“Stone Cold Fox” Captures ’80s Revenge Flick Madness
Revenge stories can take a multitude of forms. From bloody action flicks to more calculated takedowns, humans are forever drawn to tales of justice served. Sophie Tabet’s Stone Cold Fox is one tale of revenge that’s more along the lines of bloody vengeance. Clearly borrowing style and sensibility from the action movies of the ’80s, Stone Cold Fox takes an abundance of tropes of the genre — crooked cop, kidnapped sister, hero with a cool jacket, ex-military with PTSD, villain with an equally cool jacket — and mixes them together in its own way.
courtesy of Vertical
Fox (Kiernan Shipka), whose real name we don’t learn until toward the end of the movie, grows frustrated with living at home with her alcoholic mother. Fox’s little sister, Spooky (Bluesy Burke), begs her not to leave, but Fox is adamant that she has to for her own good. While on the run, Fox meets and subsequently falls in love with Goldie (Krysten Ritter), a drug queenpin. At first it’s intoxicating to be with Goldie, but eventually the high wears off and Fox escapes to return to Spooky. Goldie doesn’t take kindly to someone leaving her tight-knit group and sends her goons to capture Spooky. Now Fox must return to the place she escaped from to save her sister.
Tabet happily explains that she grew up on the gritty action movies of the ’80s, but one doesn’t have to read her director’s statement to know that. It’s clear from the get-go that Stone Cold Fox is an homage to the pulpy movies of yore. It’s more than just the fact that the film is set in the ’80s, it’s the reverence for the pizzazz that came from the era. Each character is introduced with a stylized title card and a freeze frame while Fox provides snarky voiceover throughout the film. There’s also Dylan (Adam El Sharkawy), an unexpected ally Fox finds along the way, who dreams of living in a real-life action movie. He and his ex-military paramedic sister (Mishel Prada) provide the set-up for the classic training montage. Stone Cold Fox loves the DNA from which it was constructed, and there’s a palpable energy that runs throughout.
courtesy of Vertical
That being said, Stone Cold Fox isn’t reinventing any wheels, but it’s not trying to. What Stone Cold Fox is interested in doing, and achieves, is creating the sort of thriller that scratches the revenge flick itch. It’s brighter than something like John Wick, with its colorful costumes, humorous one-liners, and screwball-adjacent heroes who don’t know how to exist in this world of villains. Stone Cold Fox is pulpy on purpose, enjoying the fact that it’s hiding blocks of cocaine in a roller rink locker, unconcerned with real action movie logic. Stone Cold Fox is ninety minutes of plot that doesn’t take its foot off the gas. At a time when people are annoyed by long runtimes and movies that don’t know when to cut things out, Stone Cold Fox is undeniably a quick watch that offers quite a lot of bang for its buck.
If you examine the main theme of Stone Cold Fox, you’ll see that it touches on the idea of found family and the way some people abuse that for their own gain. There’s immense power in losing your biological, then meeting people who become the most important people in your life. Blood relative or not, Stone Cold Fox argues that you have the ability to choose the people you surround yourself with. The film doesn’t beat viewers over the head with that theme, just quietly weaves it throughout the runtime. Stone Cold Fox is a love affair. From its appreciation for the action movies that came before to its message of found family, Stone Cold Fox is a revenge tale wrapped in a hug.
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