The Rhythm Section

STORY: All hell breaks loose when a bereaved Stephanie Patrick (Blake Lively) learns that the tragic death of her family in a plane crash was, after all, no accident. Jaded and broken from the inside, Stephanie embarks on a journey to avenge herself.

REVIEW: It’s been three long, painful years since the now ‘junkie’ and self-immolating Stephanie lost her close-knit family to a plane crash over the Atlantic. Upon being enlightened with the truth, quite naturally, she finds a sense of purpose and is hell-bent on exacting revenge from the international terrorist outfit that was behind this organised crime. And to add fuel to the chaotic fire enters the taskmaster and a former (disgraced) CIA agent, Iain Boyd (Jude Law). To quieten the burning desire of vengeance, Stephanie accepts Iain’s hard-pressed offer to assume the role of a seasoned assassin. But her route to redemption proves to be a bumpy one as she has very limited life as well as combat skills.

All that hype about the glamourous Blake Lively undergoing an on-screen image makeover with director Reed Morano’s tortured and tormented Stephanie is flat-out true: Lively as a de-glammed amateur assassin and full-time junkie is unrecognisable. With her believable British accent, droopily piercing eyes, and a deathly calmness — the kind that’s endogenous and cannot be taught — Lively is quite the revelation. Her portrayal of a disturbed individual is one that’s bound to keep you hooked, if not thriller-level entertained. However, Jude Law’s Iain Boyd starts off as a whimsical man and winds up being an underwritten role; his act as Lively’s mentor is disagreeable and only manages to touch upon the duo’s supposedly twisted rapport and their overall psyches.

Yes, brutality and violence are rightly at the heart of this action-thriller/ revenge saga, but Morano’s adaptation of Mark Burnell’s eponymous book does not quite strike a chord with the audience because of the loosely knitted screenplay, coupled with a few uneven location recces that the team sets out on: the transition doesn’t look smooth and interrelated whatsoever.

The plot is snail-paced, way too far-fetched and the climax is as predictable as a wasp on speed. Also, the look and feel of ‘The Rhythm Section’ is all things ‘James Bond’ and it is worth mentioning here, given the fact that it comes from the same production house. The music, funnily enough, has an old-world charm and a melancholic stillness to it, which blends in reasonably well with the savagery that goes around on the outside.

Sans Lively’s depiction of an aloof, withdrawn and damaged victim of circumstances, ‘The Rhythm Section’ has failed to cook up a tune that its viewers could dance to; foreseeable ending doesn’t work well with mysteries.