Lou

In Janney’s capable hands, our heroine is fully fleshed out, yet lean with more gristle on the bone than meat. She delivers zingy one-liners as well as she does a knock-out punch. Her refreshing spin on this archetype, blending masculine bravado and bluster with feminine wit and wisdom, elevates the spartan material.

The plot races from one tense outdoor confrontation to the next, as “Lou” tells a simple but effective story about two women enduring the harshness of the elements and the machinations of violent men.

Lou is a quiet thriller that takes a deep dive into the consequences of one’s actions. The film enables Janney and Jurnee Smollett to command every scrap of attention through physical and emotionally compelling performances.

Though Lou is derivative and schematically plotted, it’s gripping enough to get away with it, thanks largely to Janney’s committed performance.

Janney is flinty enough in what isn’t one of her best performances. Smollett, recently seen in “Lovecraft Country,” but a reliable screen presence since “Eve’s Bayou,” gives the picture its heart.

The sheer existence of Lou might be a step in the right direction for women over 50 in action movies, but it’s a misstep everywhere else.

Janney makes a great murderous curmudgeon, but the script’s big reveal strands the actress with a “layered” character who’s never given the chance to transcend the most basic aspects of her archetype. Worse: She only gets to kill like three people!

Allison Janney is fantastic in this, her performance alone warrants a watch.

(Mauro Lanari) If even the Bad Robot of J.J. Abrams starts producing films that are old cinematographic works with the simple gender change of the protagonists from male to female, we'll have them for about another century. But didn't the feminine universe have its own specificity, sisterhood instead of brotherhood or sorority instead of fraternity?

Allison Janney is the person who gets this film moving, and more than proves that she can lead an action movie without any real hiccups, so I can confirm that it's her performance that will get you interested, it's just a shame she wasn't given a story worth watching.

Not the worst action thriller I have seen. The plot is very, very contrived though.

yeah, lol, this was pretty unwatchable. i expected more from allison janey, but this was a rush job, hack job, same as all the others type of "action" revenge flick, i had to fast foward through most of it, because frankly, all of it was uneccesary. got to see her plug a couple bad dudes real good, but other than that this is a complete pass.