Pierre Morel, the director of Taken, and Chad St. John, screenwriter for London Has Fallen and The Punisher: Dirty Laundry, which I’ve never seen, team up to bring us a chick Punisher in Peppermint starring Jennifer Garner of Alias fame, which was an ABC spy action drama in which she played Sydney Bristow, a CIA officer, and as Elektra in (not the good one) Daredevil, starring her husband, Ben Affleck, and Elektra, a later cinematic spinoff of Daredevil.
I was going to see Peppermint regardless of quality or reviews. I’ve been silently fuming in a corner that Garner has been stuck as either the uptight bitch, the romantic interest or the mom in a family friendly/kid movie ghetto. I know that Garner can do action, and she probably took those roles because in real life, she has a family, and it probably worked with her schedule. Meanwhile Affleck, whom I like, but is not as strong an actor, gets to be Batman and continue his career as if nothing changed. While Garner never reached Lucy Lawless levels of love and support, I always have a warm place in my heart for any actor who gets her start as an action hero. I love to watch movies with women kicking ass, and with Garner returning to her roots in a revenge movie, I was sold.
I want someone to remake Peppermint immediately or make it into a TV series because there is a good story being told by all the characters, but we only catch glimpses of it when we’re permitted to spend rare moments watching Garner kicking ass or patching herself up as Riley North, a mother and widow out for revenge. We spend more time hearing from the cops or the criminals about Riley’s backstory and elaborate plan than we get seeing it, and that was frustrating as frack. Show me! Don’t tell me! How does a mom with no badass experience become a vigilante and end up on Interpol’s wanted list? When Bryan Mills is tracking down criminals, the film spends the majority of the time watching him ramp things up until the bananas finale. We don’t get that with Riley North. It is a cynical move that betrays the filmmakers’ lack of confidence that a woman can be the focus of a movie. We actually spend a considerable amount of time watching her get beat down although there is a piñata store sequence worthy of Garner and the genre. I don’t mind seeing her get her ass handed to her as long as for the majority of the movie, she is on screen and takes center stage.
Let’s be honest. I know that the other actors in Peppermint are probably talented and loved by fans, friends and family, but I paid to see Garner, the headliner, and she is the only one giving her A game. Sorry, guys, but for the majority of the film, it felt like y’all phoned it in. It felt as if there was a lot of footage left on the cutting room floor for all the other characters, but we were still expected to be as invested in their story as if that information was still available. For example, it is implied in two scenes that the big bad clearly beats his woman when she briefly takes center stage. I assume that the movie wanted us to know that this man won’t hesitate to hurt Riley. I didn’t need those two scenes. I got it during their first confrontation, which was terrific. We didn’t need her as a way for Riley to find him. I had no doubt that she would find him if she found ways to repeatedly breach his organization. There were too many extraneous scenes with tertiary characters that should have been devoted to Riley and her quest for vengeance.
For instance, before Riley becomes a bad ass, she has her first post-traumatic incident brush with intimidation. We see this character two times, and he seems as if he will be the respectable face of the big bad, but we don’t see her take him down. We do see her kill another character who plays a pivotal role, but not with the person responsible for her first epiphany. It was a huge letdown that gives Peppermint an asymmetrical, unfinished, nagging feeling that makes the ending unnecessarily unsatisfying. Why can’t we see Riley take down both? Is it a coincidence that they are both white collar, unarmed white men so there were sensitivity concerns that because they couldn’t physically fight back, audiences would sympathize with them more than Riley so they chose the one that was more corrupt? Probably, and I actually don’t have a problem with that choice, but then you need to revise the script to make the first character less important. The filmmakers’ choice of who should feel Riley’s wrath betrays some disturbing insights into their subconscious views on what genders and ethnicities make more acceptable villains in different contexts.
Television is less concerned about the likeability of their women characters than movies. So many cinematic action heroines get saddled with children as supporting characters. I was relieved that while Peppermint did show Riley as being invested in children generally, her storyline never got burdened with a kid sidekick although I do think that it was going to happen, but it ended up on the cutting room floor with everyone else’s character development.
How was the fight choreography? Excellent. Garner had a distinct fighting style that suited her character, and it was my favorite part of the movie. Because she is a thin woman, she used the momentum of objects to get the drop on the bad guys and had a great sense of spatial awareness and physics of objects to enhance her strategy. I will give a tiny demerit to the person who did the choreography for the father and daughter. It looked less as if he was protecting her and more as if he was using her to shield his body. Garner is a hot woman, but she is never ogled by the camera during the movie or made into a sex object although the first scene does play on the idea of a steamy, rocking car. I don’t actually have a problem with that visual misunderstanding, but because of the lack of sexiness as a trap for the bad guys in Peppermint, it sticks out as not fitting in with the overall narrative. No feminine wiles to see here!
There is a lot of imagery on the drug dealer’s property of skeletons surrounded by candles, which I’m not familiar with, but is reminiscent of Catholic iconography then Riley is alluded to as an angel. It feels as if Peppermint was going to hit some deeper themes then tossed it instead of tying the threads together, which seems like the filmmakers sacrificed nuance in the narrative, but since it didn’t give us more action, it was an unnecessary one.
Peppermint is a ridiculous title, but it particularly stings because the events of the movie unfold during Christmas time yet the studios did not release the movie as an alternative to schmaltzy, family friendly Christmas movies. It is a dreadful missed financial opportunity to get big bucks from people more interested in action than sentiment during the holidays.
I enjoyed Peppermint despite all of its flaws, but it is extremely disappointing to know that they had a solid story and a great lead yet lacked the confidence in both. They edited it into an inferior standard action movie than what they originally had, which is a disservice to the viewers and Garner. Do better!