2.5 stars. Rated R, for violence, profanity, sexual content and drug use
By Derrick Bang
It’s painful to watch a filmmaker sabotage her own work.
Cinematographer-turned-director Reed Morano appears to have impressed folks with a trio of episodes for TV’s The Handmaid’s Tale, but her big-screen feature record is nothing to write home about; both 2015’s Meadowland and 2018’s I Think We’re Alone Now were dead on arrival.
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| Required to liaise with an "information broker" who could supply a key lead, Stephanie (Blake Lively) arrives early at the public rendezvous point, hoping to gain an advantage. |
I therefore cannot imagine why market-savvy producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson — the driving force behind the phenomenally long-running James Bond films — would select Morano to helm a thriller with the franchise potential of The Rhythm Section.
Author Mark Burnell’s Stephanie Patrick series is four books strong (although he hasn’t written another since 2005). The character and premise, as introduced in 1999’s The Rhythm Section, borrow heavily from 1990’s La Femme Nikita and its subsequent film and television sequels; that said, star Blake Lively certainly makes Stephanie her own.
Burnell adapted his own novel as this film’s sole scripter, so the core elements remain faithful. Unfortunately, he did a sloppy job of condensing his 448-page novel into a 109-minute screenplay; by the time we reach this film’s conclusion, it’s impossible to determine who pulled the strings, or why the ultimate double-cross takes place.
The film certainly isn’t boring, but sheer momentum can’t conceal the increasingly clumsy and confusing narrative.
More critically, The Rhythm Section is marred by all manner of directorial tics and twitches: jangly hand-held cinematography; relentlessly tight close-ups — particularly of Lively — at the expense of locale-establishing shots, and other essential characters who often should be in the frame; poor use of Steve Mazzaro’s admittedly dull score; bad editing by Joan Sobel, particularly during what should have been a suspenseful car chase; and a relentless use of the same bloody flashbacks.
I swear, we see the soft-focus memory-image of Stephanie’s mother a dozen times, when twice would have been more than sufficient. We get it. We get it. We get it.
Such overkill is the hallmark of an inept director who trusts neither her cast nor the script.
Anyway…
Stephanie is introduced at low ebb, three years removed from personal tragedy: the loss of her parents and two siblings, all of whom died — along with everybody else on board — in a plane crash. Worse yet, Stephanie endures survivor’s guilt; she was supposed to be on that flight with them. (Why didn’t she join them? We never find out.)
She has re-located to London, and fallen into a swirl of drugs and alcohol, funding her habit via prostitution: never able to keep the painful memory at bay. Out of the blue, one of her “clients” turns out to be a journalist — Proctor (Raza Jaffrey) — who tells her that the plane crash was no accident, but the result of a terrorist act. And that the bomber, Reza (Tawfeek Barhom), walks London’s streets with impunity.
For some reason, even though British and American security services know who he is, they won’t touch him. (Why? We never find out.)
Proctor seems unduly imprudent for a veteran journalist, although Jaffrey makes him patient and compassionate; we hope he can bring Stephanie out of her self-destructive purgatory. Alas, she’s foolish and reckless — drug addicts not being known for rational behavior — and soon adrift. But she was smart, once upon a time, and a dangling clue leads her to Northern Scotland, and the isolated home of former MI6 agent Iain Boyd (Jude Law).
(Actually finding him seems rather a stretch, requiring a long bus journey that Stephanie apparently has no money to fund, given that all her possessions have been stolen. No doubt this made sense in Burnell’s novel; here, you gotta roll with it.)
Once Boyd is satisfied that Stephanie’s desire for revenge is genuine, he sets about transforming a jittery junkie into a well-trained, fighting-fit assassin. This segment, very much akin to La Femme Nikita’s first act, is the film’s highlight. Lively and Law share terrific anti-chemistry, as neither Boyd nor Stephanie fully trusts the other; their sparring and bickering takes place amid his chill professionalism and her petulance. Fun stuff.
I dunno about the swim across the loch, though. Seems she should have drowned 17 times over.
There’s also the matter of Boyd’s passing observation that Stephanie’s primary talent is a “facility for languages,” which she never later uses. (Details, details…)
Her subsequent path to payback involves assuming the identity of Petra Reuter, a notorious German assassin believed dead; since her body never was found, this uncertainty is sufficient to mount an impersonation. Stephanie’s subsequent quest takes her to Madrid, New York City, Tangiers and Marseille; her search for Reza requires the assistance of former CIA agent Marc Serra (Sterling K. Brown), who now peddles sensitive information to the highest bidder.
But before he’ll help, she must perform a sidebar assassination for him. And so it goes.
It’s refreshing to see that — as a neophyte killer — Lively makes Stephanie realistically fallible. She’s nowhere near the capable rage machine of, say, Charlize Theron (in 2017’s Atomic Blonde) or Angelina Jolie (2010’s Salt). Indeed, Stephanie survives her first assignment only by dumb luck, and gets badly hurt in the process. (Shards of broken glass always evoke a visceral reaction from us, don’t they?)
Lively throws heart and soul into this part, and she definitely holds our interest. She’s appropriately bruised, battered and agitated when Stephanie is introduced, her fingers fluttering uncontrollably like the wings of a wounded sparrow. But even after Boyd cleans her up, she remains wary, haunted and guarded, her eyes somewhat concealed beneath the black spikes of her hair makeover.
The performance is solid and consistent until the third act, when Stephanie succumbs to a romantic clinch that — as Lively has portrayed, thus far — this character never, ever would have indulged. This may have seemed reasonable in Burnell’s novel, but here it’s sheer movie contrivance. And completely superfluous. (It feels like a contractual stipulation, as if Lively demanded a love scene.)
Law is terrific as an enigmatic, world-weary man of mystery: every inch a once-loyal agent who feels betrayed by his former service. Brown is similarly strong as the quietly careful Serra, his gaze forever assessing this mysterious woman, wondering if she’s who she claims to be.
Richard Brake also stands out as the scruffy and creepy Lehmans, Stephanie’s first target, who proves unexpectedly lethal.
Morano’s irritating directorial flourishes notwithstanding, her film also feels sloppily truncated, like a four-hour miniseries trimmed to an unsatisfying, Reader’s Digest Condensed Book shadow of its superior self.
I’d say better luck next time, but on the basis of this cinematic introduction, Stephanie Patrick doesn’t have a future on the big screen.
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