Being an action hero in the cinema – or in streaming – of these 20s and trying to separate himself from the known models and clichés is not easy. Liam Neeson and Jason Statham are unlikely to make it, but how about we try Jennifer LopezWhat makes a cold and ruthless woman, never disheveled, who as a mother must put her life on the line to save that of her daughter?
They must have thought of something like that. Netflix, because The mother is an action film produced by Netflix. And if you’ve seen more than one, you know that the role model is pretty much the same, that there’s going to be more violence or gruesome depending on who’s behind the camera and not in front.
It’s inside Mother who directs is Niki Caro, the New Zealander who had surprised with whale riderbut whose latest film, the adaptation of mulanof Disney, with actors in the flesh, was rather disappointing.
Jlo is the mother – the character has no name even when she becomes a protected witness for the FBI – a former military sniper involved in arms trafficking and other nefarious things. And that you fell in love with two characters, one of those who are usually bad, even if they are cute. one is LatinGaël García Bernal– and the other, Anglo-Saxon -Joseph Fiennes, who composes a villain at the antipodes of the one who made people suffer in The Handmaid’s Tale.
treacherous, but good
But let’s review how the film opens, in which the mother is being interrogated by an FBI agent. She has already betrayed -later in the film you will see how- these criminals and she is as sure that they will come after her as that she is pregnant with one of them. And it doesn’t go that one of the bad guys – we won’t say who – stabs him in the stomach.
Don’t ask her how she lives and gives birth, but the deal with the FBI calls for her to take refuge in a remote, snowy log home in Alaska with her baby in the care of a surrogate family.
He won’t be able to see it.
Unless, when 12 years pass, and the villains want revenge on their mother, they kidnap the girl/teenager to force her out of the den.
And there, yeah, Jlo is just like Statham. No, she’s not bald, she has shiny hair as always, but she fights hand-to-hand or with automatic weapons, she’s skilled at killing who -or who, because she kills dozens- and if necessary puts barbed wire on her fists for torture anyone who knows where his daughter is, well Ben Affleck’s wife will.
Perhaps Mother be a bit long. Maybe evil characters are like 2D in a 3D movie. In other words, they are not three-dimensional, but appear without edges, without relief. And that they are García Bernal and Fiennes.
But Jennifer didn’t deserve a movie like this. One where she usually seems very serious and very pretty and very motherly and very drunk.
“Mother”
Action. United States, 2023. Original title: “Mother”. 115′, SA 16. From: Nikki Caro. With: Jennifer Lopez, Joseph Fiennes, Gael Garcia Bernal, Lucy Paez, Omari Hardwick, Paul Raci. Available in: Netflix.
Source: Clarin
