{"id":9872,"date":"2024-12-10T23:27:49","date_gmt":"2024-12-11T04:27:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=9872"},"modified":"2024-12-10T23:27:49","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T04:27:49","slug":"the-protege","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/12\/10\/the-protege\/","title":{"rendered":"The Prot\u00e9g\u00e9"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Prot\u00e9g\u00e9 <\/strong>(2021)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lionsgate\/Action-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 109 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody violence, language, some sexual references, nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Martin Campbell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Richard Wenk\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Rupert Parkes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: David Tattersall\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 20, 2021 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Michael Keaton, Maggie Q, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Patrick, Patrick Malahide, Ray Fearon, Ori Pfeffer, Taj Atwal, Florin Piersic Jr., Tudor Chirila, Velizar Binev.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $8.7M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0How about this for a dream team, Nikita, Nick Fury and Batman? Sounds pretty cool, no? That\u2019s what you get with The Protege<\/strong>, a totally slamming action flick directed by Martin Campbell whose filmography includes two James Bond movies (GoldenEye and Casino Royale), two Zorro adventures, the underrated conspiracy thriller Edge of Darkness and the campy superhero piece Green Lantern. He\u2019s more than qualified to direct this tale of globetrotting assassins taking out targets as they confront the past.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Maggie Q (Nikita) stars as Anna, a highly skilled contract killer who runs a rare bookstore in London. It\u2019s both a front and a passion. This is a woman who oozes class from every pore. She has exquisite taste in everything- food, clothes and literature. She\u2019s also lethal with every kind of weapon you can imagine. She owes her life to her ailing mentor Moody (Jackson, The Avengers) who spirited her out of Vietnam after a massacre from which she emerged as the sole survivor. Her past is about to come back to haunt her.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It starts when Moody asks her to find a fellow named Lucas Hayes. Not long after, people who helped Anna turn up dead. An attempt is made on her life as well. To find out who\u2019s responsible, she has to go back to Da Nang. The person she\u2019s looking for is connected to a contract Moody carried out 30 years earlier. Her search brings her into contact with Rembrandt (Keaton, Batman), a ruthless fixer for a billionaire criminal (Malahide, The Long Kiss Goodnight) who imagines himself a global humanitarian. She first meets Rembrandt when he poses as a customer at her shop looking for a rare Audubon book. They flirt for a bit. They have a neat back-and-forth, quoting Edgar Allan Poe as they look deep into each other\u2019s eyes. The chemistry continues as they try to kill each other time and time again.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As has become the trend as of late, the plot of The Protege<\/strong> is somewhat convoluted. To its credit, it makes more sense than Jackson\u2019s previous outing The Hitman\u2019s Wife\u2019s Bodyguard. There\u2019s a lot less shouting too. Still, it\u2019s loud and chaotic. It has the usual genre amenities- shoot-outs, fights, stunts, chases, explosions and bloody kill scenes. A biker gang led by Robert Patrick (T2) shows up from time to time to lend Anna a hand. They prove especially helpful when she wishes to question a heavily guarded person of importance with valuable information.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In any event, the action scenes are very well done. An early sequence in Bucharest sets the stage for what\u2019s to come in how it establishes Anna as a bad ass not to be underestimated. There\u2019s also a great bit where she uses a fire hose to make a quick trip from the upper floor of a sterile office building to the lobby. Wouldn\u2019t you know it, it\u2019s just the right length to allow her a safe feet-on-the-floor landing. The Protege <\/strong>bucks a trend that\u2019s driven me nuts since the final five minutes of the first Lethal Weapon. The well-choreographed fights are edited in a way that allows the viewer to see and understand what\u2019s going on. You see the hits, punches and kicks land. You see the damage they inflict. I\u2019m especially impressed with the fights between Maggie Q and Keaton. In a way, they\u2019re kind of flirtatious. It\u2019s obvious they\u2019re attracted to each other despite fate making them enemies. At one point, a combat session ends with them in bed together for a different kind of session. It\u2019s touches like this that make The Protege <\/strong>so much fun.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Maggie Q is a total bad ass, no two ways about it. I\u2019ve known it for a long time. She\u2019s shown her mettle in Mission: Impossible III, Live Free or Die Hard and the Divergent series. She\u2019s good in The Protege<\/strong>, but the screenplay lets her down by not developing her character beyond a surface level. We eventually find out what happened to her in Da Nang as a child and it\u2019s horrible. What we don\u2019t see is her training with Moody. How did she transform into the human killing machine she is now? At the very least, a montage would have sufficed. Despite this hiccup, she does solid work. Keaton has not slowed down with age. At 70, he\u2019s still more than capable of going toe-to-toe with his younger co-star. He brings the right amounts of charm and menace to his villainous character. He still has that mischievous twinkle in his eye that can become threatening in an instant.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Jackson, on the other hand, plays it like he always does. He brings his trademark foul-mouthed swagger to his character. It\u2019s always fun to see him in action, but his character feels slightly out of place in The Protege<\/strong>. It\u2019s almost like he\u2019s in a different movie. Why don\u2019t we just call it comic relief and leave it at that?<\/p>\n

\u00a0There\u2019s a surprise plot twist in The Protege <\/strong>that I suspect most will see coming. I saw it right away. My friend did not. Either way, it\u2019s really not all that surprising. You\u2019ll know it when you see it. Okay, so The Protege<\/strong> is flawed. So what? It\u2019s a damn entertaining late-summer actioner. Fast-paced and action-packed, it\u2019s better than most of the typical August studio output. I enjoyed it very much. It\u2019s a solid matinee movie.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Prot\u00e9g\u00e9 (2021)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lionsgate\/Action-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 109 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody violence, language, some sexual references, nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Martin Campbell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Richard Wenk\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Rupert Parkes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: David Tattersall\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 20, 2021 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Michael Keaton, Maggie Q, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Patrick, Patrick Malahide, Ray Fearon, Ori Pfeffer, Taj Atwal, Florin Piersic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10175,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hidden-treasures","category-kick-ass-actioners"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/The-Protege-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9872"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10177,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9872\/revisions\/10177"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}