Set in New Mexico, Nikki Halsted (Milla Jovovich), a special forces veteran, decides to fight for her daughter, Chloe (Isabel Myers), and declares war on sex traffickers to get her back. “Protector” (2025) has solid action and a cliché script that tries harder than it needed to. First time screenwriter Bong-Seob Mun wants to be the M. Night Shyamalan of the action genre film. If you are a fan of the genre, as long as the film did not look like dog shit like “A Working Man” (2025), then only action and empty violence with a veneer of meaning are required, and it checks those boxes.

Jovovich is a good actor, but she is also comfortable sticking to her lane of action movies such as the “Resident Evil” franchise, “Ultraviolet” (2006) or as a villain in “Paradise Hills” (2019). She has not aged a day, which is a good thing because as Nikki, her action scenes appear demanding, relentless and skilled. Unfortunately, she functions as a narrator, apparently talking to herself so she can stay awake for seventy-two hours to rescue her daughter before she goes missing forever. She sounds like a gumshoe detective in a classic Hollywood noir. Initially “Protector” seems promising because it is not long before the action starts, and Jovovich is jumping off roofs, breaking windows, hanging on cars and killing people willy nilly. She makes Liam Neeson seem like a diplomatic statesman. Nikki has no chill as she should.

So why all the unnecessary talking? There is a supporting cast. No disrespect intended, they were extraneous. Captain Michaels (D.B. Sweeney) of the Las Cruces Police Department seems more concerned about Nikki than the sex traffickers. Colonel Joseph Lavelle (Matthew Modine) plays the man who puts Michaels in his place and explains the big twist at the end, which explains why “Protector” counterintuitively omits a ton of scenes in the beginning or why the time jumps seem so random. Afterwards you will probably say to yourself, “Ohhhh that is what they were trying to do,” but if you need a character to explain it, and it is impossible to figure out without the lecture, maybe keep it simple. I had a flash of recognizing a clue to the twist, but I did not pull the thread. Detective Jane (Lydia Hull) seems as if she is going to be pivotal, but nope. Hull is just good at making a meal from a morsel. No small parts, just small actors. Brooklyn Sudano also makes the most of her second in the spotlight, but they are afterthoughts. A rookie cop, Detective Woo (Chase E. Kim), was a nice palette cleanser because even ruthless Nikki does not believe that he is part of the conspiracy, and it would have been fun to keep him around as a foil.

There did not even need to be a monologue or dialogue for most of “Protector.” Just string a bunch of action scenes together until the end, and it would have been better. The best scene is when Nikki decides to stop a caravan during the day and puts on a mouth guard because it feels fresh whereas other scenes are more familiar or nostalgic so hold fewer surprises. Side note: if you kidnapped someone and seconds later, that person’s mom comes barreling through killing people left, right and center, would not you just dump the girl and run. Obviously then there is no movie, but damn, these criminals are not practical. There may be bigger, more explosive encounters, but none as audacious as that one in terms of speed, scope and efficiency. When fight scenes are lightning strike rapid, more is more, and framing is key.

Grunberg is good, not great. I will beat on this drum until the end of time, but fight scenes need to be shot like Fred Astaire’s movies: put a camera down, capture the full body with as few cuts as possible. Yes, the more obscured the action is, the more wiggle room for staging with stunt men and effects, but it also means losing suspension of disbelief. Nikki’s fight scenes are usually staged well, but often with darker lighting. The interior, night fight scenes can be hard to discern, but not impossible. If you find yourself checking out during those moments, they pass fairly quickly then the confrontations become more visible. The “turn the tables on the torturer” schtick felt as if it happened more than it did because Nikki keeps getting framed as an underdog when *waves hands generally* she obviously is not. A couple of supporting characters had a brief physical melee, and it felt as if the editor cut it more times than the rest of the movie.

The villains are not memorable and barely put up a fight, which is why the law enforcement manhunt is necessary. Ben (Shane Williams) kidnaps Chloe as a spotter for the Syndicate. Sullivan (Don Harvey) is trying to stop Nikki without alerting The Chairman (Gabriel Sloyer), but The Chairman finds out anyway. The Chairman is as forgettable as his henchman. If Mun wanted to zhuzh up the genre, the work could have been done there, but it is understandable that he did not want to spend time in the headspace of human traffickers, but all villains are heroes in their own story. One torturer gets a monologue, but it feels more like a serial killer monologue than a torturer. Just an observation, not a criticism.

Is “Protector” exploitive? Yes, Chloe is barely a person before she gets snatched away. Developing Chloe as a character that the audience is as attached to as Nikki would have made the movie stronger and is the only way that “A Working Man” beats Jovovich’s latest film. Chloe only exists to motivate her mother, but not as a three-dimensional person. Remember when in real life, Neeson went on a tangent imagining beating up strangers unrelated to a crime that his friend endured. He made himself the main character in someone else’s pain, and it is an inherently gross position even before you get to the other details of the story. It is not a deal breaker but another area where time devoted to Chloe instead of a twist could have elevated the story.

Speaking of exploitive, the release timing of “Protector” is perfect. The US is attacking the Middle East, and unrelated (Kathryn Hahn winking) sex trafficking of children and women with the Epstein files has captured the imagination of the world. When the movie opens, it is framed as Nikki just choosing to fight a war at home instead of abroad, and it is a message that will resonate with audiences dissatisfied with law enforcement’s crackdown on pedophiles, rapists and murderers. Sadly, real life shows how the movie could have added texture to the perps instead of making them cardboard cutouts of bad guys.

Overall, if you are jonesing for more Jovovich kicking ass, “Protector” will fulfill your needs. It could have been better, but no one watches action movies for the plot. It delivers on its most important promise: a mom unleashing guilt free violence and death with no calories against the worst of the worst.