After reviewing Ben Affleck’s latest piece, it only makes sense that I should check out his wife’s latest film. The Mother stars Jennifer Lopez as an assassin who emerges from hiding to protect the daughter she had to abandon at birth.
I’ll start with the very few positives I have. Jennifer Lopez does put in a good performance. She seems invested in the character and story and it made the watch bearable. The story itself was decent. There are only so many ways you can tell the same “ex-military assassin kills everyone in their path” story and this was different at the very least. I also thought there were some fun camera shots that were scattered throughout the movie that looked pretty cool as well. In that same vein, the set pieces were pretty cool. The finale takes place in the Alaskan wilderness which made for a nice backdrop to the action.
As for the rest of the movie?
I absolutely hated the action in this action movie. It is so choppy and cut to hell that it becomes boring. There are gunfights and chase scenes that I truly could not have been less invested in. There are “missions” that feel ripped straight from Call of Duty with none of the gratifications from completing them. Add that in with what I would consider bad pacing, and this movie was a struggle to get through.
I know I said the story was different, but I am so burnt on this type of story. John Wick has spoiled this type of action for me. Seeing the action hero being some legendary assassin or feared soldier is just not interesting to me anymore. The movie doesn’t take any sort of risks to stand out which was the biggest bummer. It’s why having boring action really is a death sentence for a movie like this for me. There is no personality with how those scenes are shot and it showed.
While there were some cool shots in The Mother, there were some puzzling ones as well. For some reason, interactions in the foreground are shot with a blurry background. Not just like they are out of focus but like if I took a picture while falling. There were also some slow-motion shots that I didn’t think added anything to the experience.
Final Thoughts
There are smaller things along the way that really annoyed me, but this review doesn’t rise to the level of CinemaSins. I don’t need to go in-depth about all the continuity mistakes or bad writing. This is an action movie that reminds me just why I don’t like action movies. Unengaging action and cliches up the wazoo prove The Mother is exactly what it appears: a Netflix original that will probably pop on everyone’s trending tab but will fade in a month.
