The Mother review: Why isn’t Jennifer Lopez a huge action star?

Ask any great screen fighter, and they’ll tell you: Movie fighting is much more like dancing than like real fighting. Bruce Lee is a famous cha-cha dancing champion. Patrick Swayze made the transition from dancer into action star. And scores of Indian movies have proven that great dancers can make terrific screen fighters.

That’s the opportunity director Niki Caro (The Whale Rider, Disney’s live-action Mulan) has with Netflix’s The MotherJennifer Lopez plays a faceless assassin in this dark action thriller. She is forced back to the action by her mother, who abandoned their daughter when she was born. Lopez has developed into a unique talent in the genre of crime. The Out of Sight You can also find out more about the following: Hustlers. She’s an enjoyable comedic actor, and she’s particularly strong as a dancer, coming up as a Fly Girl on In Living Color She was already a star before she became a worldwide sensation with her dancing-oriented music videos.

Jennifer Lopez leaps over the top of a car in The Mother.

Jennifer Lopez sits at a bar with a glass of wine while wearing a nice dress in The Mother. Joseph Fiennes looms behind her, wearing a suit.

Unfortunately, these skills are not used much in the workplace. The Mother, which doesn’t give her much to work with. Both the plot and character of hers are dark and serious. The most thrilling action sequences include long-range weapon fights and chase scenes. The hand-to – hand combat scenes are greatly edited, making it impossible for viewers to understand the story or the effort Lopez made in this role.

“She had to learn how to fight, and she’s really good,” second unit director Jeff Habberstad said in a behind-the-scenes video about her training for the role. “Dance and choreography background makes it so she’s just real coordinated.”

The Mother opens at an FBI safe house, where Lopez’s very pregnant character (credited only as “The Mother”) is acting as an informant, with agents interviewing her about a pair of dangerous arms dealers. The interview ends badly, with a hard-to-parse fight scene (thanks to Netflix’s compression and some dark lighting) that leaves her isolated, unfairly on the outs with the FBI, and forced to leave her new daughter behind. This sequence is beyond belief. She strikes a side deal with FBI agent Cruise, played by Omari Hardwick. Cruise will keep an eye on her daughter. He’ll contact her in case anything happens. Twelve years later, she’s moved to Alaska, and gets the message that something indeed has gone wrong.

The movie’s entire setup is a series of thinly drawn characters and conflicts. It is not a good movie. The Mother, people recite the title character’s biography to her in order to build her legend, rather than letting us see it and believe it for ourselves, or having characters tell each other about her, as if she were a spooky story (a tactic used in John WickRecently, Sisu). Bad guys illustrate that they’re evil by pushing down nuns in the street. Gael García Bernal plays a cartoonishly villainous arms dealer who says things like “You sold your soul to the devil, how do you look so good?” — which sounds like fun, but instead plays out as another rote bad guy who sexually menaces the protagonist with a series of played-out aggressive pickup lines, like some sort of perverted wind-up doll.

Jennifer Lopez, wearing a leather jacket, stands protectively in front of Lucy Paez, in front of a motorcycle, in The Mother.

Jennifer Lopez and Lucy Paez hold rifles in the snow in The Mother.

What is the most fascinating part of Mother The Mother’s relationship with her estranged, but still loved daughter Zoe Paez (Lucy Paez). The two spend a small amount of time together as The Mother helps Zoe learn to shoot and drive in Alaska’s wilderness. This is the strongest narrative thread of all. The two characters getting to be friends and forming a bond through their circumstances. The MotherCaro is a speedy reader. It’s shocking when The Mother at one point refers to the “months” they’ve spent together — it feels like a week, maximum.

Certain action beats work better than others. The Mother snipes at guards outside of the villa from afar, and this allows for some clever framing. The later scenes in Alaska’s snowy landscape are better lit and more thrilling than those of the first part. They include a snowmobile shootout and a snowmobile chase. There’s also a funny gag where The Mother hits a guy with her car as a nearby wedding party does the bouquet toss, and the edit matches his flight through the air with the bouquet’s similar arc.

Jennifer Lopez lies down with a sniper rifle in the snow, with a heavy fur coat on, in The Mother.

But Caro and editor David Coulson even undercut those moments with bizarre cuts that pull the story’s punches. The Mother brutally questions a gangster in one scene by repeatedly hitting him on the face. Caro reveals that she has wrapped barbed wire all around her hand, but only after The Mother finishes punching the gangster. This is to build anticipation of The Mother’s brutality, not by showing it. Then The Mother waterboards him, which gets her the information she needs within seconds, because apparently we’re in the 2000s again.

The Mother is the second straight-to-streaming Jennifer Lopez action movie this year, following the Prime Video action comedy Shotgun Wedding. As if The Mother The emotional impact of the film is increased. Shotgun Wedding at least recognized Lopez’s central talents and used them, giving her an opportunity to flex her comedic chops as well as her movement skills. Netflix has missed a chance to transform a star of a new generation into a true action hero.

The Mother Netflix has the latest episodes available.

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