I will look for you. I will find you. And I will kill you.”
These simple words may be one of the most popular film quotes forever ingrained into our lexicon and into the psyches of filmgoers from the recent past.
Convincing. Intense. Fear-inducing. The jump-off point of Liam Neeson’s desperate search for his kidnapped daughter effectively set the stage for the compelling and exhilarating thrill ride that was 2008’s “Taken.”
Ten years later, the director of the hit blockbuster, Pierre Morel, brings the now somewhat tired trope of vigilantism back to the big screen with “Peppermint.” Some problems with this retread include the fact that Jennifer Garner’s Riley North is far less likeable than Neeson’s Bryan Mills, and the film’s feminist undercurrent is sorely misappropriated.
Flashing back five years, North (Garner) is a banker living in Los Angeles and trying to make ends meet with her mechanic husband, Chris (Jeff Hephner). It is a few days before Christmas and their daughter Carly’s (Cailey Fleming) birthday. An acquaintance of Chris’s named Mickey (Chris Johnson) comes into his shop with a surefire scheme to make some quick money. After thinking it over, Chris declines the offer as he, Riley and Carly spend the evening at a winter carnival.
Unbeknownst to Chris, the “surefire scheme” involved running afoul of local drug dealer Diego Garcia (Juan Pablo Raba) and running off with his money. After executing Mickey, members of Garcia’s gang track the three down to the carnival and murder Chris and Carly in cold blood.
Wounded in the melee, Riley soon recovers and identifies the perpetrators in a police lineup. In court, however, the defense attorney for Garcia’s henchmen preys on her dependence on prescription drugs to crush her clarity and credibility. The prosecutor and judge wash their hands of the trial, and the gang members go free.
Fast forward to the present day, and detectives Stan Carmichael (John Gallagher Jr.) and Moises Beltran (John Ortiz) find the bodies of those same gang members hanging from the Ferris wheel at the winter carnival. Joined by FBI agent Lisa Inman (Annie Ilonzeh), the three desperately try to track down Riley as her own pursuit for justice unfolds.
Riley’s transformation from unassuming bank employee to gun-toting and butt-kicking badass is completely written off. She becomes the woman with the knowhow to seamlessly wield explosive rope or administer effective first aid with a staple gun seemingly overnight. She did take a couple of trips to Hong Kong and spent some time in the octagon, as evidenced by a video on YouTube, though.
The film pretty much devolves into a collection of shooting gallery sequences in which it’s “see bad guy” and “shoot bad guy” with a variety of high-powered weapons. In “Taken,” Neeson’s Mills got a chance to let his intellect and training permeate through in multiple sequences, along with taking out the bad guys. It also helped that he was competing against an actual and metaphorical running clock, adding a sense of urgency to the action.
Although Garner’s portrayal of Sydney Bristow on “Alias” was critically acclaimed and brought her widespread recognition, she falls flat in her portrayal of Riley. She doesn’t bring that same level of commitment which Neeson brought to “Taken,” and Riley’s bond with her family is paper-thin.
It also doesn’t help that the actions of her character verge on mean-spiritedness and ridiculous. Riley shoves a gun into the mouth of a drunken father in a liquor store who has gotten off the same bus she was on. She threatens to kill him if he doesn’t start acting like a father to his son who is playing his caretaker.
Similarly, she threatens the liquor store owner with the same fate if he sells to the father. A snobby mother of a girl who was in Carly’s class is greeted at the door with a punch to the face as Riley steals her car to give “closure” to the throwaway character.
The film is infused with the presence of the #MeToo movement in the form of multiple news broadcasts, showering a tide of social media support for Riley’s actions. The fact that it’s so obvious, however, makes it seem like it’s being forced down the viewer’s throat. A good analogy for this film would be that sometimes a cold, piercing stare speaks more volumes than a bullet from a gun.
