Charlie’s Angels Review

Charlie’s Angels get a globe-trotting makeover with Elizabeth Banks writing and directing a reboot of the female-led franchise.

The Townsend Agency has evolved from being a local detective agency to an international organisation that rights wrongs around the world. Two of the angels working for the organisation, Sabina (Kristen Stewart) and Jane (Ella Balinska) are assigned a mission to safeguard a meeting with a corporate whistleblower, Elena Houghlin (Naomi Scott). When the meeting goes wrong the trio has to go dark to find out who’s trying to buy a new energy technology that could be turned into a weapon.

Charlie Angels has been at the centre of a horrible and pointless culture war. There has been a vocal minority that has wanted the film to fail because they perceived it as a feminist hijacking of the action genre, whilst Elizabeth Banks claimed that the film only failed because of sexism. It was a similar case to what happened with the 2016 version of Ghostbusters when the real reason that film failed was because it’s bad.

On its own merit the 2019 version of Charlie’s Angels was a standard if uninspired action-thriller. It has the basic screenplay template of a new device being invented or important file getting lost and the good guys have to prevent it falling into the wrong hands. It’s a plot that has been used in many Mission Impossible and Bond films. It is the most unoriginal and uninspired screenplay possible.

The previous film series was filled with over-the-top action sequences and getting the main trio to dress up in sexy costumes.  Banks set out to make more grounded version of the material. The tone was more straight-forward and serious. The action was more fist-fights, gun battles, and car chases, and less breaking the laws of physics. The best sequences were a car chase through the streets of Hamburg and the Angels interrupting a deal in the quarry. There was also espionage action with the Angels having to don disguises to infiltrate a corporate headquarters.

Whilst this version of Charlie’s Angels was more serious it was hardly Bourne or Daniel Craig’s Bond. The tone was still fairly light. The characters joked amongst each other and there were a few lines and moments that made me chuckle.

The character dynamics between the Angels were similar to the trio in the previous film series. Sabina was the wild child who became good, like Dylan, Jane was the serious, no-nonsense type (i.e. the Lucy Liu), and Elena was nerdy and awkward. Jane and Elena had the biggest arcs. Jane was a former MI6 agent who left the agency because of a failed mission and has to learn to work with others. Elena was the audience surrogate having a journey from scared young woman to aspiring Angel. Although the filmmakers try to make us believe that the beautiful Naomi Scott who recently played Princess Jasmine is an awkward nerd. It was fun to see Kristen Stewart having a chance to let her hair down.

The Charlie’s Angels franchise has walked a fine between female empowerment and sexism because past Angels have either been dim-witted or leered at. The film opens with a Sabina stating that women are underestimated and Elena not being taken seriously in the tech industry. The film makes a point of the characters not being sexualised. Banks does homage the previous iterations of the franchise through photographs, Easter Eggs, and the classic theme being a part of the score.

Charlie’s Angels has been overly hated by some quarters of the internet. It certainly doesn’t deserve a 4.0 rating on IMDB or some of the one-star reviews it has received. It was a perfectly serviceable, if unremarkable action-thriller. It does lead to the question, what if someone like Matthew Vaughn or Christopher McQuarrie made this film.