Catch the Fair One

Catch the Fair One

Directed by Josef Kubota Wladyka
U.S | 2021 | Narrative
85 minutes | English

In this gripping revenge thriller — executive-produced by Darren Aronofsky (“The Wrestler,” “Black Swan”) — Native American Kaylee (Kali Reis), a former champion boxer, engages in the fight of her life when she goes in search of her missing sister. Endeavoring to retrace her sister’s steps and find the man ultimately responsible for her disappearance, Kaylee becomes entangled in a horrifying human-trafficking operation. Reis, a real-life world boxing champion, not only stars in the film, delivering a powerful debut performance, but co-wrote “Catch the Fair One” with Josef Kubota Wladyka, who won a directorial award at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival for “Manos Sucias.” Describing the film as “a lean, efficient variation on ‘Taken’ in which women are both predator and prey, and happily-ever-afters are best left to the imagination,” the Daily Beast writes: “Barreling forward without any interest in filling in all the sharp, jagged corners of its plot, ‘Catch the Fair One’ immerses us both in Kaylee’s headspace and in the seedy underworld milieu of sex trafficking. The fact that this is a portrait of white men exploiting Native American women for profit and sexual gratification isn’t lost on the film, but Wladyka shrewdly leaves those larger sociopolitical concerns unremarked-upon; like the rest of his thriller, he allows his spartan scripting and visual storytelling to convey the material’s wealth of pain, suffering, and righteous fury.”