[rating=5.00]
The Rhythm Section is one of the more frustrating films to come around in a good while. It is a film struggling with purpose, grasping for something stable enough to hold onto as it thrashes around in search of meaning. That meaning lays permanently just beyond its reach, so close that even we, the audience, are all too aware of it’s trying to grab hold to.
It is, put simply, very nearly a good movie. Despite the best efforts from director Reed Morano, best known for helming the first three incredible episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Rhythm Section sits upon the broken foundation of its script, and no amount of maintenance can prevent the walls from crumbling inward.
Perhaps the strangest part about this fact is that the script was written by Mark Burnell based upon his novel of the same name. Normally, we might expect that the author of the book would endeavor to ensure that their story was translated well onto the screen. The fact that the book in question comes in at near 500 pages and the movie itself is less than two hours in length tells me that much was left by the wayside in the adaptation.
The end result is a slipshod attempt to capture the intensity of the Bourne franchise without ever earning the right to its own mystery. Even with moments of potential brilliance that shine through thanks to Morano’s guiding hand, The Rhythm Section quickly becomes another dime-a-dozen spy thriller that you’ll soon find in the discount bins at any number of used DVD stores.
Which sucks, because there’s very nearly something here. Maybe not a great movie, but at least a good one. The character of Stephanie Patrick (Blake Lively) is an interesting one, and with a better script The Rhythm Section might have been the start to a fun franchise. Instead, it quickly becomes an also-ran, a film most memorable by what it isn’t rather than what it is.
Stephanie Patrick begins her journey as a broken woman. Three years following the death of her entire family in a horrific plane crash, she has descended into the world of heroin and prostitution. Thanks to the work of a freelance journalist (Reza Jaffrey), Stephanie discovers that the crash was no mere accident but, instead, a terrorist operation that’s been covered up by the world’s intelligence services. This leads her to meeting disgraced MI6 agent Iain Boyd (Jude Law) who secretly trains Stephanie in the art of covert assassination.
Rarely are so many of the right pieces assembled in so boring a manner. Burnell’s script lacks any intrigue or exposition that might help us connect to either the character or the story and, instead, relies upon clichés and tropes as a shorthand. So many shortcuts are taken on the exposition and characterization that even when the movie hits it’s still hard to care. The Rhythm Section doesn’t have characters so much as it has over-trodden pastiches of half-baked archetypes. We don’t feel bad for Stephanie, we’re told to feel bad for her, and the script expects us to fall in line.
The problem is we can’t. We may want to. Indeed, Stephanie’s story is a sad one. But the script gives this no time to percolate and simmer, throwing us instead into a series of scenes that expect us to do the heavy lifting. There’s definitely a solid story in the mix somewhere, but not in the way that it’s been executed.
Lively and Law do a fine enough job with the material they’ve been given but the material is so sparse that it’s a wonder they can shine at all. The real star, however, is Morano, who holds the film together impressively and even manages a few intriguing scenes that show what The Rhythm Section could have been. In particular, she orchestrates one of the better car chase scenes in recent memory and assembles it with a frenetic intensity that showcases the kind of director she might be with better material.
But what we’re left with is a film that never finds its own beat and is, instead, left thrashing. It’s never terrible, but nor is it ever particularly good. It’s merely a movie that exists, for the moment, and will soon be lost to memory, gathering dust in the discount bin and wondering where it all went wrong.
The Rhythm Section is now playing in theaters everywhere.
