Director: Elizabeth Banks
Distributor: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Duration: 118 minutes
Charlie’s Angels (VOD) – Movie Review
The Charlie’s Angels franchise has known many entries over the years, ranging from series to movies. The most known renditions are probably the 2000 movie, and its sequel that was released in 2003, starring Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore. These two movies were proper action comedies, having a rather perfect balance between the two genres. They starred lovely leading ladies and the plot and action never got too heavy. This new Charlie’s Angels, which was seen in theaters around the world in 2019, tries to amp things up with grittier action scenes, a bit more darkness and more violence. While these things can certainly work for a movie such as this, it sometimes felt like the director tried a bit too hard.
The story of this new Charlie’s Angels begins with a mission where we get to meet Sabina (Kristen Stewart) and Jane (Ella Balinska). Sabina is getting close to a man who has embezzled a fortune, and now they’re pretty much taking him down. Last on the scene is their handler, John Bosley (Patrick Stewart). We fast forward a year and see John retire, leaving things up to the other ‘Bosleys’, as it seems the agency has grown so much that there are now plenty of Bosleys looking out for their Angels.
A bit later we get to know Elena (Naomi Scott) who works for a major tech giant. She is currently developing Calisto, a unique power source that could potentially render other sources of power obsolete. She, however, believes it shouldn’t be released yet, as, with its current setup, it can be weaponized. She informs her manager, but he brushes away her arguments and tells her to keep quiet. She can’t sit still and informs Edgar Bosley (Djimon Hounsou), who recruits Jane and Sabina to watch his back while he talks to Elena. Things then get out of hand as an assassin already has Elena in his sights.
Even though the movie spans around two hours, the pace is actually quite fast with a lot of action sequences. We have to admit, the violence factor is a lot higher than the 2000 and 2003 movies, and some fighting scenes take a really long time, making them somewhat unrealistic. You can only get a few kicks to the face before you’re knocked senseless, so if you get smacked into a wall 248 times, things get a bit wonky. Nonetheless, the pacing itself is quite decent, as you get enough information for things to stay interesting, and the characters evolve a bit, especially Elena and Jane. We hardly learn anything relevant about Sabina, except for that she supposedly comes from a ‘rich’ family.
Acting performances are actually quite good in the movie. We get to see a Kristen Stewart that comes out of her Twilight shell, handling this part with a lot of poise and a certain comical hyperactivity. Her co-stars, Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska also handle their roles as angels quite gracefully and with a lot of professionalism. We also see the somewhat legendary Patrick Stewart perform in this movie, which is always impressive, even if he doesn’t get a lot of screen time. Elizabeth Banks, often going hand in hand with sillier roles, takes up her arms as a Bosley in this movie and does so quite well. Other performances in this film were certainly quite outstanding as well.
As many parts of the world are still in lockdown and many shops are closed, we only had access to the VOD format of Charlie’s Angels. We can only speculate which extras will be included with the physical copy, but perhaps a bit of history of Charlie’s Angels would be nice, as well as how some of the action scenes came to life.
Conclusion
Charlie’s Angels is a fairly good homage and/or sequel for the series, but it never truly shines through. The action sequences are great, the acting performances are enjoyable, but overall the movie feels a bit bland in comparison to the lighthearted movie that was released in 2000. If you love the franchise where women kick every men’s butt they come across, by all means, view this movie and enjoy it, but at times it feels like the creators were trying too hard to fix something that wasn’t really broken. Be warned though, some action sequences are a bit more violent than other entries in the Charlie’s Angels series.
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