Red Sonja (1985)

One nice thing about being home is the wide range of movie channels, causing me to sit on my bum and watch many an odd or sort-of shitty work of cinema. This is one of those instances. I'd heard Red Sonja was being remade, and thought the original might be interesting since it's based on a successful comic series and has a strong lady protagonist. In the end, it was pretty dumb. Bridgitte Nielson plays Sonja, a chaste warrior woman given special powers by a goddess so that she may seek revenge on Gedren (Sandahl Bergman), an evil queen who killed her family and had her men rape her. As Sonja masters her sword-fighting skills with a Chinese teacher, a group of female priestesses try to destroy a powerful talisman. Gedren slaughters this group (including Sonja's sister) and claims the talisman for herself, systematically destroying kingdoms in her wake with its magic. Seeking revenge, Sonja and the talisman's mysterious keeper Kalidor (Arnold Schwarzenegger) travel to Gedren's fortress. Along the way they pick up a snotty prince (Eddie Reyes, Jr) and his servant (Paul L Smith), who serve as "comic" relief.

Well ok, this movie could have been pretty awesome, but really: it's not. The narrative is uninspired and a little boring, the plot's structure is awkward and dragging, and the dialogue is trite. I couldn't even really enjoy these typical b-movie aspects for their silliness, since it just amounted to something kind of lame. The characters are hit and miss, with the prince's whiny brat routine getting old immediately and his servant's fat-guy-wisecracks too stupid and out of place to be funny. I wanted to like Gedren since she reminded me slightly of the Great Tyrant from Barbarella, but she failed to deliver in the iconic badassery department and lacked charisma. Kalidor was ok, since Schwarzenegger is unable to ever not be entertaining, and I liked Sonja for the most part. She's got killer sword skills (though some of the fights were not well-staged) and totally saved the day. She's not very smart though, and saving herself for a man who could beat her thoroughly in combat is just frustrating- why become such so strong and independent if you're only waiting to be dominated?

For most of the film I kept wondering where the hell they were supposed to be. With Kalidor's Austrian accent, Sonja's vaguely Scandinavian one, the prince's presumably Chinese or Mongolian culture and his servant's New Yorker inflection, I was pretty confused. And Sonja was maybe in China but her sister was maybe in a Scandinavian area, but it's all a horse ride away? I'm not very good at geography, so maybe I just missed something. Whatever, dude. Red Sonja is pretty bad, but slightly redeems itself for having a fairly capable female lead and some decent fight scenes. Meh. Hopefully the remake will be more interesting- if anything Rose McGowan will be there.

2.5/5

PS Here's a pretty interesting article about the "avenging Amazon" motif as a feminist and lesbian icon, if you're interested.