REVIEW: ‘The Red Line’ Is A Heart-Pounding Game Of Cat And Mouse

From the logline, The Red Line sounds like Ocean’s 8 meets Thelma: the film follows several women teaming up to take down thieves after being conned out of their money. But what follows is a harrowing tale of deception, violence, and despair. Inspired by Southeast Asia’s robust online scam industry, The Red Line is a worthwhile but overlong addition to Netflix’s international catalog.

In the opening scene, Orn (Nittha Jirayungyurn) answers a phone call she believes is from the police. After transferring the callers’ half a million baht, she realizes she’s been scammed. The real police are no help, telling her just to accept it. Orn comes from an upper-middle-class family, and asks her husband, Benz (Tul Tulyathep Uawithya), to keep her mistake a secret from their family and friends. They can afford the blow to their bank account, but Orn struggles with shame and nightmares.

Orn meets similarly enraged women at a support group for scam victims. Wow (Chutima Maholakul) watched a phone scam drain her elderly grandmother’s savings. At the same time, Fai (Esther Supreeleela) had her hard-earned savings from her physical therapist job vanish, and she’s unable to pay a down payment on a condo. The cops haven’t been any help for Wow and Fai either, and their collective anger at themselves for falling for the scam isn’t getting any better. Together, they realize they have to take matters into their own hands.

The Red Line transforms into a thrilling game of cat-and-mouse.

What starts as a simple revenge thriller becomes a cat-and-mouse game when The Red Line introduces its other key players. Aood (Todsapol Maisuk) is the brains of a particularly successful scam operation. As the manager of a scam call center, he steps in to play roles on FaceTime, like cops, to secure closing deals.

One of his trafficked employees, Yui (Paowalee Pornpimon), is the one who scammed Wow’s grandma, and she experiences a crisis of conscience. The Red Line builds empathy for Yui because, even though she’s ruined someone’s life, she’s trapped in a situation she can’t escape. Aood, too, is trapped, as he reports to the Chinese mob, but if there’s a modicum of empathy for the people he manages, he’s not great at showing it.

Orn, Wow, and Fai hatch a plan to catch their scammers in the act, with Aood caught in their web. It’s one thing to devise a plan, but another one to execute it entirely. “No one’s Tom Cruise,” Orn points out, as her team’s scheming becomes increasingly far-fetched. To catch a scammer, they have to start acting like scammers – and maybe lose their own humanity in the process of pursuing justice.

In The Red Line, we see how far someone will go to find justice. 

The Red Line, engagingly written by Tinnapat Banyatpiyapoj and Kongdej Jaturanrasamee, is equally thrilling and chilling. The energy of the team’s operations, as they move from idea to reality, is heart-pounding. Aood goes to violent and emotionally abusive ends to ensure his scams continue running without interference. It’s a tough watch, but a necessary one, given that phone scams are a thriving industry.

Director Sitisiri Mongkolsiri’s direction is solid, cutting back and forth between Orm, Wow, and Fai’s storyline and Aood’s arc. At two hours and fifteen minutes, The Red Line balloons from tense to bloated. A tighter cut might make the tenseness of The Red Line feel sharper rather than exaggerated. But it’s anchored by strong performances, especially from Pornpimon and Supreeleela, and each character’s desperation is vivid and nail-biting.

While overlong, The Red Line is engrossing and powerful. With a strong cast and culturally relevant premise, it holds up a chilling mirror to our own world and the cost of seeking justice at any price.

The Red Line is streaming now exclusively on Netflix.