The Mother

If they can look past their own internal biases, The Mother should satisfy even the most diehard action fans, while leaving the door to some new ones.

The Mother is a lean, mean actioner, but one that could have benefited from better editing and a tighter script. That’s not to say that the film is terrible or unbearable by any means, it's just that it is a straightforward narrative that does not require a nearly two-hour run time to tell it right.

I’ll take this JLo as “nobody fucks with me or my daughter” killing machine, discovering her long-hidden maternal instincts, over those grimly generic rom-coms she cranks out once a year, which might as well be direct-to-inflight movies.

While there's enough action (murky action, but action all the same) to keep you at least half-engaged with the material, you might want to spend Mother's Day weekend doing something else instead.

The end result for Netflix is a missed opportunity to redefine a generational star as a bona fide action hero.

It’s annoyingly lumpy, shockingly pedestrian, and instantly forgettable.

It’s a script which shows every sign of having had plenty of rewrites, though perhaps it could have done with a few more.

Jennifer Lopez delivers a solid performance. Entertaining and engaging, great one

The movie had good action and J-Lo seemed quite good in it too, just it had too much plot cliches that got too predictable, especially closer to end and some of it I did not like, but overall a decent watch.

The Mother This is a movie we've all seen before. Clichéd and formulaic, The Mother rides lazily on action movies before it, without offering anything tangible or new to the genre, and it's such a shame that three prolific writers were involved in making the plot. Jennifer Lopez's acting is good, but with the material she had to work with, it's a dud. Lucy Paez as Lopez's daughter is a revelatory performance, and this should be a career launcher; her facial mannerisms also remind me of Sydney Sweeney. The Mother has nothing new to offer, but it's still a watchable flick. 5-6/10

Several variations on this plot have been released in the last few years: A skilled spy/agent (Jennifer Lopez) has to come out of hiding to rescue a loved one (in this case, her surly estranged daughter). This requires the usual action scenes, as well as tender drama moments. It's all done with mediocracy and any lack of originality. Even Lopez feels bland. As this genre goes, this one will be quickly forgotten.

Standard fare action spy **** with a side family angle. The plot is very weak.