Peppermint, which on paper looks like a potentially enthralling, feminist, vigilante revenge thriller, turns out to be even less than a by-the-number action flick.
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The last memorable action film that Jennifer Garner, who made her name in the action TV series Alias, starred in was Elektra; that was 2005. Following that, Garner appeared in a long string of comedy dramas and romantic comedies. Garner’s return to the action genre in Peppermint was thus highly anticipated.
Garner plays Riley North, a down-to-earth, working-class mother who, during a family outing, witnessed her husband and daughter brutally gunned down by cartel mobsters right in front of her eyes. Her subsequent attempts to secure justice fails miserably as the corrupt legal system of judges and lawyers scheme to dismiss her case and to even have her placed in a mental institution, ensuring that she will forever be silenced. So she escapes and disappears. On the 5th anniversary of her husband and daughter’s death, the police finds three corpses - the three shooters - dangling upside down from the ferris wheel at an amusement park, the scene of her family’s murder. Riley North is back for revenge.
She proceeds to take out the judge who had presided over her trial and the prosecutors who handled her case, before going on to storm a toy warehouse that the cartel is using to launder money and a shootout ensues. As Peppermint is directed by French director Pierre Morel, who had directed the first Taken, we are expecting high-intensity, adrenaline-rushing, superbly choreographed fighting action sequences. But we get none of that. The fight sequences are generic, even bland, except for the climatic shoot-out sequence at the cartel boss’ hilltop residence, in which, for once, North suffers from actual life-threatening pushback. In her other fight sequences, North beats her enemies so easily that it’s not thrilling to watch.
It is unfortunate that Peppermint, which on paper looks like a potentially enthralling, feminist, vigilante revenge thriller, turns out to be even less than a by-the-number action flick.
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