The Mother

This is a movie we've all seen before. Clichéd and formulaic, The Mother rides lazily on action movies before it, without offering anything tangible or new to the genre, and it's such a shame that three prolific writers were involved in making the plot.

Jennifer Lopez's acting is good, but with the material she had to work with, it's a dud. Lucy Paez as Lopez's daughter is a revelatory performance, and this should be a career launcher; her facial mannerisms also remind me of Sydney Sweeney.

The Mother has nothing new to offer, but even with the cliches it's still a watchable flick.

5-6/10.

The trailer is deceiving.

It led me to think I was gonna watch something to the tune of NOBODY. Instead we get this bad-ass lady (by way of narration by a law enforcement officer as to her past accolades) who does bad ass things early in the movie and suddenly, seemingly it all finished. Then soon audiences are reminded oh wait another bad guy still has his portion to get through.

Plotholes, cliches, mentorship in badassery to her kid that doesn't pay off and just poor writing makes for this incoherent action flick.

Sure Lopez has done some (better) action flicks in the past but this won't be the one she will be remembered by.

Jessica Chastain does a better job, Jennifer Garner, heck even Michelle Rodriguez too at being an onscreen bad-ass chick.

The only badass scene here really is when she rode that HD 48.

Such a dissapointment.

The screenplay to "The Mother" is so bad, you don't have to wait until the end credits to ruminate on its flaws. The glaring plot holes and errors of logic occur in real time, and all the scenes of Jennifer Lopez kicking butt aren't going to save it. Lopez is the title character, a perfect-shot military assassin who gets caught between two ruthless arms dealers- Adrian (Joseph Fiennes) and Hector (Gael Garcia Bernal) in a confusing guns-and-love triangle. She ends up pregnant, and gives birth to a girl who is immediately put up for adoption. Because of the danger to her daughter, Lopez must go on the run, using sympathetic FBI agent Cruise (Omari Hardwick) as her eyes and ears on the daughter's upbringing. Bad guys come back into the mother's life in a big way after the-now twelve year old daughter Zoe's (Lucy Paez) whereabouts are discovered, and The Mother must spring into The Action.

Caro directs the film with confidence. There are long, complicated action sequences, and the cast is athletic and ready. A few too many overhead drone shots to be sure, but given the right screenplay, Caro could have directed set-pieces that enhanced the story and added to the suspense. This screenplay is not the right screenplay. I found myself wondering out loud what the writers were thinking. The characters onscreen weren't thinking, I could be an elite assassin, too, up against this bunch of henchmen. Every action film cliche ever concocted seems to have found its way onto the screen. At one point, there was a purposeful car crash that I saw coming a mile away, and the driver of the car that was struck should have also known what was coming from a mile away- literally. The story tries to get metaphysical with the introduction of a mother wolf and her cubs that gets sillier as it goes along. The locations are used to their fullest extent, and are beautiful to look at. Lopez has some nice scenes, but her character is busy being off-putting and secretive, and her lack of emotion renders her performance stilted. Paez is pretty good as the twelve year old whose life is suddenly upended, but I found Hardwick's role bizarre. I'm beginning to think his Cruise started out as two characters- the special agent whose life the Mother saves, and the helpy helperton who befriends Zoe's new family to keep an eye on her. Although villains, Bernal and Fiennes are barely here. With some name and gender switching, this could have served as a weak James Bond entry, or any other action film with an infinitely wealthy, special-ops protagonist who must go into isolation and await the standard army of villains to attack. The very final scene could have made a darker statement about the preceding two hours, but instead we got the warm fuzzies. I went in cold to "The Mother," having no idea about its existence until it popped up on a streaming service. The film feels longer than under two hours, and it took me two days to complete. There is a lot about "The Mother" that should have worked.

Contains strong physical violence, strong gun violence, gore, profanity, adult situations, drug abuse, alcohol and tobacco use.