Delayed Reaction: Ava

Premise: Jessica Chastain is an assassin with a conscience who get burned by her agency.

 

Expectations make or break a movie. It's not fair. It's not rational. But it's true. If 20 people tell me a movie is a masterpiece before I see it, I'm going to approach it differently than a movie that was quietly released that I haven't heard of. Similarly, I'll use factors like budget, cast, method of release, and genre to build a baseline expectation in my head. I like to think that I remain pretty objective and open to being wrong and to adjusting on the fly. But I'm definitely kinder to a movie when I understand its level right away.

 

Ava is a pretty typical assassin movie. It's built in that John Wick/Atomic Blonde image. It's an overqualified star (Jessica Chastain) looking flawless and ruthlessly killing people with efficiency and often effortlessness. I sized this movie up immediately, and because of that, I enjoyed what worked in it and ignored what didn't.

 

Jessica Chastain is really great in "not a hair out of place" roles. She has the right face for that look, I guess. And, she's a great actress, so she can expose the cracks in the facade nicely too. Best of all, she looks competent at everything she does, so it's not hard to believe that she's a skilled assassin. They assemble a pretty nice cast of talented people who, yeah, I can also imagine were available to pick up and easy pay check. While I could never imagine young John Malkovich as an elite assassin, I do believe old John Malkovich as a retired assassin and mentor. Collin Farrell is a nice heel. I sort of feel like we're due a 'Farrell-aisance' in the next couple years that ends with him earning an Oscar. I don't get enough Geena Davis in my life, and she's good casting as Chastain's mother. Because of John Wick, I kept waiting for Common to turn out to be an assassin. The big disappointment was that Diana Silvers didn't turn out to be an assassin wunderkind. She still looks so young (she's actually 23), but I was hoping for a fight scene with her that would have me wondering when she'd be cast in Barely Lethal 2 or a D.E.B.S. reboot.

 

My big disappointment with the movie is that there wasn't a standout set piece. I figure they didn't have the budget for a Mission: Impossible sequence, and it's not fair to expect they'd have the stunt coordination of a John Wick, but I was hoping for at least one big shootout with an explosion and a bunch of screaming extras. Instead, everything felt rather small. The big fight was Chastain and Farrell in a hotel room. It felt small. And, I don't get the sense that Chastain learned Tae Kwon Do for 6 months in preparation for the role or anything like that.

 

Still, I had fun watching a B-movie story executed by A-list talent in just over 90 minutes. Sure, it would've been nice to get a John Wick or even a The Old Guard, but sometimes a Shoot Em' Up is plenty. That said, while I was reasonably pleased with the movie, there are a few too many similar movies that I'd rather watch over this one.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend