Protector
review by Bobby Blakey
Director Adrian Grünberg knows his way around the action genre delivering films including Get the Gringo and Rambo: Last Blood. His latest film Protector teams him up with Milla Jovovich who has established herself in the action world as well with the Resident Evil franchise. The film co-stars Isabel Myers, Manny Montana, Michael Stahl-David, Lydia Hull, D.B. Sweeney, Chase E. Kim, Don Harvey, Gabriel Sloyer, Texas Battle, Arica Himmel and Matthew Modine, but does it do justice to the revenge action thriller genre, or will it fail to protect anything?
Protector follows Nikki, a veteran war hero, who thought she'd left her violent past behind for a peaceful life with her daughter, Chloe – until Chloe is kidnapped by a human trafficking ring that forces Nikki into the city's criminal underworld on a relentless pursuit. As she tears through a ruthless crime syndicate using her military training, Nikki draws the attention of both the police and the military, shooting her to the top of the most wanted list. In this high-stakes race against time, Nikki must use the violent skills she thought she left behind to save her daughter.
I love a good revenge flick and bringing in the over-the-top action is always a plus. These days we have seen so many variations on the Taken idea that most fail to bring much if anything new to the genre. This is pretty by the numbers generic take but has some saving grace in the action department even if its stuff we have seen before.
Jovovich as usual handles the action well and you believe that she could bring the pain when needed. They never make her a superhero, which is a good decision but instead just a trained soldier with the added level of an angry mother. They waste no time getting to the meat of things, allowing the film to spend more time in the action
and searching for those involved, then watering it down with extra nonsense. The blatant rip off of First Blood with the Colonel showing up to help bring her down feels a bit uninspired and forced.
In an interesting turn it shifts focus about halfway through that seemingly is the end of things before they twist it again. The problem with this is it gets redundant at that point and feels like they just didn’t have enough to work with, so they turned the corner and went this route just to make her get back at it. The ongoing narration from Jovovich is unnecessary most of the time where it’s trying to create her inner monologue and tension but just feels cheesy.
The film feels more like the straight to home entertainment fair. It isn’t bad necessarily, but it doesn’t offer much outside of the action that isn’t elevated enough to hold just that. All the stereotypical tropes are here keeping things as by the numbers as possible leaving it with the inability to ever have its own voice. None of the bad guys outside of the very first encounter she has ever feels like much of a threat so you are just kind of waiting for her to kill everyone and move on. Thankfully they allow her to get beat up quite a bit to at least give it some realism.
The final act is fine and watching Jovovich walk through like a Terminator is fun to watch, but beyond that tends to just be more of the same. I always love watching her kick ass as she has a great action presence, but the film itself is one note and will likely not work for most. There is a cool twist in the end that helps to elevate some aspect of the film and I applaud it for doing something different that even leaves it to a possible follow up, but not sure if its enough to pull people in.
Decide for yourself and check out Protector in theaters now from Magenta Light Studios.