Following Tom Cruise’s superheroic badassness in the “Mission: Impossible” franchise and the smooth slickness of the ‘Bond‘ series, the spy genre desperately needed a shake-up in the early aughts. That much-needed implosion arrived right on cue with the ‘Bourne‘ films that revitalized the espionage genre by deglamorizing it, dirtying it up, making it raw and, yes, grittier (Daniel Craig’s Bond films took its cues from that series too). Taking a page from the ‘Bourne’ playbook, while never feeling overly-indebted to its vertiginous shaky-cam aesthetic, Paramount’s “The Rhythm Section,” tries to take the stripped-back idea one step further by using the femme fatale archetype, subverting it, deglamorizing her, and adding lacerating emotional notions of trauma to push the genre forward.
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As played by Blake Lively, the self-destructive Stephanie Patrick is a mess. An emotionally damaged drug addict, she was headed for summa cum laude at Oxford, but following the death of her parents and siblings— killed during a plane crash three years ago— she heads into a downward spiral, leading to her most recent occupation as a drug-addicted prostitute. Life suddenly changes; however, when a mysterious man appears to reveal the plane crash that devastated her years prior was the result of a bomb and not mechanical failure. Stephanie drops everything to begin her quest for revenge, thus making her the most interesting, emotionally complex spy to hit the big screen in quite some time.
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Along the way, in Stephanie’s transformation from junkie to action hero, she is forced to not only face her own miserable past—upping the emotional stakes and making her mission feel unusually intimate— but a cavalcade of people (mostly men) that want nothing more than to use this broken woman for their own selfish reasons.
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The man responsible for teaching Stephanie the ins and outs of the spy game, B (Jude Law), is a shell of his former self, entirely controlled by his psychic wounds and living in solitude, unable to attain the redemption he seeks. Throughout the story, Stephanie comes across various ineffectual men who hide behind women and manipulate and exploit for their own gain. Keeping spoilers out of the discussion, it’s clear that cinematographer-turned-director Reed Morano and Lively have much on their mind about the agency of women and how females are usually treated in this genre.
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“The Rhythm Section” marks the third feature-length effort from Morano, and when you contrast this film to her previous, the low-budget indies (“I Think We’re Alone Now,” “Meadowland“), it’s clear the filmmaker has grown leaps and bounds in a relatively short time (of course, helming and executive producing “The Handmaid’s Tale” hasn’t hurt that evolution). And while there are serious missteps with this new project, including an incredibly gloomy, tedious and, overly-self-serious first act that could have used an upper from Stephanie’s drug stash, Morano really comes into her own after the first act, when the movie really takes off, and she’s allowed to fully embrace the global set pieces and action that you would expect from a modern espionage thriller.
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Keeping in line with ‘Bourne,’ the action is decidedly unflashy and anti-Bayhem. The filmmaker bucks tradition with an intense and midday car chase scene that keeps the perspective claustrophobically within Lively’s precarious maniac-driving POV, featuring viscerally-felt collisions, startling gunshots, and violent, close calls in real-time. Cleverly hiding the cuts, it’s all done in mostly one take, presenting the action uninterrupted and raw.
The philosophy carries over into the clumsy, but deadly hand-to-hand combat and gunfights too. Stephanie has only trained for a few short months, so her fighting style is ugly and flawed. She doesn’t win fights as much as she survives them. All this tension creates fraught energy where you believe the character could die at any moment, which adds convincing stakes to a genre that often paints its leads as invincible superheroes.
But for all this raw, persuasive texture, there are critical issues beyond the sluggish first act. Like many spy films, “The Rhythm Section” falls prey to a convoluted plot that throws too many twists and turns at the audience. Additionally, due to Lively’s sometimes-spotty British accent and the often monotonous delivery of lines by the rest of the cast, much of the already dubious expository dialogue that contains essential plot reveals can be difficult to understand. Also, the film is littered with too many contrivances—convenient shortcuts that clearly are there to streamline the story but no doubt will challenge the suspension of disbelief in the average viewer.
Overall, Blake Lively and Reed Morano have presented a slightly new take on the spy genre, where emotional pain and personal stakes take center stage instead of worldwide destruction and action hero one-liners. It’s a refreshing, admirable idea and makes “The Rhythm Section” feel more personal and wounding. Great, more of this, please. However, by placing such a high premium on character and suffering (and tense, realistic action), the film drops its guard with nearly all the other fundamentals of plot, story, and believability, leaving itself vulnerable to snipers like myself that can point out its good intentions and valid strengths, but still sharpshoot down its other numerous flaws. [C+]