Protector Can’t Save Itself

2 ½ stars

Make a list of Top 25 Movie Action Heroes. 

If Milla Jovovich isn’t on it, go back and try again. 

Jovovich is one of the pioneers of female film action stars. Not only is she the lead in the popular Resident Evil six film franchise, but she’s also brought her unique sense of fighting style to a wide range of films, from the vacation from hell thriller A Perfect Getaway to apocalyptic nightmares like In the In the Lost Lands and Monster Hunter. They haven’t all been hits; some of them, like 2005’s Ultraviolet, have been godawful. But she’s always been dependable when it comes to kicking ass.

On one level her performance in her latest film, Protector, ranks among her best. She delivers plenty of visceral excitement, especially in the way she embodies her character’s military training to dispose of dozens of bad guys. She also brings an emotional depth to her character to a level not usually found in this kind of action-centric cinema. 

Unfortunately the story surrounding her, and the choices director Adrian Grunberg makes to tell it, doesn’t always keep pace with Jovovich’s work.

In Protector, Jovovich plays Nikki, a highly trained veteran whose 16-year-old daughter is kidnapped by a human trafficking ring calling itself The Syndicate. From the second she realizes what has happened, Nikki goes into full Terminator mode, relentlessly mowing her way through the bad guys to rescue her daughter. It’s exciting and fun to watch, with just the right dramatic tension oozing out of Jovovich to bring weight to each scene. And it’s just as the story starts gaining traction that Grunberg starts throwing roadblocks in its path. He makes the risky decision to have a lot of the action take place off camera. We watch a closed door, maybe see a couple of gunshots go through it, then the aftermath. It’s interesting, but he uses it too often so it seems less an artistic choice than a budgetary one. 

And then there’s the problematic ending. You can almost feel things go off the rails when Nikki’s former commanding officer, played by Matthew Modine, shows up to take over and bring her in before she can do any more damage. Genre fans will get more than a sense of movie deja vu listening to Modine and thinking of Richard Crenna coming in to capture Sylvester Stallone in Rambo: First Blood Part II. And that felt hokey 41 years ago. 

Dredging up that old platitude isn’t the worst of it. Grunberg, working from a script by Bong-Seob Mun, slaps on a “twist” ending which the film simply doesn’t support. The best films with that style of ending are the ones you can think back on – or watch a second time – to find the clues hidden in plain sight along the way. They earn it. Protector only left me scratching my head, feeling that it didn’t.