Ada (Kate Beckinsale) is on a mission to rob Peter to pay Paul in James Nunn’s video game-like Wildcat. Written by Dee Dee, it is a film with no novel plot, but the director of One Shot has proved, once again, that he is one of action’s best filmmakers. After an unnecessarily clunky set-up, Nunn delights in a series of escalating set pieces staged with immensely pleasurable precision, and Wildcat‘s number dramatic moments are easily papered over.
Beckinsale has long been one of the genre’s more affecting stars, and she once again brings a degree of pathos to an otherwise emotionally robotic affair. She’s an adept physical artist, and the film is at its best when she lets us see through her plastic exterior. When her vulnerability is on full display, desperate as Ada is to rescue her deaf daughter, Charlotte (Isabelle Moxley) from captivity, Wildcat sings. The film’s kinetically staged set pieces are electric regardless, but Beckinsale elevates the material beyond its more rote clichés.
James Nunn’s Ability to Stage a Fight Supersedes the Script’s Sillier Tendencies
Charlotte is in said captivity because of Ada’s reckless brother, Edward (Rasmus Hardiker), a dopey screw-up who owes half a million pounds to Frasier Mahoney (Charles Dance), one of East London’s criminal kingpins. A former black ops soldier intent on living a “normal” life, Ada has long left the shadowy world that Edward and Mahoney now exist in, but Edward has given up his elder sister in a desperate plea for his life. With only hours to spare before having to meet up with Mahoney and get her daughter back, Ada assembles her old team again to rob Mrs. Vine (Alice Krige), Mahoney’s rival. The plan: make Vine believe Mahoney has robbed her and start a civil war so that they might abscond amidst the fray.
Nunn and screenwriter Dee Dee prioritize style over efficiency in the film’s first act, jumping from the present to ten years ago to ten days ago to ten hours ago to ten minutes after the heist in question, and none of that is justified beyond the opportunity for some overly large graphics. Setting up the film in this way mars Nunn’s ability to engender us to the calm of Ada’s life, the one she has gotten used to over eight years as a single mother to Charlotte. But after the heist, Wildcat settles into a labyrinth of ascending chaos. Ada has brought in her old boyfriend, Roman (Lewis Tan) and muscle, Curtis (Bailey Patrick), and each actor is given endless opportunities to flex. For all of Dee Dee’s difficulty with efficiency, the film certainly has its bevy of distinctive, sympathetic characters.
As they find themselves in the middle of this budding gang war between Vine and Mahoney, the Mushka tribe of skeleton bandana-clad gangsters throw gasoline on the fire. Wildcat has moments of gun-fu like a game of Frogger, where Ada and company are continuously escaping oddball bosses and an incessant stream of overly confident lackeys in an underworld we are not used to seeing. Of the more watchable fights: Ada battling her way out of a BDSM sex dungeon while her hands are tied by leather cuffs, and when Roman finds himself caught between a handful of bruisers inside a carpentry studio with all manner of hammers, pipes and rusty knives.
Nunn isn’t great at working his way through the film’s more emotional beats, and the script certainly has its fair share of silly, rote and muddied material, but the main event here, the breakway action sequences, are choreographed so well, it hardly matters. Most of the film, as Nunn’s previous work, is dependent on cleanly shot over-the-shoulder, Call of Duty-like shots and tracking through destroyed dry wall and darkly-lit hallways and back alleys. All of it is done better than most mega studios with far more money than Nunn has to play with. As the film barrels towards its inevitable conclusion, it consistently surprises, becoming almost the platonic ideal of what this kind of thing should look like. Ada’s life may be far from normalcy, but thank goodness; its too fun to watch her play in this crumbling sandbox.