Susan Granger’s review of “The Mother” (Netflix)
You know that Netflix is scraping the bottom of the barrel when Jennifer Lopez is cast as an intrepid assassin, trained by the U.S. military, in “The Mother.”
In the opening sequence, The (nameless) Mother (Lopez) is being interrogated as an informant in a ‘safe house’ by F.B.I. agents. Only it’s not safe – since nasty arms smugglers lurk outside, determined not to let her squeal. Not only do they shoot the government agents but they also try to kill the fetus in her womb.
Cut to the hospital where she’s just given birth to a baby girl. Convinced that her child is in grave danger, The Mother reluctantly gives her up for adoption.
12 years late, her daughter, now named Zoe (newcomer Lucy Paez), is once again in danger, so The Mother teams up with F.B.I. agent William Cruise (Omari Hardwick) to return Zoe to her adoptive parents, hoping she can lead a normal life.
In the meantime, The Mother takes Zoe to her isolated hideout cabin in the snowy wilderness of Tlingit Bay, Alaska, never revealing to the tween that they’re related. Of course, the youngster soon guesses the truth, as The Mother ominously trains her in a variety of tracking and shooting survival techniques.
Of course there’s a gratuitous glimpse of JLo’s famous rump as she’s dancing in Havana. That leads to the question about which of the baddies (Joseph Fiennes, Gael Garcia Bernal) actually fathered Zoe.
Written by Misha Green, Andrea Berloff & Peter Craig and directed by New Zealand’s Niki Caro, who helmed the live-action “Mulan” remake and the Oscar-nominated “Whale Rider,” the utterly predictable script suffers from a total lack of character development.
Instead, it focuses on JLo’s hard-working stunt double who dominates the action, made even more obvious since – in close-ups throughout the chase sequences – JLo’s hair and makeup are always flawless, perhaps because her expressionless face looks perpetually frozen.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Mother” is an absurdly forgettable 4, streaming on Netflix.
