Because there's a prodigious level of talent involved in The Protégé you might not notice that this glossy, violent action-thriller is fairly shonky until the credits roll. It's entertaining, adrenalising shonk yes; but shonk nevertheless.
The movie, an Amazon Prime Video original, stars action-woman Maggie Q, righteousman of furious anger Samuel L Jackson and cinema's best Batman, Michael Keaton.
That's a lot of A-list firepower. But The Protégé has big guns behind the scenes as well.
The film was written by the chap behind The Equalizer films starring Denzel Washington, and calling the shots from the director's chair was Martin Campbell, the Hastings boy done good whose directing credits include two of the great James Bond flicks, 1995's GoldenEye and 2006's Casino Royale.
Maggie Q and Samuel L Jackson plan their next move.
All of these hired guns give the film their best shot. No one's slacking off, least of all Maggie Q who spends the movie kicking ass and looking good doing it. If a female James Bond is still in the realm of possibility after Daniel Craig's recent retirement from the role, then The Protégé makes a hell of an audition tape.
Here she stars as Anna, a rare-books store owner/contract killer working under the tutelage of Jackson's master hitman Moody. He rescued her from some bad hombres in Vietnam when she was just a kid, taking her under his wing and guiding her towards success on this unconventional career path.
Of course, being a professional hitman wins you a few enemies over the years and soon enough Moody is killed. Anna's not too happy about this, swears almighty vengeance and sets off on a mission to kill his killers. This set-up's not a million miles away from the John Wick franchise, although unlike Keanu's popular killer Anna's a cat person, not a dog person.
The fellow on the right is regretting his life choices in Amazon Prime Video's action thriller The Protégé.
Her blood-soaked enquiries lead her back to Vietnam as she pieces together who murdered Moody and why, before graphically killing her way up the baddie food chain.
Along the way she encounters Keaton's enigmatic Rembrandt, a suave, fast-talking henchman of the film's big bad. They match wits, punches, bullets and flirtatious quips as their mutual attraction pits their desire to murder each other into direct conflict with their actual desire for each other.
Throughout the flick, Keaton looks like he's having a blast, playing up his likeable charisma for his snappy wordy parts and delivering a deep level of menace to the parts where he lets his fists do the talking. It's his sharp-suited tough guy who delivers one of the most awful, stomach-churning kills in the movie. An achievement considering one poor sap gets roasted alive on an industrial-sized dry-cleaning iron press.
Michael Keaton as the suave, enigmatic Rembrandt.
Keaton brings an eclectic electricity to every scene he's in which perfectly complements Q's appropriately cool, calm and collected lead performance. It's a simple dinner between the two that proves one of the most thrilling scenes in the whole film, where all they do is talk.
When you cast Jackson you get Jackson, and at this point if he did anything other than Jackson it'd be a disappointment. Given that he's 72, his action sequences mainly see him waving a pistol or a glass of whisky around. But he absolutely kills whenever he speaks. Especially in one lengthy monologue where he goes into full Jackson mode.
Samuel L Jackson delivers a killer monologue.
But it's Q who keeps the film moving as its ice-cool, beret-wearing heroine out for revenge. An action movie veteran, and former protégé of martial arts legend Jackie Chan, she's never anything other than totally believable whether she's all guns blazing or putting real pow behind her wallops in her many hand-to-hand combat scenes.
While you don't necessarily switch on an action flick for a deep and meaningful story, The Protégé takes a swing at one anyway. The familial relationship between Anna and Moody being the obvious one, but it also explores a doomed romance in the increasingly dangerous dance between Anna and Rembrandt.
Despite taking steady aim, its targets remain elusive. There's a predictability to proceedings that constantly distracts, threads that goes nowhere and a haze around its story that only gets explained at the end. When it did pull into focus, it didn't satisfy.
But the action is inventive, slick, very well executed, frequent and blood-spillingly brutal. And the acting is terrific. It doesn't quite hit the bullseye, but The Protégé is still worth a shot. It's an easy and exciting watch that's a lot of fun.
It will entertain, but unlike the majority of baddies in the film you won't be blown away.
