Review: Peppermint
Lest one forget, Jennifer Garner became a household name with her breakthrough role as CIA officer Sydney Bristow in the television spy drama, Alias. On the one hand, it's great to have the opportunity to see her once again in ass-kicking mode. On the other hand, the opportunity comes via the formulaic revenge thriller, Peppermint.
Directed with plodding predictability by Pierre Morel, Peppermint begins with Garner's Riley North dispatching a random criminal before returning to her van to staple her wound. A box of peppermint Girl Scout Cookies triggers memories of her life five years earlier when she was an ordinary suburban wife and mother. Hoping to make ends meet, her husband agrees to help a friend rip off a local drug kingpin, Diego Garcia (Juan Pablo Raba). Though her husband backs off at the last minute, it's enough to warrant Garcia's ire when he discovers the plan. Thus family night at the local fair results in Riley's husband and daughter been killed in a hail of gunfire and Riley being seriously injured. When she identifies the three gunmen and later testifies against them in open court, justice is derailed due to Garcia's influence and the corrupt judge overseeing the case commits her to a mental hospital. Somehow she manages to escape during transport and disappears without a trace.
Cut to five years later during which Riley has somehow transformed herself into an avenging angel with Garcia as her main target. She's not exactly subtle - the same three gunmen who got away with killing her family are found hanging upside down from the fair's ferris wheel on the fifth anniversary of her family's murder Unsurprisingly, this makes her the prime suspect in the eyes of FBI agent Inman (Annie Ilonzeh) and LAPD detectives Moises (John Ortiz) and Carmichael (John Gallagher, Jr.), the latter of whom had tried to help Riley bring Garcia to justice the first time around and who can't quite believe that these brutal murders have been committed by the Riley North that he knew.
It's somewhat worth noting that Morel, who also helmed Taken, has successfully centred his grieving parent draws on their special set of skills to avenge their child formula around a mother without necessarily skimping on the savagery. Garner is ideally cast, with her inherent mix of tough and tender well-deployed. However, much like most of his other films, Peppermint is a case of trying to elevate what is essentially a B-movie with an A-list star and slightly failing because the star is too good for the material. Nevertheless, Peppermint is a satisfying enough effort despite its overall sloppiness and derivativeness.
Peppermint
Directed by: Pierre Morel
Written by: Chad St. John
Starring: Jennifer Garner, John Gallagher Jr., John Ortiz, Method Man, Richard Cabral, Annie Ilonzeh, Juan Pablo Raba
