Army of One (2020)
Movie rating: 6/10
“They left her for dead. Big mistake.”
I was sold on this movie as soon as I saw that tagline on the poster alongside lead actor, co-writer, and co-producer Ellen Hollman. How could any fan of old-school action movies resist? Part of the charm of these films is their adherence to reliable old tropes: the badass hero who plays by their own rules but gets results; the odious villain, the stupid chief, the one-liners; the formulaic plots about revenge or terrorists or drug cartels; the generally right-wing politics and glorification of military and police; and the use of comic-book violence to solve all problems, including legions of henchmen taken out by a one-man—or in this case, one-woman—army.
This classic formula ruled the roost in the 1980s, yet for better or for worse has became something of an endangered species in the 21st century. R-rated action flicks started to go into decline after the Columbine shootings were blamed on The Matrix, among other pop culture scapegoats. PG-13 superhero blockbusters subsequently became the most popular type of action movie, which only accelerated with the rise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With the increasing bloat of superhero fare and blockbusters in general, plus Marvel fatigue setting in for this writer, there’s something greatly satisfying about a stripped-down, meat-and-potatoes action movie that gets the job done in less than 90 minutes.
Army of One meets that criteria. There’s a lot of stuff in this movie that’s bad, even laughable (how do the villains not kill a character they shoot at the head from point-blank range?). There’s also much that’s legitimately good. At its core is a solid performance by Ellen Hollman, who makes a compelling case for herself as an action hero in the role of Brenner Baker, a U.S. Special Forces soldier in the 75th Ranger Regiment with a very particular set of skills.
Strange, then, that the film opens with a scene focusing on her husband Dillon Baker (Matt Passmore). Dillon is a cop conducting a raid on a gloomy old house with his partner Detective Frank Shelton (Alan Moore), who has been chasing these psychos for years. I don’t recall what these criminals are actually accused of, other than being generic bad guys who wear animal masks and wordlessly try to kill the cops, Michael Myers-style, when they enter the house. Did I mention that the partner is close to retirement? I think you can guess what happens to him.
All this turns out to be a flashback from Dillon, who is driving with his wife Brenner through the backwoods of Alabama to go hiking for their vacation. The only reason for this flashback is to show that Brenner’s husband is (almost) as much of a badass as she is, which is important because her quest to avenge her husband’s murder drives the plot of the film. The better the hero’s murdered spouse looks, the more understandable the hero’s desire for revenge becomes for the audience.
A tattooed hillbilly with a mohawk hairstyle drives past the couple and makes vulgar remarks. When they pull into a restaurant down the road, the same man comes in with a bunch of his friends. This is Butch (Gary Kasper), who we later see with a couple of SS runes tattooed on his neck to drive home how repulsive he is. The gang threaten Brenner and Dillon until the couple’s friendly server, who calls herself Mama (Geraldine Singer), brings Butch and his pals to heel. But there’s more to Mama than meets the eye.
The couple head deeper into the woods and set up camp. While hiking they get caught in the rain and take shelter in an empty house. That house turns out to be full of drugs and guns. Before they can escape, who should turn up but Butch and the gang, who tie up the couple and beat them bloody demanding to know who they work for. The gang, for their part, work for Mama, who is the leader of a cartel that rules over the area with an iron fist. Eventually the thugs shoot Brenner and Dillon and leave them for dead. As you might have guessed from the tagline, that turns out to be a big mistake. (Incidentally, “Big mistake” was also the catchphrase of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character in the underrated Last Action Hero). Brenner, of course, is quite alive and ready to deploy her considerable skills against Mama and her gang.
So much about this movie is derivative and formulaic, but you can say that about any number of action movies. Indeed, as with romantic comedies, that’s much of the appeal. The most obvious influence is Rambo, especially First Blood. Since Army of One predominantly takes place in the forest and Brenner is a Special Forces soldier, we get many scenes of her stalking and killing the henchmen and setting up traps. But I love First Blood, and if you’re going to steal, steal from the best.
Many plot details are confused or unclear. Based on what the Bakers discover in the house early on, Mama’s cartel appears to be involved in drugs and guns, yet we see little of that in the movie. At Mama’s home compound, she seems to be running some kind of human trafficking operation, where girls and women are taken and used as slave labour. When one young woman escapes and is recaptured, Mama tells her goons to “put her back in rotation”. What does that mean exactly? We know many of the girls are raped and kept in cages. We see them cooking meals and doing chores for the cartel. But it’s all very vague. The main point is that Mama’s cartel is kidnapping and enslaving women, and only a certified badass like Brenner Baker can save them. I got similar vibes to when Rambo parachuted into ’Nam to rescue American POWs in Rambo: First Blood Part II.
