It’s been proven time and time again that Netflix funneling hefty production costs and big names into an original blockbuster is very rarely a guarantee of quality, so expectations for The Mother should be set fairly low as a result.
After all, outside of her career-best turn in Hustlers, Jennifer Lopez has hardly been renowned for setting the world alight when it comes to playing major roles in expensive productions, never mind the fact it’s been a long time since she dusted off her action hero credentials. If anyone was expecting The Mother to buck the trend that’s dogged almost all of Netflix’s in-house actioners, then we have some bad news.
At the time of writing, director Niki Caro’s revenge thriller that finds Lopez’s former assassin come out of self-imposed exile to rescue and protect the daughter she left behind for her own safety debuted to a decidedly mediocre 58 percent Rotten Tomatoes approval rating, which is admittedly higher than the likes of Red Notice and The Gray Man.
Not to get too ahead of ourselves, but it would be fairly safe to assume that regardless of what critics have to say about the platform’s latest lackluster runner and gunner, The Mother is virtually guaranteed to make a splash on the viewership charts over the weekend, before it does what almost all of them do and fades from memory in virtually no time at all.
Everybody watches it, some people like it, the majority don’t; such is the way of the Netflix genre film, a cycle that hasn’t even shown an inkling of changing.