Casino Royale (with cheese!) director Martin Campbell - who also has GoldenEye, The Mask of Zorro, and Vertical Limit on the plus side, but also Green Lantern and The Legend of Zorro on the debit side of his IMDB ledger - reteams with his Casino Royale Bond girl Eva Green for the messy, underdone Dirty Angels.
Opening in 2021, we meet Green's Jake (no explanation for the male name) as she's being held captive by the forces of Malik (Reza Brojerdi) as she's being hauled out of a cage to be stoned by a crowd. (As in having rocks thrown at her, not hippies blowing bong hits in her face.) Right as the sentence is to be carried out, Army helicopters swoop in and rescue her, but over her protestations several men are left behind and executed. Who were they? We never know. Jake tries to have the pilot who took off court martialed, but it goes nowhere and allusions to her past are made.
Jumping to present day, Aghan jihadis attack a Pakistani all-girls school and kidnap those who they didn't toss off the roof back to Afghanistan. Due to their parents being important ambassadors or ministers, a handful are held for ransom with Malik demanding the return of an imam as a condition for their return.
To attempt a rescue, Jake is tasked with leading a squad of female soldiers who will be posing as aid workers. Because Jake is all business (and the committee of four writers, including Campbell, aren't interested in character details even as minor as names), she calls them by their roles in the mission like Medic (Ruby Rose, John Wick 2, playing horny & heterosexual for a change), The Bomb (Maria Bakalova, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm), Mechanic (Rona-Lee Shimon, lots of Israeli television), Geek (Jojo T. Gibbs, Past Lives), Shooter (Emily Bruni, lots of UK TV), and I put more work in looking up their credits than the screenwriters did creating their characters other than one being shown wrapping her chest in bandages for presumably gender reasons.
The only real surprise about Dirty Angels beyond how utterly unmemorable it is is how high the body count goes as very few members of the mission have plot armor sufficient to stay alive. (Though you can guess who's most likely to make it to the end credits by how familiar you are with the actress. Ahem.) More detail is spent on a pair of brothers and a running gag about how bad a driver he his versus his other skills than the squad combined, so when they start getting knocked off it carries no emotional weight.
Green is a plausible action heroine, but is also let down by the sparse script and generally apathetic action helmed by Campbell. Why she's unpopular with the Army is explained, but also rings false. With Angelina Jolie barely acting these days and her action queen heydey long in the rearview, there aren't many woman who can turn the hat trick of beauty, action skills, and acting chops. Other than AJ, you've got Charlize Theron, Halle Berry, Milla Jovovich (though she barely gets to show acting anymore), Zoe Saldana - Sigourney Weaver is 75 now! - so if Green wants to do more in this space, I'm here for it. But she deserves far better than Dirty Angels.
Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.
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