Netflix’s The Mother misses a clear chance to make Jennifer Lopez an action star

polygon.com:

Ask any great screen fighter, and they’ll tell you: Movie fighting is much more like dancing than like real fighting. Bruce Lee was famously a champion cha-cha dancer, Patrick Swayze successfully transitioned from dancer to action star, and scores of movies from India have shown how terrific dancers make for terrific screen fighters.

That’s the opportunity director Niki Caro (The Whale Rider, Disney’s live-action Mulan) has with Netflix’s The Mother, a dark action thriller starring Jennifer Lopez as a nameless assassin thrust back into action to protect the daughter she gave up at birth. Lopez is a singular talent who has excelled in the crime genre with Out of Sight and Hustlers. She’s an enjoyable comedic actor, and she’s particularly strong as a dancer, coming up as a Fly Girl on In Living Color before hitting global superstardom through her dance-centric music videos.

Unfortunately, neither of those skills gets much use in The Mother, which doesn’t give her much to work with. The plot and her character are darkly serious, and the most exciting action sequences involve long-range gun fights and vehicle chase scenes. The few hand-to-hand combat sequences are edited beyond recognition, robbing viewers of any chance to follow the action or appreciate the work Lopez put in for this role.

“She had to learn how to fight, and she’s really good,” second unit director Jeff Habberstad said in a behind-the-scenes video about her training for the role. “Dance and choreography background makes it so she’s just real coordinated.”

The Mother opens at an FBI safe house, where Lopez’s very pregnant character (credited only as “The Mother”) is acting as an informant, with agents interviewing her about a pair of dangerous arms dealers.