A VIGILANTE

OK, be warned this is a heavy film.  That's partly down to the subject matter (marital abuse) but mainly to it's style.  

For no good reason I was expecting an up-market and progressive version of 'Death Wish' except in this film it would be a female vigilante who takes down a series of bad guys, but in an entertaining way, although now that I think about it that would make for a fairly gross film.

So quite rightly writer and director Sarah Daggar-Nickson treats the subject with the seriousness it deserves, but possibly overdoes it.

The protagonist Sadie is helping women and children escape from abusive husbands or fathers, which sometimes means she has to use her martial arts training to inflict violence on the abusers.  At the same time she is trying to locate her abusive husband who killed their son and then went off-grid.  Somehow she knows he is in a particular forest, which she is scouring methodically.

We also get some flashbacks of Sadie in a support group where we get to learn of her own experiences as well as those of some other group members.

If all this isn't harrowing enough Olivia Wilde gives a totally committed performance as someone still traumatised by her abuse and the death of her child.

The film ends with a confrontation between Sadie and her husband which is a tough watch.  It ends happily (sort of) when Sadie, rather implausibly given that she is now suffering from a broken arm, manages to kill her husband and then load his body into her car so that she can then dump it in the road later.

The whole film is directed in a rather arty way which irritated me a little.

So whilst I admire the sincerity of all those involved in making this film, and everything about it is highly accomplished, I can't say I enjoyed it much.