‘The Mother’ Review: Jennifer Lopez Makes a Meal Out of Netflix Action Drama
“The Mother” is like a lot of Netflix action-dramas of late: A mix of different genres with hints of a darker, possibly richer story, that ended up being excised due to budget and/or time constraints.
There is a lot of well-worn inspiration to be found in its familiar plot, from the survivalist parent/daughter relationship found in the 2011 feature “Hanna” to another Jennifer Lopez feature, 2018’s “Second Act” in which Lopez’s character is also at odds with a daughter she gave up at birth named Zoe.
All of this is to say a film like “The Mother” shouldn’t work, and it doesn’t completely gel 100 percent. But in the hands of Jennifer Lopez and director Niki Caro, the film as a whole mostly comes together as an action-packed (at times), contemplative (at times) and entertaining story of maternal self-sacrifice.
The audience meets Jennifer Lopez as an unnamed woman — referred to as the eponymous “Mother” — turning herself into the FBI as an informant. She’s been involved, in both the professional and Biblical sense, with two very dangerous men: Adrian Lovell and Hector Alvarez (Joseph Fiennes and Gael Garcia Bernal, respectively). Each now wants to kill her.
A first attempt fails to dispatch her and her unborn baby but the Mother is placed in a precarious position: Keep her child and put the infant, continually, in danger or give her up. She quickly picks the latter, but 12 years later the Mother is forced back into her absent daughter’s life to finally get rid of her past suitors, once and for all.
Make no mistake, this is a Jennifer Lopez movie and that means one thing: she is the most impressive element around which everyone else circles. Edie Falco shows up for one scene purely to deliver exposition about how the Mother (even a nickname would have been nice…come on) did two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and is one of the best snipers. And Lopez pulls this resume off with some fantastic fight choreography, including an amazingly shot — courtesy of cinematographer Ben Seresin (“Godzilla v. Kong”) — hallway fight.
And after seeing Lopez’s raw power in “Hustlers,” it’s clear how she thrives under female directors and “Whale Rider” helmer Niki Caro is no exception. You can see Caro’s quiet, meditative approach in the sequences where Lopez and young actress Lucy Paez, who plays the Mother’s daughter Zoe, are ensconced in the wilds of Alaska. The camera wanders the barren landscape, one of several overwrought metaphors for the Mother’s cold personality. But these moments also give Lopez room for levity, whether that’s playing off of Paez, whose whiny tween Zoe won’t eat freshly hunted meat and generally acts like a kid, or Paul Raci’s chronically underutilized Jons.
“Chronically underutilized,” though, is a term that runs through “The Mother,” giving audiences frustrating glimpses of what could have been. There are two strongly divergent halves to the film: Mother and Zoe in Alaska, wherein Zoe is learning survival, and the lead-up to that involving a host of baddies that maybe Mother was romantically involved with. There’s a push-pull to this latter storyline, almost as if the script is afraid to say Lopez’s character slept with two men at the same time. Or, worse, that she was using her sexuality to get ahead. We get glimpses of her character’s manipulation in flashbacks, but the movie turns away, and it undermines Lopez’s abilities as an actress.
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This comes through clearest in the one major sequence between Lopez and Bernal. Practically nothing is known about their relationship prior to this — short of he’s a bad guy she’s interacted with — but when Bernal shows up, rocking long, blonde hair of all things, the two have a palpable chemistry. He refers to a kinky sexual relationship they presumably had and right away you wonder why these two don’t have more interaction!
The same can be said about Lopez and Raci’s character, who have a fantastic camaraderie. If there’s a longer cut with these characters let’s see it. Omari Hardwick, as one of Mother’s FBI agent/few friends and Joseph Fiennes as the main villain round things out, but they feel like set dressing more than anything.
Really, the majority of time is spent with Lopez and Paez and, again, these two are wonderful to watch. Where Lopez plays Mother as cold and controlled, Paez’s Zoe is warm and emotional. They have just enough commonalities to make the audience believe they’re related. Watching the two test each other’s boundaries leads to significant drama, so much so that you’re almost saddened when the action comes back to the forefront.
“The Mother” works despite its shortcomings and because Jennifer Lopez has that movie star allure. If her and Niki Caro want to reteam again on something, albeit with a more polished script, it’d probably yield better results. All the same, “The Mother” is a solid timewaster on Netflix, worth a watch but don’t worry if you forget it by June.
“The Mother” streams on Netflix May 12.
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