Just in time for Mother’s Day comes the new Jennifer Lopez Netflix movie “The Mother.” A twist on the 1994 thriller “The Professional,” it is the story of a cold-blooded assassin whose heart is warmed by a young innocent caught up in a dangerous situation.
When we first meet The Mother (Lopez) she is a pregnant ex-assassin making a deal with the FBI to turn on her former crime partners, gun runners Adrian Lovell (Joseph Fiennes) and Hector Álvarez (Gael García Bernal). Their business began when she was stationed at Guantanamo Bay, but soon spun out-of-control and now, even the morally compromised Mother wants out.
Trouble is, Lovell and Álvarez will do almost anything to keep her quiet. “You burned down our entire world,” says Lovell.
One barrage of bullets later, Mother is hospitalized. In recovery, she has the baby, but is told by a stern FBI agent (Edie Falco) that not only is she in danger, but the threat from Lovell and Álvarez extends to the newborn. “What you are to that child is a death sentence.”
Mother reluctantly agrees to put the child in foster care while she goes into hiding in the Alaskan wilderness. “You put her with good people,” she says. “Keep her safe. If there’s trouble, let me know.”
Cut to twelve years later. Mother gets word that her daughter Zoe (Lucy Paez), who has grown up in a quiet, leafy suburb unaffected and unaware of her biological mother’s past, is once again in danger. “They’re using her to get to me,” Mother says. Working with FBI agent William Cruise (Omari Hardwick), Mother comes out of hiding to protect the daughter she has never met. “I’m a killer,” she says, “but I’m also a mother and I will die protecting her.”
Hiding out in the wilderness, Mother homeschools Zoe in the ways of tough love and warfare. “Do you hate me?” Mother asks. “Good. Use it. You’re going to work harder than you ever thought you could work. Then you are going to run out your reserve tank and find out you have more. And then you’ll run that out too.”
“The Mother” has echoes of “The Professional” and “Hannah,” but pales by comparison.
New Zealand director Niki Caro kicks things off with a far-fetched, but promising set-up, only to allow it to flounder as the running time increases. A compelling twist on a mother – daughter relationship is wasted by a script with paper thin characterizations, a pair of lackluster villains and no real twists after the first fifteen minutes.
Lopez brings a steely, studied deep freeze to the deadly character, punctuated by moments of familial concern. Lopez is no stranger to action or intrigue, and the “Bourne” style -up-close-and-personal fight scenes have some punch to them, but the clichéd dialogue feels left over from a 1990s direct-to-DVD flick. “I’m whatever I need to be to keep her safe,” could have been said by any number of b-movie heroes, and here, as the words spill out of her mouth, it feels like an echo from another, better movie.
Big points, though, to costume designers Bina Daigeler and Jeriana San Juan, whose fur-trimmed looks for the on-the-run Mother, are runway ready.
Even worse is Fiennes as the blandest bad guy to come down the pike since the forgettable Max Lord in “Wonder Woman 1984.” We know Lovell is evil because he does terrible things, but Fiennes plays him as a vessel for some heavy prosthetic make-up and nothing more.
“The Mother” is serviceable, a big action movie that fits the small screen.
Richard sits in with CP24 anchor Stephanie Smythe to review the Jesse Owens’s biopic “Race,” the religious terror of “The Witch” and the religious fervor of “Risen.”
Richard and “Canada AM” host Jeff Hutcheson have a look at the weekend’s big releases, the Jesse Owens’s biopic “Race” and the puritanical terror of “The Witch” and the pious secularity of “Risen.”
In 2006 Entertainment Weekly rated The Passion of the Christ — Mel Gibson’s gritty and gory account of Jesus Christ’s final 12 hours leading up to his crucifixion in Jerusalem — the most controversial movie of all time.
Its detractors noted historical and biblical inaccuracies and accused the film of being anti-Semitic and excessively violent. Despite the cries of critics, the film became the top-grossing Christian movie ever.
In fact, it was something of a miracle at the box office, earning $611,899,420 worldwide in its original release.
Since then there has been a trickle of films aimed at a Christian audience, some successful, some not, some controversial, some not.
Passion had a great marketing strategy coupled with enough controversy to get people interested to see what all the fuss was about.
It’s been hard to capture that kind of lightning in a bottle again, which is why we haven’t seen a cavalcade of biblical epics in mainstream theatres.
This weekend Risen looks to the bible for inspiration. Playing like an unofficial sequel to Gibson’s film, it tells the tale of the Resurrection from the perspective of Clavius (Joseph Fiennes), a Roman Centurion commanded by Pontius Pilot to quell reports of a risen Messiah and thwart an insurrection in Jerusalem.
The film, directed by Waterworld helmer Kevin Reynolds, appears to have skirted around controversy by telling the story from the point of view of a fictional and non-believing character.
The studio is quick to note, however, that the script is a “faithful scriptural treatment of the story.”
The secret to success for a Christian themed movie lies with the filmmaker’s ability to translate the scripture to the screen.
