In a supposedly safe place, a woman warns the FBI agents she has agreed to work with that the place is about to be attacked. What happens, not without the woman, who will remain anonymous, succeeds, as expected, in killing all the assailants. “As expected” is a key concept here in The Mother (The mother), an action movie starring Jennifer Lopez that turns out to be so generic that it could have been scripted by ChatGPT.
It is however nothing. Even that it is quite the opposite, since this Netflix production was written by Misha Green (the series Lovecraft County), Andrea Berloff (Oscar-nominated co-screenwriter for Straight Outta Compton) and Peter Craig (co-writer of The Batman and of Top Gun Maverick). And yet, all these talented people limited themselves to laying a story as predictable as it was full of clichés. From the surly, but basically vulnerable teenager, to the unmissable nature training montage since Commando And Rocky IVanything goes.
We therefore follow this nameless heroine, a former army sniper, who, for reasons that we will not say, is pursued by a sadistic arms dealer with a scarified face (so that we understand that he’s the bad guy). One-dimensional, uninteresting, this role does not give Joseph Fiennes much to do, except wince.
The protagonist’s Achilles’ heel, hence the title, is that she has a daughter.
Abandoned at birth for her own safety, this child is 12 years old when said villain tracks her down and kidnaps her in order to force “the mother” out of her hideout.
No visual identity
Now, as the vile trafficker will discover to his cost — as one might expect — the one who lives as a hermit in the depths of the woods where she feeds on caribou and hares is a fearsome “mother bear”.
The film was directed by New Zealander Nicki Caro, who once wowed with the feminist initiatory narrative Whale Rider (The legend of the whales), before seeing his artistic personality absorbed by Hollywood in sometimes forgettable productions, such as North Country (The North wind), sometimes honorable, like Mulan. For its part, The Mother is devoid of any form of visual identity. With the exception of a handful of postcard images showing the snow-capped forests of British Columbia, no sequence, no shot testifies to any vision or intention.
It’s sausage for the digital platform, with a star (the ever-charismatic “J. Lo”), shootouts, explosions, and chases (poor imitations of those seen in the sagas). Bourne Or Impossible mission), frequent enough never to annoy or make you want to move on to another formatted production. In short, this is a film that we know by heart even before having seen it.