‘The Protégé’ stalls
Despite Maggie Q, Michael Keaton and Samuel L. Jackson, film doesn’t hit the mark
“The Protégé” (in theaters Friday) is one of those films that sounds so good on paper that maybe it should have stayed there.
Putting Maggie Q, Michael Keaton and Samuel L. Jackson together in a twisty action thriller sounds like a great idea. It is a great idea. It’s the film itself that’s lacking. Director Martin Campbell does a good job with the action – the violence is “John Wick” level.
Richard Wenk’s script is not. It does the minimum work of getting Maggie Q’s Anna, an expert assassin, from one scene to the next, but not a lot more. Watching her interactions with Keaton and Jackson keeps the film from failing – as do the expertly choreographed, bone-shattering fight scenes – but it’s impossible not to believe this could have been better.
The problem with ‘The Protégé’ is the script
The film begins in Vietnam in the 1990s, when Moody (Jackson) comes upon a bloodbath, with a bunch of tough-looking sorts shot to death. The only person alive is a young Anna – and she’s holding a gun. We’ll discover as Campbell goes back and forth in time that Moody takes Anna in and teaches her what he knows best. Which is how to be an elite assassin.
She’s his protégé, in other words. Moody makes a pretty good living, judging by the castle-like home he lives
in. Anna has a rare book shop as a front, though she really does love and know books. One day a man named Rembrandt (Keaton) walks in, looking for a gift for his boss’ wife. He and Anna engage in meet-cute banter.
Except this isn’t that, really. Soon events will pit Anna and Rembrandt squarely against each other. It’s a sort of
delicate dance that typically results in romance, except this time they’re trying to kill each other. And they’re both really good at killing.
Which is not to say there isn’t room for flirting while you’re flinging sharp objects at each other or dodging bullets.
There are some decent surprises as Anna goes after the villain, a really bad man Rembrandt is protecting, albeit in Keaton’s detached, cynical way. That doesn’t mean Rembrandt doesn’t take the job seriously, though.
There are also some rather absurd twists, and of course for the story to work people who normally never miss with a gun suddenly can’t hit a thing. However, the film also isn’t afraid to, ahem, dispatch characters when you aren’t expecting it.
Jackson does the usual Jackson thing – laces quips with profanities in
a way that is somehow still funny. It works because he makes it work.
Keaton plays the affable smart-aleck. Maggie Q has effortless cool
Keaton is kind of like Bill Murray in that he almost always plays the same sort of character – a charming smartaleck who is clever enough to be a step ahead of almost everyone else, which makes him unflappable. (Which is also why Keaton was the best Bruce Wayne of all.) He’s always so much fun to watch.
Maggie Q, meanwhile, also makes an icy cool seem effortless. We get some backstory during the flashbacks, but for the most part, the film presents her as a killing machine, without a lot of time for much else (except an unusually thorough knowledge of rare books). She’s compelling enough on her own to make you care about the character, but the filmmakers don’t give her a lot of help.
Too bad. “The Protégé” has so many cool elements, so many reasons that it should be better than it is. Chief among them are Maggie Q, Keaton and Jackson. But they can only do so much, and ultimately the film feels flat. Like so many of the hapless anonymous bad guys, it just can’t hit the mark.