“Catch the Fair One” is a violent, sweltering rescue revenge drama — the kind of genre workout you’d expect Liam Neeson to grimace around this time of year. With all due respect to Neeson, the star of this tough, humble film brings a different kind of credibility. She is Kali Reis, a world champion boxer in both welterweight and middleweight. Her nickname is KO
Reis, who co-created the story with writer and director Josef Kubota Wladyka, plays Kaylee Uppashaw, a boxer whose best fighting days are over. Kaylee waits for tables at a restaurant, spends nights in a shelter (sleeping with a razor in her cheek) and worries about the fate of her younger sister, Weeta (Mainaku Borrero), who has been kidnapped by sex traffickers. Sadness, guilt and anger lead Kaylee to look for Jaya and get revenge.
Kaylee describes herself as half Native American, half Cape Verdean – an identity she shares with Reis – and there is a strong flow of pride and social awareness running through the film. Weeta and Kaylee’s mother, Jaya (Kimberly Guerrero), leads a support group for the families of missing Indigenous women and girls, whose photos cover the walls outside the conference room. The human trafficking is led by a father-son pair of wealthy white men who hide their cruelty behind a facade of respectability.
The combination of racism, patriarchal power and sexual exploitation gives ‘Catch the Fair One’ an impulse of justified anger, and Reis’s charisma – her willingness to display both fear and determination – makes Kaylee a magnetic protagonist. Boxer Shelito Vincent, as Kaylee’s trainer, provides a spark of salty humor amid the overwhelming grimness. Wladyka shoots in northwestern New York, mostly at night, and doesn’t find much heat.
As Kaylee digs deeper into this heart of darkness, the plot flattens out in a series of blunt, unforgiving scenes of reckoning. These aren’t poorly executed, but as the bloodshed escalates, some of the film’s ambition begins to leak. It’s a genuine, moderately effective revenge drama that could have been a little more.
Catch the fair ones
Not judged. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters and for rent or sale on Google Play, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV providers.
