All guns, no ammo

Aside from a shredded Jennifer Garner, violent vigilante tale ‘Peppermint’ lacks firepower

A blend of “Death Wish” and “Die Hard,” vigilante-justice tale “Peppermint” has almost nothing of note to offer. ¶ The possible exception being Jennifer Garner.

Largely relegated to mom (“Love, Simon”) and love-interest (“Draft Day”) roles for the last several years, the former star of the “Alias” TV series is back in butt-kicking mode, and it’s fun to see.

And, really, for much of “Peppermint,” Garner is less Sydney Bristow from “Alias” and more Sarah Connor from “Terminator 2: Judgement Day,” Garner’s muscular arms looking like they could give the then-ripped Linda Hamilton’s a run for their money.

But a shredded heroine and a high body count —

“Peppermint” offers a particularly violent brand of vigilante justice — are not enough to make this one stand out from the pack.

It’s especially disappointing if you’d hoped director Pierre Morel might have done for Garner what he did for Liam Neeson with 2008’s “Taken,” which launched a second-act action-movie career for the actor. Maybe that will happen for Garner, but it’s hard to see it right now.

We meet Garner’s Riley North right before she

executes a man, asking him in his final moments if he remembers her.

We then flash back five years to encounter a very different Riley, a suburban Los Angeles mom who loves her daughter, Carly (Cailey Fleming, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”), and husband, Chris (Jeff Hephner, “Chicago Med “). At this point, her biggest concerns are financial — will she, a bank worker, and Chris, a mechanic, be able to give Carly the life she deserves? — and whether Carly will have a great 10th-birthday party.

Riley’s present begins to meet her dark future when Chris and Carly are gunned down at a neighborhood carnival, Morel using slow-motion and shielding us from some of the horror, which will prove to be a far cry from how he showcases the movie’s myriad subsequent gun deaths.

After being let down by a corrupt legal system, Riley goes off the grid, spending the next halfdecade in places such as Asia and Europe developing, well, a particular set of skills.

She returns to LA a fierce woman and sets up shop in a van in an extremely impoverished area, becoming a sort of protector of the people of this skid row. (They are so thankful they don’t steal any of the military-grade weapons she leaves in the unlocked van while she’s gone.)

When she leaves, it is to terminate, with extreme prejudice, members of the drug operation run by Diego Garcia (Juan Pablo Raba, “The 33”) and to learn how it operates. Diego is ultimately responsible for the deaths of her loved ones, and she intends to make him pay — and pay dearly.

He, of course, intends to stop her, as do members of the police department — namely detectives Stan Carmichael (John Gallagher Jr., “10 Cloverfield Lane”) and Moises Beltran (John Ortiz, “A Dog’s Purpose”).

Because of social media, however, Riley becomes a hero to more than the people of skid row, folks following her ever-increasing death toll via various platforms and posting about her.

Writer Chad St. John (“London Has Fallen”) tries to tie these story elements together in a compelling way, but he comes up pretty short. While you can say his script is only occasionally laughably silly, it even less frequently offers anything the least bit interesting. There is, at best, one development you won’t see coming.

All the carnage offered up by Morel — whose previous directorial effort was 2015’s reasonably better “The Gunman” — is rather garden-variety, too. If you come to “Peppermint” for dudes getting shot in the face, you’ll get that, but violence junkies won’t see anything they haven’t seen a thousand times before.

At least there’s the 46-year-old Garner putting her muscles into this effort.

She gets her bloody Batman on in rather fine fashion.

Sure, she’s not terrific in an over-the-top courtroom scene at the end of the movie’s first act, but it’s easy to pin that on Morel’s direction.

We’ll root for a better action role in the near future for Garner — but not another serving of “Peppermint.”

STXFILMS A ripped Jennifer Garner stars as a woman out for justice for her murdered family in “Peppermint.”