The Protégé (2021)

Da Nang, Girl!

or

"You Only Get Lucky Once"

 

Martin Campbell can be a hell of a competent director. He's introduced a couple of James Bond's (Pierce Brosnan in Goldeneye and Daniel Craig in Casino Royale) and directed the best of their movies. He did both "Zorro" films with Antonio Banderas and directed one of my "Anytime Movies", the mini-series "Edge of Darkness." But, the film version of Edge wasn't all that good. And he directed the mish-mash that was Green Lantern. When the material is sharp and focused, and when he has the right actors lined up, Campbell is top-notch (here's hoping the Broccoli kids hire him to premiere the next Bond—if the script is good). He's a fine director of action scenes and he also knows how to keep the movies zipping along at a brisk pace. He can also take complicated material and scrape it down to the bare essentials so it doesn't matter, and even add a stylistic flourish or two that gives it a certain style that can surprise the most jaded of movie-watchers, rising above the tendency of producers to jam through the latest craze of movie cliche's and hammer down the brass-tacks of what makes a good entertainment.

 

His latest film, The Protégé, has just opened, and it's nice to see that he can still, at the tender age of 77, show the young directing bucks how to stage an action scene, of which there are plenty.

It's a rainy night in Da Nang, Vietnam, and an operative named Moody (Samuel L. Jackson) is looking for bad guys. When he stealths through what appears to be a stronghold, he finds somebody beat him to the draw—all the well-armed baddies are bleeding out on the floor. A brief scan of bullet-holes leads him to open a cabinet to find a small girl pointing a gun at his head. She pulls the trigger on an empty chamber. He takes the gun from her, commenting that her choice of weapon was usually reliable, reloads the chamber, and hands it back to her saying "Now you're good to go." She does not kill him. They leave together.

It's 30 years later in Bucharest, Romania, and the son of a Romanian don is kidnapped. The ransom is €30,000 and when the drop is made, the woman picking it up (Maggie Q) finds herself looking down the barrels of several automatics. She is taken to the Don's palatial moşie, where he talks big, shows her the money, and slaps her around. She cooly states "I didn't come for the money...I came for you" and opens a hidden stilleto in the phone (there's an app for that?) and punctures his jugular, blood spraying everwhere, and kicking him into his indoor pool, then dispatches his guards. She ignores the money, and walks outside where guards come running up to shoot her *viiip* one's down *viip**viip* the rest fall.

Okay, this may sound spoilerific—it's only for this particular sequence—but it's indicative of the action strategy—the fight's are bloody, spurty, and require some gore make-up, and sometimes things happen that aren't explained until later. It requires some patience along with the visceral jolts. Just go with it.

But, the gist is that Moody and Anna—that's the Maggie Q character, but we don't learn their names until deep into the movie, and it feels like the makers don't care—are a hitman team ("We find people that can't be found") working globally and based in London, where Ana runs a rare book store, one is not sure why, but it's nice to have a day-gig. One day, Michael Rembrandt (Michael Keaton) ambles into the shop looking for a specific book for a birthday present. He and Anna trade cute reparteé, but ultimately it's no sale and he leaves. But, it's a visit by Michael Keaton, so it must be significant, and the ramifications of the visit, which is in reality a sort of recce, will drive the plot of the rest of the movie, and set Anna on a vengeance quest, one that will take her back to Da Nang "and a rendezvous with her past."

Not the sort of summary that would make an executive spill his Stoly and say "I've GOT to make that picture!" But, there are joys. Some of the dialogue is snappy and everybody drawls it out in a world-weary, dryly wisenheimer kind of way. There's a dinner scene between Q and Keaton where they taunt and banter while holding automatics under the table at each other that's a nice little essay on advancing the story-line, but also keeping repartee entertaining, like Nick and Nora busting wise over cocktails. Keaton can be off and on, depending on the material, but when he's on, he's an eye-magnet, and here, he's so simultaneously sharp and relaxed that you watch his every move. There's a shot where he bounces back into the scene to deliver some random comment that feels ad-libbed, like he caught the camera running and said "This'll be fun" and everybody just kept it. And Q is sleek and confident, even when she's jumping off a balcony. There is a list of absurdities in the film a mile long, but the director keeps it fast and punching, so the movie never stalls out. Not for a moment. Every movie drags in places. The Protégé is always light on its feet and pushes the momentum, if not exactly pushing expectations.