1/7/2023 0 Comments Cast of the protegeOne need look no further for how the film feels about its setting than the following line delivered by Patrick’s Billy Boy: “Vietnam has always been a place of death. Rather than delve into the rich texture of Da Nang, one of the Vietnam’s biggest cities, The Protégé uses the city as a backdrop to be coded with colonialist assumptions of danger and lawlessness. Yet despite a large chunk of this movie is both set and filmed in Vietnam, the film’s world is populated almost entirely by American characters, including a Da Nang-based biker gang headed by Robert Patrick and composed of other white men. Thirty years later, when Moody is killed by a mysterious Big Bad, Anna goes back to Vietnam to find his killer and becomes tied up in a convoluted conspiracy. In The Protégé, Q stars as Anna, a Vietnamese assassin found by hitman Moody (Jackson) as a child and trained to join the found family business. Jackson, and Michael Keaton are goddamn professionals. The answer is a lot, because Maggie Q, Samuel L. The Protégé is an exercise in casting several charismatic actors and seeing how many terrible tropes can be piled on top of them before the performers break under the clichés’ weight. Unfortunately, a terrible script results in a 109-minute reminder of just how good Q’s underrated action TV series Nikita truly was, and just how much kinder action TV has been to women than the world of action movies in the last decade. ![]() The film pairs Casino Royale director Martin Campbell with proven action hero Maggie Q, and it should be a shoe-in for a good time. This is probably because there has traditionally been less money to be made on TV, so the rich, mostly white men who rule Hollywood have left TV to a slightly more diverse crowd of behind-the-scenes talent to tell slightly more diverse-especially on less “important” platforms like The CW.Īction flick The Protégé, released in theaters last weekend, tells this story too well. The TV landscape has always been ahead of movies when it comes to giving women-and other underrepresented identities-a shot. Overall, The Protégé is a film you can put on if you're bored, but otherwise, it's a middle-of-the-road story.This article contains minor spoilers for The Protégé and Nikita. But if the story were stronger, Q and her castmates would be better served. Keaton and Jackson do their best with their roles, and Q is entertaining enough in her action sequences. Characterizations are simplistic and expected, and the reasons why people are out to get Moody are ill-defined. But that alone can't save a film that has a weak story. Having Q and Jackson in the main roles is a welcome change of pace and proof that Hollywood is at least trying to heed the call of being more diverse in its casting. ![]() ![]() The film follows the usual cliché of an assassin out for revenge, with the most notable departure from the norm being that an Asian American woman and a Black man are the two lead characters. However, the storyline doesn't have enough staying power to fuel several films. But it does feel like the filmmakers might have had high hopes of starting their own franchise centered on a kick-butt female action star. To be fair, The Protégé isn't trying to be another John Wick. This action film tries to bring something new to a genre that was already irrevocably changed (and challenged by) the John Wick franchise, but it falls short.
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