Vigilante’s revenge
PEPPERMINT DIRECTOR: Pierre Morel CAST: Jennifer Garner, John Gallagher jnr, John Ortiz, Method Man, Richard Cabral, Annie Ilonzeh, Juan Pablo Raba, Tyson Ritter, Pell James, Chris Johnson, Kyla Drew, Caily Fleming RUNNING TIME: 102 min CLASSIFICATION: 16 DLV RATING: ★★★✩✩
JENNIFER Garner displays a particular set of skills in the latest action movie directed by Pierre Morel, who resuscitated the vigilante genre with Taken.
Playing the sort of badass character who makes her Sydney Bristow on Alias look delicate, the actress brings an admirable physical commitment to her performance as a mother intent on getting justice after her husband and daughter are murdered. Peppermint lacks subtlety and anything even remotely resembling credibility, but like its heroine, it gets the job done. It’s a picture that would’ve been boffo on a grindhouse double bill in the ’70s.
Garner’s character, Riley North, doesn’t start out as a lethal assassin. She’s an ordinary Los Angeles housewife, working at a bank and lovingly devoted to her husband Chris (Jeff Hephner) and 10-year-old daughter Carly (Cailey Fleming). The family is having trouble making ends meet, leading Chris to consider joining a friend in a plot to rip off a local drug kingpin, Diego Garcia (Juan Pablo Raba).
Chris backs out at the last minute, but not before the plan has been discovered. During an outing at an amusement park to celebrate Carly’s birthday, he and his daughter are brutally gunned down, with Riley seriously injured.
Co-operating with the sympathetic detectives (John Ortiz, John Gallagher jnr) investigating the case, Riley identifies the gunmen (criminals should probably avoid having distinctive facial tattoos) and testifies against them in court, even after receiving a combination bribe offer/ threat from the defence attorney. But the deck is clearly stacked against her, with the obviously corrupt judge dismissing the case. When Riley goes berserk and tries to attack the killers, she’s Tasered and is on her way to a mental hospital when she escapes.
Cut to five years later, enter lean, mean killing machine. The screenplay by Chad St John (London
Has Fallen) doesn’t detail how Riley becomes an expert in hand-to-hand combat and automatic weaponry. But she’s back in Los Angeles and begins her vendetta against Garcia and his minions, starting with the three men who murdered her family.
She proves remarkably adept in her mission, showing no mercy as the body count mounts into the triple digits. The frustrated Garcia, watching his men slaughtered in a series of daring raids, is reduced to, “Put this bitch in a box before sunset!” Along the way, Riley demonstrates that she hasn’t lost her maternal instincts. And after being injured in a violent encounter, she briefly takes refuge in the house of a soccer mom who made her life miserable in the past. But not before punching her in the mouth.
Director Morel stages the ultraviolence for maximum visceral effect.