“Catch the Fair One”: Sex-Traffickers Beware

Variety has just reported that Josef Kubota Wladyka’s Catch the Fair One, a Native-American, feminist take on Taken, will hit the big screen. Here in the Liam-Neeson role is Kali Reis, a real-life US-boxing-world champion, convincingly portraying a tough-cookie ex-boxer, Kaylee, in search of a younger sister who’s being sex trafficked by a run-of-the-mill criminal organization.

The first half-hour is a rather seamy setup that includes a flashback of the sibling stupidly getting into a stranger’s van on a highway; a peep into a support group for parents of missing children; Kaylee noting her mom wishes she and not her sister was being sex trafficked; and finally Kaylee getting herself picked up, doped with heroin, and “forced” into prostitution to find her sister and set her free. At this point, the film livens up with our heroine knocking off the villains right and left while freeing other kidnapped souls.

Possibly due to its low-end budget, several of the slaughters, especially the final ones, could have been finessed a bit more. However, Wladyka, who’s directed 7 episodes of…