In Pierre Morel's Peppermint, Jennifer Garner plays a stressed suburban L.A. mom turned vigilante machine after her husband and daughter are shot down by murderous drug-dealers on the child's birthday, a few days before Christmas. Yes, the pathos in the first 15 minutes is laid on pretty thick. Because the drug lord (Juan Pablo Raba) owns L.A. cops, lawyers and judges, his hitmen go free. Garner's character, Riley (homage to the Aliens series’ Ripley?), goes ballistic in the courtroom, is ordered into psychiatric custody but escapes and disappears for five years. During that time she's a ghost traveling the world, training in hand-to-hand combat, stockpiling military grade weaponry and, on the fifth anniversary of the killings, begins taking out the bad guys, all while living out of a van (more an arsenal on wheels) on Skid Row. Yes, it's utterly, brutally ridiculous and features the highest count of bullets to the face I've seen all year but Garner pours a great deal of heart into all of the havoc.
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