Rent Freedom Fighters: The Ray (2017)

Freedom Fighters: The Ray review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

The Ray is a somewhat troubling picture because it carries a certain overtness that is necessary but carries a certain simplicity to its bluntness. Spruced up as a 21st-century reimagining of Freedom Fighters, where American heroes do battle with villains, the film clearly defines the new age of heroes being those of a diverse group in race and sexuality. The bad guys are still Nazis, however, but politicians are casually lumped in as well. But in the film’s own way of trying to be about fighting bigotry and representing LGBT themes, there are a few missed opportunities that scale down the drama into a message that’s perhaps too easy to digest in its almost lip-service appeal.

Intentions are still noble within the narrative. Starting off in alternative Earth, Nazis have taken over Earth and are making progress on their whole genocide mission of race cleansing. Only a handful of heroes stand in the way of this chaos but not many can survive when a literal Nazi Supergirl is leading the charge of hate. In a last-ditch effort to keep the fight going, the superhero known as The Ray leaps through dimensions in hopes that another Earth will give way to a new Ray that will save his Earth.

The Earth that The Ray ends up on is the modern-day Earth-1 where the Nazis didn’t win. Ray Terrill (Russell Tovey) didn’t grow up into a world where he would fight Nazis but one where he would become a social worker trying to help out immigrants and the LGBT community. He instead fights bigoted politicians and tries to come to terms with coming out to his parents about being gay. A good fight to be sure but the other Earth really needs him to become The Ray so that he can stop Nazi Supergirl.

Even though the film exists within the same realm as Arrow and The Flash CW series, including the obligatory cameos to make it official, the film shares a lot more in common with shonen-ai in how it goes about weaving the story of a gay superhero. There’s a tightrope walked within how the film attempts to balance Ray’s developing romance and his superhero story of defeating Nazis that the film comes off with a certain sensation of lip-service to what it represents. We first see Ray struggling as a social worker to find suitable housing for Muslim Americans but don’t see it play a much larger role later. The romance that Ray develops with a new guy he meets is cute but given about as much weight as any other superhero side romance that is heterosexual. For a film that favors progressive aspects, it’s a bit bitter to digest it all as more of standard superhero outing with somewhat softer takes on big targets.

The Ray is more or less the ultimate hero fantasy for the LGBT community and there’s a certain charm to that blunt appeal which represents a new vision of America. It tries to redefine the somewhat goofy image of the Freedom Fighters more as those fighting oppression on the homefront. While it does pick the easy-to-hate bad guys of Nazis, there’s a mild subplot of Ray also having to deal with his judging father and a bigotted politician. Those would seem like juicier targets to make the film more provocative but I just have to remind myself this is a superhero film and that a scene of Ray punching out a racist politician would be too radical, even if that politician was someone like Nazi Luthor. Maybe throw a robot suit on him to meet the comic book criteria.