The real-life boxer Kali Reis plays a pugilist in search of revenge.
“Catch the Fair One” is a violent, brooding rescue-revenge drama — the kind of genre workout you might expect to find Liam Neeson grimacing his way though around this time of year. With all respect to Neeson, the star of this tough, modest movie brings a different kind of credibility. She’s Kali Reis, a world champion boxer in both the welterweight and middleweight classes. Her nickname is K.O.
Reis, who conceived the story with the writer and director Josef Kubota Wladyka, plays Kaylee Uppashaw, a boxer whose best fighting days may be behind her. Kaylee waits tables in a diner, spends nights at a shelter (sleeping with a razor blade tucked into her cheek) and anguishes over the fate of her younger sister, Jaya (Kimberly Guerrero), who has been kidnapped by sex traffickers. Grief, guilt and fury combine to send Kaylee looking for Jaya, and for payback.
Kaylee describes herself as half Native American, half Cape Verdean — an identity she shares with Reis — and a strong current of pride and social awareness runs through the film. Jaya and Kaylee’s mother, Debra (Lisa Emery), leads a support group for the families of missing Native women and girls, whose pictures cover the walls outside the meeting room. The trafficking ring is led by a father-son pair of wealthy white men who hide their viciousness behind a facade of respectability.
The nexus of racism, patriarchal power and sexual exploitation gives “Catch the Fair One” a pulse of righteous anger, and Reis’s charisma — her willingness to show fear as well as resolve — makes Kaylee a magnetic protagonist. The boxer Shelito Vincent, as Kaylee’s trainer, provides a sparkle of salty wit amid the overwhelming grimness. Shooting in northwestern New York, mostly at night, Wladyka doesn’t find a lot of warmth.
As Kaylee probes deeper into this heart of darkness, the plot flattens out into a series of blunt, brutal scenes of reckoning. These aren’t badly executed, but as the bloodshed escalates, some of the film’s ambition starts to leak away. It’s a sincere, moderately effective revenge drama that might have been something more.
Catch the Fair One
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
