Catch this lean, engrossing thriller while you can
★★★★
IGraeme Tuckett
n the freezing northern reaches of New York State in a bleak mid-winter, Kaylee is training. She was once a promising boxer, and had a shot at belts and fame. Then Kaylee’s kid sister went missing, presumably kidnapped and sold into sexual enslavement by traffickers. After which Kaylee’s own life spiralled into decline.
As Catch the Fair One opens, we find Kaylee waiting on tables for thankless diners, counting the days she has been clean from addiction and back sparring in the ring.
She fights larger men, learning how to defend herself against their strength and bodyweight. By night, Kaylee sleeps with a razor blade inside her cheek, learning how to make the blade an accepted part of her body.
It occurred to me, maybe half an hour into Catch the Fair One, that it is essentially retreading the plot of Taken, but stripped of the fatuous patriarchal fantasy that underpinned the Liam Neeson vehicle.
As Kaylee sets out to infiltrate the ranks of the prostituted women and girls, she is entirely alone.
There is no bureaucracy for her to call on and no protectors who will keep her from the worst of what might happen. She has her fists and her wits – and the nihilistic fury of someone with nothing to live for, but who refuses to not remain human.
Catch the Fair One is a lean, engrossing, troubling and maybe unprecedented film. Although it will definitely find friends with anyone who respects Winter’s Bone or Frozen River, I’m not sure even those films – one of which made a star of Jennifer Lawrence, the other handed a rare leading role to the incredible Melissa Leo – could hold a candle to what director Josef Kubota Wladyka and his co-writer and star Kali Reis achieve here.
Reis is a former champion boxer herself. She won her first world title right here in New Zealand, fighting Maricela Cornejo for the WBC Middleweight belt.
Reis is of Cherokee and other Indigenous American descent. She is an activist on behalf of the
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) movement. She has based the details and backstory of Catch the Fair One on a score of real-life cases.
And it is that authenticity and detail that gives this film its grit and its indelibility. Once you believe in the granular reality of a film, it is far easier to accept the storyline, no matter how lurid it might become.
Reis is simply incredible here, holding together every stitch of the film with a lived reality that goes far beyond acting.
I hope that Catch the Fair One is a launching pad for a career that lets us see a lot more of her. But I also know that roles worthy of her commitment and ferocity are a hard sell – to producers and to audiences.
Catch the Fair One is a hell of a film. Without resorting to the easy exits and expected beats of the genre, it is still the best thriller I’ve seen this year. But it is also much more than that.
Catch the Fair One is now available to rent from AroVision, Academy OnDemand and GooglePlay.