How many highly-skilled-assassin movies have been released since Liam Neeson threatened a villain on the phone with his “particular set of skills” in 2008’s “Taken”? An endless, unsurmountable amount. The genre has spawned countless rehashes, both good (“John Wick”) and bad (“Hitman”). Tate Taylor’s “Ava” belongs with the latter, despite it starring Jessica Chastain as a killing machine with a dark past who gets targeted for elimination by the very organization she is a part of. Sounds familiar? “Ava” adds very little to a genre that badly needed to be shaken up. Taylor’s attempt at giving Chastain her own Taken-esque franchise falls flat by playing like a greatest hits package of the better movies before it, instead of something fresh and riveting.
We already know from the very start that Chastain’s Ava, recruited by the military, will not let the bounty on her head get the best of her. The endless bodies of villains will pile up, ditto the inevitable climactic clash with protégé Simon (Colin Farrell), who wants Ava out of the picture after a botched job. The fight between Chastain and Farrell doesn’t hold back on the thrills and hints at the better movie hidden underneath this mosaic of cliche-ridden plot strands. Taylor pulls out all the stops with this sequence, using body doubles to choreograph a bone-crunching fight but in fact, it’s the only scene where both actors appear together, at the same time on screen.
Needing to escape red alert territory, Ava takes a plane to Boston to bond with her dysfunctional family, including an estranged sister (Jess Weixler) and her boyfriend (Common), who used to be Ava's fiancé until she up and left him. She also visits her neurotic mother (Geena Davis looking odd in a slab of plastic surgery). It doesn’t help that Ava has a drinking problem; she’s been sober for a few months now, but every time she looks at a bottle, she starts to melt down and needs to leave the room. But why even include these subplots in the first place? It all feels forced and stringently unnecessary, for the primary reason why we’re even watching such a film is for the action.
That’s the problem with “Ava”: just when you think it gains in momentum, Matthew Newton’s dull-as-a-cucumber screenplay bogs it down with soap opera theatrics. No wonder its theatrical was scrapped in favor of a direct to VOD release. I’m very aware of what Taylor and Newton’s goal was here. Their “Ava” desperately wants to be something it is not. It's an obvious attempt at building a female action franchise. Almost everything falls flat in this movie, from the action to the direction, to the tone-deaf screenplay. Ironically enough, Newton was set to direct until Chastain, also a producer on the film, got flack for having someone with domestic abuse charges in her film. Newton stepped down, and Taylor (“The Help”) stepped in to save the day, so to speak. [D-]
Skip this one and rewatch Charlize Theron in “Atomic Blonde”.
Boyle's answer was met with a shout of "Never do that shit again" from the crowd, and the TIFF moderator swiftly brought the Q&A to a close, thanking everyone for coming.