Movie Review: The Rhythm Section

The Rhythm Section ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Reed Morano.

Written by: Mark Burnell based on his book.

Starring: Blake Lively (Stephanie Patrick), Jude Law (B), Sterling K. Brown (Mark Serra), Daniel Mays (Dean West), Max Casella (Leon Giler), Raza Jaffrey (Proctor), Richard Brake (Lehmans), Geoff Bell (Green), Jade Anouka (Laura Fuller), Jack McEvoy (Conor), Ivana Basic (Oksana), David Duggan (David Patrick), Nasser Memarzia (Suleman Kaif), Tawfeek Barhom (Reza), Ibrahim Renno (Vincent), Amira Ghazalla (Alia Kaif), Degnan Geraghty (Punter), Elly Curtis (Sarah Patrick), Hugh Scully (Lyle), Maceo Oliver (Jimmy), Shane Whisker (Christopher Patrick), Nuala Kelly (Joan).

 

I’m not sure Blake Lively quite gets enough credit for becoming a really interesting actress over the last few years. She anchored what could have been just another silly shark movie - The Shallows – turning it into a ridiculously entertaining silly shark movie, and delivered a hell of a movie star performance in the candy colored noir/comedy A Simple Favor. Even during the Gossip Girl years, she was trying to do interesting work in movies alongside that – The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, The Town, Savages, etc. She has now become a reliably interesting screen presence – taking on some challenging roles. And she does all she can with The Rhythm Section – a sort of thriller, sort of action movie, sort of character study, that tries to cover too much ground in 100 minutes, and ends up not doing it particularly well. The film is from the producers of the James Bond movies – and you can almost feel as if they are responding to the controversy where some want a female James Bond – and others just want a female action hero as badass as James Bond, and they are trying to force this square peg into a round hole to fill it. This is a globetrotting action movie, and one with interesting ideas, and some interesting visuals, that just doesn’t lead anywhere.

 

Perhaps the problem is that the screenplay was written by Mark Burnell, adapting his own novel – the first book in a series about Stephanie Patrick. In a way, the film is an origin story – one that has to both establish who Stephanie Patrick is, and tell an interesting story at the same time – and the screenplay is never able to do both – as both character development and plot seem rushed through. Authors, sometimes, cannot let go of what was in the novel – but sometimes you have to, to streamline for the screen.

 

When we meet Stephanie (Lively), it is a few years after her family – father, mother, sister – were killed in a terrorist attack when the plane they were on – and she was supposed to be on – is blown up. She has not responded well – becoming a drug addict and prostitute in London, numbing the pain of that loss (perhaps it’s just me, but I would have liked more backstory here – if all the surviving members of your family die like that, and they seem like an upper middle class family at minimum, she probably should have more than enough money to not have to resort to prostitution so quickly – and also, I always think it’s a little cheap that when men in movies lose their families and become addicts, we just see them wallowing in cheap bars, and women immediately become prostitutes). She is approached by a reporter who says he knows who is responsible for the bombing. This leads to a bizarre series of plot points that eventually hooks Stephanie up with B (Jude Law), a former MI6 officer, who takes Stephanie under his wing as the two retreat to his remote cabin in the woods for months, where he trains her to become an assassin. And then, the second half of the movie, is her tracking down those people responsible – with the help of a former CIA Officer (Sterling K. Brown) and getting her revenge.

 

The film is at its best during the action sequences. Directed by cinematographer turned director Reed Morano, she stages the action sequences in interesting way. Stephanie’s first job as it were, a fight in an apartment with a man who is seemingly incapacitated, is brutal and messy – the real world coming out here in a way, because of course training is different than actually doing it, and this is her first time killing. It is immediately followed by the best sequence in the film – a wonderfully staged car chase, shot in seemingly one take, inside the car as Lively tries to get away. Morano, best known for a couple of indie films and some episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale, proves to be an adept action director.

 

The plotting of the film though doesn’t really work. There are too many jumps in time and logic to really get invested in anything. We aren’t introduced to the people Stephanie is going to be assigned to kill until right before – and we never really know what they did, or how they all connect. You get a feeling immediately that Sterling K. Brown is going to end up being more important than they try to make him out to be – because if not, why the hell are you casting Sterling K. Brown? Jude Law is basically just playing the same character he did in Captain Marvel – except this time, you never believe he could possibly be good.

 

I do like Lively here though. There’s enough in her performance that is interesting – enough to make me interested in her as an action star, perhaps even this action star. Perhaps a TV show would have been better here – so we didn’t have to rush through character development that needed time, and a plot that also needed it. Here, we rush through everything, and basically get nowhere.