The Protégé: Solid action chops

The Protégé (2021) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong bloody violence, profanity and sexual candor

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Revenge thrillers are a lot more interesting when the characters involved have actual personalities, as opposed to being one-dimensional rage machines.

 

With respect to the latter, Wrath of Man is a recent case in point: sheer boredom.

 

With a successful assignment behind them, Moody (Samuel L. Jackson) and Anna
(Maggie Q) turn their attention to a long-dormant mystery ... little realizing the
consequences of this seemingly innocuous investigation.

Happily, The Protégé is cut from superior cloth. Scripter Richard Wenk understands solid character development — he gave us both Denzel Washington Equalizer entries, among others — and director Martin Campbell has two gilt-edged Bonds under his belt, in addition to 2017’s terrific Jackie Chan vehicle, The Foreigner.

If star Maggie Q were a better actress, the results here would be similarly noteworthy. Sadly, her thespic limitations are a distraction, particularly when in the company of seasoned scene-stealers such as Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Keaton.

 

Following a brief prologue that tips its hat to the core premise in 1994’s Léon: The Professional, we’re introduced to Anna (Maggie Q) and Moody (Jackson). They run a rather unusual extermination business, with high financial returns for the successful removal of two-legged cockroaches. They’re always successful.

 

Indeed, Moody taught Anna everything he knows. And she was an eager pupil.

 

By day, she’s an antiquarian book dealer — intelligent, refined and shrewd — with an adorable street-corner London shop. She also spends as much time as possible with Moody, whom she adores as a surrogate father. She’s troubled by the implications of his relentless coughing jags, but maintains a neutral face while (for example) celebrating his 70th birthday with a particularly special gift. (Guitar geeks will salivate.)

 

An old case has been nagging Moody; he asks her to investigate somebody who went off-grid back in the 1990s. Back in her shop, Anna is approached by a cultivated and sophisticated gentleman who introduces himself as Michael Rembrandt (Keaton). He also knows books; they quote Edgar Allan Poe to each other. Their banter is superficially flirty, but the undertone is tense. Deadly.

 

Keaton makes excellent use of his arched eyebrows and condescending, reptilian gaze. Campbell wisely lingers on it.

 

Rembrandt departs; Anna watches him thoughtfully. (Credit where due, Maggie Q does contemplative thoughtfulness pretty well. Her line deliveries, alas, are another matter.)

 

Hours later, all hell breaks loose.

Mortal Engines: High-octane thrills

Mortal Engines (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13 for dramatic intensity and sci-fi action and violence
By Derrick Bang

This one’s relentless.

Director Christian Rivers’ exhilarating adaptation of Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines is sci-fi world-building on a scale we’ve not seen since Lord of the Rings and Avatar. This impressively ambitious, post-apocalyptic saga hits the ground running — literally — and doesn’t let up during a bravura 127-minute adventure that barely seems long enough to contain its opulent wonders.

Out of the frying pan, and into the fire? Tom (Robert Sheehan) and Hester (Hera Hilmar,
right) are moments from a fate worse than death, when they're snatched away by the
enigmatic Anna Fang (Jihae). But is this a rescue ... or something more sinister?

Scripters Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson have done an impressive job of condensing Reeve’s 2001 young adult novel into a slam-bang romp that faithfully follows roughly half the book and hits most of the key plot beats. (That said, Walsh & Co. deviate seriously during the climax, likely in the interest of anticipating a sequel.)

These events take place a millennium after what has come to be known as the “Sixty Minute War,” when Western nations unleashed a cataclysmic weapon that destroyed much of civilization, while causing planet-wide geological upheaval. Forced to adapt to earthquakes, volcanoes and other instabilities that continued for hundreds of years, metropolitan centers were retrofitted with massive wheels and engines, in order to become mobile “traction cities”: a steampunk method of survival known as Municipal Darwinism.

Countries have vanished; civilization per se has developed into cooperative bands of peaceful small-town traders, constantly on the alert for fast-moving, scavenger settlements.

Along with the biggest threat of all: the massive predator city of London, which hunts, pursues and dismantles (devours) other cities for resources.

All this by way of back-story, because Rivers opens the film without preamble, as the massive bulk of London chases down a small mining community known as Salthook. Production designer Dan Hennah, cinematographer Simon Raby and a huge visual effects team — Ken McGaugh, Kevin Smith, Luke Millar and Dennis Yoo, take a well-deserved bow — swoop the camera in, around and through London’s jaw-dropping hugeness and complexity, layered with bits and bobs clearly snatched from countless earlier captures.

It’s an absolutely amazing, stunning sequence, particularly as many of London’s thousands of residents gather at their city’s layered edges, cheering the pursuit with the bloodthirsty savagery of heartless nationalists (an allusion to current real-world behavior, in which this film frequently indulges).

Salthook has maneuverability and quick turns in its favor, but it can’t compete with London’s stronger engines. The outcome is inevitable, with one of the smaller community’s residents — a young woman with a red scarf concealing part of her face — watching with (we’re surprised) what appears to be mixed feelings.