The Mother

dir: Niki Caro

2023

The Mother is the very necessary sequel to The Father from a couple of years ago. But instead of a senile Anthony Hopkins battling with unseen forces arrayed against him, we have a Jennifer Lopez with perhaps early-onset dementia fighting against the forces of, I dunno, patriarchy maybe?

Otherwise, the nonsense plot makes very little sense. And we need things to make sense this close to Mother’s Day, yeah?

I mean the flick dropped onto vaunted streaming service Netflix just in time for people to be able to honour their mothers by watching a flick specifically called The Mother.

To not watch it is to spit in your own mother’s face, if not the faces of mothers everywhere.

The Mother of the title is only referred to as “the mother”, but I’m pretty sure her name is probably Karen. Very implausibly, she is a highly decorated and highly important special forces sniper for the United States of America. She gets involved with… I still have no fucking idea, and I’ve watched the thing, but for whatever reasons, she gets involved with a corrupt higher up (Joseph fucking Fiennes) AND some Cuban criminal (Gael Garcia Bernal, in a throwaway role), because she wants to know about some weapons they’re smuggling (or maybe it was exclusive Pokemon cards?). But then she finds out that they’re also smuggling some very dirty looking people somewhere.

I don’t know where. To the States maybe? Smuggling people into the Communist paradise that is Cuba, alternatively? To give them the better life they always dreamed of?

Why is she Special Forces, but also patrolling the famous “wall” at Guantanamo Bay, the one which Jack Nicholson’s overacting in A Few Good Men was trying to protect the rest of America from, AND she’s conducting investigations AND getting pregnant to one of those two men?

A mother’s work is never done, that’s why. Of course she has to do everything, because otherwise how does the script get done? When we’re introduced to her, she’s haggling with two FBI jerks, who are being jerks to her, and she’s heavily pregnant, and then a whole bunch of people get shot.

The guy who murders all the FBI agents bar one, being Joseph Fiennes (the actor, not the character. This is what he has to do for reals these days for beer money) then stabs JLo.

In her pregnant belly. How dare you, you absolute piece of shit? And on Mother’s Day, no less?

And this is the most implausible bit out of an entire flick constructed out of the implausible and the unlikely – the person that murders a bunch of FBI agents is never pursued, never caught.

The States has invaded countries for less. The States has bombed schools and weddings for less. And we’re meant to believe that they just let Joseph Fiennes go, because of that smoky eye thing he used to do back in the day, and because our mums loved him in Shakespeare in Love?

Well, what a rude awakening for us – that was 25 years ago. How fucking old do you feel, or maybe you’re wondering “What’s a Shakespeare and who would ever love him and why?”

I don’t know why he has practically no career and plays shitty baddies in forgettable flicks now. He must have sexually harassed the wrong person’s assistant. Is he terrible in this? It’s hard to tell. He has about 4 minutes of screentime.

The FBI, again implausibly, once the knife attack triggers The Mother’s labour, decide that The Baby will have to be adopted out to some random couple, and The Mother has to fuck off somewhere.

But…but The Mommy doesn’t want to give up her baby. But… but the Mommy knows she has to, so she allows it to happen, and then just waits in the Alaskan wilderness for something interesting to happen in her life.

Twelve long dull years, just long enough for the plot device (the girl) to grow old enough to become convenient for the production.

The bad people decide ah ha, that woman 12 years ago who didn’t really achieve anything against us or our mighty empire of evil – we must find her, now, after 12 years. And maybe there’s a kid somewhere – a ha! We go after the kid, we get da Mommy, kill everyone, and then we debate we’re we should go for lunch. Thai, or that place down the street with the great paella?

JLo, Da Mom of the title, kills a whole bunch of people. She kills people in the States, she kills people in Cuba, and later on she’ll get to kill people at a car park, and then in Alaska. But most importantly she gets to bond with the girl who she gave up 12 years ago *sob*.

What could be more touching than that? Well, it’s decidedly of the not touching at all variety, which is probably a good thing. The Mother is a cow to the daughter, and the daughter is screaming expected teenage crap like “I HATE YOU” and “YOU’RE NOT MY MOM” in such dull, cliché ways. And JLo, as well, who I’ve seen be great in a stack of films that are very much not this film, is so fucking flat throughout that I never really bought any of it.

Do you know how tiring it is to have some limply deliver lines like: “everything I’ve ever done, I did for you” or “I regret a lot of things I’ve done in my life, but I don’t regret having you” and the absolute doozy “boys would like you if you smiled more” level of bullshit. The whole bonding stuff is just – awful. We are meant to buy that she’s adored this child from a far for twelve years, but once she actually gets a chance to spend time with her, acts like a fucking gruesome dolt with so much tough love that makes her look like a sociopath.

But, you know, Special Forces sociopaths get results.

It doesn’t help that I have no idea what the premise even is – international conspiracy of some vague criminality which can’t be caught and can go anywhere really wants to kill 12 year old girl in order to upset The Mother, and then kill The Mother for…Revenge!

Everything is resolved in kind of a cack-handed manner, especially the end, which doesn’t make sense when you think about it on any number of levels, dependent as it is on The Mother getting a particular sniper-like shot on a guy driving a car at speed in order to save Her Daughter, the only precious thing in her life.

I would have loved a reveal that this was all a horrible fantasy in The Mother’s head, and that she and Zoe weren’t connected in any way, and this was just a violent parent killing officers from Child Protective Services. But the algorithm is nowhere near capable enough of delivering something that mildly interesting.

The ending has, in this new perfect world created by JLo killing all of her enemies, The Mother stalking her daughter from nearby, despite the lack of any necessity for setting up a sniper’s nest / perch near her daughter’s school in order to spy on her during school hours. To what kind of viewer is that a happy ending?

How dare you hint at a stupid sequel, that would somehow manage to be even dumber and limper than this?

The Netflix flick Lou which starred Allison Janney was this exact flick, but much, much better. The recent Vietnamese flick Furie was pretty much this flick, but much, much better. I have no objection to the genre, but I have an objection to the laziness with which its delivered, and I question why anyone thought JLo delivering flat dialogue about “where’s my daughter have you seen my daughter I must save my daughter are you my daughter who’s my daughter again?” or her stunt double taking on generic special forces types so lazily was ever going to excite anyone.

4 times about the only thing I liked was seeing and hearing Paul Raci again from Sound of Metal out of 10

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“You can’t keep her from me. I’m her mother.” – and I would like to speak to your manager - The Mother