‘Red Sonja’ Review – Matilda Lutz Gets Fierce in Adaptation Hampered by Constraints
When it comes to comic book adaptations, Red Sonja has a fairly low bar to clear. The 1985 feature of the Marvel comic introduced in the ’70s, starring Brigitte Nielsen as the barbaric heroine, was a commercial and critical flop, after all. The good news is that director M.J. Bassett (Ash vs. Evil Dead, Solomon Kane) and writer Tasha Huo (Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft) clear that low bar with B-movie ease. Actor Matilda Lutz taps into the same primal ferocity from her breakout role in Revenge for her feral turn here, but her Red Sonja is hampered by budgetary and storytelling constraints.
Armed with the comic’s writer, Gail Simone, as a consulting producer, the new Red Sonya functions as a proper origin story that introduces its red-haired huntress as a forest dweller deeply connected to her companion horse and the forest’s mystical nature itself. She may have learned to live off a land long-rumored to be uninhabitable, but she’s also fiercely driven to reconnect with her long-lost tribe. When Emperor Dragan the Magnificent (Robert Sheehan) sends his men and warrior lover Annisia (Wallis Day) into the forest to uncover its secrets while destroying it in the process, Sonya winds up his prisoner and is thrust into a battle to the death.
It’s Lutz’s spirited performance that goes far in Red Sonja. What the actor lacks in height and musculature, she more than makes up for in attitude and grit. The guttural growls as she lunges at enemies are as infectious as Sonya’s utterly charming bond with her loyal horse. Sonya is both primitive and spiritual, a character capable of both extreme compassion and feral violence, and Lutz is able to slip into both with organic ease. It’s a great quality to have in a sword-and-sorcery B-movie that approaches its material with complete sincerity. Bassett and Huo inject swashbuckling levity, to be sure, but refreshingly avoid going too tongue-in-cheek with Red Sonja’s slow rise from forest child to lethal legend.
That approach, along with smart photography that features stunning landscapes, helps lend scale where there isn’t any. Despite the larger-than-life central character, Red Sonja doesn’t quite succeed in capturing the epic feel it’s insistent that it possesses. VFX-enhanced set pieces evoke the sword-and-sorcery and Ray Harryhausen films of yesteryear, notably in a battle involving a cyclops, but the budgetary constraints limit the number of set pieces in Sonja’s quest.
Despite Bassett’s efforts to add range and visual interest, Sonja’s personal war against a corrupt Emperor ultimately only feels limited to her backyard, making the eventual reveals all too contrived and convenient rather than emotionally affecting. Not helping is that Sheehan’s Dragan is too milquetoast a villain to add any stakes or dramatic tension. As such, it robs Bassett and Huo’s boldly feminine final confrontation of impact, instead fizzling out with an unsatisfying whimper when it comes to the subplot between Dragan and Annisia.
Red Sonja does let its battles get appropriately bloody, with its heroine taking a literal bloodbath at one point, and it finds effective ways to incorporate the comic callbacks. The character’s trademark bikini becomes an amusing in-joke, and loyal ally Osin the Untouched (Luca Pasqualino) factors into Sonja’s ascent. It makes for an entertaining enough yet ultimately paper-thin adaptation, but one a bit more authentic to the Marvel character. Red Sonya is never as epic in scope as it claims to be, nor does it ever really take any narrative risks with its straightforward Hero’s Journey. But there’s enough B-movie charm, largely thanks to Matilda Lutz’s engaging take on her character, that it at least improves upon the previous adaptation.
Red Sonja releases in theaters August 15 and digital platforms August 29.
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