I’ve seen enough JLo action comedies. People forget, she’s a sneaky great dramatic actor when she wants to be. The Mother simply removes the comedy from “Action Comedy”, giving us a humorless straightforward action thriller with Jennifer Lopez. I didn’t see any new layers to JLo the actress, but it did remind me why I keep getting excited when she’s involved in a movie.
JLo…IS…THE MOTHER! We first meet her, pregnant, being interrogated by the FBI, including agent William Cruise (Omari Hardwick). Fast forward 12 years later, and mom has been off the grid, hoping to keep the cruel arms dealers Aidan Lovell (Joseph Fiennes) and Hector Alvarez (Gael Garcia Bernal) off the scent. However, the well resourced men find the location of Zoe (Lucy Paez), JLo’s daugther. And you know what they say, never poke the mama bear…
It’s nice to see Lopez working in a different movie register. She’s quite good as the mother: not too dissimilar from her hubby Ben Affleck’s role in The Accountant. Stoic and fierce, she quietly goes about what she does best: protecting her daughter and laying waste to bad people. The first hour or so is the latter, with JLo showing her action hero chops and looking great doing it in the process. But the movie gets much more interesting when the character is actually forced to be a real mother to Zoe. Though the mother is great at the protection part, she’s garbage at nurturing, having only lived one way. JLo is quite good enacting her “tough love” on Lucy Paez’s Zoe, forcing her to do a lot while saying a little, something she hasn’t done in a long time.
As far as the action goes, The Mother goes for visceral and grounded. The opening sequence is legit scary since pregnant woman + gunfire in a dark safehouse means constant peril. The middle gets a little too plot driven and maybe forgets reality and smart decision making as JLo has to get some pieces off the board. But at least those dumb choices have real consequences which the mother and Zoe have to live with, pushing them together in the third act. That snow laden paradise turns into JLo’s tundra nightmare of weapons and mother daughter bonding, as she protects her daughter from her past. It’s not John Wick, but it’s also much better than an overcutting bad action movie, right in that Netflix sweet spot.
You gotta hand it to Jennifer Lopez. She’s always playing the game. For a while studios wanted her to make movies for them. Now she’s pitting streamers against one another, releasing new movies on multiple platforms. How far is she gonna take the game? Are we gonna get a YouTube vs TikTok video war? Maybe a war with her lovers ARod and Batfleck? I have no idea, but if JLo is involved, it’s gonna be exciting!