*** outta *****

3 outta 5

Peppermint is a decently messy revenge thriller that takes a lot of its component parts from other, better franchises. The setup of the family gunned down, person going crazy and turning themselves into a weapon is really similar to Frank Castle, The Punisher, the Marvel character / Spider-Man villain / Netflix show star. Even the family being gunned down at the fair is very similar to the various different ways The Punisher lost his family over and over. One person taking out an army of crooks looks and feels like John Wick of John Wick but not nearly as excellently done. Instead the action here is mostly adequate with flourishes of unique ultraviolence. Those guys taking out gangs by themselves makes sense since they are former killers but the character in Peppermint is just a suburban mom with no previous training in the deadly arts. Still, she sells it convincingly making this an adequate piece of action catharsis.

Riley North (Jennifer Garner) is a typical, overworked suburban mom, living life with her kid, Carly (Cailey Flemming) and her husband Chris (Jeff Hephner). When Chris and her daughter are gunned down by gangbangers it sends Riley into a spiral of rage. This gets worse when the guilty gang members are let off by a sleazy lawyer and a corrupt judge, so Riley disappears. Years later, Detective Stan (John Gallagher Jr.) notices she has returned and so along with Agent Inman (Annie Ilonzeh) and his fellow detective, Beltran (John Ortiz) they try to find her. But Riley is determined to find the drug lord, Diego (Juan Pablo Raba), who is responsible for the death of her family. No matter who gets in the way she will dispense of them with maximum gun violence.

Garner is pretty great even if for most of it she’s just growling angrily but she does it really well. Riley is getting ice cream when her family is gunned down and she runs after them (in slow motion) still holding the ice cream cone in her hand. That is a bit of an odd choice, was she too traumatized to remember she was holding the ice cream cone and just ran with it? Or is it supposed to symbolize Riley’s last grasp of suburban paradise? Anyway, she emerges from the crucible of her family’s murder a changed woman. There’s not much explanation as to how Riley became a killing machine aside from a brief 10 second clip of her getting wailed on in an MMA match. There isn’t even a training montage or her arming up which are reliable and almost mandatory staples of the revenge movie genre.

Garner works for the emotional bits, a graveside reunion with her family is full of sorrow, and she has some great badass moments. A fellow suburban mom, Peg (Pell James) treated Riley and her daughter mean and years later Riley breaks into her house to terrorize her. It’s a great comeuppance scene although the movie should have gone further with it. There’s a difference between a standard revenge movie where every action of the person seeking revenge is morally justified and great revenge movies where their actions are morally murky. As much killing as Riley does, she is never in the wrong.  She’s so virtuous she’s even the patron saint of protecting homeless people on Skid Row.       

As the main antagonist, Juan Pablo Raba’s Diego certainly looks intimidating however he is generic and unmemorable. There is one good bit where he hollers at an amusingly cowardly subordinate and he has one genuinely villainous bit when Diego threatens to off random homeless kids to draw Riley out. The trio of cops are all decent actors even though the parts are shallowly written but Gallagher Jr. adds some drunken gumshoe pathos and Ortiz manages to pull of some tricky plot mechanics emotionally. As for Ilonzeh, she is basically there to drop exposition and have a somewhat shocking exit.

Happily, this movie goes for full on splatter violence which makes it better because if this was a generic, bloodless mainstream action film it would have been borderline intolerable. The various shootouts are really messy and features some cool gun fu moves like when Riley shoots a gangbanger in the foot to drop him and then shotguns him in the head. It’s a bit too long until unleashes righteous gun enabled justice but it is decently done. There are also some nifty revenge scenes like when Riley confronts the corrupt judge who set the killers of her family free. Director Pierre Morel (Taken) has a very long list of action movies under his belt and he presents the action in a clear and easy to follow way. Considering a lot of this movie takes place at night and in dingy drug dens, that is actually quite a feat.

It’s been awhile since star Jennifer Garner’s action heyday of Alias and Elektra so it’s fun to see her back in that action heroine role, especially since this doesn’t tone down the violence. Thankfully, Peppermint is unabashedly adult with lots of splatter. There are better action movies this movie is stealing from but this is best when it gets nasty.