Movie Review: 'Catch the Fair One' is Authentic and Gritty

Catch the Fair One is a bold and uncompromising thriller about the desperate plague of human trafficking. The film stars real life boxing champion Kali Reis as Kaylee, the older sister of Jaya (Kimberly Guerrero). Jaya has been taken and to get her back Kali will offer herself to a human trafficking ring while making plans to get her and her sister out. Written and directed by Josef Kubota Wladyka, Catch the Fair One is not an easy sit but it is one that will haunt you if you give it a chance.

Kaylee has fallen from grace. Once a world champion boxer, Kaylee ended up in jail and then working a minimum wage job as a waitress following the disappearance of her little sister. Kaylee is on the outs with her mother, and instead of training for her next fight, she’s begun training for a very different kind of fight. With her only friend, Brick (Shelly Vincent), she’s discovered a way into the word of human trafficking and she’s now training to fight her way in and out of this incredibly dangerous world.

Catch the Fair One then proceeds through a dark and harrowing story involving drugs and the horrifying mundanity of evil. The gritty, grimy, dark gray and black of Catch the Fair One gives the movie an oppressive and bleak feel fitting of the subject. As Kali gives herself over to the traffickers she’s subjected to humiliation and drugs and the general mistreatment of women that comes with such a horrific practice. Catch the Fair One is unflinching in the presentation of this ugly, disturbing world.

The movie is based on an idea from star Kali Reis and was adapted in full by writer-director Josef Kubota Wladyka and it draws on Reis’ background as a Native American woman. One of the deepest, darkest secrets of our American society is the generations of Native American women who have vanished from some of the poorest and most neglected parts of our society. The similarly themed and far more high profile film, Wind River starring Jeremy Renner was an introduction to this idea. Catch the Fair One is a partner to that movie but instead of coming from a law enforcement perspective, it’s the victim’s perspective.

That fact gives a dramatic charge to Catch the Fair One even as the movie doesn’t overplay this aspect in the narrative. The movie uses the tropes and elements of the action/thriller genre as a vehicle to tell a very bleak and difficult story about human trafficking from the perspective of the victims, those whose exploitation is largely ignored by a population eager to not know about the horrors happening in the underbelly of ‘the greatest country in the world.’

The bleak yet important story of Catch the Fair One lays a lot on the appeal and charisma of star Kali Reis. I’m happy to report that what Reis may lack in experience as an actor, she makes up for as a physical presence and as a sympathetic underdog. Reis has an extraordinary face, one that communicates a wealth of emotions, anger, pain, and soul deep suffering. When Wladyka trains his camera on Reis’ face you can’t help but get caught up in her gaze, an unflinching, accusatory and pained expression. Reis is holding back a tsunami of emotions, emotions she channels into violent action.

This is not the cartoon, meme-worthy world of Liam Neeson in Taken. Catch the Fair One is far more down to Earth than that blockbuster take on a similar idea. That said, the movie has a rollercoaster of action and suspense within the grounded, nasty evocation of the real world of human trafficking. The final act has Kaylee enacting a bloody path of vengeance that may feel cathartic but is weighted with a tragic and heartbreaking realism.

Not for the faint of heart, Catch the Fair One is gritty, bleak, and harsh. The film opens in limited release in theaters on February 11th, 2022.