Beautiful Creatures

You can certainly see the fun in the ideas behind this blackly comic female buddy picture. Regrettably, the execution proves patchy. The uneasy combination of high farce and crunching violence is established early on. When Petula (Weisz) is in the midst of rough-house treatment from her boyfriend (Mannion), passer-by Dorothy (Lynch) interrupts the altercation, and a hefty whack from an iron bar soon quietens him down. Accidentally, of course, but permanently. Once the two gals collect themselves, they cook up a kidnapping scam, hoping to collect a million quid while the corpse gathers dust. The strength of the movie is the way the female leads play off one another; together they manage to create an effective partnership, shaping an amusing learning curve in the face of the escalating mayhem. There's a vague female empowerment vibe and some ill-defined notion about male objectification of women, but it's hard to credit much of it when the movie inflicts harm on humans and dog alike with would-be shocking relish.