Peppermint (D+ or 1.5/4 stars)
'Peppermint' (a revenge/action thriller directed by Pierre Morel) stars Jennifer Garner as Riley North, a middle-class L.A. wife & mother who witnesses her husband & 10 yr. old daughter getting gunned down at a carnival after he's peripherally involved in a nefarious plan to steal $$ from drug kingpin, Diego. Although Riley barely survives the shooting that wiped-out her family & is able to identify the 3 gunmen, bribed officials {including a judge} ensure that these 3 terrible men are not prosecuted or convicted. 5 yrs. after the murders, the still-grieving Riley returns to Los Angeles with a new hair cut, a new set of skills & one purpose ... kill every man she holds responsible for her husband & daughter's deaths. Bloody mayhem ensues.
Blechh. I loved Jennifer Garner in Alias. She's an amiable presence in nearly every film I've seen her in. But while she returns to her kicking butt roots here, I just didn't care for this film. What could have been a fascinating gender twist on tried-&-true revenge flicks a la Death Wish or Taken, devolves into an uninteresting rip-off of those superior movies. It's particularly disappointing that, with its gut-wrenching premise {imagine losing your husband & 10 yr. old daughter to gang violence in one fell swoop}, 'Peppermint' wastes Garner's talents with its stale script, problematic depictions of villains & ludicrous plot. An example of that? We never know just how Garner's Riley acquired her expertise in assassination, burglary & the covert global transportation required to become a 1-woman murder machine.
Perhaps worst of all is the cartoonish depiction of the villains -- with the exception of a couple, they're all people of color {Latino, Korean, etc.). Sure, there's John Ortiz as a homicide cop, but he's under suspicion for most of the time as being the drug dealer's inside man. The 'optics' of a white female vigilante being an angel of righteous vengeance against the criminal underworld while nearly every person of color in the plot is a cold-blooded drug dealer, criminal or henchman looks tone-deaf by today's standards. That said, even if you set all of those socio-political undertones aside, this revenge thriller doesn't really work, anyway. Revenge thrillers, when done right, can be exhilarating to watch -- this one wasn't, for me.
Blechh. I loved Jennifer Garner in Alias. She's an amiable presence in nearly every film I've seen her in. But while she returns to her kicking butt roots here, I just didn't care for this film. What could have been a fascinating gender twist on tried-&-true revenge flicks a la Death Wish or Taken, devolves into an uninteresting rip-off of those superior movies. It's particularly disappointing that, with its gut-wrenching premise {imagine losing your husband & 10 yr. old daughter to gang violence in one fell swoop}, 'Peppermint' wastes Garner's talents with its stale script, problematic depictions of villains & ludicrous plot. An example of that? We never know just how Garner's Riley acquired her expertise in assassination, burglary & the covert global transportation required to become a 1-woman murder machine.
Perhaps worst of all is the cartoonish depiction of the villains -- with the exception of a couple, they're all people of color {Latino, Korean, etc.). Sure, there's John Ortiz as a homicide cop, but he's under suspicion for most of the time as being the drug dealer's inside man. The 'optics' of a white female vigilante being an angel of righteous vengeance against the criminal underworld while nearly every person of color in the plot is a cold-blooded drug dealer, criminal or henchman looks tone-deaf by today's standards. That said, even if you set all of those socio-political undertones aside, this revenge thriller doesn't really work, anyway. Revenge thrillers, when done right, can be exhilarating to watch -- this one wasn't, for me.