![]() ![]() Garner’s long-awaited return-to-form deserved better than this over-obvious bit of franchise bait.ĭon’t worry she’ll be fine! Jennifer Gardner in “Peppermint. But a woman doing all the ludicrous stuff that Liam Neeson normally does in the Taken series is the only thing that makes this outing any different from any other flick of its ilk, and that’s not enough to make it a standout even in this overstuffed and repetitive genre. ![]() They certainly didn’t bother to come up with a plot that makes much logical sense, as Garner’s character is all but superhuman considering the beatings she survives, all while taking on drug cartels, the FBI and the LAPD simultaneously. We’ve certainly seen this kind of thing before, and really the only addition to the formula is that it’s a woman doing all this butt-kicking and not a guy. We can talk about our favorite moments in Mad Max: Fury Road or the John Wick series, but has there been a more influential semi-recent action film than TakenThe Luc Besson-produced potboiler. But everything else is as unbelievable as it is in any one-man army flick. The bad news is she’s also in a movie that is as ridiculous as it is occasionally clever incorporating social and news media into its plot, and scripting in some misleads to keep things interesting. Her action sequences are well-choreographed, bloody, and brutal.Īll of which makes sense for an R-rated revenge flick. But now, more than two years later, and the Jennifer Garner-led. And it’s that last mode that made her famous initially, and she returns to it with relish, complete with all the accompanying R-rated language and violence. Peppermint didn't exactly set the box office on fire after debuting in theaters to generally negative reviews in September 2018. The good news is that Garner fully commits to the role in every way: she’s all bubbly, soccer-mom smiles before the tragedy, then crushed in its aftermath, and finally steely in her eventual revenge. According to some unearthed, sketchy YouTube videos, she apparently used those lost years to learn all the dark ways of dealing death, including hand-to-hand combat and weapons-training, virtually all of which happens off-screen. She reappears on the anniversary of her family’s death to personally mete the justice that The System failed to deliver. She herself then goes free in a fashion disappearing and “going off grid” for five years. She is also injured in the hail of gunfire, and after an extended recovery in the hospital, she awakes in time to see her assailants go free on a technicality. Garner plays Riley North, a wife and mother who loses both her husband and only daughter to a drive-by shooting. Given how efficient she was at this, it seems Moises (who's disenchanted with his corrupt department) recognizes he'll need help when the Mexicans come back, which paints a possible relationship similar to DC's Commissioner Jim Gordon and Batman.From “Taken” director Pierre Morel (surprise!) comes Peppermint, an action thriller starring rom-com favorite Jennifer Garner back in full-on “Alias” mode. She knows they're Diego's bosses, so she can now hunt them to cut the head off the snake. However, Ortega may not even have to hunt Riley because Moises' gifting her freedom means she'll be looking for them. But to continue peddling the cartel's drugs, he'll have to find and kill the vigilante, especially as she knows their business inside out. With Diego failing and getting eliminated, Ortega is perfectly positioned to come in and restore order to the LA arm of their operations. He knows they have a deadly enemy, and he trusts Diego to fix things as Riley's raids were hurting their business big time. The tension rises when Diego's henchmen interrupts the meeting to tell him that Riley's been killing their people, which Ortega overhears and grows furious over. The cartel's unknown boss sent his son Ortega (Michael Reventar) to speak to Diego about two incidents and warn him that as big as he is in LA, he's still a puppet they installed there. Earlier in the film, Riley was hijacking the cartel's drug shipments to get them ticked off at Diego, who was responsible for selling them. ![]()
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