The Mother review: Jennifer Lopez packs a punch in a film that doesn’t
JLo uses her particular set of skills to search for her kidnapped daughter in a generic actioner from Mulan director Niki Caro
Film Reviews Jennifer Lopez
In the pantheon of female assassin films, many have shown grit and gravitas, but only a handful have nailed their targets. This is especially true in the case of original features for the streaming services. While recent international offerings from Netflix—like Kill Boksoon and Furies—have demonstrated a modicum of mettle, splashy English-language releases—like Gunpowder Milkshake and Kate—have proven frustrating and far from thrilling. And although director Niki Caro’s The Mother ranks as one of streaming’s stronger action titles, alongside Lou, it also sticks to a straightforward formula. It’s decent but a tad too restrained for its own good.
Our tale opens on a sleepy suburban safe house where our pregnant heroine—known only as The Mother (Jennifer Lopez)—attempts to broker a deal with the FBI to inform on her former exes; ruthless arms dealers Hector Alvarez (Gael García Bernal) and Adrian Lovell (Joseph Fiennes). The negotiation is cut short when Adrian shows up and attempts to murder her and her unborn child. Since she’s a top-notch assassin, she survives and severely maims him in the process. It becomes apparent that in order to protect her newborn daughter, she must give the child up for adoption and go into hiding in the Alaskan wilderness near her ex-military pal, Jons (Paul Raci). Yet not before getting Agent Cruise’s (Omari Hardwick) word that if trouble arises again, he’s to send for her aid immediately.
Sure enough, said trouble does arise when a bunch of baddies carrying a photo of Mother’s daughter Zoe (Lucy Paez), now a happy, stable Midwestern 12-year-old, are intercepted by the FBI. With skills as sharp as ever, the dormant recluse comes out of hiding just as Zoe is kidnapped by Hector’s right-hand man, The Tarantula (Jesse Garcia). As The Mother and Cruise head to Cuba to rescue her estranged progeny from the slimy, silk shirt-sporting Hector, they draw the eyes of Adrian, who’s physically scarred and hell-bent on revenge. The Mother is then forced to launch her most precarious mission yet: Parent and train an obstinate tween in the ways of an assassin.
Similar to Lou in its use of a laconic, world-weary heroine driven to chilly remote surroundings through a sense of self-abnegation, Caro and screenwriters Andrea Berloff, Peter Craig, and Misha Green (working from a story by Green) create a dynamic female lead character who, both metaphorically and physically, dwells and thrives in life’s gray areas. This is reflected narratively, in her shady post-military career and covert motherhood, as well as aesthetically, in her dilapidated cabin sanctuary and its drab color palette. Symbolism surrounding a wolf mother and her young cubs is delivered with a tender touch, acting as a subtle nature-versus-nurture commentary on The Mother and Zoe’s dynamic.
The film’s big action set pieces are workmanlike in their construction, but hold enough character-driven tension and visual flair to make their execution compelling. Mother’s pursuit of The Tarantula on foot, motorbike, and car through the winding alleys of Havana (which recalls a sequence in Mafia Mamma involving a coffin and oranges tumbling down stairs) is akin to a Bourne film. Mother and Cruise’s raid on Hector’s heavily guarded compound is set to Massive Attack’s “Angel,” giving it a steely cool sonic identity with its chorus of kills and pulsating beats. Adrian’s camouflaged henchmen descend and die on Mother’s snowy mountain like Bond baddies. And the finale’s fisticuffs between Mother and Adrian hit hard, thanks to Lopez instilling her eponymous heroine’s unrelenting journey with tangible poignancy. She delivers nuanced work where her empowering emotions land as strongly as her punches.
However, the film’s fabric experiences a few frays that lead to a sloppy unraveling. Around the midpoint, characters slowly stop behaving as humans, and behave more like puppets functioning on behalf of the story. It also suffers from a villain problem where both of the evil exes are barely one dimensional, neither oppressive nor genuinely menacing due to Fiennes’ and Bernal’s lack of meaty material. Screenwriter contrivances guide the second-to-third-act transition. The Mother’s considerable abilities begin to slip for baffling reasons that run counter to her established character—early on she can mend a bullet wound with superglue, but later she can’t stitch a bite wound.
