SPOILER-FREE PLOT SUMMARY
A career soldier, Nikki Halsted (played by Milla Jovavich), is a mother of one. Her job keeps her from attending most of her daughter’s formative years but when her husband dies of leukemia, she retires from the military to spend more time with her daughter Chloe (Isabel Myers). In an attempt to celebrate Chloe’s 16th birthday, Nikki pulls out all the stops. But, being 16, she just wants to hang out with friends and sneaks out to a local bar. There, she meets an attractive young man who slips a roofie into her drink. Once incapacitated, she’s snuck out the backdoor where she’s kidnapped for sex trafficking. Meanwhile, Nikki has tracked her down and enters the bar just in time to chase the kidnappers out the backdoor and down the street. When the car pulls away, she begins her manhunt and takes out anybody and everybody in her way until her former commanding officer, Colonel Joseph Lavelle (Matthew Modine), shows up in an attempt to talk some sense into her.
SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
From completely useless dialogue to purposely dark lighting to stereotypical monologuing to completely unbelievable circumstances, PROTECTOR is what happens when you give an amateur filmmaker a Hollywood budget. Director Adrian Grünberg and writer Bong-Seob Mun have collaborated on a feature film here that would’ve been better off as a TV mini-series.
The film opens with Jovavich’s character in what seems like some sort of interrogation room explaining how everything went down in a somber, tired, serious vibe (as one would be in that situation). But about 20 minutes in, out of nowhere, she’s still narrating but it’s in a completely different tone, almost as if she’s now in a recording booth, not in the dingy, half-lit, closed-off box at police headquarters.
There are flaws galore. For example, in what’s actually a pretty cool directing choice, Nikki explains that, in child abduction cases, there’s typically just 72 hours before the trail runs cold. As the narrator, she explains this and we cut to a digital clock counting down from 72 hours. But then, throughout the rest of the movie, she’s got it counting down on her watch.
So what’s the problem?
When the clock started, she was unconscious in the street and, when she woke up, there’s no telling how much time has passed until we see her next, tied up, upside down, in a butcher shop. So how could she know exactly — which is the entire point of this plot device — how much time is left in the 72 hour window?
And that’s just one example. Don’t get me started on her hanging out the side of a speeding car screaming while zero people walking on the street acknowledge it. Or how about the scene where a rookie cop — who just happens to be wearing a hat that says POLICE, in case you didn’t know that he was law enforcement — suggests the novel idea that the squad should go check out the address that’s on Nikki’s drivers license. Or, if that’s not enough, how about when there’s a desperate attempt to create a twist that’s completely unnecessary and only confuses the audience?
Don’t get me wrong, there are some redeemable qualities. The head-on collision scene, the relationship building between the mom and the daughter at the beginning and the JOHN WICK-esque finale stand out as highlights. But those aren’t enough to save this from the proverbial dump bin.
Jovavich is fine, Myers is solid, the score is interesting and the premise is a good one. But, all in all, PROTECTOR is borderline worthless as a feature film. Had it been made into a mini-series, it still wouldn’t be great but it’d at least be average.
JKG SCORE: 3.5
Untitled Film Project 