The trailer for TAKEN director Pierre Morel's new film PEPPERMINT starts out the way you would expect the trailer for any movie starring Jennifer Garner to begin, with heartwarming images of a family having fun together and building each other up with love. But then things take a dark turn.
Garner's character loses her family in a random act of violence and soon she's toting some major firepower on a mission of revenge. It was jarring to see at first, that's not what I've come to expect from Jennifer Garner… then I remembered, action projects are how she broke through. She was the star of the spy series Alias, she did martial arts moves and played an assassin in DAREDEVIL and ELEKTRA, she was in Peter Berg's action thriller THE KINGDOM. What seems like an unexpected choice for her now, since she has been away from action work for the last decade, is actually a return to form.
Written by Chad St. John, PEPPERMINT tells the story of
young mother Riley North, who awakens from a coma after her husband and daughter are killed in a brutal attack on the family. When the system frustratingly shields the murderers from justice, Riley sets out to transform herself from citizen to urban guerilla. Channeling her frustration into personal motivation, she spends years in hiding honing her mind, body and spirit to become an unstoppable force – eluding the underworld, the LAPD and the FBI – as she methodically delivers her personal brand of justice.
Garner is joined in the cast by Richard Cabral, John Ortiz, John Gallagher Jr., Juan Pablo Raba, and Method Man.
I was a fan of Alias back in the day, so I'm glad to see Garner back in ass-kicking mode. PEPPERMINT looks like a movie I would really like to check out when it reaches theatres on September 7th.