Mark Reviews Movies: WILDCAT (2021)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 22, 2021

The premise of Wildcat is a tricky one, primarily because this story could so easily veer into the realm of exploitation. It's about an American woman who is abducted by a group of local militants outside of Mosul and tortured for an unspecified length of time for information. This material could become exploitative in two obvious ways: 1.) in focusing on the gruesome reality of torture, and 2.) in turning the woman's captors into representatives of an entire country, ethnicity, and/or religion.

Writer/director Jonathan W. Stokes mostly and smartly avoids both of those potential missteps, although certainly those who want to imagine that everyone or the majority of people from this particular region are represented by the antagonists in this story will see their prejudices confirmed by the film. That's their problem, though, not Stokes'.

He has made a thoughtful thriller, set almost entirely within the confines of a single room, that's not about the physical effects of torture or evil villains. It's about two intelligent people, trying to one-up each other without the other person realizing the mental game that's being played. The material works, too, thanks to Stokes' focus on the psychological impact of this scenario, as well as the mind trickery being employed by our opponents, and a pair of strong performances.

Khadija Young (Georgina Campbell), a Muslim-American journalist covering the conflict in Iraq, has been abducted. The convoy with which she was travelling was ambushed. She and a Marine security guard named Luke (Luke Benward) were captured and are the only survivors of the attack, which killed all of Luke's fellow Marines and a U.S. diplomat.

All of that happens before the story begins. We meet Khadija within a cell in the militants' hideout, somewhere within the city limits of Mosul. She is brought in with a hood over her head and chained to a cot. Luke lies unconscious on the floor, suffering from a gunshot wound to his abdomen. Before Khadija can get her bearings, a man named Hamza (Maz Siam) comes into the room with a toolbox. Ignoring the woman's begging and pleading, the man—whom Khadija later says has the air of "a psychopathic mechanic"—grabs some pliers from his kit and proceeds to tear off one of Khadija's fingernails.

To be clear, just because Stokes doesn't show us the grisly details of what the prisoners endure while in captivity, all of this remains incredibly unpleasant. The key, though, is that we don't see those specifics. Stokes cuts away from the bloodiest, most grotesque moments, giving us a close-up of a pained face (The plot jumps past the violent removal of Khadija's other nails, letting the increasing number of bandages on her fingertips tell the story of her trauma), or only allows us to hear what the captors are doing to Luke, often brought into a neighboring room for interrogation.

The effect of these gaps matters. We get the point, but we can't accuse Stokes of wallowing in such grisly violence.

Instead, we're left to concentrate on Khadija, a woman whose occupation may only be a cover for another cover story about her real purpose in Iraq, and her determination not to let this pain be the end of her. She comes up with a plan to escape with Luke, who doesn't trust her as a journalist or as whatever her job might actually be, or, barring that, to prevent a planned attack on a U.S. consulate in the city. The two have a lot of information—security numbers, guard placements and rotations, passwords, etc.—that could make such an attack successful. They have to determine how much real and fake information to disclose, with as little frequency as possible without making themselves seem useless and, hence, disposable.

The main captor is a man named Jalal (Ibrahim Renno), a much sought-after and prized target for the American military and intelligence services. After the torture from the mechanic, Jalal comes into the room, addressing Khadija with respect and words of comfort. He knows exactly what he's doing, giving her little bits of compassion, which seem like a lot under the circumstances, before doling out pain of his own.

He is in control here, and even when he provides his back story, explaining how his daughter was horrifically killed in a bombing attack, it's a tool—one of genuine pain and grief, but a tool of manipulation nonetheless. The trick to the back-and-forth between these characters is in Khadija's response to his story—putting the blame for the girl's death squarely on Jalal's head.

Stokes doesn't try to obscure or complicate matters. We know who Khadija is (more or less, but enough to understand that her job is obtain information) and what she wants from her captors. We know who Jalal is and what he wants from his prisoners. The plot consists of watching these two play the game that must necessarily unfold from these motives, and Stokes' screenplay maintains the tension in watching Khadija's plan unfold, not knowing how far Jalal is willing to take his own plan, and being fully aware that one wrong word or one mismatched lie from the captives could doom Khadija, with nothing coming from her death.

The performances from Campbell and Renno are intelligent and resolute in communicating this battle of wits and manipulation, while Campbell also gives a strong sense of Khadija as a determined survivor. Wildcat is undoubtedly a tough film, but through these performances and with Stokes' attention planted firmly on the psychological sides of this story, it's an effective one, too.

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