Is it me, or have the latest batch of woman-led action films been a little… familiar? Not that I’m trying to put the boot into any movie that features a female protagonist – diversity can lead to putting a cool new spin on an old trope after all – but we’ve been getting batches of narratively similar flicks featuring brawling babes. As of the time of writing, it’s barely been a fortnight since we got the one-two punch of Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come and fellow satanist slayer, They Will Kill You, and now we get ballerina themed slug-fest, Pretty Lethal, the second movie from studio 87Eleven in under twelve months to predominantly feature that particular type of dancer (obviously the other one was John Wick spin-off, Ballerina).
Can this clutch of desperate dancers manage to forge new ground in a something of a crowded action climate? Certainly helping their case is they’re joined by female action royalty in the form of The Bride herself, Uma Thurman.
A talented Los Angeles ballet troupe is desperately trying to get their shit together before they attend a dance competition in Budapest – however, tensions within the group are proving to be a problem. For a start, rich bitch, Princess, and rebellious lead dancer, Bones, can’t stand each other due to differences in class; pious Grace won’t stop lecturing everyone; and Zoe can’t stop being overprotective of her hearing impaired sister, Chloe who is feeling more than a little smothered. Trying to keep these girls in line is their long suffering dancer instructor, Thorna, but by sheer force of will, she manages to get them as far as Hungary where the bus they’re using breaks down in the middle of nowhere.
Like most movies where something terrible happens in the middle of nowhere, the group opt to go the rest of the way on foot in order to get to the competition on time, but instead they stumble upon the Teremok Inn, a hotel run by the flamboyant gangster Devora Kasimee. Not only was Devora once a prima ballerina herself, but her establishment is a haven for more undesirable types and while they tale shelter, the girls inevitably stumble upon some illegal activities that land them into a whole heap of trouble.
Now trapped in a hotel populated by criminals who want to kill them, the girls have to rely on their ballet skills to fend off their attackers throughout the night. Be it using their athleticism to out-maneuver their foes, or using the immense physical rigors of the medium to push through the pain of fighting someone twice their size, Bones, Princess, Grace, Chloe and Zoe have to overcome their differences before they can overcome their attackers. However, as the night wears on, it seems that Devora has another agenda on her plate, that involves gaining belated revenge on a local kingpin – will she allow these young, tutu-ed upstarts to ruin her long gestating plans?
87Eleven has dedicated their relatively short existence to delivering a string of flicks where plot and action blend in to be as one. While some other action movies tended to pump the brakes on the story in order to deliver a punishing brawl or a searing gun fight, the powers the be aim to make repeated acts of gratuitous violence be part of the character arcs and ever advancing plot. Pretty Lethal proves to be something of a noticable example as it pits a clutch of pirouetting girls against a hotel full of sleazy killers and palms it off as a spot of particularly vicious character building. Obviously, stark realism isn’t high on the list of priorities for director Vicky Jewson, who wisely fully embraces the lunacy of the sight of five bloodied girls in tutus, slicing and dicing eastern European goons with their repurposed dance moves.
However, while Petty Lethal bristles with the sort of youthful, excitable energy usually reserved for a Bubbles-heavy episode of the Powerpuff Girls, there’s a sense that it’s attempts to keep it’s story lean has also resulted in it being rather slight. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially when other, enjoyable movies such as Commando, Mad Max: Fury Road and, yes, They Will Kill You, feature plots that could fit comfortably within the confines of a single sheet of A5 paper, but in the effort of paring everything down to it’s purest strain, the film relies on some fairly familiar tropes. For example, the five girls placed Maddie Ziegler, Lana Condor, Iris Apatow, Millicent Simmonds and Avantika all play the basic character types you’d usually find in a lazier Bring It On sequel. Ziegler heads up the group as the tough talking street girl who isn’t sure that ballet is for her despite her obvious talent and butting heads with her is Condor’s spoilt brat, but you know they’ll be war tested comrades by the end. Rounding out the group, Apatow plays the overprotective sister who has to let go, Simmonds shows there’s more strings to her bow than just A Quiet Place and Avantika is the goodie two shoes who gets to go off the rails due to accidental drug use and liberal splashes of frenzied violence. While each architype works well (Ziegler especially convinces as a rage-fueled brawler), you can see every single one of their arcs coming from a miles away and in comparison the other character have to play we even less.
Lydia Leonard kindly dance teacher is primarily there to provide motive and the vast array of suited thugs are predictably cannon fodder, but most frustrating of all is that Uma Thurman’s heavy accented crime boss could have been a breathtaking villain – if her character was actually focused on the five girls dismantling her operation. But the fact that she has her own plot thread concerning a revenge play on a rival mobster means that any chance of a deranged Thurman fighting the girls in a 5 on 1 extravaganza is sadly dashed in favour of something way more muddled.
Thank God then that Pretty Lethal’s fighting team can paper over those cracks with a string of preposterous fight sequences that sees the girls become a murderous fighting team. Cutting blades are embedded in ballet shoes and uses to slash the necks of all comers; nimble foot work sees the girl leap out of the grasp of their attacks with hummingbird speed and dexterity; and in an especially cool concept, Bones proves to be impervious to toenail related torture due to the shit being a ballet dance puts your feet through. And yet, while Pretty Lethal is appropriately light on its feet and Jewson has a good eye for carnage, there’s the sense like many dancers themselves, the film is a bit too thin and much more could have been done with the concept in general.
Despite being narratively as light as a feather, there’s a sense that a young viewer may watch Pretty Lethal one day and feel inspired to make a female-led face breaker of their own. Sure, it’s pretty throwaway and there’s a sense that a couple of more drafts could have put more meat on its bones – but if you’re tuning in purely to watch ballerinas fuck some shit up, this film certainly has the moves.
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