Gal Gadot beating up The Rock and Ryan Reynolds in Red Notice
As a moviegoer, I am aware there is some suspension of disbelief I need in order to enjoy an action-adventure movie, and I’m all for it. Exaggerations are what make movies dramatic and entertaining, but there is a limit to how much my mind is able to ignore physics. At some point, my brain will start screaming LIIIES and I will start to feel self conscious about my choice of entertainment.
If a female character is going to beat the ever-loving crap out of multiple male characters, there need to be some ground rules. She should either have an imposing physique, or be nimble on her feet, armed and very focused on dodging attacks.
I would not mess with Brienne
What makes the Red Notice fight scene so ridiculous compared to say Uma Thurman fighting 88 crazy Japanese businessmen, is the fact that Gal Gadot is actually overpowering Dwayne Johnson.
The fight starts of on a ridiculous note and just keeps surpassing itself at every moment.
We begin with a very comfortable looking Gal provoking the two men to arrest her. They oblige, but as soon as they come close she sends Ryan Reynolds flying with a kick to the gut.
The Rock gets behind her and manages to grab both her hands behind her back. I don’t care how good anyone is at martial arts, when a 6′5′’, 260lb sentient pile of muscles grabs you like that, the fight is over.
But in an epic feat of what I can only imagine is crackhead strength, she casually removes his arm and breaks free.
The fight then continues with her mopping the floor with the two men using the blunt end of a spear, before Dwayne gets behind her again and puts her in a chokehold. Since by this point we’ve established common sense is out the window, she casually throws him over her shoulder like a rag doll.
At this point in the fight I’m expecting her to grab the Rock’s hands and slap him with them, telling him to “stop hitting yourself”.
The fight then ends with her cuffing them to each other and knocking their heads together like a pair of misbehaved toddlers. She walks off without breaking a sweat or ruining her hair.
I don’t know what happened in the rest of the movie since I had to change it or pop a vein rolling my eyes too intensely, but I’m guessing it could be anything. The rules of physics have collapsed and everything was now possible in bizarro world.
Edit:
It has been kindly brought to my attention that the entire fight scene was staged by The Rock and Gal Gadot’s characters to trick Ryan Reynolds, and should therefore not have ruined the movie for me. After careful consideration, I have concluded this fact to be *drumroll please*
When this slap in the face of a scene comes along, I (along with Ryan Reynolds’s character) am expected to nod along thinking “well, that happened, what’s next I wonder?”. Anything revealed by the end of the movie – be it setups, cyborgs, superpowers, dream sequences or whatever – changes nothing.