MOVIE REVIEW OF A BUTT-KICKING FEMINIST ACTION THRILLER “DAUGHTER OF THE WOLF”

Imagine “The Grey” (2011) crossed with “Furie”(2019), and you’ve got the basics of Gina Carano’s latest straight-to-video actioneer “Daughter of the Wolf” (**1/2 OUT OF ****), an above-average, winter-time ransom thriller set in the icy, snow-swept north about a mom who risks her life to rescue her son from trigger-happy captors.

Once an MMA cage fighter, Carano made her memorable debut as a dame who delivers herself from distress in Steven Soderbergh’s slam-bang saga “Haywire” (2011) where she killed a succession of tough guys, among them Michael Fassbender, Antonio Banderas, and Ewan McGregor. Indeed, those dudes never knew they had it coming! Afterward, Carano landed prominent supporting roles in both “Fast & Furious 6” (2013) and “Deadpool” (2016).

 Between them, she played the lead in John Stockwell’s “In the Blood” (2014) as well as Peter Howitt’s bleak, post-apocalyptic western “Scorched Earth” (2018). Carano brings charisma and muscularity to her butt-kicking heroines, and she is nobody to be casually dismissed, as “Haywire” and “Scorched Earth” illustrate.

Although she may not qualify as appropriate role model material for young women, Carano plays empowered broads who refuse to stay down after they’ve been knocked down.

In “Daughter of the Wolf,” Carano is cast as a military veteran who survived two tours of duty in the Middle East, saw her husband blown to bits in an IED explosion, and now faces a rocky road back home with her estranged teenage son who wants nothing to do with her.

Cue the kidnappers who conveniently abduct him for a high-dollar ransom demand. Carano goes into action with the same determination and ‘special skills’ that Liam Neeson mustered in “Taken” (2008). She doesn’t cry over spilled milk.

“Daughter of the Wolf” deals with revenge as much as abduction. The head of the despicable gang that snatches her son is an infuriated old coot, Father (acclaimed Oscar-winning actor Richard Dreyfus of “The Goodbye Girl”), who abhorred our heroine’s father and demands his pound of flesh from the daughter.

Happily, “Saw V” director David Hackl doesn’t make her mission to recover her son a stroll in the park. Obstacles in every shape and size keep getting in her path, whether it be either a lake covered with thin ice or a ravenous pack of wicked looking wolves that appear be able to distinguish between the virtuous and the villainous.

Father shoots one wolf, and it look like the entire pack stalks him. Hackl never lets the action bog down in complications, apart from some mandatory exposition, and the sprawling, snowbound scenery adds to the enormity of the obstacle course that our heroine must cope with to save her son.

Hackl and scenarist Nika Agiashvili don’t beat about the bush bringing “Daughter of the Wolf” up to speed. As the action unfolds, Clair Hamilton (Gina Carano of “Kickboxer: Vengeance”) has just packed up a bag of loot to pay the low lives who abducted her son Charlie (Anton Gillis-Adelman of “Birthmarked”) but have other plans for him which they haven’t shared with our heroine.

Things haven’t been good for Claire. Not only did her husband die in the Middle East in combat, but she has also lost her father. Clair has alienated Charlie because she preferred combat to raising him.

Consequently, when she arrives home for the funeral, her son gives her a chilly reception. As it turns out, the people who took Charlie have no intention of holding up their end of the bargain to exchange him for the ransom money. Oddly enough, neither Hackl nor Agiashvili ever reveal the monetary amount that the villains sought. Nevertheless, Clair is prepared to pay them.

At the rendezvous, Father’s three sons hold her at gunpoint while they count the cash, and then they start shooting at her on the spot. Big mistake!  She blasts one of them with a double-barreled shotgun, while the other two pile into their large SUV and careen off down slippery roads.

Desperately, Clair pursues them, swerving recklessly along the road, sideswiping and swapping shots with them. She smashes into them and shoots the driver in the head.  The two trucks skate uncontrollably on ice. Clair’s massive vehicle flips upside-down in a spectacular crash and skids to a halt.

The surviving kidnapper, Larsen (Brendan Fehr of “Final Destination”), inexplicably jogs off into the snow with the money. Clair manages to wound him in the thigh, and she catches up with him on a snow-covered lake. During their wrestling match, Clair shattered the thin ice, and Larsen saves her from drowning.

She chases him down, and he reveals that he didn’t know his brothers had planned to shoot her. They call a truce, and Larsen agrees to lead her to a shut-down ski lodge where Father is holding Charlie hostage.

During the action, wolves of every color and description emerge from the woods to menace heroes and villains alike. Father kills one of the wolves that fed on one of his sons, and the wolves mark him for dead—like in “They Grey,” while they leave Clair alone to track down Father and his brood.

Eventually, Clair finds the cabin, holds Larsen at gunpoint, with an empty pistol, and fools Father. Unfortunately, our heroine doesn’t get far because one of Father’s women rams her on a ski bike and sends her plunging into a huge lake beneath a waterfall. Gradually, Clair whittles the opposition down with help from the wolves. These wolves seem to know that she represents the good, while everybody else constitutes meat that they can munch.

Hackl and Agiashvili provide enough thrills and chills as well as a reversal or two to keep you interested. Our heroine refuses to back down, something her father instilled in her as well as Charlie. Richard Dreyfus has a field day as the dastardly, egotistical patriarch, and “Black Panther’s” Sydelle Noel gives our heroine some competition.

Clocking in at an agile 88-minutes, “Daughter of the Wolf” qualifies as an exciting but familiar R-rated, feminist action thriller.