Red Sonja Review: A Barbarian’s Uprising

Red Sonja fails to elevate its simple yet potentially striking premise due to how unpolished its performances, action, and even basic dialogue feels.

Red Sonja is also based off of the comics character of the same name, created by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith for Marvel Comics in 1973. She’s particularly famous for sparking the hormones of many through her iconic chainmail bikini. That said, that was where my prior knowledge of her ended. I didn’t know what I should expect from this movie, or how to tell if this was a faithful adaptation. I actually prefer that, because then it’s easier to judge a film solely by its own merits. 

Red Sonja however, fails on its own merits. Sonja wants to escape from being a gladiator and find her way back to her lost tribe. That seemed like the recipe for a simple but raw and satisfying rebellion story. Stories about uprisings or fantasy battles are nothing new, but with compelling character exploration, the premise could have worked. Yet Matilda Lutz doesn’t portray her character well enough to get audiences invested in that premise. She conveys angst and emotion adequately in some quiet scenes, but in other lines of dialogue, she sounds and acts slightly detached, as if she didn’t fully understand her own character’s emotional state.

Then there is Robert Sheehan, who has a different problem: he clearly had an idea of what sort of character he was playing, but he just didn’t know what sort of movie he was in. Despite Red Sonja keeping an overall somber tone throughout, Sheehan depicts his character as a whiny, whimpering, and pathetic manchild. Perhaps Red Sonja wanted Dragan to be like that, but considering this is the film’s main villain instead of a one-off mook, you need some justification for him to take that mantle. But Dragan doesn’t carry any charisma beneath his whininess, nor is he so over the top hateable for us to gain enough catharsis from his defeat. It’s at least entertaining to see how hammy he can get, but I don’t think that was the film’s intention.

Then again, it’s hard to pin the blame solely on the actors when the film doesn’t give anyone enough time to properly chew the scene. Red Sonja’s pace is breakneck. Sonja’s time as a gladiator lasts for a little over thirty minutes, during which she supposedly earns the respect of her fellow slaves, makes friends (and possible love interest) with them, and matures enough to defy the emperor directly. Those aspects, however, are implied rather than shown, leading to poor immersion.

It’s frustrating considering, again, this film had some genuine potential to elevate its premise. Some of the character dynamics could have been explored in interesting ways. For instance, there’s a fellow gladiator whose lover winds up dead partly due to Sonja, yet any resentment or internal struggle he could have shown to make him a rival or reluctant ally is absent. Then there’s Dragan. Despite how hard he is to take seriously, he could have gotten more dramatic weight as someone so overtaken with rising to the top that he forgets his own humanity. That could have contrasted well with Sonja, who attempts to maintain her humanity even while fighting her way to the top. Those elements, however, are barely touched upon because the film’s insistent on giving you the sparknotes version of its story.

What drives the nail home on the coffin of this fantasy war movie is that the battle aspect is embarrassingly sloppy. Weapon swings are sluggish, and there are moments when a new cut starts where it feels like the actors were waiting on cue. Sometimes, Lutz or Day feel like they’re momentarily thrown off balance by the weight of their props. Some of the fighters even pause in clear view of the camera to give the other actors time to get into position. And of course, the CGI is very noticeable and grating.

There are also moments of straight up inconsistency in the dialogue. (Spoiler warning for the rest of this paragraph) For instance, during her first encounter with Annisia, Sonja gets the upper hand and puts her in a chokehold. However, after she gets captured, Sonja states she lost that fight. They fight again in the climax and Annisia stabs Sonja through her gut, but Annisia later states she drove her blade through her heart. When you have characters recapping events in a way that’s clearly not how they actually happened, you can’t help but notice, and this will have your immersion broken as a result. The fact that the film shows clear cracks at a fundamental level like this is massively disappointing to see.

The following is based on pure speculation as I don’t know the source material, but I wonder if Red Sonja chose the wrong sort of tone from the start. Sonja from the comics is a barbarian warrior in a chainmail bikini. The film could have leaned into the absurdity and fun of that, made the film’s tone more over the top, more brutal, and injected more adrenaline into all of the performances. Had it gone over the top, perhaps it would have been easier for audiences to comfortably enjoy some of the aforementioned negatives. Instead, the film tries to take a more serious route but forgets to add in the dramatic weight or complexity to justify that sort of tone.

Red Sonja feels like a direct-to-DVD film that somehow managed to fight its way onto a theatrical release. I didn’t feel the surge of cynicism I usually feel when watching movies that I rate this low, but that was because I lost all expectations for this film after a while. In the end, Red Sonja proves to be the worst kind of adaptation: one that is neither particularly faithful nor entertaining in a general sense.

Red Sonja will be released in US theatres on August 13, 2025 for one night only and on VOD on August 29. In the U.K., the film will be released on DVD & Blu-Ray by Signature Entertainment on September 8, 2025.