IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Walsh) review
RogerEbert.com (S. Abrams) review
AVClub (G. Garner) review
Peppermint [2018] (directed by Pierre Morel, screenplay by Chad St. John) is a film that's very violent and that will offend a fair number of viewers notably Latinos who will identify, QUICKLY, the film's most obvious villains -- tattoo covered members of a MS13 style LATINO drug gang -- who kill the film's heroine's (Riley, played in the film by Jennifer Garner) husband and cute as a button 8 year old daughter on the eight year old's birthday.
'Course its a little more complicated than that. There are also bought-off / corrupt cops, attorneys and judges, all of whom are white, who make the normal / legal / non-spray them all with bullets path toward justice _impossible_ for Riley. Indeed, they wanted to put her away into a nut-house when she tried to testify against her family's murderers, but ... she ESCAPED, drops off the radar and COMES BACK five years later to the day of her family's murders AND ... you get the picture.
A clear problem with this picture TODAY is that it almost seems like the film that Quentin Tarantino had Goebbels make for Hitler in Inglourious Basterds [2009] only here for ... To call this film a dog whistle would diminish ... dog-whistles.
And yet, the film does express a frustration of many of those who did vote for Donald Trump -- honest, hardworking white people struggling to make ends meet who do feel frustrated at all levels by the system, dominated by rich folks (also generally white people, but who don't seem to care about them). And then throw in TATTOO COVERED, UTTERLY INCOMPREHENSIBLE "ALIENS" well, it's enough to get one REALLY, REALLY SURVIVALIST WITH AN AR-15 / UNLIMITED SPRAY OF BULLETS MAD.
To those Readers who are still Reading here ;-), the film reminds me of a conversation I had with group of lovely Puerto Rican born parents when I was stationed at a heavily Puerto Rican parish, St. Catherine of Siena, in Kissimmee, FL. I asked them why they didn't seem go to the movies much. And they responded: "Fr. Dennis, we're church going people trying to raise our kids right. Why should we go and support movies which almost always portray us as EXACTLY what we don't want our kids to become?"
And films like this make their point ... 0 Stars.
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