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THE RHYTHM SECTION
Director: Reed Morano Cast: Blake Lively, Jude Law, Sterling K. Brown, Max Casella, Daniel Mays, Geoff Bell, Richard Brake, Raza Jaffrey, Tawfeek Barhom MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:49 Release Date: 1/31/20 |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 30, 2020 With The Rhythm Section, screenwriter Mark Burnell and director Reed Morano attempt to do something different with the typical revenge thriller. At its core, this is the story of a woman who seeks vengeance for the murders of her family—her parents and two siblings, all of whom were killed in an airplane bombing, which was covered up as an accident for complex and mostly unexplained geo-political reasons. The basics of the story are as one would expect: The protagonist travels from one location to another with a plan to kill someone who was directly or indirectly involved in the bombing. At first, Burnell's screenplay (based on his novel), though, is a bit more methodical than that simple setup. When we first meet Stephanie (Blake Lively), who survived simply because she didn't want to go on the trip with her family, she isn't even remotely prepared to go on a globe-hopping tour of revenge (Well, technically, she is, thanks to one of those unnecessary prologues that briefly observes the main character at some point in the story's future, but that's beside the point). Three years have passed since the deaths of her family members, and Stephanie's life has crumbled. She gave up a university education and became a drug addict, making cash as a sex worker in an impoverished part of London. Her body is a wreck—covered in bruises and sluggish from the drugs. Her mind is in a similar state—always remembering her family, coveting a left-behind father's wedding ring, guilty about the fact that the family changed their flight in an attempt to get her to come with them. Then, a man named Proctor (Raza Jaffrey), a freelance journalist, arrives in her bedroom. He tells her the truth: The plane didn't crash, as the official report stated. It was an act of terrorism. The bomb was built by a man named Reza (Tawfeek Barhom). The attack was orchestrated by an unknown man, known only as "U-17," who was funded by some shadowy people and, perhaps, the hardline government of an unspecified country in the Middle East. Skeptical at first, Stephanie eventually decides to leave behind her current life and learn more details from Proctor. The movie doesn't rush any of this (which might be why there's that prologue, in which Stephanie sneaks into an apartment in Tangier and points a gun at someone's head—to ensure the audience that something will come of this), which is both to its credit and to its detriment. On the positive side, Burnell and Morano take their time establishing Stephanie's all-encompassing grief, and that, along with Lively's understated performance, helps to generate quick sympathy for the character. On the negative side, though, the lengthy time spent repeating this central point of the character only shows how one-note this entire affair is. The movie firmly establishes Stephanie's mourning and desire for revenge, and then it moves forward like clockwork—only with the battery draining or the timepiece in need of some winding. Proctor is murdered in his apartment by an unknown killer, and Stephanie decides to find his source for the information about the plane bombing: an ex-MI6 agent living in isolation near a lake in Scotland. When she meets the man, known only as "B." (a cold and stoic Jude Law), he teaches her how to shoot, defensively drive, and fight, preparing her for the conflicts that will come on her road to revenge. Morano's somewhat off-kilter approach to Stephanie's lengthy introduction and subsequent training continues through the rest of the story. Time seems flexible, on account of those flashbacks and some montages in which scenes are somewhat jumbled (For example, one conversation between Stephanie and an ex-CIA agent, played by Sterling K. Brown, who now sells information on the black market is intercut with a romantic interlude between the two that happens later). When Stephanie has a target within her reach, though, the movie's approach is far more stable (A one-take scene in which B. teaches her to fight is the first example of this, and it's an impressive scene for how the choreography defines each of the characters). The movie's few action sequences, which dismiss that subjective style of relating Stephanie's perspective, are intimate and intense. A fight with that target in Tangier has the camera up-close and personal with the combatants, and during a car chase, Morano places a rotating camera in the passenger seat—turning to catch each beat, from gunfire and crashes to Stephanie's terror, as it unfolds in real time. Once we see the clear-cut nature of Burnell's narrative (There's some unexamined and, ultimately, useless talk about revenge being an empty enterprise, and the identity of U-17 is its only twist—albeit an anticlimactic one) and comprehend the alternating trappings of Morano's approach, though, the movie's attempts to do something different with this type of story reveal themselves to be only surface-deep. The Rhythm Section is mostly a hollow stylistic experiment that, on a fundamental level, does nothing different. Copyright © 2020 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for violence, sexual content, language throughout, and some drug use)
