I’m at a disadvantage because I barely remember the 2000’s Charlie’s Angels, never saw Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and have never seen any of the original TV show… I don’t think this movie ever precisely explains who the Charlie’s Angels are and what they do. There’s a group of female spy agents who take orders from Bosley, and work for Charlie. I don’t know who they help or how they decide on their cases; all I know is the main girl of this story got their contact information off a business card and met with a Bosley in a café.
This Charlie’s Angels reboot is directed by Elizabeth Banks, and follows Elena (Naomi Scott). The latest invention at Elena’s science company is about to launch internationally, but it has a glitch that could mean global catastrophe if it ends up terrorist hands, and nobody will listen to Elena when she tries to warn her superiors. Charlie’s Angels are here to help and discover a potential cover-up; it seems releasing the product on the market with the glitch is going to benefit someone, but who? Sabina (Kristen Stewart) and Jane (Ella Balinska) are the Angels on the job, jet-setting around the globe and infiltrating various groups to get to the bottom of the case.
I’m so happy for Kristen Stewart, who is back in a blockbuster movie after a long slog in smaller projects. She’s been great in movie’s like Personal Shopper, and won awards for Clouds of Sils Maria ever since her Twilight-buzz wore off, and the drama surrounding Snow White and the Huntsman; Stewart has been out of the spotlight for some time. She’s got a history of being the dour one in her movies but in Charlie’s Angels she gets to have fun. I like her hair. She jokes, she dances, she wears pink jockey outfits for a disguise; she’s very cool. Stewart and Balinska have the best characters of the movie; Sabina is one wild and rebellious angel, while Jane Is serious and callous. I didn’t know if their characters were going to mesh at first, as both can be blunt towards Elena, but there’s a sweet through-line where the two Angels become friends – they have worked together before but have never clicked. There’s some blink-and-you’ll-miss-it relationship building, but it’s there.
Traditionally, I thought Charlie was meant to have three Angels, but here we have two, with Elena tagging along and providing assistance where she can. Bosley (Elizabeth Banks) is also fairly central to the action, working as the Angel’s boss. I thought the movie might opt for showing us training first for a new angel, with Elena being a rookie thrust into a difficult situation to learn on the job – that’s how it seemed in the trailer, but the scene where Bosley makes Elena land the plane on her own doesn’t come into the movie until the closing credits. Instead, it’s made pretty clear that Elena is no Angel, only given lookout jobs or hacking specialties where necessary while the other two kick butt.
The movie is not very good. I can overlook what I said at the beginning about not knowing enough about the Angels; since there’s so much source material, maybe I should have done my research, but the movie makes a lot of leaps to move this convoluted story at a fast pace. For instance, Bosley blows up the Angel’s meeting spot, knowing that they are inside, but is fine with not killing the Angels; in fact, he hopes they come to face off with him moments later. He makes Elena put on a fancy dress, but hopes to blow her up in a private room. The movie attempts double-double bluffs, where good guys are bad guys and good guys again; and that’s “bluffs” meaning it happens more than once. We jump around from European city to city, and only get a scene or two before we move on; I can only guess Charlie’s Angels might have had limited time it was allowed shooting in each location…? I don’t know. There’s an action sequence at a Hungarian racetrack that could be anywhere and isn’t attached to anything else, other than setting up that the guy the Angels are tracking met someone there and moved on. Charlie’s Angels is an action movie, and I understand the argument that is often posed, that if the action is good, then the plot can be subservient – what’s troubling about that notion though, is that the action is not remarkable, and it’s edited with multiple cuts that change the camera positioning and make it hard to track all the moving pieces. I always think that if a film has set up interesting action sequence, then it doesn’t need significant cuts, as it’s best to show great work as clearly as possible. Be sceptical of multiple cuts.
And hey, can someone give Djimon Hounsou something substantial to do?! I don’t know if he has kids at home, and only has time for minor parts, but he is gone from Charlie’s Angels as quickly as he comes. He keeps popping up in unimportant roles this year, like in Serenity, Shazam! and Captain Marvel.
I did enjoy Jonathan Tucker; a guy I’ve never seen before who plays the silent henchman. He has piercing eyes and should be memorable in that sub-category of bad guys who never talk (he says ‘bitch’ once). Where did the silent henchmen idea originate? Was the first Odd-Job in Goldfinger, or was it earlier I wonder?
Sir Patrick Stewart is also in Charlie’s Angels; he’s got his groove on, and makes being old look cool.
There are a few jokes that don’t land but Charlie’s Angels does have some charm. It’s not as heavy-handed with the female empowerment message as it could be, which is nice – except for the end to the final conflict, which is one of the tackiest ways for our heroes to win that I have ever seen. I didn’t mind how Kirsten Stewart’s character explains the advantages of being an undercover female agent at the beginning of the film, as a man usually takes an extra seven seconds to identify a woman as a threat. It’s somewhat confusing though, when you realise how proud these girls are to be Charlie’s Angels but the pop song attached to the movie is called “Don’t Call Me Angel.” Mixed messages? I remember how successful Destiny’s Child’s “Independent Woman” was with Charlie’s Angels, back in the day; I’m sure Arianna Grande, Miley Cyrus and Lana Del Rey will be hoping for the same kind of traction with the new song. One of the main adversaries of the new film, Australian Johnny (Chris Pang) nicknames Sabina ‘Independent Woman’ which I thought was a neat nod.
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