STONE COLD FOX Review: Kiernan Shipka Stars in Retro '80s-Style Thriller

Moments into writer-director Sophie Tabet’s feature-length debut, Stone Cold Fox, the singularly named “Fox” (Kiernan Shipka, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Mad Men) of the title, stops time in mid-air kick and addresses the camera with a playful, tongue-in-cheek response, suggesting Tabet’s film won’t just embrace old-school genre tropes, but possibly subvert them too.

 

Unfortunately, that’s as far as Stone Cold Fox goes subversion-wise, overpromising and underdelivering, instead unfolding as a self-conscious parody of 80s-style action-thrillers, complete with retro, freeze-frame character intros, sly, past-tense voice-over narration courtesy of Fox, a teen runaway turned kept girlfriend by a drug-dealing psychopath and cult leader wannabe, Goldie (Krysten Ritter).

 

Inadvertently discovered by Goldie at the lowest point in her life, Fox eagerly joined Goldie’s clan without realizing that once in, there was no easy way out. With a backstory filled with capital “T” trauma (a father removed permanently from her life by accident, an alcoholic, substance-abusing, absent mother, abject poverty), Fox left her desperately unhappy life behind for Goldie. Fox also left her teen sister, Spooky (Bluesy Burke), behind, a selfish, self-centered decision that haunts Fox to the present day. 

 

Already rankled by Goldie’s manipulative, controlling, increasingly abusive behavior, Fox begins to imagine a new, better life outside Goldie's influence. That impetus to change her life for the better arrives via a chance encounter at a drug-fueled party with a teen resembling Spooky. It's enough to convince Fox to stop dreaming and leave Goldie and her clan behind. In Fox's head, leaving empty-handed makes zero sense, so she grabs one of Goldie’s duffel bags on the way out. Naturally, Goldie doesn’t take kindly to Fox’s departure. She sends a disposable duo and a corrupt law enforcement officer, Sergeant Billy Breaker (Kiefer Sutherland), to recover the stolen duffel bag. 

 

Incredibly ambitious, especially given obvious budget constraints, Stone Cold Fox expands beyond the central conflict to include Frankie (Mishel Prada), a combat medic with PTSD, Dylan (Adam Elshar), Frankie’s martial arts-obsessed adopted brother, a straightlaced law enforcement officer, Corbett (Jamie Chung, underutilized) new to town, and among others, Minx (Karen Fukuhara) and Crystal (Gabrielle Maiden), the other members of Goldie’s cult-like clan. Their paths cross, criss-cross, and cross again, often leaving narrative logic, or whatever counts for narrative logic in the hyper-stylized world of Stone Cold Fox. 

 

With so many characters, multiple subplots, and a 90-minute running time, Stone Cold Fox feels both overstuffed and underdeveloped. Character beats aren’t allowed to breathe, tone-changing moments aren’t allowed to linger, and plot points lack connective tissue, resulting in an often frustrating experience, all the more so given Tabet’s obvious talents as a visual filmmaker, albeit one influenced more by everyone from Quentin Tarantino to Edgar Wright and everyone in between, rather than the 80s action-thrillers intended by the time period, characters, and storyline.

 

Still, Tabet keeps the action flowing at an admirably steady thrum, Shipka makes for a winning, root-worthy anti-heroine, and the rest of the cast, specifically Kiefer Sutherland as an increasingly desperate, corrupt cop, do their next-level best to elevate the material beyond its story-based shortcomings. Special shout-out to composer Alex Kovacs for delivering a suitably propulsive score that wouldn’t feel out of place in a 40-year-old straight-to-video or grindhouse action-thriller.