This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
No More Mrs Nice Guy
Plot Overview
Special Forces servicewoman Nikki
Halsted (Milla Jovovich) views her daughter's third
birthday party remotely for having been deployed off country
(“It's protocol”) but promises to be there for the next. She
misses that one, too, and the sixth, and pretty much all of them in
sequence. After her kid Chloe (Isabel Myers) turns fifteen, she has to
muster out to take care of her as her dad has died (of Leukemia.)
Come Chloe's sixteenth birthday, she refuses to be called “baby” (“I'm not a little kid anymore”) and goes out on the town with her girlfriends (“Ellie invited me out.”) While underage at a bar there in Las Cruces, she gets picked up by a dreamy guy Ben (Shane Williams) who seemed okay, but was a “spotter” for “the Syndicate's” human trafficking ring. Her worried mom arrives on the scene and gives chase like a “crazy bitch” but loses them.
Statistically, she has seventy-two
hours to recover her girl before she's gone for good. She
singlehandedly wastes Club 30 their best whorehouse, for
which “the Butcher” trusses up “the
Spotter” (“They're a dime a dozen”) like
“beefsteak” for bringing them
“Livestock” w/baggage. The “crazy
bitch” gives him some of his own medicine, then goes after
the local boss Sullivan (Don Harvey) in his guarded, desert
compound and then to “the Chairman” (Gabriel Sloyer) in
his headquarters the Grand Hotel, an impenetrable fortress.
She's come to the attention of the authorities by now who want to
stop this vigilante, but there's some jurisdictional dispute.
Ideology
"Protector"
details the decline of Western society along the lines of: (Prov. 30:21-23) “For three things the
earth is disquieted, and for four which it cannot bear: For a
servant when he reigneth; and a fool when he is filled with meat;
For an odious woman when she is married; and an handmaid that is
heir to her mistress.” The “servant” is
culturally represented by blacks who said “Yessah” and
“Nosah” on the plantation, whose speech is the
“lazy diction” characteristic of Negroes today as
a Negro doctor here orders his underlings around with forty
dollar words he didn't own, was barely able to memorize them from
a script. For a sample of doctor-speak, let's look at a doctor
author, David Farris, representing their exchange:
She produced a leather sack with a drawstring and carefully laid its contents on the low table beside the couch: a long glass smoking pipe, smudged from prior use but wrapped in tissue, a long thin chemist's pipette, a shallow glass dish like a watch lens, some small glass vials and jars, matches, and a bottle of Pharmacists' Ether.
“Ever freebase?” she asked without looking at me.
I hesitated. “I don't think so.”
“You'd know it you had.”
She went to the kitchen cupboard for a box of baking soda and filled a jar half full of water. She mixed the water, baking soda, some of the ether, and the contents of one of the vials and shook. She lectured, “You remember ether extractions from organic chemistry?” I must have looked blank. “You dissolve an organic salt in water, add acid or base, depending on the organic compound you're after, then add a lipophilic, hydrophobic, immiscible liquid, preferably a highly volatile one …”
“Like ether,” I interjected.
“Like ether. Shake and bake.” She smiled, bit her lip, and shook her concoction with self-conscious glee. “Draw off the liquid layer, and you're left with the free organic acid or base, which in this case, is cocaine base.”
“I knew that year of organic chemistry had to be good for something,” I said. (108–9)
The actor who played the
doctor never heard his compañeros use such big words when cooking
crack in the microwave, or anywhere else for that matter.
He memorized them from a script, not from “that year of
organic chemistry,” which he never took or any other
academics. To the audience it sounds like an actor struggling
with lines that won't roll off his thick tongue. To the extent it
even works in the movie, we see a quack doctor whom his underlings
don't respect, nor does his vigilante patient who having caught up
on sleep checks herself out, against his orders, to the
disruption of society.
Ellie (Arica Himmel) the queen bee of Chloe's clique is also (mostly) black and it's her lead that gets them to a place they shouldn't be, vulnerable to mischief that disrupts our society—along with 17K other babes who get trafficked in the U.S. every year.
“A fool when he is filled with meat” is here the police Captain Michaels (D.B. Sweeney) who looks well fed and whose expensive attire receives comment. His foolish leadership puts the hurt on his men. Bribery disrupts an ordered society.
“An odious woman when she is married” is the anti-heroine Nikki whose “duty” to her country eclipses her duty to her daughter, much to the latter's chagrin. The Muslims she is fighting have a birth rate superior to Westerners' who are barely at replacement level, and the Muslims domesticate their women to a fault.
“An handmaid that is heir to her mistress” is a minor pretending to be of age to drink, but she couldn't handle it.
Production Values
“” was directed by Adrian Grunberg. It was written by Bong-Seob Mun. It stars Milla Jovovich, D.B. Sweeney and Matthew Modine. Jovovich was great as Nikki. Modine playing a high Pentagon official with military bearing could tip one into enlisting. The other parts weren't challenging enough to secure anyone's reputation. The stunt doubles deserve some purple hearts.
MPA rated it R for strong/bloody violence, and language. The fighting scenes were first rate as was their buildup. It was filmed on location in Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA. Runtime is 1½ hours.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
Nikki's driver's license shows her to be 51 years old, and her daughter is of child-bearing age. In an elite force that's a young man's game and has never qualified a woman, the commander calls Nikki, “my best soldier.” That puts her in the über-granny myth. If more attention had been given not to let us take this story too seriously, we may not have seen patrons leave early the way they did. Also, I question the wisdom of showing women with training trouncing bigger men. In real life it often doesn't work out that way, so why set them up to think it? The action scenes are worth it, however, if you can get over these quibbles.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Edge of your seat action-packed. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Well done special effects. Video Occasion: Better than watching TV. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Two stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture is quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.
Farris, David. Lie Still. Copyright © 2003 by David Farris. New York: HarperCollins Pub., 2003. First edition. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org