Where I Watched It: Netflix

English Audio Description Provided By: international Digial center

Written by: Steven Christopher

Narrated By: Jamie Lemcheck

I enjoy Jenny from the block, and I do wish the best for her career. It’s mostly vapid and forgettable romcoms, but her career has spanned quite a broad period of time. Sandwiched into that spectrum of time are these little glimmers that she’s capable of so much more, and just needs to choose her projects better. Whether your choose to point out her almost Oscar nominated turn in Hustlers or her fan favorite turn as Karen Sisco in Out Of Sight, there are these little glimpses that she doesn’t need to do things like Shotgun Wedding to survive.

However, she also should not start following the empty vast wasteland that are the current careers of Liam Neeson and Gerard Butler, who churn out title after title of almost exactly the same film, which all require them to have a very particular set of skills accumulated over a long period of time.

In a Man With No Name scenario, Lopez is The mother, a character without an identity, who we first meet under precarious terms, and shit gets real super fast. The problem is that instead of trying to do this in a tight manner, it far overstays its welcome. I actually didn’t mind the first part of the film. it was well paced, had some decent action sequences, and didn’t ask too much of its audience. It seemed to know what it wanted to be. Then, we find out that the bad men know where her daughter is, and this woman with a set of skills pops into action, and kicks some ass. When she reaches her former boss, who dared to kidnap her daughter, and exacts her revenge, I’m sitting there going… wow. This was a great film. Paced really well…

Why the fuck is there an hour left in this movie?

Dammit.

And then The Mother just shits the bed. Like, massive, backed up diarrhea all over the place. It goes from being a short and tight film, to extending itself into dreary boring bullshit, where suddenly her daughter gets character development, and she’s not nearly as interesting as the film thinks. There’s a joke about killing Bambi’s mother, and eating Thumper. because, I’m sure that’s the first time that joke has been made. The film goes from 150MPH, to driving under the speed limit in a school zone. I generally don’t mind character development, except when the tone shifts so erratically that it shifted my perspective of the film. This thing was truly headed for a B/B+, then it decided I needed an hour more, and it needed to be much slower, and feature an annoying child.

I’m not sure why. This film shot itself in the foot. It’s self-inflicted. The last half of the film reminded me of last year’s Lou, if Lou was dreadfully boring.

I don’t know why these choices were made, but had the film ended at a certain point, I think the audience would have enjoyed this a whole lot more. Instead, it’s just another crappy film that feels far too much like fifty other things you’ve seen before. Lopez deserves better.

I didn’t have a problem with the audio description in any sort of game changing way. She just doesn’t have a name. That’s part of the films shtick. The action sequences are well described, and that’s what matters the most.

However, I can’t really in good conscience recommend this, nor would I ever watch this again, at least not in its entirety.

Final Grade: D