Just in time for Mother’s Day, Jennifer Lopez stars in “The Mother,” the ideal tribute to devoted mothers everywhere. If only.
Instead, this R-rated Netflix gorefest is a brutal, bloody, revenge thriller that thinks killing to protect your kids is right up there with the loving art of raising them.
Yikes! There are so many things wrong with “The Mother,” especially the dopey daogue, that it’s hard to know where to start enumerating its most glaring faults. Let’s begin with the lame script credited to three writers who shall remain nameless — they can thank me later.
Jennifer Lopez in “The Mother,” 2023.Netflix
The basic plot is this. Lopez plays a military-trained assassin who gives up her daughter at birth so she can turn state’s evidence against the two sadistic global terrorists — one of them is the father — who swears vengeance for betraying them by taking her and her daughter down.
Mother, as she’s referred to throughout the movie, shows her parenting skills by asking FBI agent William Cruise (Omari Hardwick), whose life she saves in the opening shootout scene, to arrange for her child to be raised by a good family and report to her if there’s any trouble.
Twelve years later, the distress call comes in for Mother at the isolated cabin in Alaska where she’s been hiding in chic assassin wear with the help of Jons (“Sound of Metal” Oscar nominee Paul Raci), a soldier she served with in Afghanistan. Her daughter Zoe (Lucy Paez), whose photos she stares at dreamily, has been kidnapped. And it’s Mother and William to the rescue.
Is the culprit Adrian Lovell, the murderous arms dealer played by Joseph Fiennes, the star of “Shakespeare in Love” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” who is clearly slumming in the one-note role of a seductive Svengali who uses Mother for her “wow” body and her skills as a sniper, but can’t understand why she’d give a damn about this brat that may be his.
Or is it Hector Alvarez, a contractor Mother met in Guantanamo Bay in 2007 as played by the way overqualified Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal (“Y Tu Mama Tambien,” “Mozart in the Jungle”). Hector has imprisoned Zoe in a hideout in Cuba where he sits like a pervy king on a throne surrounded by candles as he plots a thoroughly ridiculous revenge.
Jennifer Lopez in “The Mother,” 2023.Netflix
It’s hard to find any reason why these former lovers of Mother, whose taste in men needs a serious rethink, would raise armies to destroy her other than Lopez is a star and it’s fun to watch director Niki Caro (“Whale Rider,” “Mulan”) set up this Latina powerhouse to mow down the bad guys like sitting ducks of macho ineptitude.
In the film’s last third, set in Alaska where Mother instructs Zoe in the cringey craft of efficient manslaughter, Caro pumps up genuine momentum. What a shame that the script buries her skills in an avalanche of cliches and blood-drenched mother-daughter bonding that would leave the folks at Hallmark cards clutching their pearls in horror.
Lopez handles the fight choreography like the dazzling dancer she is. So it’s galling to watch her play this rugged warrior with glam makeup and lighting more appropriate to a magazine photo shoot. The film’s poster showing a weaponized, airbrushed Lopez in a fashion fur hat and movie icon warpaint sums up the phoniness at the movie’s core.
Lopez, denied the Oscar nod she deserved for “Hustlers,” has always been a stronger actress than her critics allow. But “The Mother” finds her going Hollywood on a story that needed to at least seem real. It’s not like male muscle stars (I’m looking at you Vin Diesel) don’t indulge in the same family-that-slays-together silliness. But J.Lo and all the mothers out there deserve better.