This is all well and good, because in the finest traditions of ’80s action flicks, all we need to know is that U.S. cops and military are good (fun fact: “Army of One” was also the U.S. Army’s recruiting slogan from 2001 to 2006), and those who oppose them are cartoonishly evil. There’s a scene where Baker rescues the local sheriff and assures him that she’s on his side, that she’s one of the “good guys”. Mama and her cartel are certainly vile. What’s an impeccable action movie hero without equally deranged bad guys? The danger is when people apply that same lens to the real world, which is considerably more complex.
At one point Baker flashes back to a time in the military when she was captured during an overseas deployment. We see her captors looming over her, shouting in Arabic as she wallows in a dark hole. Shades of Rambo again here, recalling the scene in First Blood when we flashed back to Rambo being tortured by North Vietnamese soldiers. This is an example of how Army of One updates old xenophobic ’80s action formulas for our current age. Instead of evil commies, here we have evil Muslims. The U.S. is at war in so many countries these days, it’s not even clear where this flashback is taking place. Only in the end credits do we learn these are ISIS soldiers.
As in the news and other popular media, it’s always kept vague in these movies what exactly the U.S. military is doing in these foreign countries, other than fighting for “freedom”. In truth, U.S. imperialism is the most reactionary and violent force on the planet and has killed untold millions since World War II. Making U.S. imperialism look good requires 1) being vague and untruthful about the actual reasons the U.S. military is fighting so many endless wars, and 2) having a sufficiently repugnant enemy, which the medieval barbarism of ISIS fits to a tee. Of course it was the U.S. invasion of Iraq that gave birth to ISIS in the first place, but to dwell on that would be to question what cannot be questioned: the article of faith that U.S. imperialism is always inherently a force for good, regardless of the facts.
Another way that Army of One updates the Rambo formula is that our hero is now a woman. The increasing focus of military leadership and propaganda on diversity and inclusion isn’t just a byproduct of popular movements like the Black, women’s, and LGBTQ+ struggles. It’s also because with so many wars going on at once, the U.S. military is finding it increasingly difficult to reach its recruitment goals. To maintain a steady supply of cannon fodder, it’s not enough anymore to appeal to young males. Hence the increasing presentation of women in the military as role models for young girls. Probably the most commercially successful example of this strategy was Captain Marvel, revolving around a female U.S. Air Force fighter pilot and fully backed by the Pentagon. Army of One has a much lower budget than a Disney/Marvel blockbuster, but its presentation of a female military hero is more within the limits of plausible reality. Brenner Baker is portrayed as the first female U.S. Army Ranger and U.S. media often depict members of the U.S. military, particularly the Special Forces, in superheroic terms.
The fight scenes are a strength of this film. They’re not flashy, but they’re effective. One of the challenges of fight scenes involving female action heroes is convincingly depicting, say, a 130-lb woman throwing down men who weigh 250 lbs. Hollman is trained in jiu-jitsu and shows off those skills in this film, which helps. The fights are brutal and short, which makes them feel more real than some overly choreographed fights in big-budget blockbusters. Baker uses her surroundings as weapons to dispatch her foes. I could believe her kicking ass more often than I could, say, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow. Finally, Hollman appears to possess some serious physical strength for a woman of her size. In one flashback to her Ranger training, we see her carrying a man on her back. If that wasn’t movie magic and Hollman did that for real, it’s impressive.
Hollman’s acting gets the job done. She’s effective enough when weeping over her husband’s murder. I’d say she’s a better actor than most of the classic ’80s male action stars in their heydays. For this kind of role, what’s most important tends to be an actor’s physicality and charisma, and Hollman succeeds on both counts. I haven’t seen any of her past work, much of which is straight-to-video fare aside from a starring role as a Germanic warrior on Spartacus: Vengeance and a part in The Matrix Resurrections, but after this I’d like to see her in more action movies.
The only other performance of note is Geraldine Singer as Mama, who in the tradition of a lot of action movie villains (think Brian Dennehy in First Blood, Ben Gazzara in Road House, or in the superhero world, Lex Luthor and The Joker) is not a physical threat to our hero, but an effective commander of henchmen who are. Singer is delightfully sinister, though it’s unclear why a cartel boss like Mama is serving food at the restaurant she owns in that early scene.
Bottom line is this movie isn’t great art, it’s derivative and cheesy, but I had a fun time. It’s one of those action flicks where the hero kills a great number of people without consequence, which is what I would expect from a violent live-action cartoon. I got the same feeling and laughed along with this in the same way I do watching professional wrestling. An entertaining throwback with a contemporary sheen.