Movie review: Jennifer Garner exacts bloody revenge in vigilante drama 'Peppermint'
“Peppermint” - ★ ★
The insane revenge movie “Peppermint“ starts to make a lot more sense when you realize that it was directed by the man who brought us “Taken” (Pierre Morel) and written by one at least partially responsible for “London Has Fallen” (Chad St. John). It's a movie in which the central character, Riley North (Jennifer Garner), is called a “female vigilante” by a local news anchor, and a “soccer mom” by Los Angeles police. She uses a maxi pad as a makeshift bandage to sop up the blood from a gushing knife wound and may have a higher body count than John Wick.
Why, you might ask, all the bloodshed? Riley is just a regular mom juggling a job and parental responsibilities before she watches her husband and young daughter get gunned down by agents of a powerful Latin drug boss at a public fair. In slow motion.
Riley survives, barely. She awakes from a coma, gets a grief haircut and identifies the three men with face tattoos who killed her family. But a corrupt system lets them walk, and Riley goes rogue, disappearing for a few years to learn how to be a killer and return on the five-year anniversary of the attack to execute all who wronged her.
The movie doesn't show much, if anything, of her training, which is summarized in exposition by an FBI agent (Annie Ilonzeh), but just picks up with her killing spree. It's a bit of whiplash, her transition from Laura Ashley to Lara Croft, but you get used to the new Riley fairly quickly. And she is not kidding around with these murders, which are not only bloody and gruesome but psychotically theatrical.
The funny thing about “Peppermint” is that even in spite of its ridiculousness and clichés, the movie does start to lull you into submission. And there are a few twists and turns as you wait for her inevitable showdown with Diego Garcia (Juan Pablo Raba).
“Peppermint” is not some model of equality; it's just violent escapism that happens to have a woman in the lead role. And Garner is as compelling a lead as any, and more so than quite a few of the men who get parts like this. But maybe, just maybe, next time consider a woman or two behind the camera (and script) as well.
• • •
Starring: Jennifer Garner, John Ortiz, Annie Ilonzeh, Juan Pablo Raba
Directed by: Pierre Morel
Other: A STXFilms release. Rated R for violence and language. 102 minutes