Maggie Q, Michael Keaton, and slick direction elevate the assassin boilerplate of The Protégé
It's a silly throwback of an action thriller outfitted in high-quality costume changes
Film Reviews Michael Keaton
“A bookstore owned by an assassin… never saw that one coming,” says Rembrandt (Michael Keaton) in The Protégé, in a rare instance of a character played by the actor not coming across like the smartest guy in the room. The real surprise about the store owned by master assassin Anna (Maggie Q) is that it actually stocks a substantial collection of used books, rather than concealing a John Wick-style armory. Anna really does enjoy her sideline in buying and selling rare first editions—and anyone who shares her interest will find the movie’s violence horrifying. No, not the headshots augmented with cheesy, ugly spatters of CG blood, but a subsequent scene of bookstore carnage that sends tattered pages flying through the air.
Anna’s attitude about her night job is curious. Her store is successful enough to have at least one other employee, and she doesn’t appear to have the type of clients who would refuse her attempts to retire from freelancing, so it’s unclear why she hasn’t switched to bookselling full-time. Maybe it feels to her like a family business; her closest associate is fellow hitman Moody (Samuel L. Jackson), who has been a father figure ever since he stumbled across her on an unidentified mission to Vietnam in 1991, and the two share a disarmingly warm rapport (especially when they’re disarming and murdering various goons). When mysterious henchmen come for Moody and others in Anna’s circle, it’s not because any of them have tried to leave the business. Anna simply takes an innocuous-sounding missing-person case that doesn’t even involve knocking anyone off. After vicious attacks attempt to warn her off the inquiry, this expert multitasker continues the investigation while plotting to retaliate against the bad guys. This takes her back to Vietnam, though the generic interiors don’t make much use of the location.
That’s where Keaton’s smarter-than-the-room routine comes in. In a movie that repeatedly replaces its seeming Final Boss, and not with successively more interesting characters, Keaton’s Rembrandt weasels in from the side; he’s a self-described “after-the-facts” guy sent by Anna’s enemies to organize, analyze, and occasionally perform hand-to-hand combat, by the grace of Keaton’s talented stunt double. Rembrandt also strikes up a flirtation with Anna, a stunt Keaton performs himself. Their exchanges are almost certainly in the script by Richard Wenk, penner of movies where stars ranging from medium old to decidedly old to old souls are forced to take action. It’s too close to that wheelhouse, and too extensive, to be a plausible improv. Yet Rembrandt’s interest in Anna plays, delightfully, like a classic Keaton aside allowed to mutate into its own weird little subplot, a natural outgrowth of the way his character pauses to extol the virtues of bone broth or inquire about the source of a man’s suit. If their dynamic has a playful queasiness, at least it’s an antidote to the steadfast sexlessness of so many action movies, including polite young superheroes and the mostly-celibate old men Wenk specializes in writing.
That Wenk is now writing about a female assassin should hardly count as a flipped script; distaff John Wicks are so hot right now. But that non-front of a bookstore is an early clue that The Protégé isn’t really a Wick riff (despite name-checking the Keanu series in its ads). It’s a straightforward genre picture, directed with the trademark sleek clarity of Martin Campbell, best known for steering two different Bond reboots. His recent gigs are lower-profile, but still well-crafted. Apart from some parceled-out flashbacks of questionable utility, this new one is sillier and less grim than The Foreigner, his previous foray into a style of movie that now seems destined for Netflix surfing—the 21st-century equivalent of the lazy Sunday-afternoon cable watch. As with The Foreigner, The Protégé becomes a theatrical release by the dogged professionalism of its filmmaking and the radiance of its star power.
That star power isn’t just from Keaton and Jackson, exercising their enviable ability to have fun whittling some character put of the standard-issue blocks of wood they’ve been handed. The Protégé is also a belated Hollywood star vehicle for Maggie Q and her no-nonsense charisma. Beyond considerable physical presence, Q brings touches of subtlety to a stock character; by the time she makes her eventual, inevitable reference to wanting to get out of the game, there’s a genuine weariness that feels earned enough to bypass the cliché. Elsewhere, a different cliché more specific to female action stars is enthusiastically embraced: Anna receives more elaborate outfitting than her male counterparts. It might feel condescending if Maggie Q didn’t look so at home throughout her stunning and lovingly ridiculous variety of costume changes: fancy dresses, catsuits, practical skulkwear.
Plenty of people will vibe with the efficiency of The Protégé on an airplane, or on Netflix, or maybe even on TNT in a few years, and that’s fine; it’s hardly the kind of movie that will inspire another round of debate about the waning theatrical experience. Yet there is something resonant about the characters’ appreciation for tangible evidence of the past, including Anna’s first editions and Moody’s prized vintage electric guitar. Campbell and Wenk haven’t inserted many gratuitous, self-mythologizing references to “going old school” as a sop to their target audience. They let their old-fashioned programmer speak for itself, mostly just by making it with a bit more flair than strictly necessary. This is a movie where the audience can temporarily believe that the ruthless assassin owns that bookstore.
