If your film contains cursing, blood, explosions, gunfights, screaming, and all about every ten minutes, then it says a lot that it still manages to be so boring and monotonous that it could put audiences to sleep. That’s the reality for “Peppermint”, a new revenge thriller with all the style and substance of a sticky, lint covered candy.
Jennifer Garner (“13 Going on 30,” “Daredevil”) growls her way through most of the scenes as Riley North, a mother whose husband and daughter were killed in a drive-by shooting on the night of her daughter’s birthday. The reasoning behind the shooting is quickly and unconvincingly coughed up by a few side characters, and quickly forgotten. Plain and simple, Garner is an actor whose talents are completely wasted on a borderline one-dimensional revenge seeking mother.
After all, why put any obstacles in the way of Garner kicking ass? Her badassery may be cool to watch at first, but eventually the film’s shoddy editing style and overuse of slow motion become too grating to ignore. Every scene transition seems to feature a weird blur effect and if its meant to be a representation on Riley’s deteriorating psyche, then it doesn’t work, since it feels like the editors simply used it whenever they felt like it.
However, her character is so cliched and thin that any semblance of depth that an editing trick like that could provide quickly evaporates. The first scene in the film where she isn’t kicking ass involves a stuck-up suburban mom yelling at her about moving in on her daughter’s cookie selling territory. No less than twenty minutes later, she’s become a completely changed person, with no reasoning given.
Yes, her family was killed, and the men got away with it, and yes this is a revenge fantasy film, but that doesn’t explain how she goes from Los Angeles to Hong Kong, kick boxing and stealing drug product from the Cartel along the way, only to end up smuggling herself back into the U.S. on time. It’s bizarrely convoluted and is mentioned once and then never again.
The supporting cast doesn’t fare much better, in performances or characterizations. Everyone is a poorly written, cliched character with no hope of depth. Annie Ilonzeh (“All Eyez on Me,” “Til Death Do Us Part”) and John Gallagher Jr. (“The Newsroom,” “10 Cloverfield Lane”) try to hold it together as an FBI agent and local detective, respectively, but both are as cliched as possible. The only bright spot comes from John Ortiz (“Fast & Furious,” “Jack Goes Boating”) as the elder cop Moises, but that’s less to do with the quality of his characterization, and more to do with the fact that he seems to be the only person in the movie who isn’t angry all the time.
Everything apart from the writing and acting isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just overly familiar. Every set, every gunfight, every explosion brings to mind other films that have done it better. At best it’s makes the film simply forgettable or bland. At worst, it harms the film’s sense of space and structure, by setting it in a series of corridors and warehouses instead of memorable locations.
Cliched is the perfect way to describe “Peppermint” but it doesn’t just go as far as the characters. Every story-beat and detail feels rehashed and reused. Every cop constantly drinks coffee with alcohol in it, the grizzled cops are the young reckless one and the aged wise one. The FBI eventually becomes involved, the public thinks she’s a vigilante, every bad guy is from the Mexican cartel and the two major cartel locations are painfully racist: a piñata warehouse and a drug warehouse filled with statues of Mary, mother of Jesus.
A handful of moments are amusing at best: at one point in the movie, Carly, Riley’s daughter, tells her mother that she should’ve punched the uptight suburban mother. That line is called back to quite effectively later on, and the scene afterwards is probably the best in the film. It allows Riley to slow down and for a moment, we see her pain and anguish. She feels like, even just for a moment, a real person. Less than five minutes later, though, she’s back to her old, boring self.
More disturbing than the film’s disregard for Garner’s acting talents is the blatant emotional manipulation it employs for most of the film, especially during the drive-by. The musical cues and flashbacks are utilized in such a razor-sharp way, it feels like the filmmakers didn’t stop until they chemically produced a product more emotionally manipulative than the SPCA’s “In the Arms of an Angel” ad campaign.
It’s the overall lack of sincerity that leads to this film failing to be any form of entertaining. Films like “John Wick” succeed because, for all the gore and badassery within, they aren’t afraid to show their characters affected by their actions. “Peppermint” robs audiences of what could have been a wonderful performance from Garner by failing to provide her with a character who is anything more than a caricature: a figure, not a person, crafted to elect an emotional response and then be immediately forgotten about.
“Peppermint” could at best be described as a throwback to the pulpy grindhouse revenge films of the seventies, but even by that measure it still wouldn’t be any good. Bland action and cinematography combined with flat performances across the board leave “Peppermint” at the mercy of its poor characterizations and bad writing. Needless to save, that doesn’t save it. One could describe it as a “turn off your brain” movie, but even then, it just ends up being boring. “Peppermint” isn’t sweet like its namesake; its more comparable to a different small round edible object: Ambien. Because all this vengeful mother is going to do is put her audience to sleep. 1/5
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