Ruby Rose may have stepped away from The CW’s Batwoman after one season, but as the first trailer for Vanquish makes perfectly clear, the actor hasn’t given up on becoming an action star by any means.
Co-written and directed by veteran journeyman George Gallo, Rose plays the caretaker of Morgan Freeman’s wheelchair-bound retired police commissioner Damon, with the protagonist finding herself blackmailed when he takes her daughter hostage and leverages her past as a Russian drug courier against her.
Having been forced into doing the nefarious Damon’s bidding, Rose’s Victoria is tasked with completing five increasingly dangerous assignments before getting her child back, which involves double-crossing a team of corrupt cops in an effort to clean up the city, but this being an action movie, things clearly aren’t going to go according to plan.
While the trailer doesn’t offer much to indicate that Vanquish will be any better or worse than the innumerable B-tier actioners that flood the market on a regular basis with relatively similar premises, it does at least boast some decent production values, as well as furthering Rose’s mission to reinforce her action hero credentials.
No stranger to the genre having previously appeared in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, John Wick: Chapter 2, XXX: The Return of Xander Cage and The Doorman, Vanquish is just one of two action-packed outings for Rose set to arrive imminently, with SAS: Red Notice premiering tomorrow on VOD, which sees her starring alongside Sam Hueghan, Tom Wilkinson, Andy Serkis and more in the adaptation of former Special Forces soldier-turned-author Andy McNab’s novel of the same name.
Vanquish doesn’t look like anything fans of the action thriller haven’t seen a thousand times before, but the syrupy tones of Freeman are always more than welcome, not to mention capable of injecting even the most mundane of projects with an instant shot of esteemed gravitas, while it’s always refreshing to see him sink his teeth into a more villainous role than we’re used to seeing from the screen legend, and history has more than shown that nobody delivers dry exposition better than he does.
It’s been a quick turnaround for Vanquish, which only wrapped shooting at the end of January, but it’s already scheduled for release on April 23rd, and you can check out the trailer below.