Peppermint ★★½
JENNIFER Garner joins Charlize Theron and Alicia Vikander in the 2018 ranks of female movie anti-heroes with the revenge thriller Peppermint.
Actually, Garner started her career with action roles in Daredevil and Elektra as well as several seasons of the television series Alias so she knows her way around an action sequence.
Over the past decade she has primarily gone the rom-com route, so in that regard Peppermint is a welcome return to form.
Unfortunately, Garner is the best thing about the film which is pretty much a by-the-numbers action movie requiring significant suspension of disbelief.
Garner plays Riley North whose husband and daughter are killed in a drive-by gangland shooting. In a nutshell, corrupt cops, lawyers and judges are all involved in tearing down her testimony in order to get the culprits off.
Five years later, the formerly meek and mild Riley has transformed herself ala Sarah Connor into a beefed-up and merciless avenger determined to make them all pay.
Cue a series of sustained, violent fist, knife and gun fights on the streets of Los Angeles between Riley and a constant stream of bad guys who seemingly can’t accurately aim from ten feet away.
The film plays around with timeframes and, in that regard, is able to document Riley’s mental and physical transformation through flashbacks, meaning we don’t have to suspend disbelief for that aspect. But unfortunately the level of ineptness of the ‘organised’ criminals, the police and the FBI is not feasible.
As expected, Garner provides a strong presence and dominates almost the entire film. John Gallagher Jnr and John Ortiz are good as police partners who investigate the initial crime and then have to deal with Riley’s revenge spree.
The action sequences offer nothing particularly new but are well handled by French director Pierre Morel who was also responsible for Taken in 2008, From Paris with Love (2010) and The Gunman (2015). I haven’t seen 2004’s District B13, the French language film that brought Morel to the attention of Hollywood.
Ultimately, one for the action fans but with some promise for a sequel if Garner gets a better script.