In the first minutes of “The Rhythm Section,” Blake Lively is seen as a purposeful but stressed-out assassin, a mild, loving member of an upper middle class British family, and a heroin-addicted prostitute. She inhabits all these personae with commitment. The actual order of events for her character, Stephanie, is family girl, addict, assassin. The director Reed Morano couches the domestic persona in soft diffused light and the hardened one in shallow-focus claustrophobia.
Stephanie has lost her family in a plane disaster. After succumbing to despair, she learns the explosion wasn’t an accident, but an act of terrorism. The Islamic kind. Or was it? The tired script by Mark Burnell, based on his own novel, ultimately doesn’t have the energy to capitalize on red-herring bad faith.
Revenge-seeking Stephanie soon finds a rogue, or ex, MI6 agent, played by Jude Law, who teaches her to fight and kill while dispensing bromides like “Even if you succeed, it won’t be worth it.” Her subsequent adventures include an infatuation with an assassination arranger — a rogue, or ex, C.I.A. agent played by Sterling K. Brown.
The movie is produced by Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson, the keepers of the James Bond franchise keys. “The Rhythm Section” suggests they want to extend a multifilm license to kill to a female character. (Spoiler alert: Burnell’s novel was the first in a series.) But this picture makes an iffy origin tale.
The talented Morano, whose work on the TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale” shows a knack for shuddery grim realism, sometimes seems to want to subvert the espionage-action genre by bludgeoning the pleasure out of it. One fight scene pitting Lively against the wiry, insistent Richard Brake is so severely brutal it feels like Soderbergh’s “Haywire” remade by Lars von Trier. Audiences may be more shaken than stirred.
The Rhythm Section
Rated R for bludgeoning, gouging, shooting and so on. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
