Protector opens in select theaters on March 6 from Magenta Light Studios.
Milla Jovovich has been at the forefront of the action genre for most of my life by now, plastered prominently as a presumable face of badassery ever since Paul W.S. Anderson made her kill zombies and hurl kicks at undead dogs in 2002’s Resident Evil. Indeed, the trend has done numbers for her as a box office draw, and her standing continues well in the genre with her latest take in Protector from director Adrian Grunberg.
The plot, penned aptly by Thieves Highway writer Mun Bong-seob, reads seemingly familiar at first; The film starts with Nikki (Jovovich) sitting in a dark room with half her face lit as she faces the camera, monologuing about the trials and tribulations of balancing life as a soldier, a wife, and a mother. From then on, Nikki’s voice over narration is interwoven throughout the film as we follow along the respite joy and prevalent turmoil as life goes from manageable to discernibly difficult, especially as daughter Chloe (Isabel Myers) grows into her teens.
Cue the misguided whims of adolescence, however, when the young girl decides to sneak out one evening, taking up an invite with friends at a bar after a tiff with mom tenses things up at home. When Nikki discovers her daughter’s empty room and a brief, contrite note, it isn’t long before Nikki is able to locate Chloe. All the same though, it is only seconds upon arrival before Nikki spots Chloe, innoculated, and being taken by two captors out the back of the facility.
All this occurs roughly fifteen minutes into the film, cranking things up full throttle as Nikki barely manages to foil Chloe’s kidnapping before being injured. Unconcious and from that moment on, the film takes you on Nikki’s grim, desperate and brutal journey into the dark corners and machinations of America’s suburban underworld, hunting down any and all clues and answers that she can in order to find and bring Chloe home.
That pretty much sums up what the promotional run for Protector would have you believe in its otherwise savvy marketing, appealing to the same audiences that have given immense reception to films like Pierre Morel’s Taken, Lee Jeong-beom’s The Man From Nowhere, Lee Whittaker’s The Vigilante, or Choi Jae-hoon’s The Killer. That favor even extends to fans of more ominous concepts sewn into films like Skin Trade or even Grunberg’s Rambo: Last Blood, the latter to which Grunberg’s certainly draws some of his creative fervor into Jovovich’s performance.
To his credit, it is here that Protector amplifies its narrative strength, hingeing on the psychological constructs of military trauma with several visual aides, both as modifiers to drive sympathy and inspiration in following Nikki through her linear and deadly quest. The depths to which Nikki’s psychosis brings the violent reprisals is tested further with the actions of dogged police captain Michaels, played by D.B. Sweeney as he taps into the “Sheriff Teasle” for today’s audience. Matthew Modine crams in his ode to the iconic Richard Crenna in his portrayal of Lavelle, Nikki’s former Colonel who gets called in just as Michaels furtively turns the heat up.
At roughly ninety minutes of runtime, the rate at which Protector makes its intial case bodes like a jarring exposition, cutting corners to eventually land at the starting point; By this point, the movie already skips the more gratuitous in-story aspects, truncating the events to kick off just when our hero wakes up bound, strung up and tortured by a butcher working for powerful and protected higher ups. You can imagine – or not – what happens next, but rest assured there’s still a movie to be made with an hour left, so don’t fret.
Jovovich adapts well to Grunberg’s breakneck pacing, further complimenting the film’s evident and straightforward direction as a genre placeholder for action fans favorable to stoic tales of soldiers fighting personal wars at home. To add, Jovovich proves capable once again of delivering herself as a combo talent in arresting drama, and feasible action.
Just shy of a popcorn potboiler, Protector eventually crafts something substantive in the noise, conceiving a paint-by-numbers rescue thriller on its face and mingling it with something more chilling and nuanced. Provided you like any of the aforementioned films or you enjoy thrillers like Duncan Jones’s Source Code to tickle your brain, Protector achieves enough to merit the desired effect the core twist involves, and leaves an impression for an entertaining thriller that won’t keep you guarded for too long.
