The Rhythm Section (2020)    Paramount/Action-Drama    RT: 109 minutes    Rated R (violence, sexual content, language throughout, some drug use)    Director: Reed Morano    Screenplay: Mark Burnell    Music: Steve Mazzaro    Cinematography: Sean Bobbitt    Release date: January 31, 2020 (US)    Cast: Blake Lively, Jude Law, Sterling K. Brown, Max Casella, Daniel Mays, Geoff Bell, Richard Brake, Raza Jaffrey, Jade Anouka, Jack McEvoy, Ivana Basic, David Duggan, Nasser Memarzia, Amira Ghazalla, Tawfeek Barhom.    Box Office: $5.4M (US)

Rating: **

 Blake Lively has come a long way as an actress since the days of Gossip Girl and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. She was terrific in The Town and A Simple Favor. She held her own against a killer shark in The Shallows. The new actioner The Rhythm Section is a huge step back. She’s horribly miscast as a young woman seeking revenge against the terrorists who killed her family in a plane bombing. Grunge look notwithstanding, I didn’t believe her character for a minute. Lively doesn’t have the raw edge or depth required to play such a character. Her spotty British accent only weakens her case further. I kept imagining Keira Knightley in the role. No doubt she could have pulled it off. I’m not so sure she could have done anything much with the familiar material.

 Here’s a list of the movies that The Rhythm Section made me think of: Point of No Return, Leon the Professional, Atomic Blonde, Red Sparrow, Peppermint and Anna. All of these titles have strong women at the center of the action. Yes, I’m including Sasha Luss (of Anna) on the list based solely on her ability to kick ass (she can’t act to save her life). All of the female leads in these films are convincingly bad ass. Lively, on the other hand, is NOT. I’ll grant that this is likely by design. After all, her character has no background in violence. She’s not a trained killer or anything like that.

 Stephanie Patrick was a student at Oxford when her family (parents, brother and sister) died. The tragedy left her deeply traumatized. An investigative journalist (Jaffrey, Lost in Space) finds her addicted to drugs and working in a London brothel three years later. He informs her that terrorists rather than mechanical failure were responsible for her family being killed. When he ends up dead, Stephanie seeks out an exiled MI6 agent known only as “B” (Law, Captain Marvel) hiding in the Scottish highlands. He helps her get clean and trains her to fight and shoot.

 Stephanie has only a few months training under her belt when she goes out looking for blood and recompense. Her mission brings her into contact with Mark (Brown, This Is Us), a former CIA agent who now sells information to the highest bidder. He gives her a few names. She goes after them. Needless to say, none of her hits go as planned. Yet somehow she always makes it out alive. I know that action movies are, by nature, implausible. The Rhythm Section stretches plausibility to the limit and beyond. At least Bridget Fonda had back-up in Point of No Return. Lively’s character goes it alone, a risk that would surely result in her immediate demise given her inexperience and half-assed training.

 If I may circle back to Blake Lively briefly, she does make an honest effort at a darker-than-usual role. She really tries. It’s not entirely her fault she doesn’t pull it off. The sheer ordinariness of The Rhythm Section is partly to blame. While I do enjoy a good, globe-trotting action flick that takes its hero/heroine to exotic locales around the world, it comes off as perfunctory here. There is absolutely nothing about The Rhythm Section that makes it stand out. Aside from a couple of intense, claustrophobic action sequences (a car chase and a fight in a small kitchen), the movie just kind of sits there. It’s drab and dreary. None of the actors appear capable of summoning much in the way of enthusiasm. The screenplay by Mark Burnell, who also wrote the novel upon which it is based, has a truncated feel like he’s taking shortcuts to get from one plot point to the next, sacrificing character development and emotional content in the process. Although Stephanie and B spend several months in a remote, isolated place, we don’t feel any sort of connection between them. Law does solid work as B but it’s all for naught in the end.

 The title, if anybody cares, comes from advice Law’s character gives Lively as she practices on the makeshift shooting range. He tells her to calm down and think of her heartbeat and breathing as an orchestra. If only somebody imparted that advice to director Reed Marano (I Think We’re Alone Now). The beat is way off in The Rhythm Section. To its credit, it’s not terrible. It’s watchable but only barely. Given that it’s a January movie, that’s high praise indeed.