Year of Release: 2023
Director: Thomas Vincent
Starring: Kaley Cuoco, David Oyelowo, Bill Nighy, Connie Nielsen, Rudi Dharmalingam, Lucia Aliu, Regan Bryan-Gudgeon, Simon Delaney, Sonita Henry, Jade Dregorius
Genre: Action, Romance
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 2
Watch it on Amazon
Synopsis and Review
Another release from Amazon's Prime Video platform, this is another take, hot on the heels of my prior review for Tate Taylor's "Ava", on the life of a female hired assassin whose life starts to unravel. Apparently hired assassin is a hot topic on Linkedin or something. The narrative for this film focuses on Emma Brackett, who is a lethal hired killer, but who also maintains a more sedate facade on her day to day life as a suburban mom in New Jersey. Emma is married to Dave, and they both share two young children. Emma justifies her constant traveling (for her killing assignments) as requirements from her job, which demands her to go to Iowa, and other locales in the midwest. When she misses her wedding anniversary, she and Dave decide to spruce things up, and do some role playing in NY, which includes booking a hotel room, and generally playing sexy with each other. However things take a different turn, when Bob Kellerman, an older gentleman interferes, and he turns out to be another hired assassin trailing Emma. Emma as it turns out, used to work for a highly specialized agency, and they really want her back in their ranks. And they'll stop at nothing to do so, including bringing Dave and the kids into the game.
While Tate Taylor's "Ava" tried to bring some drama to the life of a hired assassin, director Thomas Vincent goes for a slightly more lighthearted approach to that topic. However and much like "Ava", this is yet another film that doesn't know what to do with these characters, or with the situations themselves. Thomas Vincent who has mostly worked on TV Shows (including Amazon shows such as "Reacher", Netflix shows such as "Bodyguard"), mostly illustrates what's on the threadbare script, never really going beyond the limited dilemmas the characters face, which in this case mostly pertains to Emma maintaining her double lives going. This isn't a film that questions what Emma actually does, the whole killing spree is just a byproduct of her double life, it mostly focuses on the issues of being a hired killer and a mom/wife. We never get to understand much about Emma's past, nor what her ambitions actually are, the same going for all the characters who surround her, who apparently have nothing better to do than think about her and what she's doing. Whereas "Ava" tried to be a quasi character study on a woman who kills others for a living, this is more like the sitcom version of that storyline (without the over the top situations and snark that Shane Black's screenplay for "The Long Kiss Goodnight" for instance had). The problem with this film is the lack of commitment to whatever agenda the writers are going for. It's never truly a comedy, nor is it a gritty action film: it tries to be everything and the result is simply generic and forgetful. The film surprisingly has some really good actors in its cast, including the always fantastic David Oyelowo, Bill Nighy and Connie Nielsen, all of whom I hope got really well paid to be in this. The production team is competent, including Maxime Alexandre's cinematography. This is simply not an interesting proposition and film, and the only reason for this score lies with the quality of its cast.
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