We’re never certain why the film’s title. We’re never certain about a lot of things, in this story of Riley North (Jennifer Garner) whose husband and child are brutally gunned down by a drug cartel. With little time to grieve, Riley disappears, before remerging in full blown out Terminator meets Death Wish mode, leaving our emotions confused.
We’re never certain either why the tag line:“Join the movement and take flight.” There is no movement, only her need to seek revenge.
But we are certain why the usually squeaky-clean-cast Garner might want to step away from her puppy dog family films and Capital One ads asking, “What’s in your wallet?”
Answer. A lot of payback.
Peppermint doesn’t let us evolve organically into any emotion. It unnecessarily opens on a car and a murder. Basically a forward flash of things to come, before cutting to Riley as the mom-at-the-mall selling ‘Firefly’ cookies (a generic Girl Scout cookie) for her daughter. Why not just open up the movie there at the mall? Allow us to fall in love with Riley’s love of her family right from the get-go? It begs the question “are we living in an age where truly our attention span is so short that the filmmakers question whether or not we will sit through three minutes of lovey-dove family routine before mayhem sets in? So they have to start with mayhem?”
Later in the courtroom – and without divulging too much – a loophole causes justice to go unserved. Shortly after and when we do see the pivotal moment of revenge on the three men who killed Riley’s family….they’re already dead. Huh? Movie plot 101: The get-the-bad-guy scene are everything to the viewing audience. We want to SEE the justice not see that we, um, just missed it.
But we tread along with this Radical Evangelist of Mother Justice as she goes from woman to machine. We’d also just like to see her cry a little, show some vulnerability, but apparently she hasn’t any time for tears.
Of course like Janis Joplin used to croon, “Freedoms just another word for nothing left to lose” and when you lose your family what does it matter what you feel, right? Your free in a way you might not want to be anyway.
Nevertheless, Peppermint offers something only seen in this summer Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom…and that’s to say the last quarter of the film gets better. In the last twenty minutes Riley delivers a really heart felt and believable struggle as a woman, a mother and a wife of substance and integrity… to the death. Or not.
2 ½ tiaras