Just a couple of weeks back, G20 had Viola Roberts use her military training to take on a bunch of terrorists; now, in Exterritorial, Jeanne Goursaud fights against the US consular establishment in Frankfurt, using her military background. It would be interesting to see how ordinary women would cope when faced with such indomitable adversaries. Obviously filmmakers simply want females in action films to be well-prepared in advance for any impending crisis. Still, this Christian Zübert film misses out on great emotional content by making his leading lady a soldier. (The original film is in German, but Netflix has an English dubbed version too.)
After an ambush in Afghanistan killed her fellow soldiers, including her partner, Sara Wulf (Goursaud), formerly with German special forces, suffers from severe PTSD. When she is recruited by a security firm in America, she goes to the US consulate with her seven-year-old son Josh (Rickson Guy Da Silva), to apply for a work visa. After a very long wait, she leaves the fidgety kid in the play area for a few minutes to get a coffee and when she returns, he has disappeared. To make her ordeal worse, the helpful regional security officer Eric Kynch (Dougray Scott) tells her that she had come into the office alone and shows her CCTV footage to prove it. Even in her state of anxiety and disorientation, Sara is convinced that Kynch and his security cohort Donovan (Kayode Akinyemi) are lying to her.
She escapes from the room in which they have confined her – in an extra vigilant US consular building, a bent paper clip works to open a door! As she jumps, climbs and runs about with no clue as to where Josh might be, she bumps into Irina (Lera Above), a Belarusian refugee imprisoned in the premises, looking for a chance to escape. Now Kynch and Donovan have two women on the loose to contend with—both fit, dressed for fighting, and able to find their way around the massive complex.
At 109 minutes, the film packs in a lot of action and a conspiracy that Sara eventually unravels. The action sequences are not spectacular, and Sara easily finds whatever she needs at the moment just lying around—whether it’s a pin, a computer, a recording device or ingredients for making an incendiary device. Still, Exterritorial is entertaining enough, and it is always fun to watch two women run riot, in the US consulate, no less!
Exterritorial
Directed by Christian Zubert
Cast: Jeanne Goursaud, Dougray Scorr, Lera Abova and others
On Netflix
