RED SONJA Review: Charm and Heart Battle Budget Issues

For a movie based on a hard-edged sword and sorcery comic, itself inspired by an early 20th century pulp story, 2025's Red Sonja starts off a lot more Lord of the Rings than Conan the Barbarian.

Over warm, inviting strings, a voiceover explains the history of the fantastical lands where the story will take place; we're treated to images of fog settling over a forest and herds of horses running in bright green fields. We're then introduced to the titular Sonja (Matilda Lutz, a modern genre icon for her performance in Revenge), who has a charming one-sided repartee with her horse, and a few moments later the camera is swirling around them before landing on a clearcut and blackened piece of forest. It feels lifted straight out of Peter Jackson's adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's high fantasy masterpiece, and it forces you into a suspicious perspective.

Perhaps ironically though, it's the fact that Red Sonja doesn't have the budget to pull off the same aesthetic as Jackson's adaptation that offers its most apt, and ultimately complimentary parallel: Xena: Warrior Princess.

Red Sonja's low budget is apparent immediately from its less-than-convincing medieval costumes, passable but glaringly CGI creatures, and overlit daytime scenes. Add to the limited production value a script that is both cliche-ridden and as subtle as a sledgehammer, and you've got the kind of movie that demands buy-in from anyone who might spend the nearly two-hour runtime in this world. But as with Xena, if you do buy in, Red Sonja has a good amount to offer.

The film's greatest strength is its surprisingly cozy tone, set by director M.J. Bassett (who also did significant rewrites of Tasha Huo's initial script) through small character interactions that are brought to life by a cast with easy ensemble chemistry. It's a remarkable feat to make simply spending time with characters comfortable and enjoyable within minutes of a movie rather than hours of episodes, and Bassett and her cast deserve credit for pulling it off. Albeit one of the best character dynamics, a teasing flirtation between Sonja and her not quite love-interest Osin The Untouched (Luca Pasqualino), does play out over the course of the film.

The ensemble is made up of the Damnati, fighters in a gladiatorial arena Sonja is shipped off to after being captured early on by the evil Emperor Draygan (Robert Sheehan, having a lot of fun being mustache-twirlingly evil). It's among the Damnati that she becomes a leader and it's these characters who will ultimately support her in bringing Draygan down, but Red Sonja packs in enough ups and downs in different locations to feel like a full-fledged adventure epic (whether or not those locations actually look epic).

An epic with themes, too. While the movie may never allow much room for interpretation, having Draygan scream about how he needs to burn down a forest for "progress" doesn't feel too on the nose when AI data centers are drawing the last drops of water from drought stricken communities.

That environmental focus extends to animals as well, as Sonja fights to free several from being forced to perform in the arena and argues "no one can own the creatures of the forest." That the response to Sonja's comment is "anyone can own anything with enough power" makes the villains of this sword and sorcery tale feel all too real and contemporary.

The action that erupts from the conflict between good and evil fluctuates in quality almost in accordance with whether we're watching a battle or a one-on-one fight. The battles are rousing, with wide shots that offer up images of the many combatants chaotically engaging each other, and some time spent on specific characters fighting off multiple assailants.

These moments of characters moving through faceless enemies in battle are given just enough time to highlight the movie's scrappy choreography that communicates a real desperation while also being clear enough for viewers to track. Sadly, the smaller, arguably more narratively important fights between two named characters are far too aggressively edited, leaving them hard to follow and more frustrating than exciting. It's the kind of filmmaking that feels like it's hiding something, which is baffling given that the battle scenes show off good choreography and a game cast.

Red Sonja (2025) is significantly flawed, but it's also an unabashedly earnest adventure movie, something that's been missing from our screens and deserves to return. There's a tacked-on, downright bad, sequel bait "scene" that closes the film, and while I rolled my eyes at it, I know I'd watch the movie it promises.

The film releases in movie theaters for one night only -- Wednesday, August 13 -- ahead of a digital release on August 29, via Samuel Goldwyn Films. Visit the official site for locations and showtimes.