28 Comments
I just don’t know how to take this review seriously seeing that you made it through about 500 words and never connect this movie and Maggie Q to Nikita
for real
Oh, it’s closer to 1,000 words than 500.How should this movie be “connected” to Nikita, critically speaking? Would it help give you a better sense of this movie if I said “Maggie Q also played an assassin in the Nikita TV series I never watched”? She’s played a bunch of spies, assassins, etc. over the past 20 years.
HOW DARE YOU OMIT HER PARTICIPATION IN MY HIGH SCHOOL’S TRACK & FIELD TEAM!!!Actually… considering our relative fames… I guess it’s more of her high school.
Whoa for real?? That rules!
Yeah… in our 1995 yearbook her regular picture is missing and only her sister (who I had a bit of a crush on) is there. But there is a picture of her sitting on the ground tying her shoes or something under the track team’s page. I recently visited my parents and they had this yearbook in their attic… which… I probably left it with them years ago because I was very awkward in high school.
So I Wikied her (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie_Q) and:Quigley [Q] attended Mililani Waena Elementary School and Wheeler Intermediate School. She then attended Mililani High School, where she was on the cross country, track and field, and swim teams. She won the title of “Best Body” senior year, and graduated in 1997.WTF??? Your HS had a “Best Body” award in 1997???
I guess? I graduated in ‘96, so I didn’t really check in on what went on there in ‘97. I was too busy dorming with a roommate I hated in college.Also since she was 1 year behind me, I guess we shared a year at Wheeler too! Uggh… now I’m having flashbacks to Mr. Suma yelling, “I wanna see bare balls, people!” at us after gym class… ::shudder:: …I hope he’s been fired by now.
Peta Wilson will always be Nikita for me.
I’ve seen both movies and every episode of both tv shows. The one with Maggie Q is the best by far in my opinion.
I know her mostly from Designated Survivor.I loved the scene where she comes in all beat to hell and slumps into a chair and her geek friend asks:“Can I get you a… hospital?”
Oh, that’s almost a shame because she is soooooo much better in Nikita. In Nikita, she plays an assassin who starts on a path of revenge after her organization kills the person who matters most to her. If you’ve watched the show or ever just done a basic amount of research on her career, there is no way to watch the trailer for this film without seeing a whole set of similarities to a show where she played the lead for four years.
says Rembrandt (Michael Keaton) in The Protégé, in a rare instance of a character played by the actor not coming across like the smartest guy in the room.
See also: Out of Sight/Jackie Brown and uh… Much Ado About Nothing.
I guess one of his Multiplicity clones is not in the running for “smartest in the room” either. Ray at least seems pretty crafty in Jackie Brown. He comes off as more of a dumbass in Out of Sight.
“Hey Ray, do you ever wear a shirt that says ‘Undercover’?”“… No.”
Birdman, as well. Talented beyond what Hollywood labeled him as, yes. But definitely not a genius.
Bookstore? Assassins? Did you watch Gunpowder Milkshake? It was a meh German movie with a cool trailer.
“[Maggie Q’s] considerable physical presence”That’s one way to put it, yes 🙂
Maybe the international assassin gig is what finances the book store?
At one point, she quotes a price on one of her first editions at like $200,000 so it seems like at very least, she’s got some assets to live off.
I remember falling out of love with Michael Keaton after Burton’s Batman, when he dismissed those who objected to his casting as “the DC Fanatics”. It was generally an okay movie . . . but he was wrong for the part. Don’t think I’ve really watched anything of his since. BTW. . . yes, I’m old.
Wait, seriously? If anything, Keaton was prescient in dismissing fanboy whining! And he’s great in the part, especially in Batman Returns! And have you really never seen The Paper, Jackie Brown, The Other Guys, Birdman, Spotlight, or Spider-Man: Homecoming?!
I agree that Batman Returns is Keaton’s best outing as the character — he’s more comfortable in the role and has great chemistry with Pfieffer — but there will always be a part of me that wishes we got to see an Alec Baldwin Batman opposite a Michael Keaton Joker. I assume that Keaton didn’t want to repeat himself after Beetlejuice and we know Tim Burton had aversion to leading man types as Bruce Wayne. But a survey of Baldwin’s roles around that period and since demonstrate he has the depth and capacity for weirdness of a character actor — the limitation was in Burton for not being able to see it. Leading man types like Jeff Bridges or Kurt Russell were also real actors, with more range and relatability than he gave them credit for having. So as much as I enjoy Keaton in the role — I do and I look forward to seeing him in the Flash movie — I will remain forever annoyed at Burton’s rationales. And as long as I’m fantasizing, let me also dream about what could have been if the studio had ever been foolish enough to hand the Batman reins to Paul Verhooven.
Nope, have seen none of them. And I don’t think he was great, sorry. The suit did most of the acting.
Huh. I would recommend burying the hatchet re: Keaton and… watching any of those movies. (Well, Birdman I can kinda take or leave, but on the balance it’s still worthwhile.)
I can remember falling out of love with Keaton after “Night Shift.” He’s ALWAYS smarmy and annoying, and I couldn’t ever finish “Beetlejuice.”
Plus, I’m older.
“plus, I’m older.”I’ll get off your lawn.
The only thing I want to know is if anyone in the movie says, “You and your deranged protégé!”