MOVIE REVIEW
“THE PROTEGE”
Rated R. At AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay, Regal Fenway and suburban theaters.
Grade: B
To such female-fronted, “John Wick”-style assassin films such as “Atomic Blonde,” “Red Sparrow” and last month’s “Gunpowder Milkshake,” we can now add Martin Campbell’s “The Protege” with Maggie Q of “Nikita” and “Designated Survivor” in the lead female role. The action begins in 1991 in Vietnam, where a preteen girl (Eva Nugyen Thorsen) survives the murder of her family and apparently kills all of her family’s attackers with one of their own weapons. She’s so precocious. The traumatized girl is then taken under wing by military assassin Moody (Samuel L. Jackson) and trained to be his heir. When Moody is later murdered by unknown killers at his English estate stronghold, a grown-up Anna (Q), whose London rare bookshop is shot to pieces by the same assassins, seeks to find her foster father’s killers and exact vengeance.
New Zealand-born director Campbell (“The Mask of Zorro,” “Casino Royale”) knows how to stage a chase, a fight scene and a shoot-out, and “The Protege” has many of those. It also has former and future Batman (he’s reprising the role in WB’s ‘The Flash’) Michael Keaton credibly showing off his shooting and fighting skills as mysterious, Edgar Allan Poe-quoting Michael Rembrandt, who has an ambiguous, semi-romantic relationship with Anna. The film’s violence is extreme with multiple, graphic head shots.
The screenplay by Richard Wenk (“The Mechanic,” “The Equalizer”) is the bare bones of a revenge story that is satisfied to introduce characters without developing them. The plot is so rote it is almost invisible. Anna must return to Vietnam to seek out the Mr. Big who had Moody killed. That person (David Rintoul) is a virtual non-entity. He might as well be played by a pinata. Meanwhile, Anna is captured by Mr. Big’s thugs and waterboarded in captivity. In one sequence, she fights four of her attackers, while, conveniently, no one watches the action on the security cameras installed in her cell. Meaningless philosophical dialogue about the nature of good and evil fills out some (too much if you ask me) of the film’s 109-minute running time. The story builds to a big, lavish party, where Anna is expected to try to kill the host. “The Protege” was shot in Romania, Bulgaria and the U.K.
Keaton still has a powerful screen presence, even when he is playing an action film cliche. But you wonder what he is thinking about being in such nonsense. Honolulu-born Q, a former model who trained with Jackie Chan, is not in Keaton’s acting league. But her fighting skills are impressive, giving the action scenes real credibility, and she and Keaton have genuine chemistry. Anna may not be much more than just another “Jane” Wick character, a kick-ass type the public can’t seem to get enough of. But Q has authority in the role. Robert Patrick shows up as the leader of a biker gang in Vietnam, presumably some Vietnam War veteran who never went home, another interesting character left undeveloped. Maybe a sequel will tell us more.
(“The Protege” contains graphic violence, sexually suggestive scenes and profanity.)
"heavy" - Google News
August 20, 2021 at 03:51PM
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‘Protege’ thin on plot, heavy on action & violence - Boston Herald
"heavy" - Google News
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