When we think of our later-in-life directors still plugging away, we tend to focus on the heavyweights: Martin Scorsese at 82; George Miller and Steven Spielberg in their late 70s. Heck, Clint Eastwood made his latest movie in his early 90s! But maybe just as admirable is the lesser-known journeyman who’s still out there grinding despite not having the same marquee recognition as those guys. This brings us to 81-year-old Martin Campbell, whose new action film, Dirty Angels, debuts both in theaters and on VOD this weekend. If you know Campbell at all, it’s likely for the two excellent James Bond films he directed — GoldenEye and Casino Royale — which were damn near perfect introductions to their respective Bonds, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig. He also helmed The Mask of Zorro and The Legend of Zorro, the well-liked adventure duology. Past that, his career is a true hodgepodge, ranging from the early British sex comedies that gave him his start to BBC TV work to his one shot at the superhero genre with Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern. (Probably the less said about that one, the better.)

It’s the filmography of a workmanlike professional more than it is an auteur, but you’re certainly not going to have made 18 movies without picking up some things along the way. I wouldn’t call Dirty Angels — which has Eva Green playing the leader of a special operations unit tasked with rescuing a group of kidnapped teenage girls in Afghanistan — a good movie, per se. Still, it is a competently made one, clearly headed by a director who has been around the block. It looks good, and everyone gives a performance that feels reasonably authentic. The problems that do exist — and, to be clear, there are some significant ones — all seem to exist at the script/story level, which is interesting since Campbell also has his first screenwriting credit on Dirty Angels. Who says you can’t try new things in your 80s?!

What Is ‘Dirty Angels’ About?

In Dirty Angels, Green plays an Army Ranger named Jake who never leaves a man or woman behind in the field, no matter how perilous the rescue attempt. Near the beginning, she’s trying to get a military pilot court-martialed after he rescued her from foreign capture but was forced to bail before snatching up the rest of her team. (Even her superiors think she’s being ridiculous.) Meanwhile, in the Middle East, jihadists based out of Afghanistan have raided a Pakistani all-girl high school and kidnapped most of the students. Cruel fates await most of them, but five of the girls, all the daughters of various ambassadors and deputy ministers, are kept prisoner and held for ransom. Jake is put in charge of a rescue team made up mostly of female soldiers, disguised as a medical-relief group), that is tasked with going in and rescuing the girls by any means necessary.

Jake is given the ridiculous alias of Jessica Rabit, pronounced Ra-BEET. (“Just one B,” she reminds folks.) She’s so no-nonsense that she doesn’t even want to know anyone else’s name, just their function. So the rest of the team goes by monikers like “Shooter” and “The Bomb.” (Guess what their jobs are!) The most notable actors portraying team members are Ruby Rose (John Wick: Chapter 2) and Maria Bakalova (The Apprentice, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm). There are also a few men about, including the team’s handler (Christopher Backus), a doctor who’s not long for this world, and two Middle Eastern brothers who work as drivers for the team and develop a warm relationship with Jake.

For an Action Movie, ‘Dirty Angels’ Is a Little Light on Action
Image via Lionsgate Films

Dirty Angels is largely structured like a heist movie, with most of the screen time devoted to preparing for the big rescue. And that’s really the problem number one here. For an action film, there’s surprisingly little of it. The first significant action sequence doesn’t occur until 50 minutes into the movie. By the time the Angels, disguised in burkas, storm the bad guys’ compound, there are only 15 minutes of the movie left. The rest of the runtime is filled with endless planning and some light intrigue. The team makes various alliances with local power players, some of whom will later be revealed to be double-crossers with secondary motivations.

The film also spends a lot of time trying to build out a world where sometimes you have to ally with the lesser of two evils, but the political observations the movie offers feel both too superficial and ill-fitting for the story at hand. This is a sub-two-hour “women on a mission” action movie, which isn’t the ideal platform to sneak in a detailed breakdown of the geopolitical history of the Middle East. None of it proves to be very interesting, and plot specifics often feel like they’re from a lesser episode of 24.

Related Eva Green and Maria Bakalova Embark on a Harrowing Mission in ‘Dirty Angels’ Trailer [Exclusive] Ruby Rose and Zoha Rahman also star in the latest movie to come from filmmaker Martin Campbell.

Problem number two is that all the characters feel too underwritten like they’re sketches meant to be fleshed out in a later draft that never came. Besides their nicknames/jobs, I really couldn’t tell you much about any of them. Ruby Rose is having a fling with the doctor, which I guess gives her an emotional beat to play when he goes bye-bye. The others are … around. I suppose the point of Dirty Angels is to highlight “girl power” by sending these badass women into a region where girls barely have rights at all. It’s a noble endeavor, but I wish the film gave us heroes more worth cheering for. Green herself, who did career-best work with Campbell in Casino Royale 18 years ago, spends most of the movie in just two modes — grumpy or glum — and only springs to feral life during the big rescue in the final act. More of that throughout the movie might have really made a difference.

‘Dirty Angels’ Is Too Serious For Its Own Good

Campbell has made a movie here that does get pretty horrific and doesn’t shy away from the violence so prevalent in the region he’s essaying. If you check this out, prepare to see teenage girls thrown off a roof to their graphic deaths and several brutal executions. There’s also very little humor outside of a throwaway (and extremely out of place) Harry Potter joke. I did like Jake’s relationship with the two brothers, especially Malik (Reza Brojerdi), who she bonds with during long car rides to the next mission checkpoint, but those moments are extremely brief. Dirty Angels is often too serious and too overtly political for its own good.

As we know, Campbell is a pro, so when the action does arrive, it’s well-staged. There’s a rack focus during the climactic battle that quickly shifts from a sniper’s face to the end of her rifle that’s one of several nifty filmmaking choices. Still, “sturdy, old-school action filmmaking” can be as much of a curse as a blessing. Yeah, what’s here is reliably passable, but it also feels grossly outdated in a John Wick world, and in the same year Monkey Man came out. When the action in your movie feels too parsed out, and the non-action components fail to resonate or entertain in any reasonable way, you end up with a movie that feels in search of a reason for being. That’s what we’ve got here with Dirty Angels. But, don’t worry — Martin Campbell will be back with his 19th film, a thriller starring Daisy Ridley titled Cleaner, sometime next year. For some filmmakers, regardless of age, there’s always another movie in the chamber.

Dirty Angels releases in theaters and on VOD on December 13.

Your changes have been saved Dirty Angels (2024) Dirty Angels is a “women on a mission” movie with action sequences that feel a tad too old-fashioned.ProsDirty Angels’ action sequences aren’t too shabby … once they finally arrive.You do get glimpses of how Eva Green could crush in a movie like this. ConsDirty Angels’ characters are thinly drawn, and its action scenes are far too few.The movie also tries to tackle women’s rights in the Middle East and Afghani/Pakistani politics, but it all feels like window dressing.

Your changes have been saved Release Date December 13, 2024 Director Martin Campbell Distributor(s) Lionsgate

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