Saban Films
A Vigilante had its premiere at 2018 South by Southwest Festival and is now getting its release in theaters as well as On Demand. Olivia Wilde leads the film as Sadie, a woman determined to help women and children get away from abusive relationships. She was involved in an abusive relationship herself that ended in her son’s life. This is directed by Sarah Daggar-Nickson, which is her directorial debut. This Australian director has previously written and directed some short films before A Vigilante.
Olivia Wilde gives a raw, emotional performance of someone who has experienced pain and now wants to help people. Wilde is reflecting her anger, sadness, and guilt of her own experience onto abusers she encounters. Wilde is an actress who can balance both humor and dramatic moments, but this movie calls for a heavy dose of suffering and pain, which Wilde displays very well. She is very believable in her role and is physically fit. Wilde is great in everything she does, and she even took on a director’s role for the upcoming film Book Smart. One of my favorite performances of hers is in The Change Up, which she was hilarious in.
Throughout the movie, Sadie is entering homes of people in danger to help them. She has a rule that she will never kill the abuser but take things from them such as money and property. Each time she helps someone, she becomes better at what she does. The movie bounces back and forth between present day where she is helping people and then goes back to when she was part of a support group explaining what had happened to her. There we learn that she and her family used to go survival camping and hunt for their own food. During those trips, her husband often would break her bones, but not in front of their son. The last time that he did abuse her, the son had witnessed it and Sadie and her son fled from her husband. They were eventually caught by the husband and the son lost his life in an accident. By utilizing this technique, the scenes of her being a vigilante have an emotional weight to them and they serve a purpose. To be honest, I thought Sadie wanted to be a vigilante just because she wanted to, but as we learned more about her past, I changed my mind about the film.
A Vigilante has a slow pace going for it, which may be off-putting to some. There isn’t a whole ton of action and when there is, it is brief. Some people may be going into this movie expecting Taken or last year’s Peppermint with Jennifer Garner. This is neither of those films. A Vigilante is more of an emotional look at what women go through in an abusive relationship. At times, this is a hard film to watch due to the subject matter. The film offers some powerful moments where women are recounting what had happened to them in past relationships. The scenes feel uncut, which gives them an honest feel. Those scenes were hard to watch since nobody should have to go through something like that.
A Vigilante is an emotional movie with a powerful performance from Olivia Wilde. The dramatic moments feel earned with many women reciting their past experiences. Sadie’s actions in the film lead to an ending full of revenge and freedom. I didn’t know anything about this film going into it and I am glad that I didn’t read about the film because I might have been expecting the next Taken, which is not what I got, and I am still happy with that.
A Vigilante has a run time of 1 hour 31 minutes and is rated R for violence and language.
Saban Films
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