“A bookstore owned by an assassin … I never saw it coming,” Rembrandt (Michael Keaton) tells The Protected, in a rare case of a character played by the actor who is not found as the smartest boy in the room. The real surprise of the store owner of the murderous teacher Anna (Maggie Q) is that it actually contains a large collection of used books, rather than hiding a John Wick-style armory. Anna really enjoys her buying and selling rare first editions and anyone who shares her interest will find the violence of the film horrible. No, not the blows to the head augmented with ugly, cursive splashes of CG blood, but a subsequent carnage scene in bookstores that blows up pages worn by the air.
Anna’s attitude towards her night work is curious. His store is successful enough to have at least one other employee, and he doesn’t seem to have the kind of customers who would reject his attempts to retire from freelance, so it’s unclear why he hasn’t switched to selling books to full time. It may seem like a family business; her closest partner is fellow assassin Moody (Samuel L. Jackson), who is a father figure since he ran into her on an unidentified mission to Vietnam in 1991, and the two share a disarmingly warm relationship (especially when they are disarming and killing several thugs). When they sell mysterious minions by Moody and other people in Anna’s circle, it’s not because any of them have tried to leave the business. Anna simply takes a case of a missing person who sounds innocuous and doesn’t even involve dropping anyone. After violent attacks trying to warn her of the investigation, this multitasking expert continues the investigation while plotting to retaliate against the bad guys. This brings it back to Vietnam, although the generic interiors don’t make much use of the location.
This is where Keaton’s smartest routine comes in. In a film that repeatedly replaces his apparent Final Boss, and not with successively more interesting characters, Keaton’s Rembrandt sets aside; is a self-described “after the facts” boy sent by Anna’s enemies to organize, analyze, and occasionally perform a melee fight, by the grace of Keaton’s talented double. Rembrandt also creates a flirtation with Anna, a trick Keaton does to himself. His exchanges are almost certainly in the script of Richard Wenk, a penner of star films ranging from mig vell a decidedly old a old souls they are forced to take action. It is too close to this wheelhouse and too extensive to be a plausible improvisation. However, Rembrandt’s interest in Anna plays, deliciously, as a classic Keaton apart from being transformed into his strange subplot, a natural development of the way his character stops to exalt the virtues of the broth. of bones or ask about the source of a man’s suit. If its dynamics have a playful concern, it is at least an antidote to the constancy of the lack of sex in so many action movies, including young educated superheroes and old men, mostly single, that Wenk specializes in writing. .
That now Wenk writes about one female the killer should hardly count as an inverted script; change John Wicks they are Very Hot Right Now. But this non-front of a bookstore is an early clue that The Protected it’s not really one Wick riff (despite checking the name of the Keanu series in their ads). It is a simple genre image, directed with the elegant clarity of Martin Campbell, best known for directing two different Bow it restarts. His recent concerts are low-profile, but still well-crafted. Aside from some dubious partial flashbacks, this new one is more silly and less shady than The foreigner, his previous foray into a film style that now seems destined for Netflix browsing, the 21st century equivalent of the lazy Sunday afternoon cable clock. As with The foreigner, The Protected it becomes a theatrical release for the persevering professionalism of its film production and the glow of its star power.
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This stellar power is not just from Keaton and Jackson, who exercise their enviable ability to have fun by reducing some characters from the standard wooden blocks that have been handed to them. The Protected it’s also a late Hollywood star vehicle for Maggie Q and her senseless charisma. Beyond the considerable physical presence, Q brings touches of subtlety to a strain character; the moment he makes his eventual and inevitable reference to the will to get out of the game, there is a genuine tiredness that feels earned enough to avoid the cliché. Elsewhere, a different topic more specific to female action stars is enthusiastically adopted: Anna receives more elaborate equipment than her male counterparts. It might seem condescending if Maggie Q didn’t look so at home through her stunning and lovingly ridiculous variety of costume changes: costumes, cat costumes, practical skull clothes.
A lot of people will vibrate with the efficiency of The Protected on a plane, or on Netflix, or maybe even on TNT in a few years, and that’s fine; it’s hardly the kind of movie that will inspire another round debate on the diminishing theatrical experience. Still, there’s something resonating in the characters ’appreciation for tangible evidence from the past, including Anna’s early editions and Moody’s prized vintage electric guitar. Campbell and Wenk have not inserted many gratuitous and mythical references to “going to old school” as soup to their target audience. They let their old-fashioned programmer speak for himself, mostly just doing it with a little more gusto than is strictly necessary. This is a movie where the audience can temporarily believe that the ruthless killer owns this bookstore.