3 stars

When my parents would let me stay up late enough, I loved watching the television series Charlie's Angels as a kid, where an unseen billionaire ran a women-only detective agency, with the evil-doers often underestimating the ladies. Big mistake. Huge. The differences between myself and my school friends were most obvious when, playing cops and robbers, I would slip my gun into the back of my imaginary satin pantsuit like Angel Jaclyn Smith, while my friends would hold their pretend guns like the Six Million Dollar Man.

The director McG and his producer-star Drew Barrymore captured the fundamental camp essence of a Kelly Garrett pantsuit when they produced two Charlie's Angels films in 2000 and 2003, both enormous financial successes. They pitted Barrymore, Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz against an array of white-collar executive criminals and their henchmen with moves that paid homage to Asian martial arts films, with wire-work, high-kicks and kooky sound effects for a comedy happy ending.

This time around, actress Elizabeth Banks, whose directorial aspirations hit pay-dirt with Pitch Perfect 2, produces writes and directs, as well as co-starring, which is the kind of Girl Power! the TV series and previous films only imagined. Narratively a continuation of both the series and the previous films, the Charles Townsend Agency has gone international, placing posses of butt-kicking highly-skilled crime-fighting women in offices around the world, each assigned their 'Bosley', a lieutenant equal parts chauffeur, fixer and cleaner. As the film opens, future 'Angel' team-mates Sabina (Kristen Stewart) and Jane (Ella Balinska) meet for the first time on a mission. It doesn't go well - Jane pushes Sabina off a roof.

A year later, the two are re-teamed on a new case, to protect IT whiz-kid and whistle-blower Elena (Naomi Scott) who can identify the weapon-potential of a new piece of green energy technology that Billionaire inventor Alexander Brock (Sam Claflin) is about to launch onto the energy market. When fending of off an assassination attempt kills Jane's Bosley (Djimon Hounsou), the women team up with their newly-assigned Bosley (Elizabeth Banks) to retrieve the prototype weapons.

Elizabeth Banks' vision of the Charlie's Angels franchise isn't the film I was expecting to see. Gone is the tongue-in-cheek camp of the Barrymore era, replaced with a serious tone, and a Millennial sensibility and coolness. There are going to be a swathe of folk who find this tone as cool as I found the Barrymore films.

With only a handful of people in my cinema, a lot of the gags - most of which were given to the film's biggest star and draw-card Kristen Stewart fell completely flat. In a bigger crowd, these might have been belly laughs. So, with all of the humour removed, what I found impressive was Elizabeth Banks take on an action film universe, one of practicality and a faithful adherence to the physics of our real world. It stands apart from the nonsense physics other filmmakers pay homage to in films where cars move furiously and fast, defying gravity and common sense, actors make leaps impossible in Earth's gravity, bad guys' bullets miss, good guys' bullets land.

Her action stars take their high-heels off when they go after their prey. Every punch that lands, hurts. Not every punch lands. Every body that falls has an impact. It is Newton's Third Law, but it is so rare to see on screen, it impresses. In one battle in Elizabeth Banks' world, Stewart and Johnathan Tucker face off against each other - she jumps from her motorbike so it will sweep him at the feet and take him down. He blows up a Land Rover behind her. In practically any other film they would both spring up and continue the fight, but she stays down and he limps away, impossibly slowly.

Banks choreographs her actions sequence on a small scale, slow and intimate, while at the other end of this spectrum is Kym Barrett's gorgeous look-at-me costuming. Stars Stewart, Balinska and Scott have nice chemistry. This is Stewart's first truly commercial film since the Twilight films ended and her ultra-hip action-hero plays well to her fan-base.