Summary
What begins as a powerful tale of survival and a revival of agency descends into comic book villainy and exploitation territory. Olivia Wilde, on the other hand, is phenomenal.
Australian writer and director Sarah Daggar-Nickson tackles a massively important subject for her debut feature. Examining domestic violence and its consequences, she frames it within the boundaries of an action thriller. The novel approach almost works too, at least until the two concepts start to jar.
Sadie (Olivia Wilde) provides a service to women abused by their husbands. Contacted through a secret code, she uses brutality and planning to ensure that the women can escape from their abusers, and that they are financially secure enough to start again. It is slowly revealed that Sadie has escaped her own husband (Morgan Spector) and part of her mission is to track him down.
Wilde is phenomenal in the lead role, turning in one of her best performances to date. Far from being just a kick-ass chracter, the strength of her performances lies in the fragility she also shows. There’s at least one powerful scene in a support group where she is recounting her past. At other moments, she has full-blown (and realistic) panic attacks. Here the film comes closest to achieving a hero who is both defined by and positively overcoming her past.
It’s just a shame that this realism doesn’t extend to the rest of the film. Despite its initial promise as an original dissection of male violence against women, the final act of the film rapidly falls into some familiar genre tropes. Spector plays Sadie’s ex as a cartoon villain, a sadistic tormentor with no nuance to his performance. Chasing after her through woods and abandoned warehouses like a horror movie baddie, you half expect him to don a mask at any moment.
Alan McIntyre Smith’s photography is gorgeous though. Contrasting a series of cramped interior shots with glorious frozen landscapes, he applies the right amount of delicacy and proximity to convey the weight of the story within the genre conventions.
Daggar-Nickson’s problematic conclusion seems to be suggesting that violence can only be overcome with more violence. Structured as a vigilante origin story, we are meant to get some kind of optimism in Sadie’s ultimate escape. Yet like the films that served as inspiration, it offers no clear path for the cycle to end. It’s simply a subject that deserves better.
2018 | US | DIR: Sarah Daggar-Nickson | WRITER: Sarah Daggar-Nickson | CAST: Olivia Wilde, Morgan Spector, Tonye Patano | DISTRIBUTOR: Highland Film Group, Sydney Film Festival (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 91 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 10 June 2018 (SFF)
