In a world where films like John Wick exceed with their beautifully captured high action set piece based films, we’ve seen many similar to it come to take even a sliver of the popularity its helped create. The Protégé is one of those films that wants part of that spotlight but falls into too many cliches and false hopes.
Following Anna, who after being saved as a child grows up to become one of the most dangerous assassins in the world. When her father figure though is killed she vows revenge on whoever did it, setting her on a path of violence towards the one who killed the only man she cared for.
Plot wise its nothing fancy at all. It sets an almost straight path to follow through even hitting all the cliches along the way. What started to happen though is we get introduced to back stories and side plots that never seem to go anywhere or end up being resolved. Its all things too that never need introduced or add anything exciting to the story.
What you’d hope you’d get in this movie though especially if you watched the trailers would be great action sequences. Sadly you’d be left out as well. Far too few and far between here the action is over rather quickly and never given enough. What we get is fantastic in both the action and how its shot however which makes it an even bigger shame we aren’t given more.
Maggie Q is fantastic as Anna showing she could lead an action film like this, her character though, as are all characters here, are just paper thin. No one ever developed past the generic base of what their characters motives are. With Samuel L Jackson and Michael Keaton in supporting roles doing great it just feels like we missed such a shot here.
While never being awful, The Protege is just vanilla and standard. Feeling like something that could of come out 20 years ago and been lost in the shuffle instead of getting a great Atomic Blonde like film, we get something that only shows glimpses of what could have been.
Score : 2 / 5
