Taken with a chick…
First Screening. Cinemark. Tightwad Tuesday. It is fair to call this an attempt to recreate Taken with a chick, and why not this plot, in this time, with this actor? Jovovich is switching gears, and at 51, she knows those Leeloo days are behind her. What I see is a genuine attempt, ala Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde, to do as much with her hundred pound frame that she possibly can, and I don't know what to do other than admire that. She's also taking another page from the Theron playbook: look at Jovovich in Dazed and Confused and look at the close ups in Protector. She is deliberately casting herself as tough and tumble, rough and ready, gritty and girly, all at the same time. Some of her close-ups look absolutely ugly, and one forgets this was the supermodel on the cover of every fashion magazine you could name by 1992. At one point, she's hung upside down, with no make up (apparently) and cursing like a sailor with fake blood splattered everywhere while screaming. There might be some who can't bridge the disconnect between this and The Fifth Element, or perhaps even The Million Dollar Hotel. It is quite jarring, but it is a deliberate shift that has a tendency to prolong or even re-start careers. Personally, I like this shift, even if this particular project had a lot of minuses.
You know you have a troubled production, or at least troubled financing, when the longest list of anyone in the credits are the producers, line producers, executive producers, and extra producers. Don't forget your producers, either. In most cases, when you see four writers in the credits, it is indicative of trouble. Here, it's the producers. You can't have that many people's hands in the pots and not expect a mixed product, and that's what you have.
The most notable detraction is the editing, which relies on quick cuts, flashes (as opposed to flashbacks, but those too), and choppy correlation. This was the film's biggest issue, but not the only one. Coupled with a not particularly stellar cinema style for the first hour, and this was asking to look like a million Jason Statham films that just SUCK. The camera work did greatly improve in the finale, but not enough to make up for some time-traveling before and after "the Whorehouse" scene that was evidently cut for no reasons made known to us. If what they had didn't work out well and decided to keep the running time below 110 minutes... then what they did was a success or at least they limited the damage. This is how you try to save a film, not bury it. This means enough of those producers cared, and that's essential to me buying the DVD.
The script, as it is, followed a very familiar line and there is nothing wrong with that. Jovovich's Neeson (or Deckard) -like investigation of following one source to another in order to find her daughter is something we can all attach to. In this way, Protector is ripped out of the headlines of today's Epstein headline culture.
The biggest problem, past the editing, seems to be in the skills of the director. There were several moment of badly delivered lines, and when you have several actors repeating the same sin, it is no longer the singular actor's mistake. A lot of these mistakes, for Jovovich or my by C. Thomas Howell, could have been reshot, or edited out, but I'm guessing it wasn't done for budget reasons and I get that. There were also some pretty amazing fight scenes that lost eye direction and blocking space, and that is 100% the fault of the director. If the director is also helping the editor (as they should) then there is no reason. I am assuming also, as Jovovich is one of the very numerous producers, that a director was chosen on a cash basis. Her husband is a much better director, but we can't rely on him to direct ALL of her action vehicles, let's be real.
There is also an element of Protector that has been in our culture for the past fifteen years or so, and will only increase with time before the next major conflict. Jovovich plays a veteran who, like hundreds of thousands of real veterans, come home to a domestic environment that is a result of absence. I can understand families who resent their loved ones for choosing country over them, but without those volunteers, they would have nothing to defend. Adding to this mythos is Jovovich herself, born in Ukraine S.S.R to a Ky'yv family who decided the best thing to do was to emigrate to America for a better life. As a result they missed Chernobyl. A lifetime of poverty. A war that surly would have affected her family. Instead, Jovovich's mother worked her fingers to the bone cleaning people's houses in Laurel Canyon until someone noticed her daughter's enhanced slavic features and decided to give her a chance at supermodeling. She's been an actor, ran her own clothing line, put out a few rock albums, and generally has been living the American dream instead of the current Ukrainian nightmare. She is a rare bird, and I think she is under appreciated. This is the girl that danced in her underwear in Kuffs, putting a hard apple in my throat and forcing me to buy the VHS, laserdisc, DVD, blu-ray, and 4K Ultra versions. She is also in Protector, slamming a dick head upside the jaw with a skateboard so hard it knocks his fucking teeth out. For someone so buried in the beauty-exploitation industry, she is diving head first into the action genre. She's doing with with aplomb, growing style, and I sincerely hope that it takes.
The controversial ending, some might call a Jacob's Ladder twist, is certainly mishandled, but it is a result of the editing botch. It appears they were reaching for something like Atonement and again I see great effort. But when that effort fails, we shouldn't necessarily blame the screenwriter. It's like Gorden Gekko bitching about all the Vice Presidents meddling in the company business. Too many cooks in the kitchen. Personally, I think Jovovich just needs a budget and good direction. She seems to be dedicated to the rest.