Given the solid pedigree behind these filmmakers—Caro directed Whale Rider and Mulan, Berloff wrote The Kitchen and Straight Outta Compton, Craig wrote The Town and The Batman and Green created Lovecraft Country—it’s a surprise to see their creative consommé turn out much less flavorful than expected. The Mother doesn’t examine, augment, or challenge the genre’s familiar formulas. We might wish for a motherlode of satisfaction when the needle finally drops on Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work,” but we find a shrug of contentment instead.
The Mother streams on Netflix beginning May 12.
20 Comments
You don’t have to pretend she’s good in it.
It’s a dumb “gimme back my daughter” vehicle, so maybe she doesn’t have to excel at it this time.
The review is well-written and convincing. Lopez is a bad actor but she keeps trying it. The trailer is extremely well crafted for today’s volence (and style) loving audiences so it will probably do well. Everything seems to be doing well at the theatres (which is worrisome).
The perfect makeup, outfits and not a hair out of place are making me laugh, but I suppose few people will take issue with that since TikTok has taught us that this is how woman are all of the time.
I have to disagree with “bad actor”, given how excellent she was in Hustlers and Out Of Sight. I think she just says yes to a lot of crap.
well she very deliberately went ‘movie star’ route as opposed to ‘actress’ route. she’s not ‘bad’ but at the same time, to your point, she has basically 2 notable performances in 20+ years of acting.
And those two notable performances were ones that more or less highlight how attractive she is.
She’s a manufactured star. She might have been a decent dancer 30+ years ago, but she’s never been a good singer or actor, but hey, here we are. She’s famous, she won.
Two overrated performances in a twenty years career of otherwise complete shit, and it’s well documented that she’s a horrible person irl. Fuck her.
For the ‘90s, her batting average is actually pretty solid…not a lot in the way of box-office success, but Jack and U-Turn are the only outright failures as films. After 2000 that average goes screaming downwards (she changed agents in 1998), and she starts putting in noticeably less effort in most of her roles.(Throw in Selena, Blood and Wine, and surprisingly, Parker as part of her best performances.)
A Francis Ford Coppola, and an Oliver Stone? That takes some doing, though I’m not sure any reasonable person could blame her for Jack when fault really lay with the decision to make the movie in the first place.I read a review of U-Turn at the time that singled her out for effusive praise, and for years, her full name was “the exciting and talented Jennifer Lopez” in my head.
To be clear, the failure of U-Turn is entirely Oliver Stone and collaborator Rich Rutkowski’s fault – they forced a rather offensive tragic-mestiza plot into John Ridley’s black-comedy noir screenplay, and the two elements fatally undermine each other. This is on top of ruining the ending for a sake of a bad joke, and Stone apparently sexually harassing Lopez rather brazenly. (Point of fact, this film is generally considered the point at which Stone’s slide into hackdom was irreversible).Though yes, she is also very good in U-Turn, arguably its saving grace (no pun intended). Part of it is that she (along with Joaquin Phoenix & Claire Danes) gets to play one of the only actual humans in the cast. But she also understands the psychology of a CSA survivor, and their actual place in the screenplay, very well – indeed, she understands the plotline much better than either Stone or Rutkowski.(To your point, I do think she is a good actor – actually somewhat better than Will Smith. But choosing roles is 90% of acting, and Will Smith has far better taste in screenplays.)
This movie gets a bonus point for not having a one-word title that’s the main character’s first name, bringing it a grand total of:one point.
“attempts to broker a deal with the FBI to inform on her former exes”
What makes someone a former ex, as opposed to, you know, an ex?
I suppose if they get back together, they are former exes… only thing that makes sense to me heh
Maybe she hooked back up with them?
They’re trying to make it work, for the kids.
Basically agree with this.As to why the script doesn’t really work…my only guess is that the presence of Misha Green as a screenwriter, as opposed to just providing the story, threw things off somehow. Craig & Barloff wrote the superior 2016 thriller Blood Father together, which is only 88 minutes – and I get the feeling that their work here tended more towards tightening/punching up (literally, so to speak) Green’s scripting. Which would account for the overtuned editing in much of the action scenes, if not necessarily the villains’ thin characterization. (Possibly-ironically, I also agree with Katie Rife that the Mother & Zoe’s moments together are the strongest parts of the film).
Suspension of disbelief starts with pretending a nice chaparrito as Gael could score with J.Lo. I mean, come on!
She’s a better actress than Madonna. That’s not really a compliment. It’s like saying James Corden is better looking than Harvey Weinstein.
Sure is a lot of hate and resentment in a comment thread about a generic action movie. I wonder why that is.