OVERVIEW
Nikki, a former war hero and Special Forces veteran, has 72 hours to rescue her daughter Chloe after she is kidnapped during her birthday. That mission sends her deep into the criminal underworld, fighting and killing her way up the chain while law enforcement and military forces close in behind her. If the premise sounds familiar, that is because it is. Protector is basically a mid-budget mix of Taken, Rambo, and John Wick, with Milla Jovovich as the parent that bad guys regret messing with.
BACKGROUND
The film is helmed by Adrian Grünberg, who once worked as an assistant director for action names like Martin Campbell and Mel Gibson before going on to direct one of the worst movies ever made, Rambo: Last Blood. He is back for another action flick, this time produced by the Resident Evil couple, Milla Jovovich and Paul W. S. Anderson. At 50, Jovovich is well used to playing older action roles in lower-budget films, but Protector marks what she has described as her first turn as a more fully hands-on producer.
THE REVIEW
For a long stretch, Protector feels like exactly the generic action flick its premise and poster suggest. It has the countdown, the kidnapped daughter, the criminal underworld, and the hardened fighter cutting her way through one level after another, yet very little of it creates real urgency. Even before the film reveals its hand, there is something slightly off in the way it moves, as if it is relying on the shape of an action thriller without knowing how to make that shape exciting.
That problem is most evident in the action scenes, which are clumsily shot and edited, with almost no sense of buildup or escalation. Two moments in particular, one when Nikki hits a rookie cop and another when a colonel hits a corrupt officer, are staged so poorly that they take you out of the movie altogether. Jovovich, to her credit, commits to the choreography and still carries the physical authority of someone who knows this kind of material well, but Grünberg keeps failing her at every turn. Even with Nikki supposedly climbing a criminal ladder against the clock, the film rarely gives the impression that each step is harder, or that she is truly running out of time.
Nikki never really feels in trouble and moves through most of the film dispatching faceless goons with complete ease. The only time she seems to be in real danger comes early, in a moment that begins with her hanging upside down. The film does not bother to show how she got there, so we never actually see her lose a fight. Around her is a collection of stock figures: the obvious corrupt cop, the rookie, the policewoman saddled with dialogue that has to announce Nikki’s competence, the generic trafficking boss, and the daughter who, of course, has a misunderstanding with her mother on the very day she is kidnapped.
And yet, as disappointing as much of it is, the film also becomes a little curious, mostly because you keep hoping it will not follow through on the plot turns it seems to be setting up. Then the third act delivers one surprisingly effective twist, and suddenly some of the movie’s stranger choices begin to look different. The Terminator-like theme that plays whenever Nikki appears, Jovovich’s awkward performance, and even a few oddly staged scenes start to feel less random, even if I doubt all of that was entirely intentional. It does not make Protector good, and it certainly does not fix the weak action or the lazy clichés, but it does give some of the film’s earlier missteps a new and more interesting meaning.
FINAL THOUGHTS
For most of its runtime, Protector plays like a dull and generic Taken variation, undone by weak action, lazy clichés, and little real suspense. The third-act twist gives the film a more curious shape in retrospect, but it cannot fully rescue what came before.