3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Mother

2023, Niki Caro (Whale Rider) -- Netflix

What does it say about my personality that I make an effort (and even tag it, you doofus) to watch action movies focused on Women With Guns? I really cannot feel that bad considering there is already an established trope along the same lines. But wherein I usually dislike most of its male oriented genre, I do tend to see most in this category, even the ones I know will be less than stellar. Do they make more of an effort with the female helmed properties? Maybe? Not likely? Or maybe I should stop dissecting it, and just enjoy what I enjoy.

Also, why do you have to start pretty much every WWG post with a dissection of the tag? "Do I?" you ask? Well... click through the above tag and you will see, I don't. So, mnneyyyahhh.

So, directed by Niki Caro from a screenplay (and story) by Misha Green, mostly known as showrunner for Lovecraft Country, the movie tells a typical tale of a retired assassin who is drawn out of her isolation, back to her old, more violent life. But it begins before that, in a safe house where she is being harangued by FBI agents tasked with protecting her. She relates her recent past from military sniper to enforcer for arms dealers, a typical story of a killer who cannot come back to "the real world", but she abandons it all when she finds they are smuggling people as well as guns. Unfortunately her partners find her, kill all the FBI agents (but one), so she has to make her own safety in Alaska. Buuut before that, she has her baby, a baby fathered by one of her violent partners, but she doesn't know which one, and that is important because it doesn't matter; the child is hers not theirs. BUT she cannot take the child into hiding, so they fake its death and she tasks the surviving FBI agent with her child's protection. And then she leaves.

Of note, she makes use of that magical portal that transports people in stolen vehicles from one US border to the next, conveniently bypassing Canada altogether.

Years and years later. The FBI agent protecting the assassin's daughter has discovered evidence that the arms dealers are aware of the daughter, so she comes out of hiding to protect her daughter. Act two ends up with her rescuing the girl from her captors and secreting her away back to Alaska, the one place she now knows she can protect the girl. And then the Bad Guys come for them.

Despite my unbalanced paragraphs, things do happen, interesting things where we get to see Lopez being all badass despite her age. Despite her age. I hate how that has to be a thing because its not at all apparent. She's over 50, and while not in the ageless zone of Tom Cruise, there is no denying her athleticism. Men seem to be allowed to begin their action careers after 50 -- Liam Neeson was mid-50s when he did Taken and that was not yet part of his aging men of violence era. But let's hand wave all this consideration away and just say she does come across as convincing, even as the sociopath her character is meant to be. 

But the crux of the film, that she has no character name, just The Mother, is the female aspect of it ("female aspect of it" ?? CRINGE), one that was intentional, and while not the experience of all women, is something that must be unique to women (which is honestly coming from a male who has no desire to child bearing). If Neeson's Bryan Mills was protecting his daughter because he could, and because he had failed her so often before, The Mother is compelled because of motherhood. Or that is the implication. Whether it be biology or ritual or societal convention, that is what is portrayed in her, the mother lioness that will do anything to protect her young, even die. But was it successful in that depiction? Was it different than any other aging assassin protecting a weaker person? Other than a few teary scenes, I am not sure. Maybe I have to subscribe more to the societal convention to see the weight this movie wants to portray? In the end, I think I just ended up with a middling to lower-middling action thriller to add to The Tag.