![]() ![]() If anything, changing one element of the formula does more to expose its dullness than the same movie starring Liam Neeson. An extremely fusty vengeance tale from the director of Taken with a raging bloodlust for tattooed brown men, Peppermint has no surprises up its sleeve, and casting Jennifer Garner as the put-upon housewife turned gun-toting vigilante doesn’t change that. Movie Review: Hopkins and Goode are Sigmund and C.S.If we needed any proof that the methodology of Hollywood’s “Extreme Makeover: Gender Edition” is broken, Peppermint might be just the thing.BOX OFFICE: Willy “Wonka” over $39 - “Boy and the Heron” fly off, “Beyonce” is Bye, Bey.Movie Preview: Horror, with a rock’n roll record /Apartment from Hell context - “Destroy All Neighbors”.Movie Review: A grim tale of 1901 Tierra del Fuego is Chile’s hope for an Oscar - “The Settlers”.MPAA Rating: R for strong violence and language throughoutĬast: Jennifer Garner, John Ortiz, Juan Pablo Raba, Annie IlonzehĬredits:Directed by Pierre Morel, script by Chad St. It’s so unpleasant and unchallenging that even Garner seems to play Riley as “OK, final scene here, let’s get this over with” in scenes that aren’t the final scene. The unfunny stuff, the sadistically gory stuff, is everything else. The funniest stuff, Garner’s forte, is Riley’s mission creep - the moment she takes to school a drunk whose little boy deserves better - “This is one of those life-altering moments!” - and her revenge on the Mean Mom who ruined her little girl’s birthday, the one on the night she was murdered. The editing makes you think she could do this stuff, and her reactions to pain - emotional and ammunitional, is genuine.īut it’s a silly slaughterhouse of a movie - bored cops who have no urgency about them, a cute FBI agent who wears high-higher-highest heels on the job ( Annie Ilonzeh), adorable urchins who live on LA’s Skid Row with Riley, a place where she can lay low and nobody will know. I enjoyed watching Garner get back to her “Alias” chops, cuts, slices, shots and head-butts. She should be picking up and stealing weapons from the scores and SCORES of Cartel mobsters, Korean gangsters and crooked cops she takes down, a “spree killer” who finds herself all over the news, and all over the streets as she is bloodied, repeatedly, and must perform that action film staple - “self surgery” - vodka for antiseptic and anesthetic, staples for deep cuts, more vodka for everything else. It’d be a real movie had this lame script thought to put her, overmatched and untrained, into “Death Wish” mode, improvising, stumbling. Stupid idea #2, having her rob such a “military grade” gun store to carry out her scheme. Really stupid idea number one, that she’d wait five years to begin exacting her revenge. Riley cannot know that when she robs the bank she works for, flees to Hong Kong where she takes up cage fighting (to train you understand) and masters every weapon America’s Equip an Army gun stores carry. What did Hitchcock say? “Good villains make good thrillers?” See where I’m headed, there? Raba has the Cartel mustache, the bulk to be scary, but he’s kind of a pussycat when it comes to murderous drug lords. Which is more than you can say about El Jefe. She should have taken the opposing counsel’s bribe, delivered with a smirk and a threat by Michael Mosley - nicely done. The judge shrugs Riley’s positive ID’d suspects off. Riley’s husband kind of got himself into something the The Cartel and its boss, named for the Indian Ocean island Diego Garcia ( Juan Pablo Raba). The cops ( John Gallagher Jr., John Ortiz) are leery about working this case too hard. Husband and child are murdered right before heroine Riley North’s eyes, just as she’s fetching peppermint ice cream from a food stall. It’s a problematic, bloody exercise in formula from those throw-cash-at-stars and anything-at-the-wall-to-see-what-sticks scrap shooters at STX Films.Ĭounting “Mile 22” and “Happytime Murders,” “Peppermint” is their third turd in a row.Īn over-scheduled, over-worked LA mom misses her daughter’s botched birthday party and she and the hubbie ( Jeff Hephner) guilt-drag her to The Christmas Carnival to make up for it. Jennifer Garner shows she can still get a dirty, bloody, job done in “Peppermint,” an avenging angel action picture about a widow who lost husband and daughter to “The Cartel” and The System, and means to get her justice the hard way.
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