“Christians like a well told story,” War Room director Alex Kendrick, who, with his brother Stephen have been labelled the “Steven Spielbergs of Christian cinema,” told just after his movie toppled Straight Outta Compton from the number one spot at the box office last year.
“What we don’t like is when our saviour’s name is abused or taken in vain or our morals trashed, so that keeps us away from many movies. It’s amazing to me that if Hollywood knew how many movies we stayed away from on purpose because of some of the offensive aspects they would change because it means much more money for them.”
Recently Noah, starring Russell Crowe as the arc-building prophet, angered some Christian groups for not being reverent enough. Director Darren Aronofsky called it the, “least biblical biblical film ever made,” and a studio press release admitted, “artistic license has been taken.”
The Christian community has met other films with open arms. Catherine Hardwicke’s The Nativity Story drew on the gospel of Matthew for the story of the Immaculate Conception and while it wasn’t the box office bonanza that made Passion headline news, it made money and skirted around controversy.
In 2004 Christian films were popular enough to garner a category at the irreverent Mexican MTV Movie Awards. Up for Most Divine Miracle in a Movie was the water into wine sequence from The Last Temptation of Christ; Passion’s Christ healing Peter’s injured ear scene; and the part in Bruce Almighty where Bruce causes his girlfriend’s chest to grow several sizes. Mexican audiences voted and Bruce Almighty’s miracle took the prize.
“Risen” is an odd movie that sits somewhere in between pious and pop culture. Not since “Jesus Christ Superstar” fused the bible with a backbeat has a Christian film mixed-and-matched the spiritual with the secular in such an audacious manner. Part bible story, part police procedural, for much of the movie it plays like “Law & Order: Jerusalem.”
Told from the point-of-view of nonbelieving Roman centurion Clavius (Joseph Fiennes), the action in “Risen” really begins three days after the crucifixion of Christ (Cliff Curtis), in the days following the Resurrection. Judaea prefect Pontius Pilate (Peter Firth), concerned that the recently crucified Nazarene’s followers have stolen his body and will claim he has risen from the dead, orders Clavius to “find the corpse of the cursed Yeshua before it rots.”
Clavius is a hard-bitten warrior, growing weary of the fight. He dreams of a “day without travail; with peace.” Maybe so, but before that time comes he must launch a “CSI” style investigation into Yeshua’s disappearance with Pilot’s words—“Without a corpse we might have a messiah.”—ringing in his ears.
His relentless search uncovers several unexplainable clues—he writes off the Shroud of Turin as an imprint left by “sweat and herbs”—that eventually turn him from someone who “sees delusions to keep a crusade alive” to a follower of Christ.
“Risen” works best when it is in procedural mode. Like “The Robe” and other biblical films that use scripture as a backdrop for a different kind of story, “Risen” feels like two different movies. The first half is a thriller, a detective story complete with interrogations and observation of suspects. When it changes into a more traditional faith based story, however, it becomes less interesting. It’s respectful to the source material and Fiennes is fine in both roles—the dutiful soldier and early adopter of Yeshua’s teachings—but it feels frontloaded in the first hour.
“Risen” isn’t exactly a religious movie. It’s more a spiritual story about a man who learns how to find the peace he has always craved through Christ’s teachings. The messaging is strong, but this is more the tale of a man’s change of heart set against the backdrop of the beginning of Christianity than it is a bible story.
It’s about faith and the strength of belief, but is flawed by inconsistent dialogue style—it ranges from sword-and-sandal formality to modern day vernacular—and the limitations of a low budget that prevents any truly miraculous visions.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All atmosphere and no urgency make “Strangerland” a dull film.
Catherine and Matthew (Nicole Kidman and Joseph Fiennes) and teenaged kids Tommy and Lily (Nicholas Hamilton and Maddison Brown) are struggling to survive in the remote (and fictional) outback desert town of Nathgari. Dad, the town pharmacist, is less than enthusiastic at living in Strangerland despite his wife’s attempts to fit in. Fifteen-year-old Tommy is an insomniac who goes for late night walks while his older sister has caught the eye of the local boys.
One morning, on the eve of an immense dust storm it’s discovered the kids didn’t sleep in their beds. Or show up at school. By nightfall a search has begun, led by policeman David Rae (Hugo Weaving). As the weather intensifies so does the hunt as Catherine and Matthew struggle to cope with their grief and sense of loss.
“Strangerland” wallows in the grimness of its story. The undeniable splendour of the cinematography—the landscape and the dust storm are spectacular in their rugged, terrible beauty—plays in stark contrast to Kidman’s hysterical performance and the anxiety inducing score by “True Detective’s” Keefus Ciancia. This could have been a welcome addition to other Australian lost-in-the-wilderness flicks like “Picnic at Hanging Rock” and “Walkabout” but lacks the spark to keep the story interesting.
Just in time for Mother’s Day comes the new Jennifer Lopez Netflix movie “The Mother.” A twist on the 1994 thriller “The Professional,” it is the story of a cold-blooded assassin whose heart is warmed by a young innocent caught up in a dangerous situation.
