Jennifer Lopez reminded us that she’s pretty handy with a weapon in Shotgun Wedding earlier this year. She gets multiple opportunities to showcase that once again in The Mother, a movie which sees her join the likes of Liam Neeson, Denzel Washington, and Bob Odenkirk in the annals of late-career action herodom. Directed by Niki Caro, it’s a slick if slight Netflix outing that doesn’t reinvent the wheel but does just enough to entertain.
Lopez easily convinces as a formidable woman who’s an expert in combat. And while the action scenes are not revolutionary, they do have a crispness about them. The punches feel impactful. The high point comes when Lopez's character (she is credited simply as 'The Mother') heads to Cuba to dispatch a house full of bad men with speed and decisiveness. The low point comes in a chase scene so over-edited that for a brief second, it feels as though you’re watching Taken 2.
This is a film that’s first and foremost a showcase for its star.
For much of the film, Lopez cuts an intense and stoic figure. But inevitably, that hardened exterior is slowly pierced to reveal a beating heart as she spends more time with her daughter. Misha Green’s script leans a little too hard into a mother-wolf metaphor that would’ve been more effective as visual storytelling rather than being explicitly spelled out. But it also gives ample opportunity to Lopez and Lucy Paez to generate decent chemistry with one another.
As for the men, there’s not much meat on the bone for anyone here. There’s a hint that there might be something more than respect between Omari Hardwick’s FBI agent and Lopez’s Mother, but it’s not explored enough for certain moments to hit as hard as they should. Meanwhile, Paul Raci’s Jons – a weapons specialist who served with Mother in Afghanistan – is little more than an exposition machine. Villains-wise, Gael García Bernal’s Hector Alvarez is criminally underused, and Joseph Fiennes’ scarred former SAS arms dealer remains one note throughout.
But this is a film that’s first and foremost a showcase for its star, and on that front it – and Lopez – deliver. The Mother marks her first significant action drama since 1998’s Out Of Sight, a career high point. Hopefully, it won’t be her last.