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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 her 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 literally coming from a mile away. 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 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 get 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.
Stats:
(2023) 115 min. (4/10)
-Directed by Niki Caro
-Screenplay by Misha Green and Andrea Berloff and Peter Craig, Story by Misha Green
-Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Joseph Fiennes, Gael Garcia Bernal, Lucy Paez, Omari Hardwick, Edie Falco, Paul Raci, Jesse Garcia, Yvonne Senat Jones, Michael Karl Richards, Link Baker, Mayumi Yoshida, Ryan Cowie
(R)- Strong physical violence, strong gun violence, gore, profanity, adult situations, drug abuse, alcohol and tobacco use
Media Viewed: Streaming
