Zazie Beetz must be exhausted. Not only did she train for four months to play They Will Kill You’s Asia Reaves – an ex-con hacking and slashing her way through an elite New York hotel to rescue her sister Marie (Myha’la) – she also had to carry the entire damn film on her shoulders. Kirill Sokolov’s action-horror-comedy leans its entire body weight onto her magnetism. Practically every other shot is a crash zoom into her features, either snarled up or quieted with killer focus, wielding a blade, a fire axe set on fire, or a decapitated pig’s head possessed by Beelzebub.
Beetz, via FX’s Atlanta or Deadpool 2 (2018), has steadily built up a portfolio of pleasingly jagged-edged women – bitingly funny, tender-hearted, uncompromising. Asia’s all those qualities, plus a little of John McClane and his (literally) barefoot resilience and The Bride, of Kill Bill fame, and her single-minded fixation. She’s brilliant.
