Peppermint

The middle (II-IV) Death Wish films were on cable. This led me to want to watch this Jennifer Garner revenge flick again. The DVD has a decent director commentary. It could have had more commentary about the process (had some) and actors (not too much). But, I basically watched the whole thing while listening to the commentary with closed captioning allowing you to follow along with the film dialogue.

The film is basically about standard mom becoming a vigilante against everyone (including the judge) behind the murder of her husband (who got in trouble with the wrong people) and young daughter (who bought peppermint ice cream before being shot) as well as those who helped the denial of justice, including the judge involved. And, there were various cannon fodder sorts, like the low level crime syndicate personnel disposed of along the way.

Jennifer Garner, who played a spy on T.V. years back, does this with aplomb. I'm somewhat surprised that there was no sequel yet. The supporting cast is generally serviceable with a few people standing out, including two of the officers involved. The crime boss involved (himself only part of a wider criminal conspiracy) is a fairly good if not too notable, big heavy. This is really Garner's show, spending much of the film basically as a walking wounded expecting she was going to die fighting anyhow.

[Checking out part of it again after writing this, I want to add here that the film all and all is well put together.  It looks, at least to my untrained eye, rather like a serious effort to make a superior product. The basic story is a bit too straightforward, including her ability to mow down everyone, if with some injuries and a complication or two. But, Jennifer Garner is excellent, is looks very good, the basic story is professionally done etc.  It really all mixes into a decent, if flawed, film.  To give this film like two stars or something is silly.  For what it is, it's pretty good.]

The morality of all of this is clearly dubious.  We like many on the social media referenced in the film are on her side.  Killing a bunch of people like this, including a retired judge, is still not really great on principle.  The film does not rub our nose in it all too much (we do get more shots of her being injured and tired than we often get, but it is played fairly straight, without gratuitous gore or the like), at least as compared to other films.

Death Wish sequels (the first one is treated generally with respect by critics though I only know the general outline) go another way. The second one decides his already traumatized daughter (played by a new actress) should be traumatized some more.  First, the family housekeeper (a more voluptuous Latina, played by B film heavy Billy Drago's wife) is raped, and we get more shots of her body (all the sexy parts).  

The love interest in the sequel is Charles Bronson's own wife, Jill Ireland, who was in many films with him. He didn't want anything to really happen to her character, so she gets off easily as compared to the usual female family member in these films. She finds out he is a vigilante and gives him back her engagement ring.  Good move, life expectancy-wise.

The third film is his character being used by a police chief to deal with local gangs. The fourth goes back to killing off family members (daughter of girlfriend) to set things in motion. And since having someone is inconvenient, the mother is rather gratuitously killed off at the end too. She was played by B-movie favorite Kay Lenz, noted by a distinctive voice.  

The fifth film, not shown as part of the cable run this time, goes back to the female victim well. Apparently, it also is a more heavy on the graphic violence.  There is a certain addictive feeling to this, though at some point the character comes off as just a silly caricature.  The third was mostly about slum / urban jungle feeling.  The others had some plot with various familiar character actors giving viewers a bit to care about.

So, I am not going to be totally self-righteous here. I understand why people like this sort of thing. Many movies play with our emotions and baser instincts. This includes some wallowing into things. I still find it pretty unpleasant, especially when it gets to be like an assembly-line type series that cannot really be taken seriously.  

Some films have more quality than others.  A basic theme here is that there is evil out there, at times it is personal (like harm to family), but in a wider way, it's just too big to totally conquer.  The revenge (which feels better viscerally when the crime is worse, thus the wallowing in the pain of the victims) is sweet, but only so much.  The better ones find a way to show some complexity.  I'm also reminded of this:

She was a champion of the underdog but also sensitive to the needs of society as a whole. She began her criminal procedure class most years by asking students to identify the harms that private actors inflict on one another when crime goes unchecked and also to identify the harms that arise out of the abuse of police power—quickly bringing them to the realization that anarchy and authoritarianism are mirroring evils. Long before the most recent wave of attention to overzealous and racist policing, Sherry [Colb] proposed that traffic stops for nonviolent offenses should be drastically curtailed.

Paul Kersey kept on having more people to kill, destroying some drug dealers in one film just allowing another person to step in (a somewhat ironic reminder).  Horror films remind us that certain things, including evil forces, never truly go away. Thus, the need of constant sequels.  Any move to improve things will not lead to true completion either. But, some approaches are better than others there. 

Those who support pacifism can still read about war.  A few might think it a bad idea to even have war stories, which seem to glorify it.  That's true on some level.  Some see many of these films as having some hidden depths. A film like Peppermint with a female lead is going to appealing to some as a sort of feminist message.  Again, some of these films have more to say about some things, like this one wanted to include the issue of how social media factors in.  

Anyway, I support a sequel -- why leave her alive, if there is not sequel? The director's commentary shows a bit more that the film was done with some finesse. Another film that I am even more surprised (since sequels of Nicholas Cage films are popular) was not followed up was Drive Angry, where Amber Heard (in the news of late) added great support.