced makes it much more emotionally interesting.

Even that issue of eye-candy is addressed in a scene in a gladiator style school where a captive Sonja is handed the metallic garments by a leering armourer, who is clearly enjoying the idea of her being a sexual spectacle for the crowd – but even this character also gets a little more depth later, when Sonja makes him cry because “she’s the first one to remember his name”, which is a tiny moment, but a nice touch.

In conclusion, yes, plenty of problems, not least it really needed much more budget to realise itself a bit better, and perhaps a less predictable narrative, but I enjoyed the way Lutz managed to give us a Sonja who is both vulnerable, emotionally, and also at the same time powerful and vengeful. Still, without being some simple, unstoppable killing machine (she can, and does fail at some points), Sheehan looked like he was really enjoying his role as the emperor. Later revelations about his origins take the character – and also Sonja – in a different direction than I thought, which I appreciated. So, yes, problems, but overall it’s a guilty-pleasure, barbarian sword and action flick – it won’t set the critics or awards panels alight, but for those of us who enjoy that kind of flick, it’s a fun-enough, bucket of popcorn watch.

Red Sonja is distributed by Signature Entertainment, and available to stream on Prime from December 22nd.