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A friend of mine forced me to watch this movie. I say "forced" because while I knew Jennifer Garner had made her name on ALIAS, a show about a kick-butt super-spy, I had some trouble swallowing the idea that she could effectively play a vengeance-crazed heroine who goes head-up with the Mexican drug-dealers who murdered her family. I am happy to say my fears were groundless. This is quite a good film. It doesn't aim all that high, but it hits precisely what it is aiming at.
Riley North (Garner) is a totally ordinary suburban American housewife. Her husband's business is struggling badly, she's being bullied by a more wealthy neighbor, and she's worried about money and her young daughter's social life, which is threatened by her petty feud. Little does she know she has much more to worry about. Husband Chris (Jeff Hephner) has agreed to rip off a vicious drug dealer, Diego Garcia (Juan Pablo Raba) to get his family back in the black. Chris gets cold feet, but not before Garcia gets wind of the plot, and decides to punish Chris by wiping out his entire family. In the ensuing slaughter, however, only Chris and daughter Carly, nicknamed "Peppermint," are killed. Riley is only wounded, and after recovering testifies against the shooters. However, dirty drug money works the scales of justice, and the killers walk. Riley, on the other hand, ends up shunted off to a mental institution by the crooked judge. She escapes, however, and disappears off the face of the earth.
Years pass, and the two detectives who worked the murders, Carmichael (John Gallagher Jr.) and Beltran (John Ortiz) are still haunted by them. So too, however, is someone else, because the shooters are starting to turn up all over the city, slaughtered like sheep. Is it just a drug war, or is someone else working an angle? Diego Garcia wants to know, too, because while his star is rising, the Mexican Mob who supplies him is coke is perturbed by his inability to keep the peace. And when the judge who let the killers walk dies a horrible and humiliating death, it seems the impossible has happened: the once meek-and-mild suburban housewife has come home to exact vengeance. What follows is a curious triple hunt. Riley hunts Garcia, who is hunting Riley, and the cops are hunting them both, while simultaneously trying to understand how Miss Meek became The Punisher-ette during her mysterious time away from the city.
If all of this sounds a little tropey or predictable, what elevates PEPPERMINT from the usual boring action revenge story is as follows:
First, Jennifer Garner. She gives a very good performance, or rather set of performances, as a harassed housewife turned murderous vigilante. She is insane with grief and hatred, but it's a controlled insanity, which only a good actress could portray.
Second, the look and atmosphere of the film are very well done, with more than a touch of old-school Film Noir in the darkened, puddled, neon-reflected city streets.
Third, the pace is very, very fast without becoming a meaningless blur. There is no fat on the script or in the story, but it never feels rushed, either, and while the editing is brisk, it never hits that awful jump-cut MTV style that is so popular with hack directors trying to appeal to attention-deprived audiences.
Fourth, there are some good twists in the plot, which are at once predictable and not predictable -- you expect the twist, but you are probably wrong in your deduction of who will perform it.
Fifth, Riley is not presented as invincible because she is angry and has a righteous grudge, a mistake many lesser films make. She gets busted up. She gets hurt. She feels pain and she bleeds. The fact she drags onward with her quest thus becomes admirable and tragic simultaneously.
There are a few problems. An attempt to show how famous Riley has become by constantly referencing her presence on social media is silly, annoying and seems to pander to Millennials who live on their phones. Who cares if Riley is "trending?" We don't need to be told that Twitter supports her to feel sympathetic toward her: she has our sympathy from momet one. Also, Riley goes a bit overboard humiliating and terrorizing her petty, vindictive former neighbor, who she somewhat unfairly blames for being partially responsible for her daughter's death. The character deserves some of it, but not as much as she gets. And as always in this sort of film, a heftier than normal dose of suspension of disbelief is required. Garcia is well portrayed, but he's a generic villain and isn't nearly intelligent or competent enough to have come as far as he has in the drug world if one semi-sane vigilante can tear his organization to bits.
Having said this, I consider PEPPERMINT to be a brutal but pleasant surprise. Revenge films often bore me because they always assume that the desire for revenge confers special powers on those who seek it. This Pierre Morel-directed film manages to embrace that conceit while more or less dodging it completely by making her so tragic. Like Michael Caine's character in HARRY BROWN, the vigilante is not portrayed as an offender but rather as a victim, which makes all the difference. As the saying goes, before you seek revenge, first dig two graves.
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From the manufacturer
Peppermint
Young mother Riley North (Garner) awakens from a coma after her husband and daughter are killed in a brutal attack on the family. When the system frustratingly shields the murderers from justice, Riley sets out to transform herself from citizen to urban guerilla. Channeling her frustration into personal motivation, she spends years in hiding honing her mind, body and spirit to become an unstoppable force – eluding the underworld, the LAPD and the FBI – as she methodically delivers her personal brand of justice. From the director of Taken, this film is being hailed by critics as 'a total adrenaline rush from start to finish!'
DIGITAL CODE is ONLY redeemable at iTunes.
Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2019
The movie is great, however, the DIGITAL CODE is ONLY redeemable at iTunes. This severely reduces the value of this purchase for me. If I had known before purchase that the digital code could only be redeemed at iTunes, I would not have made the purchase. If you like iTunes this purchase should be fine for you. Apparently, this studio does not license their products for use on MoviesAnywhere.com either as my linked iTunes account does not let me aces this film from MoviesAnywhere. And now iTunes is shutting down, so where will iTunes digital copies go. go?
Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2019
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Top reviews from other countries
Amazon Customer
Great Movie but you may need multi-region player
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 22, 2020
Tony jones
This Blu-ray will not play on my Blu-ray player
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 20, 2021
