Peppermint Blu-ray Review

THE MOVIE — 3.25/5

There’s no shortage of Death Wish like feature films from the recent remake starring Bruce Willis to the Kevin Bacon led Death Sentence directed by James Wan, quality varies (the original Death Wish sequels with Charles Bronson were rather ridiculous. Now there’s Peppermint, pairing up the star of Alias in Jennifer Garner with Taken director Pierre Morel. Combination made in heaven, right? Sort of. While I rather did enjoy the film, in the end it’s not a terribly well written script, and yet still can’t say I ever regretted watching either.

Peppermint follows wife and mother Riley North (JENNIFER GARNER) who seems to have it all: a loving husband (JEFF HEPHNER) and beautifully precocious daughter (CAILEY FLEMING). But all that is torn away after the family is attacked in a drive-by shooting, targeting the husband after he initially agreed to rip-off a dangerous gangster before eventually backing out, but it was too late. This local drug kingpin, Diego Garcia (JUAN PABLO RABA), is nobody to mess around with.

Riley is also hit and lands in the hospital, full on in grief but musters up the courage to pick out the hitmen in the car. Unfortunately, once they go into preliminary hearings, her character is impuned upon by defense council and the judge rules the trio be released and Riley, overcome with rage, is arrested, though she manages to escape and disappears, before reappearing five years later. She’s undergone training around the world, as tracked by the FBI led by Agent Lisa Inman (ANNIE ILONZEH), and locally by LAPD Police Detectives Carmichael (JOHN GALLAGHER JR.) and Beltran (JOHN ORTIZ).

Outside of some exposition and short security cam footage, we don’t see Riley going Jason Bourne with her training, presumably to either save on budget or the director felt it unnecessarily padded the film and just wanted to get right into the violent and bloody fights. Although I wouldn’t have minded some background on Riley’s journey overseas, once the action starts, it is unsurprisingly well shot, no surprise with Pierre Morel at the helm.

Where the film falters in the script, and more specifically the dialogue, it makes up with finally seeing Jennifer Garner reaching back to her kick ass routes from her Alias days as her career since has been comprised of dramas and family comedies. Garner is back in form and the brutal fight sequences were the highlights and her acting, all things considered, was well done.

The supporting cast consists of John Ortiz, John Gallagher Jr. and Juan Pablo Raba, the first two as the pursuing detectives and Raba doing an effective job as the primary antagonist, and never a bad thing to see John Ortiz, a rather underrated actor.

Peppermint might not be the perfect action film but Garner puts in some great physical work and the fight sequences were well shot and all in all was generally entertaining even when there were times I rolled my eyes with some of the dialogue. Initially I had a bit of suspension of disbelief that this ordinary suburbanite woman could get enough training to accomplish what she does; however same could be said for Bruce Willis’ doctor character in Death Wish, at least here we get a sense she did undergo hardcore training over a five year period, in DW his vengeance is pretty much overnight, so I guess Peppermint does have going for it…

SPECIAL FEATURES – 2.0/5

This release comes with a semi-glossy slip cover; inside is a redemption code for the Digital HD. Features sadly are light with an Audio Commentary with Director Pierre Morel and a short Justice (2:16) production featurette.

VIDEO – 4.5/5

AUDIO – 4.5/5

OVERALL – 3.5/5

Peppermint is by no means perfect but it was the perfect action vehicle for Jennifer Garner who gets back to her kick ass routes dating back to the Alias TV series. Here the fights are brutal and hard-hitting and the performances are good enough to make an entertaining action yarn. The Blu-ray release has great video/audio transfers but features are limited.