You’d certainly hope it wasn’t intentional, but Netflix has nonetheless cultivated a reputation as the go-to home for terrible action movies. It’s an unfortunate phenomenon that’s blighted many an in-house exclusive, but even legacy titles are capable of embarking on a resurgence they maybe don’t deserve, as evidenced by the havoc currently being wreaked by Peppermint.
Per FlixPatrol, the 2018 effort from Taken, From Paris with Love, and The Gunman (itself a recent Netflix phenomenon despite taking a pasting) director Pierre Morel has taken just 24 hours to lock, load, and put a spot on the platform’s global Top 20 in its sights, despite the fact it holds an abysmal – if entirely warranted – 13 percent Rotten Tomatoes approval rating.
That being said, a 70 percent audience average underlines that Jennifer Garner’s rampage of revenge has plenty of supporters, many of whom are willing to die on the hill that it doesn’t suck. While your mileage will no doubt vary in that regard, you’ve got to hand it to a largely forgotten beat, stab, punch, and shoot ’em up still managing to entice viewers half a decade after being savaged upon its release.
After awakening from a coma to discover her husband and daughter have been killed, Garner’s Riley North decides that vigilantism is the best course of action to recover from a near-death incident, making it her mission to become an expertly-trained weapon of destruction, a particular set of skills she hones to devastating effect in an effort to exact retribution on those responsible. That’s basically all there is to Peppermint, but it’s evidently enough.