★★
A woman seeks revenge against those who orchestrated a plane crash that killed her family.
Classification: 15
Let's try and get through this whole review without making the obvious comment that The Rhythm Section is rhythmless because one that would be tacky and second it would be too obvious. While Reed Morano's action thriller is a tepid, bleak, charisma less rehash of tropes used in early 2000's gritty spy films, Blake Lively's haunted performance does offer something beyond the standard experience but only by a hair. Almost like a Daniel Craig Bond film meshed with a toned-down Munich but with all the tension surgically removed, The Rhythm Section explores a character in her grief and suffering, sacrificing her humanity in the pursuit of revenge. As Lively's Stephanie is trained in the skills of killing and espionage by the enigmatic Jude Law and fed intel by the dashing Sterling K. Brown, Stephanie wrestles with the moral quandary of committing violence in the name of her family who was killed in a covered-up terrorist attack.
Stephanie's arc is the backbone to the film and while Lively does disappear into the role with all this trauma and drive, Mark Burnell's script adapted from his own novel is just an anticlimactic collection of sequences that just drive cliche forward than any true catharsis. At first, the rough editing and utter bleakness to Stephanie's life in which she has become a drug-addled prostitute may first seem like a classic case of beautiful actress goes ugly in lieu of depth. Lively's performance, however, is more than just the agony of her face and body language but while Jude Law's Ian Boyd says "you're just a cliché" to which Lively responds she isn't (some clueless rapport where Burnell thinks he's being clever) but pretty much everything about Stephanie's story has nothing unique going for it. This raw power Lively brings to the table is just squandered as the character's misery reflects back on to the film in a way that just deflates all intrigue and engagement. Lively fully commits to the action however as the confined camera work always focuses on her character's reaction and anxiety from fistfights, gunfights and car chases. Sean Bobbitt's cinematography utilises long shots for a few sequences, one car chase through Tangiers keeping the camera inside the vehicle on Lively's panicked face, as the car is smashed around and shot at. An interesting but somewhat distracting choice as the adrenaline to The Rhythm Section never clicks with the audience.
The other stars Jude Law and Sterling K. Brown are wasted archetypes, Law the gruff former spy who uses tough love to train Stephanie into a skilled secret agent. Those sequences are actually the best as it's featured in the beautiful highlands of Scotland and Steve Mazzaro's score featuring beautiful accompaniments of affecting cultural music. While Lively and Law are shooting, training and beating the hell out of each other, the vistas are quite the sight especially when interest in the story was seriously beginning to wane. Law as Boyd doesn't bring anything to the table, he berates Stephanie for being a cliché while being completely obvious to the fact he is one himself, Law also commits to his few action scenes as his fight against Lively is an amusing cat and mouse of skill versus fury. Brown as Marc Serra is mostly Mister Exposition at times and the film forces he and Stephanie into a pretty uninteresting romance which is designed to heighten the dramatics in the third act. It doesn't, as mentioned before just about everything in The Rhythm Section is anticlimactic, there is little chemistry between Lively and her co-stars and the payoffs to the bombing plots and the truth to Stephanie's family's death barely register as a pin drop. No real imaginative explanation to the antagonist's motives and the world of the film feels so small and inconsequential when the dust settles.
It never feels that Stephanie reaches closure or even a breakthrough with her trauma, she is viciously abused by various thugs over the course of the film and transforms into a stone-cold brute herself. There is a moment at the end of the second act where her humanity breaks through, horrified at how far she's gone but then she's back to morose brutality for the final set-piece. The inconsistency of the tone and character development really mar the potential of the film's greater themes of recovery and survivor's guilt, merely using them as stepping stones for Lively just to shoot, kick and be badass. Made all the more strange by The Rhythm Section's off-putting needle drops, Morano's tone for the film seems to be serious, emotional character drama but then every once in a while a random song will just drop and breaks the diegetic reality. Steve Mazzaro's score is quite effective in places but the classic rock and pop songs come across like a desperate attempt to jolt some glamour to the dreary action.
The Rhythm Section follows the book to the letter, Morano has her protagonist be broody, get the hell kicked out of her, globe-trots and kick-ass right back but it's all futile as the film just seems to sleep through all these moments that should make it electrifying. Burnell's script feels like cliff notes for generic action films and any self-awareness to its stereotypical approach completely fall flat. It's an action film with no thrill, a mystery with no intrigue and the pacing just leaves audiences suffering from boredom as the mediocrity fails its character and potential.
Director: #ReedMorano
Screenwriter: #MarkBurnell
Release Date: January 31st 2020
Trailer:
Written review copyright ©CoreyBullochReviews
Images and Synopsis from the Internet Movie Database
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