![]() No one is spared her wrath as she uses military grade weaponry to unleash hell. and starts killing off everyone involved in her husband’s and daughter’s deaths - from the three goons that actually did it, to the corrupt court officials involved, to corrupt policemen, everyone in the gang and finally the big boss himself. Having learned how to kick butt and handle guns, she comes back to L.A. She’s assigned to a psych ward by the court but escapes and goes off the radar for five years. She identifies the perpetrators but thanks to a corrupt judge and the corrupt legal system, the trio of killers go scot free. He changed his mind but they killed him all the same. She later learns that it’s because her husband was going to take part in a heist against the cartel. Middle class mother Riley North (Jennifer Garner) watched her husband and daughter gunned down by members of a Mexican gang. The film is another indication that Hollywood’s obsession for subverting gender stereotypes is still alive and kicking as the film is part Taken, part John Wick, part Death Wish but has a female star in the lead. (It makes no attempt, however, to dodge the white savior tropes that are also endemic to vigilante pics, with one laugh-out-loud shot in particular pushing things well beyond the point of parody.Directed by Pierre Morel, who resurrected Liam Neeson’s career with Taken (2008), Peppermint is revenge porn served hot. From “Death Wish” onward, films of this ilk have long been dogged by a reactionary, if not borderline fascistic, approach to matters of race, and “Peppermint” makes a ham-fisted go at splitting the difference by casting actors of color in the supporting good guy roles, while also playing to Fox News’ swampiest MS-13 fever dreams in its depiction of Garcia’s gang. ![]() ![]() But it’s hard to say if the film would have necessarily been worse off if she let us know she’s in on the joke, as “Peppermint” is never more risible than in the moments it takes itself most seriously. There’s a more compelling Jennifer Garner tragedy in the expression on her face in that now-viral photo of her handing ex-husband Ben Affleck a bag of Jack in the Box.Īs usual, Garner displays an almost heroic refusal to smirk, sigh, or sleepwalk through any of this, never acting as though the material is beneath her, even when it’s something she could be scraping off the bottom of her shoe. Only Garner’s inimitable charm and a 100-minute runtime make this film at all watchable. Even a random Method Man appearance three-fourths of the way through the film doesn’t make it fun. There are stunts, but no choreography there’s violence, but no impact. In a world where John Wick and Atomic Blonde exist, ho-hum shootouts in drug dens feel like a waste of time. At least someone is.Īll you really need to know about Peppermint can be gleaned from its title sequence, a hodgepodge of heavy-metal music, filters, and camera effects that would make more sense in a 2000s Simple Plan music video than they do here, in a film starring America’s sweetheart.Īs the story slogs on and it becomes obvious that this film has resigned itself to the cliched mediocrity one might have predicted from looking at its poster, even the action sequences fail to merit attention. But in those rare moments, Riley North becomes a person: a violent person, a broken person, but a person who might be enjoying herself a little all the same. For most of the film, she’s a wife and mother, but nothing resembling a fully drawn woman. Elsewhere, Morel is as disinterested in her character as he is in her targets, her trauma, or the film’s themes. In the film’s best-and often funniest-moments, she gives that violence emotional substance as well, whether she’s terrifying an alcoholic father into getting his shit together or allowing herself the pleasure of clocking someone who really has it coming. Like Keanu Reeves, Garner has a gift for making every kick, punch, bullet, and desk dropped on someone’s head feel like a spontaneous decision. It’s a shame, because Garner’s herculean efforts throw the film’s sloppiness into even sharper relief. The film cares about the stalking and the killing, not the people being killed their arbitrary brownness makes the film’s giddy brutality disturbing in a way that’s (hopefully) unintentional. She stalks them through drug labs and piñata warehouses. Morel infuses Riley’s recollections with desaturated, choppy footage that evokes Sawby way of Sicario, showing us the people on her to-kill list as masks of remorselessness with face tattoos.
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