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| photo courtesy of teaser-trailer.com |
Jennifer Garner stars
in Peppermint, a bloody revenge flick
about a working mother-turned-vigilante. She plays Riley North, whose husband
and daughter are killed by a powerful cartel. After the justice system fails to
punish the culprits, Riley goes off the grid. When she returns years later, she
possesses the skills and the arsenal to take on the cartel herself.
If that plotline sounds
vaguely familiar to Taken, that’s
because it is. In fact, the director of Taken,
Pierre Morel, also directs Peppermint.
But where Taken overcomes its flaws
with thrilling set pieces and hard-hitting action, Peppermint struggles to make a good impression.
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| photo courtesy of joblo.com |
The movie’s greatest
asset is Jennifer Garner, whose capability as an action star has long been underappreciated.
Lest her more recent roles (in family features like Love, Simon or The Odd Life
of Timothy Green) make you forget, she once headlined a Marvel superhero
movie (2005’s Elektra) and starred in
one of my all-time favorite TV shows, Alias.
Peppermint demonstrates that she hasn’t
lost any of her chops in the intervening years, and if there’s something good
to come out of this movie, it’ll be that she gets the chance to star in
another, better action flick sometime soon.
When it comes to Peppermint, “unlikely” is the operative
word. Other action movies share some of Peppermint’s
faults—rough dialogue, poorly structured scenes, slow pacing—but few dare to
stretch the boundaries of belief as far and as often. The movie starts strong,
with a likeable protagonist and believable relationships, but soon thereafter,
it tells us that this heartbroken mother has gone overseas and become a lethal
assassin capable of taking out entire squadrons of heavily armed goons all by her
lonesome. She’s not ex-CIA. She’s not an undercover agent. She’s not even super-smart
or something. She’s just a regular (though admittedly really angry) person. And
if that doesn’t threaten your suspension of disbelief, don’t worry—that’s just the
first act.
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| photo courtesy of uproxx.com |
In its favor, Peppermint would make for a solid B-movie
Netflix night (not, in my book, totally an insult). The movie won’t dazzle or
surprise you, but it has action sequences and a likeable hero. And it plays
(briefly) with some interesting ideas: Riley uses her newfound abilities to watches
over the little stretch of city where she lives, becoming a sort of superhero-vigilante
akin to Daredevil or [insert other Marvel Netflix hero]. It is, in other words,
salvageable, especially for viewers with low standards and plenty of patience. So
even though it’s not exactly a good
movie, Peppermint might entertain audiences
in its own modest way.
TRAILER
Watch the trailer here.
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| photo courtesy of theyoungfolks.com |
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