Film Review: CATCH THE FAIR ONE: Righteous Anger & Endless Rage Fuel Grisly Tale of Retribution [Tribeca 2021]

Catch the Fair One Review

Catch the Fair One (2021) Film Review from the 20th Annual Tribeca Film Festival, a movie directed by Josef Kubota Wladyka, starring Kali Reis, Daniel Henshall, Kimberly Guerrero, Shelly Vincent, Michael Drayer, Kevin Dunn, Lisa Emery, Tiffany Chu, Gerald Webb, Jonathan Kowalsky, Isabelle Chester, Peter Johnson, Bill Smith, Sam Seward, Christine Lauer, Robert A. Coldicott, and Mainaku Borrero.

Ignorance is a luxury not everyone can afford, as cognitive dissonance can only cloud the mind for so long. Sooner or later the history of violence will break through, and all will come spilling out in a torrential stream of revenge. Catch the Fair One, the new film by writer-director Josef Kubota Wladyka, taps that rage and filters it into a gritty story of reckoning with and fighting against the colonial violence at the heart of sexual exploitation.

In upstate New York, former boxing all-star Kaylee (Kali Reis) – or “K.O.” as she’s known by her fans and friends – is living in a women’s shelter and working an hourly gig as she recovers from drug addiction. Mentally distraught over the kidnapping of her younger sister, Weeta (Mainaku Borrero), two years prior, and constantly at odds with her mother (Kimberly Guerrero), Kaylee turns back to boxing as an outlet for her trauma. With her friend and trainer Brick (Shelly Vincent), Kaylee buffs back up in preparation to throw some punches.

However, she’s not training for a match: she’s priming to infiltrate a local sex trafficking ring, on a hunch that she’ll be able to find out what happened to Weeta. The secrecy of the operation and the lack of encouragement from those in the know (especially Brick, who doubts if Weeta can ever be found) only makes Kaylee’s fervor more bullheaded. She dives headfirst into the seedy underworld with nothing but her own intuition and brawn to protect her, yet she soon finds out that those qualities won’t be enough to dismantle such an exploitative system. If she hopes to make any sort of progress, then she’s got a long violent road ahead.

Catch the Fair One is the type of film Taylor Sheridan wishes he could make. That may be harsh, but unlike with Wind River director Wladyka never shifts Catch the Fair One’s narrative focus (and as a result, audience sympathies) to anyone other than the Indigenous women in question. These women are not plot devices for our Caucasian proxies. Instead, they are fully realized individuals – flaws and all – fueled by righteous anger and an endless sense of rage due to the atrocities committed against them. Likewise, Catch the Fair One might induce memories of another Sheridan project, that being the script he wrote for Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario – as both films share a penchant for cold displays of torture, graphic violence, and an ominously droning score (Catch the Fair One’s Nathan Halpern is really channeling the late Jóhann Jóhannsson here) – but at least Wladyka’s film is less politically ambivalent.

In fact, Catch the Fair One is sort of cynically optimistic ­– if such a state of being even exists. It allows for the visceral reactions of vengeance to be felt, but at an ultimately detrimental cost. The shocking climax suggests that it is possible to achieve retribution, but vast amounts of destruction will still lay in your wake. Justice is a feasible goal, but it’s still a long and grueling march toward it.

Praise should also be heaped on Reis, who in addition to helming the film as her acting debut shares a story credit with Wladyka (and whose life story appears to influence many details of the film’s plot). While some may read her lead performance as monotonous or flat, it fits the role of a woman out of her element. Kaylee is a person fueled by familial love, fear, and frustration, with nothing left to lose, and Reis embodies that with a straightforward yet subdued approach. It’s a good metatextual read, too, what with Reis branching out of professional boxing and into a wholly different beast that is narrative filmmaking – all while keeping her morality and sense of advocacy intact.

Catch the Fair One is the type of dark story that chills you like a blizzard while simultaneously fanning your flames of justice. It’s a steady-handed but no-holds-barred revenge thriller that knows exactly when to hold its punches. Like Kaylee’s stage name suggests, it’s a near knock-out.

Rating: 7/10

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