Mulligan wages war against misogyny as star of ‘Promising Young Woman’

Carey Mulligan gives a memorable performance in this daring rape-revenge fantasy, the directorial debut from Emerald Fennell, an English actress and showrunner on “Killing Eve’s” second season.

Mulligan is Cassie, a medical school dropout turned coffee shop clerk who spends her nights in bars looking for men to take her home.

In smeared makeup and too-tall heels, with a convincing head loll, she seems drunk and helpless, going along with their coercions before dropping the act and enacting her revenge, Tribune News Service critic Katie Walsh wrote in her review.

“Fennell’s film isn’t all that gory, but it has the attitude and tone of a horror movie, rendered in cupcake colors. Cassie utilizes her ultra-feminine presentation of long blonde locks, florals and garish makeup as armor, a disguise, and as a weapon in her war,” she wrote. “It’s a reflection of the film’s internal logic that nothing is what it seems; the script is built on constant reveals that walk the viewer down one path before ripping the rug out.”

Also new on DVD Tuesday

■ “Brothers by Blood”: Set in the City of Brotherly Love, this crime drama depicts the violent world of Philadelphia organized crime. Stars Matthias Schoenaerts, Joel Kinnaman

and Maika Monroe.

■ “Des”: David Tennant portrays Scottish serial killer Dennis Nilsen, arrested in 1983, in this three-part TV miniseries.

■ “Don’t Tell a Soul”: Fionn Whitehead and Jack Dylan Grazer are teen brothers who steal money to help their ill mother, played by Mena Suvari, while engaging with Rainn Wilson’s security guard character.

■ “Money Plane”: This heist thriller finds a debt-ridden thief needing to do one final job, complete with a team of the world’s most dangerous criminals. Stars Adam Copeland, Kelsey Grammer, Thomas Jane.

FOCUS FEATURES VIA AP Carey Mulligan plays Cassie, a medical school dropout turned coffee shop clerk who spends her nights in bars looking for men to take her home, in “Promising Young Woman.”