3 stars out of 5
Different town, but second consecutive movie where I was the only one in the theater. I’m starting to get a complex. Or perhaps a multiplex.
The Rhythm Section (I keep typing Rhythm Method) is a crummy name for an action flick, but at least the title is explained in the opening seconds: Stay calm, regulate your body, your lungs are the bass, your heart is the drum. And the set-up is compelling enough. Stephanie’s (Blake Lively) life has fallen apart because three years earlier, her parents and siblings perished in a plane crash — a flight she was supposed to be on, no less! Now Oxford-grad Stephanie is shooting up and turning tricks, until a journalist (hey I recognize that guy from TV’s Code Black) tells her: That crash was no accident.
What would you do? Get straight and circle the globe to seek vengeance? Well, in a movie based on a shitty book that’s what you’d do. But Lively carries things for a while, lifting the proceedings to a higher level than they deserve. She makes a convincing junkie, thrust into a world where she doesn’t belong. And her British accent seems pretty decent. I stuck with Lively as she tracked down the journalist’s source in remote Scotland. Hey, it’s Jude Law! But as we endure a Rocky training montage, Law turning Lively into a top assassin, things really start to get ridiculous.
From London and Scotland, Stephanie heads to Madrid, Tangiers, New York, and Marseilles, all in search of her man. Along the way, she meets a phoning-it-in Sterling K. Brown and a just-happy-to-be-here Max Casella. There is a pretty thrilling car chase sequence through narrow twisting Middle Eastern streets, with the driver’s point of view. But mainly this is by-the-numbers action, shooting and punching, as Stephanie becomes increasingly gorgeous, because she’s Blake Lively, duh. We still have another two months until James Bond, so if you really need a placeholder, here you go.
Jack Silbert, curator