![]() A cabal of corrupt officials-including a police officer, a district attorney, a defense attorney, and a judge-helps to free the suspects. Riley survives the attack she identifies the killers in a lineup, but to no avail. Afterward, while the North family is on a holiday-season outing, gang members murder Chris and Carly. ![]() A friend lures Chris into a scheme to rob drug dealers Chris backs out, but he’s nonetheless implicated. They live in a modest house she and their daughter, Carly (Cailey Fleming), endure the contempt of the school’s rich kids and their parents (one in particular, played by Pell James, is especially cruel). Jennifer Garner plays Riley North, an employee in a Los Angeles bank whose husband, Chris (Jeff Hephner), runs an auto-repair shop. Its subject is a long-familiar bugbear of respectability and decency, the drug trade, which it looks at with a despicably ignorant and contemptuous perspective. It’s a new version of an old genre, the vigilante tale, but with a special whiff of prejudice, hatred, and resentment that-for all the film’s absurd artifice-blend all too readily into the distorted mental landscape of current American life. John), which opens today, leaves a trace of slime that’s hard to wipe up-and leaves the feeling that it would be better for the world at large if this movie hadn’t been made. 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.Mediocre movies often appear and then disappear, as though they’d never been, but “Peppermint” (directed by Pierre Morel and written by Chad St. 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. 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. 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. 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. From “Taken” director Pierre Morel (surprise!) comes Peppermint, an action thriller starring rom-com favorite Jennifer Garner back in full-on “Alias” mode.
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