Cersei Lannister would have solved her problems with wildfire and wine, but Lena Headey’s latest character prefers something more personal: industrial sabotage and maternal vengeance. The Game of Thrones alum stars in Ballistic, a revenge thriller with a premise so brutally efficient it feels like it was designed in a laboratory to win festival awards and make audiences deeply uncomfortable.
The first poster for the film shows Headey looking appropriately haunted, which is her signature aesthetic at this point. She’s playing Nance Redfield, a mother who works at an ammunition manufacturing company—a detail that seems innocuous until you learn her son has been serving in Afghanistan. The military industrial complex giveth and the military industrial complex taketh away, specifically by having her son killed by a bullet that came from her own factory.
This is the kind of cosmic irony that Greek tragedians would have killed for, and it’s also the inciting incident for what promises to be 80 minutes of escalating rage.
Headey has been here before, playing mothers who will burn the world down to protect (or avenge) their children. Her filmography reads like a manual for feminine fury: 300, The Contractor, Gunpowder Milkshake, 9 Bullets. She’s been typecast as “woman who looks fragile but will absolutely end you,” and honestly, it’s a good typecast. There’s something specific about the way Headey holds herself—like she’s constantly calculating the fastest route to your jugular—that makes her perfect for roles where grief transforms into action rather than paralysis.
Ballistic comes from writer-director Chad Faust, who previously made Girl with Bella Thorne, a film that demonstrated his interest in female protagonists who refuse to be victimized by their circumstances. His script for Ballistic apparently impressed everyone involved with its exploration of “the impact on everyday families of our military industrial complex and Americas’ near constant state of war,” which is ambitious thematic territory for what is essentially a vigilante movie. But that’s where the good ones live—in the space between exploitation and genuine social commentary.
Joining Headey is Amybeth McNulty, the Anne with an E alum who has been having a moment since joining Stranger Things as Robin’s love interest Vickie. McNulty plays Diana, and while details are scarce, one assumes she’s either a confidante, a complication, or possibly another grieving mother ready to join Headey’s crusade.
The chemistry between these two actresses—Headey with her thousand-yard stare and McNulty with her open-faced vulnerability—could elevate the material beyond standard revenge thriller fare.
The film shot in Sudbury, Ontario, which is apparently where you go when you need industrial landscapes that look authentically depressed. Principal photography wrapped in 2024, and the film premiered at Cinéfest Sudbury, suggesting a festival strategy aimed at building critical buzz before a wider release. The 80-minute runtime is particularly intriguing; this isn’t a movie interested in lingering or over-explaining. It’s going to establish the premise, escalate the tension, and deliver the catharsis, probably in that order.
What sets Ballistic apart from Headey’s previous action work is the specificity of the revenge. In Gunpowder Milkshake, she was part of an ensemble of assassins. In 9 Bullets, she was protecting a child. Here, she’s targeting a system—the military industrial complex that turned her labor into her loss. The bullet that killed her son has her fingerprints on it, metaphorically speaking, and that guilt becomes fuel. It’s the kind of role that allows an actor to explore the difference between justice and vengeance, between solving a problem and simply making the pain stop.
Headey has spoken in interviews about the physical toll of these roles, the training required to look convincing while holding weapons, the emotional preparation for scenes of extreme grief. At this point in her career, she could be playing supportive wives or authority figures in prestige dramas. Instead, she’s choosing to get bruised and bloodied in Canadian industrial parks, playing women who refuse to accept the unacceptable.
There’s something admirable about that, about an actor who understands her strengths and leans into them with increasing intensity.
Ballistic doesn’t have a wide release date yet, but the poster debut suggests distribution plans are firming up. When it arrives, it will find an audience primed for stories about institutional failure and personal retribution. The world has only gotten angrier since this film went into production, and Headey’s particular brand of contained rage feels more relevant than ever. Sometimes you need a movie that acknowledges that the system is broken and that the people broken by it might decide to break back.
Watch for Ballistic coming to theaters and streaming platforms in 2025, and catch up on Lena Headey’s complete action filmography while you wait. This is revenge cinema with a conscience, and you won’t want to miss it.
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