Revenge sweet for Jennifer Garner, but not viewers

A bit of Scout- troop snobbery gets the better of Riley North, a Los Angeles mom played by Jennifer Garner, in the opening minutes of “Peppermint.”

After a tongue-lashing from a judgmental den mother, Riley’s 10- yearold daughter, Carly (Cailey Fleming), suggests socking the woman in the kisser, but Riley responds as many of us would: “You can’t go around punch- ing people who are jerks. Then you’re just as bad as they are.”

It might be true that violence never solved anything, but of course that’s why we have movi es l i ke “Peppermint.” In this revenge- thriller directed by Pierre Morel ( 2008’ s “Taken”), Riley transforms herself into a vigilante after the men who killed her husband (Jeff Hepner) and daughter are let off by a corrupt justice system.

Riley is a typical hero — gender aside — whose righteous cause justifies her means. It’s a fantasy formulated to stoke our raging i ds, and it has worked for many a Western, the “Death Wish” f ranchise and quite a few Mel Gibson movies. In this genre, we crave just desserts, cruel irony and — let’s be honest — a satisfying twist of the knife.

None of that means much, though, if we don’t care about the characters. Neither the good guys nor the bad guys are very believable or interesting in “Peppermint,” whose perfunctory script is by Chad St. John (“London Has Fallen”).

We know almost nothing about Riley, so her metamorphosis into selftaught Navy SEAL seems more silly than shocking. As for her unwise husband, it’s hard to feel sorry for an average family man who flirts with a local drug cartel and ends up getting his daughter murdered.

Diego Garcia ( Juan Pablo Raba), by the way, is a generic Mexican criminal with exactly the accent and mustache you’d expect, while his henchmen are the usual tattooed toughs. John Ortiz, an actor of Puerto Rican descent, at least gets to play a cop.

Some might suspect “Peppermint” of trafficking in the current politics of racism and fear- mongering — it is, after all, the story of a grieving white woman who guns down almost nothing but Hispanics — but the movie feels more l azy than hateful. In fact, the movie doesn’t have much passion or emotion at all. With its bloody but bland violence, “Peppermint” fails to deliver.

STXFILMS VIA THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Jennifer Garner in a scene from “Peppermint.”