My date for this movie called its hero a female Jack Reacher. He’s right and he’s wrong.
The plot of Peppermint reminded me of The Brave One. That 2007 movie starred Jodie Foster as a woman recovered from a coma to find that her fiancé had been killed in the same attack that left her hospitalized. She becomes a vigilante, taking her own justice against those who wronged her as well as other wrongdoers in the community. In this one, Jennifer Garner’s husband and daughter are killed in front of her; she disappears for five years, trains to become a badass, a vigilante, and comes back to take her own justice against those who wronged her as well as other wrongdoers in the community.
On the plus side: Jennifer Garner is ripped and she is beautiful and I like her. The fight scenes and blow-em-up scenes are exciting, and I didn’t notice anybody firing forty-seven shots out of a magazine that holds twelve rounds (as is so common on my beloved show The Walking Dead). As pure adrenaline-excitement-thriller, this one satisfies.
On the minus side, quite a few things. Garner’s character is not developed. She loved her husband and child – we can easily trust this, but that’s pretty much all of her personality that we know, and it’s not much of a personality; it’s something most people with spouses and children carry, in fact. We don’t get to see any of her training to become the badass that we see onscreen. A single line of dialog by (if memory serves) an FBI agent describes her training in foreign countries, but it’s a very brief line. The actual becoming – a critical piece of growth, and that which makes this movie – takes place all off-screen. I’m thinking of Kill Bill here, and how it showed Uma Thurman’s character gaining her skills: that’s an important part of the story, movie people! To put it another way: the plot of this movie is easily summed up in the single sentence I wrote above. Jennifer Garner’s husband and daughter are killed in front of her; she disappears for five years, trains to become a badass, a vigilante, and comes back to take her own justice against those who wronged her as well as other wrongdoers in the community.
Pretty plot-weak, then. But successful as a blow-em-up thriller: for one thing, the weakly sketched plot tends to resonate with all of us (underdog wins; justice is served), and even with a sort of cheap version of feminism (Jennifer Garner has muscles and beats the men). Hollywood knows their formula. I enjoyed it, actually. My date enjoyed it even more. But a female Jack Reacher? No. Reacher’s author, Lee Child, gives his hero copious backstory. His books have plenty of plot twists. And his strategies, methods, and skills are detailed and explained. The Reacher books are told in either first-person or a close third-person-limited perspective, meaning that we get to know what Reacher thinks and feels. Any of these elements would have done Jennifer Garner’s character so much good, in terms of depth.
Still fun, though. Beautiful muscles on our heroine. Stay out of her way.
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