What’s It About

Captured, chained and forced to fight for survival, Red Sonja must battle her way through the blood-soaked pits of a tyrant’s empire while rallying an army of outcasts to reclaim her freedom and take down Dragan and his ruthless bride, Dark Annisia.

MOVIESinMO REVIEW

Sometimes Hollywood decides to dig up old movies that probably should stay buried. Red Sonja is one of those choices that makes you wonder who thought this was a good idea. The original 1985 movie starring Brigitte Nielsen was already pretty terrible, so it’s no surprise that someone figured it was time for a remake forty years later. Director M.J. Bassett took on this project with actress Matilda Lutz playing the lead role. The story follows Sonja, a warrior woman searching for her lost people after her homeland was destroyed when she was young. She lives alone in the forest with her horse, staying away from civilization because bad things keep happening wherever she goes. The trouble starts when Emperor Dragan shows up. Dragan is one of those evil rulers who wants to take over the world, but he’s got a bit of a twist to him—he wants to find some magical book that gives him unlimited power and knowledge. Robert Sheehan plays Dragan, and he does try to be scary, but most of the time he just comes off as trying to imitate some better villains from other movies. Sonja gets captured by Dragan’s troops and forced to become a gladiator, forced once again to fight to the death for others’ entertainment, as she has to battle monsters and other prisoners. This is the movie’s time to shine, and it should have been thrilling, yet the film turns ridiculous instead. You know the chain mail bikini outfit? Well, she dons it and fights a giant cyclops that looked like it was created in someone’s basement on a computer. The special effects are so cheap and fake that you can’t take any of the action parts seriously. The film wants to be about fighting for female empowerment and against oppression, which sounds great and sounds good on paper. Sonja teams up with the other prisoners, including a prince, Osin who becomes her love interest, and these characters devise a plan to escape as well as defeat Dragan, but the whole setup feels hollow because none of these characters was interesting enough to care about. Matilda Lutz does her best with what she’s given. She commits to the role and handles the physical demands well, but the script doesn’t give her much to work with. Her dialogue is clunky and unnatural, making her sound robotic in many scenes. The supporting cast is even worse, with most actors either overacting or seeming bored. The biggest problem is that Red Sonja feels incredibly cheap. Everything looks fake, from the computer-generated monsters to the obvious green-screen backgrounds. When you compare it to recent fantasy movies like Dune or even smaller TV shows, this looks like a fan film made with spare change. The locations in Bulgaria are nice when you can see them, but most of the movie takes place in front of fake digital backgrounds that fool nobody. The pacing drags terribly for the first hour. Endless conversations dump information on the audience while nothing interesting happens. Characters stand around explaining things that should be shown through action. By the time the gladiator fights begin, many viewers will have already lost interest. When the action finally arrives, it’s disappointing. The fight scenes lack impact because everything looks so artificial. Sonja battles giant scorpions and other creatures, but none of it feels real or dangerous. The choreography is basic, and the editing cuts away from the best moments, probably because they ran out of money to show them properly. The story follows every fantasy movie cliche you can imagine. Evil emperor oppresses people, warrior rises up, collects allies, and fights back. There’s nothing wrong with familiar plots if they’re executed well, but Red Sonja brings nothing new to the table. It goes just as you expect, with no surprises, no twists. What is frustrating is how much potential the source material has. Red Sonja began as a character in the stories of Robert E. Howard, the same writer who created Conan the Barbarian. After she became very popular in the 1970s in Marvel comics, she was known for kicking ass in her distinctive costume. There is surely space for a decent movie about a warrior woman on a revenge quest for justice. I like that with this version, they are clearly trying to modernise the character by making it more about female strength and less about the male gaze that influenced previous versions. This was a good idea, but the final product misses the mark. Rather than creating a powerful character study about trauma and accumulation of pain through survival, we have generic action sequences and forgettable dialogue. The movie is also undermined by taking the nonsensical subject matter too seriously. Important with fantasy adventure is that the absurdity needs to be embraced or to strike a good balance between drama and fun. Red Sonja takes itself completely seriously, which makes the ridiculous moments even more noticeable. When your heroine fights a cyclops while wearing a metal bikini, you need some self-awareness about how goofy that looks. At nearly two hours long, the movie overstays its welcome. The thin plot could have been told in ninety minutes, but instead, we get extended scenes of characters talking about their feelings or explaining the magic book’s importance. Tighter editing would have helped, but it wouldn’t have fixed the fundamental problems with the script and production values. Red Sonja isn’t the worst movie ever made, but it’s definitely pointless. In an age when Game of Thrones showed the world how to make fantasy on television in a proper way and like movies such as Mad Max: Fury Road and Wonder Woman demonstrated that female action ‘heroes’ could be both strong and have interesting personalities; it feels like a regression. This makes me wonder if every historical property should be remade, and if there is no intention to do it better than the original, leave well enough alone. I could see the movie appealing to people who like bad fantasy films for their oddball comedy, but most people are going to be much better off skipping this one altogether. If you want to see Matilda Lutz in something better, check her out in “Revenge” where she actually gets to act in a well-made thriller.

OUR RATING – A FLOPPY 3

MEDIA

• Genre – Action
• Street date
• Digital – August 26, 2025
• BluRay/DVD – ‎November 11, 2025
• Video – 1080p
• Screen size 2.39:1
• Sound – English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
• Subtitles – English SDH

Extras

• none