Out of Rhythm

Payback movies with strong female leads (e.g. ‘Kill Bill Vols 1 & 2,’ ‘Peppermint,’ the excellent French movie ‘Revenge’ starring Matilda Lutz) are among my favorite subgenres in cinema, so when I saw the trailer of ‘The Rhythm Section,’ Mrs. Reynolds’ (I mean Blake Lively’s) latest starring vehicle as a young woman who discovered from an investigative journalist that her family’s plane crash accident was not actually an accident and goes on a one-woman mission to make the shadowy perpetrators behind it pay the ultimate price, it unsurprisingly had me at “hello.”

 

Based on a novel by Mark Burnell (who also wrote the screenplay for this adaptation), ‘The Rhythm Section’ offers a different kind of revenge thriller for those of us familiar with ‘La Femme Nikita,’ ‘Atomic Blonde’ and ‘Salt.’  Unlike those other films, Lively’s anti-heroine isn’t a trained assassin skilled in the fine art of death dealing but a physical and emotional wreck, a normal “girl next door” devastated by personal loss and grief even three years after losing her loving parents and brother – we find out why in the movie and I’ll leave it at that.  It is also interesting to note that this movie’s produced by Barbara Brocolli’s EON Productions, well known for all the action-packed death defying 007 movies we love.

 

The calling card of ‘The Rhythm Section’ is gritty realism rather than fast-paced action, and it lives or dies (looks like the latter) by this artistic choice at the box office.  Though it’s been compared to the Jason Bourne movies, I find it more akin to slow-burners like ‘Red Sparrow’ and Steven Soderbergh’s underrated ‘Haywire.’  While ‘The Rhythm Section’ isn't a great movie, it’s not as bad as its 28 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes would suggest either.

 

Grade: B-

 

Up next….. something kooky and fantabulous.