The Protégé, 2021, 109 mins, Amazon Prime
Enlivened only by the winning performances of both Maggie Q and Michael Keaton, The Protégé is a typically nonsensical action flick that becomes increasingly preposterous as it goes on. It really makes me wonder where action movies go from here on, as they all seem to be becoming increasingly daft – The HItman’s Bodyguard films seem to be self-aware enough to be mocking their own silliness, but films like The Protégé, which seem earnestly serious, are in a celluloid dead-end now. For how long can we expect to see spies and killers and hitmen and thugs managing superhuman feats more suited to DC and Marvel heroes, and for how long can we suspend our disbelief watching wafer-thin beauties beating the shit out of gigantic assassins?
These action films seem to have become caught for several years now in an endless cycle of bigger and ever-more sophisticated stunts and feats of astonishing skills and its really in the arena of the superhuman now: indeed they have, I think, been infected and ruined by the comicbook capers dominating the box-office. Which is perfectly fine if you have a DC or Marvel logo at the head of the film, because at least then you know what you’re going to see is hyperbolic nonsense, but otherwise… well maybe a reset is in order.
I should at this point describe the plot of The Protégé, but its so unrelentingly stupid and even generic that it feels pointless. A young child, Anna, is saved and raised by an expert killer and naturally becomes a deadly assassin herself, as devastating with her fists, feet etc as she is beautiful… (broken bones and bullets don’t seem to stop her- maybe the bad guys should have tried kryptonite). When the killer that raised and trained her, played by no less than Samuel L Jackson – yes the casting is THAT generic- is murdered, Anna sets off on a mission of revenge and meets a male operative that seems her equal and one that she can respect, but is working for the other side. Dramatic, ain’t it? Okay that’s it, that’s enough of the plot, such as it is, albeit I didn’t mention the clunker of a twist that is possibly one of the biggest wtf moments that I will possibly be forced to stomach all year.
We really deserve better folks.
the ghost of 82 