Peppermint

Fellow movie goers from across the globe. Today’s review is a revenge film directed by Pierre Morel (Taken) starring Jennifer Garner as a mother who lost her husband & daughter slain from criminals. In retaliation, she embarks on a quest for revenge to track down and kill the men who’ve murdered her family. The premise I’m referring to is none other than “The Punisher,” I mean “Peppermint.”

Peppermint earned negative reviews from critics and slowly surpassed its budget at the box office.

Today’s review contains crucial SPOILERS. If you have never seen this movie, read at your own risk.

Yay & Nay Elements

Yay: Jennifer Garner did an adequate job for her performance.

Action Sequences were enjoyable to watch.

Nay: Pierre Morel did a poor job directing. He didn’t double check the script if it needed to be polished.

The premise conspicuously rips off Frank Castle/The Punisher’s origin story when his family got killed by mob enforcers located in a carnival. Marvel & Disney if you are reading my article, get yourself a lawyer. Hollywood is running out of ideas, first subpar horror remakes, a female Ghostbusters reboot, now a mockbuster of Punisher located at a dollar store!

I swear to god, I’m not making this up, Jennifer Garner’s character’s name is Riley North. I couldn’t take her surname seriously due to the fact it reminded me of Kanye West & Kim Kardashian’s daughter, North West. Let me get this straight, the director of Taken, has no idea who Kanye & Kim’s daughter’s name. I have to Double Down this con for making me laugh as well as losing ten percent of my brain cells. Riley North has got to be one of the worst character names since Ethan Hawke’s character Bruce Kenner (last names rhymes like Jenner) from Regression.

As North patches up her wound, she takes a bite of a brownie. Seriously?! Who eats a brownie while recovering from a nasty scratch? Nobody does that in real life! Even Rambo doesn’t eat an Oreo cookie if he’s removing a bullet from his arm!

Although the cops found a video of North partaking in Mixed Martial Arts, how is she an expert marksman? I barely know about her five year gap of training to become a vigilante. What if The Karate Kid never featured the “Wax On Wax Off” training session? We have to know how the main character is a capable fighter.

There’s no scene displaying how North managed to track down a corrupt judge. How did she find him, by tracing his phone or license plate?

The title of the film is mentioned as North’s daughter favorite ice cream flavor. At first, I thought she was gonna choose Peppermint in honor of her daughter. This is Fan4stic (Fantastic Four 2015) of misleading! If Hollywood made a Charlie Brown spin-off centering around Peppermint Patty, she’ll never earn her nickname causing an uproar towards Peanuts fans!

Storyline is nonsensical in a world that doesn’t rely on reality context.

Two homeless kids lacking prominent scenes other than the bad guy using them at gunpoint to lure North, never factor in too much. Statler & Waldorf (two old critics from The Muppets) factor in more as they heckle a good or bad performance!

The Villain wasn’t memorable enough to make you wanna punch him in the face. He has no motive stated on why he’s involved in drug dealing. What’s the point of running an organized crime unless you want to support a family, runaway from the past, paying expensive medical bills for a sickly relative etc.

After North is critically wounded in battle, how the heck is she able to quickly vanish away from the cops? She’s not Batman.

The ending felt unnatural. North should’ve died from her wounds rather than recovering from a hospital, then escaping. What I saw, indicates a shove it in your face sequel bait. It broke my Suspension Of Disbelief.

The Final Verdict: F, FOR FAKER!

Peppermint is basically a carbon copy of The Punisher lacking an original revenge plot with no variation whatsoever. If you want to watch a legit female centric revenge film, I strongly recommend Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. That’ll keep you entertained from start to finish or watch The Punisher on Netflix.

As a critic myself, I hereby declare Peppermint as one of the worst films of 2018 so far besides Teen Titans Go To The Movies, Gringo, Skyscraper, Winchester & Action Point. 2018’s not over yet, we must remain vigilant.