It’s Me Too time and, according to the minds behind Peppermint, this means that women can be as bad on screen as the worst bad boys (as long as a spoonful of momhood is added to sweeten the bloodshed). Consider Riley North (Jennifer Garner), a lower-middle class suburban mom whose husband and child were gunned down, drive-by style, by evil Mexican gangbangers. Denied justice in court and remanded for mental health care by the criminal-coddling judge after a shrill emotional outburst, Riley suddenly turns into Superwoman, knocks out a cop and makes a mad dash.
Five years later, she’s back in L.A. after a world tour in which she learned about kickboxing, automatic weapons and commando tactics. She’s out for vengeance and with steel-eyed determination she begins to kill everyone associated with the death of her family—the judge, the DA and the defense attorney as well as the entire drug cartel (and their Korean mob money-laundering associates). She’s more heavily armed than Charles Bronson in the old Death Wish flicks but has even less character development.
Garner cuts a brawny Rambo image, assault rifle slung across her shoulder, as she massacres armies of bad guys in their piñata-festooned hideouts, usually without cracking a sweat. With Riley holding a crinkled family picture to her heart between killing sprees, Peppermint becomes a nauseating mash-up of fake sensitivity, cartoon violence and the Death Wish-era disbelief that justice can be achieved through the justice system. It fits the anxiety of a certain subculture in our time: arm yourselves against marauding gangs of foreigners (the director, Pierre Morel, is French)! Naturally social media lights up in support of Riley. In 2018, a vigilante such as her isn’t just a lone gunwoman—she’s a digital folk hero.
