Who doesn’t love a good action movie about revenge? What Liam Neeson did in 2008 with “Taken” has allowed it to become one of the most influential Hollywood films of the last decade or so. You know the formula by now: an aging male superstar plays a former intelligence agent or operative or assassin, with a “particular set of skills,” who comes out of retirement after a close relative is murdered or kidnapped. Of course that “close relative” has evolved over the years to become a spouse, a daughter, a friend, or even, in the case of “John Wick,” a pet. Then our washed up, former bad boy ends up systematically hunting down and killing a bunch of foreign baddies.
Neeson and “Taken” really started a chain reaction of older, more mature-looking, Hollywood A-listers taking a crack at being action stars. Just look at the list of similar revenge action vehicles that came next: Keanu Reeves in “John Wick,” Denzel Washington in “The Equalizer,” Sean Penn in “The Gunman,” Kevin Costner in “3 Days to Kill,” and Pierce Brosnan in “The November Man.” Neeson has himself become a one-man genre, not only were there two other “Taken” movies, but he’s also done ‘Taken’-esque films like “A Walk Among the Tombstones,” “Run All Night,” “Non-Stop,” and “Unknown.”
The director of “Taken,” Pierre Morel, who also did Penn’s “The Gunman,” will be returning to the genre that kick-started his Hollywood career by directing Jennifer Garner in the revenge thriller “Peppermint.” Based on a screenplay by Chad St. John, the film follows along the same path as the other studio actioneers mentioned in this article. Deadline has the plot synopsis going like this:
“When her husband and daughter are gunned down in a drive-by, the heroine wakes up from a coma and spends years learning to become a lethal killing machine. On the 10th anniversary of her family’s death, she targets everyone she holds responsible, the gang that committed the act, the lawyers that got them off, and the corrupt cops that enabled the murderous incidents.”
Sounds familiar, but Garner being a part of this project really ups the ante for me. Why? Well, you might have forgotten her role as Sidney Bristow in the J.J. Abrams-created ABC series “Alias.” She was quite convincing as CIA operative Bristow and had the action chops to back it up. It’ll be great to see Garner back in full-on action mode as that is what made her popular in the first place.
“Peppermint” being green-lit might also have to do with Charlize Theron having her own revenge action movie this summer, “Atomic Blonde,” which was received with positive reviews and a decent $34 Million tally thus far at the domestic box-office. Not bad for a film that was financed by the relatively independent-minded Focus Features. There is currently no release date for “Peppermint,” we’d keep an eye on next year.