Former war hero Nikki’s peaceful life is shattered when her daughter is kidnapped. Thrust into the criminal underworld while hunted by cops and military, she must fight to rescue her child.
What We Thought:
Protector feels like an early 2000s Straight-to-Video action flick. Milla Jovovich plays a special ops type soldier who comes home and has to take on gangsters and human traffickers when her teenaged daughter is kidnapped from a local bar.
I like Jovovich. I like her Resident Evil films and a lot of other movies she’s been in. She’s proven she can handle action sequences. The biggest issue is that the film just isn’t all that realistic. Yes women are allowed in combat nowadays, but very rarely do they end up doing special forces type work. If she was an every day soldier that loses it because they took her daughter it would be more believable and you wouldn’t have needed as many battlefield flashbacks.
It’s also very generic in its action and dialogue. Matthew Modine plays her military boss and he’s a walking stereotype of military types. D.B. Sweeney is a police captain and like Modine the character is one-dimensional. There isn’t a character who feels fresh and the entire movie feels rehashed.
Then there’s the surprise twist. I won’t spoil it, but it certainly doesn’t add anything to it. It’s almost like they knew they were making a by-the-books movie and decided to throw in a twist last minute.
Protector is watchable, but it doesn’t separate itself from similar films. If you grew up on Direct-to-Video action flicks with one or two recognizable names then you’ll like it. If you are expecting a mainstream action movie that could get a theater full of fans cheering then you will be disappointed.
The Nerds Templar 