Ava

Year 14, Day 141 - 5/21/22 - Movie #4,144

BEFORE: Well, I think I made the right call, dropping "Miss Julie" into the chain yesterday.  This way both Colin Farrell AND Jessica Chastain carry over to today's film, and I think I would have felt disappointed in a way if I'd counted yesterday's film as just a romance, I guess it's what we can call a "Swedish romance", which means the lead characters love each other and want to shag, but they also want to kill each other.  Love and hate are not true opposites, it turns out.

And this leads me to today's film, where the lead characters all want to kill each other, I think, but for vastly different reasons.  I do have one more Jessica Chastain film on the list, but I need it to make a different connection in about 10 days, right at the end of May, so I'm withholding that one for then, and I'll just follow up tomorrow with another Colin Farrell film. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Gunpowder Milkshake" (Movie #4,015)

THE PLOT: Ava is a deadly assassin who works for a black ops organization, traveling the globe specializing in high profile hits. When a job goes dangerously wrong she is forced to fight for her own survival. 

AFTER: Isn't this always the way - I sit down to watch a gripping action film with a beautiful actress playing a mentally messed-up assassin, and what ends up bothering me? The fact that she looks nothing like the actresses playing her mother and sister. Look, I realize not every woman looks like her mother or sister, but I expect at least a passing resemblance when actors are cast as family members.  Maybe Ava was adopted, I don't know, because the film doesn't explain it, or maybe her character is supposed to look more like her father, I don't know because he's not shown in the film, he's dead or living elsewhere.  But isn't it the casting directors job to hire actors to play family members and at least make sure that the relationship is at least somewhat believable?  Jessica Chastain's mother here is played by Geena Davis, and the two actresses look NOTHING alike, am I supposed to NOT notice that?  Sure, people can dye their hair, so Ava's mother didn't need to be a redhead, but come on, there are only a few different facial types out there, can't they at least make sure their faces look a LITTLE bit like the same shape?  I guess if you can get Geena Davis, you get Geena Davis, but then the down-side is that her character looks nothing like her daughter's character, which is a bit of a problem. 

Perhaps the casting of Geena Davis is a nod to the 1996 film "The Long Kiss Goodnight", where Ms. Davis herself played the lead role as a secret agent/assassin in an action thriller, and she had memory problems, whereas Ava is an alcoholic/addict, much easier to believe than the old amnesia plot device. John Malkovich also plays Ava's handler, and I'm sure I've seen him in similar secret agent roles before, like in "RED", "Burn After Reading" and "Ripley's Game", so maybe they're just having fun with the casting here.  

Ava's problems begin when she starts (again) asking too many questions about the people she's supposed to take down.  She wants to know, in their words, what they did to deserve someone putting a hit out on them, instead of just taking them out, quietly and efficiently.  From this we're supposed to derive that she has some kind of conscience, knowing that she's only killing "bad" people makes the job easier for her, but doesn't win her any points from her handlers.  After a job in Saudi Arabia goes wrong (honestly, it's a little unclear to me what her mistake was, something about the way she said her fake name?) her handlers decide to have her taken care of, hiring an assassin to take out their own assassin.  

There's something weird about the way the pieces fit together here, like I couldn't tell if the scenes were being shown out of linear order, or if Ava decided twice to go back to Boston.  But then was the failed operation in Saudi Arabia between two trips to Boston, or is it the backstory that happened before the job in France?  Did Ava choose to take time off, or did her handler tell her to take time off, or both?  It's all very unclear and confusing for the first half.  

Things become a bit clearer in the second half, because all the cards are on the table - the head of the organization takes out Ava's handler, and instead of just sending more assassins to take her out, he calls her on the phone and tells her this is going to happen.  It's good manners, I suppose, but it's a terrible strategy.  And this guy RUNS the international operation of assassins?  

I suppose there needs to be some kind of NITPICK POINT about the portrayal of alcoholism here - alcoholics who go to meetings, as part of their pledges, admit that they have no power over their addiction, so they have to avoid putting themselves into positions where they are around temptation, and for that reason I think many of them choose to request that their hotel minibars are either locked or kept empty.  Knowing she herself is an alcoholic, would Ava allow herself to stay in a hotel room with a minibar?  Obviously it's important to the plot that she relapse at some point, but it raises questions about why she didn't take proper steps to prevent this possibility when she was sober.  Anyway, nobody in the world could afford to drink all those tiny bottles in the minibar like that - even Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos would balk at that. 

Things in Boston also get complicated when Ava returns to visit her family after eight years away - she's been in touch with her sister and mother via e-mails and told them she works for the United Nations, but apparently Ava hasn't read those e-mails very closely, because she learns that her ex-fiancé is living with her younger sister, and yeah, that could get very awkward.  And so it does, especially when that guy, Michael, (himself a gambling addict) doesn't come home one night and Ava feels the need to track him down and get him clear of his bookies.  What a shame, because he was THIS close to winning that high-stakes poker game, and digging himself out of the hole himself.  Yeah, right, that's just what every gambling addict says.  

Eventually the top man in the organization travels from British Columbia to Boston just to take her out himself - but wait, doesn't he have other people who can do this?  I guess he really wants to handle this personally so it's done right.  OK, sure, let me know how that goes.  It's a knock-down, drag-out fight that also manages to trash a very nice hotel room - assassins are the new rock stars, I guess.  Geez, now Ava's got to cover not only a very large bill from the minibar, but all the damages down to the room, too.  

Yep, there's kind of a love triangle here, between Ava and Michael and her sister - this sure seems to be the week for them.  More complicated is the relationship between Ava and her mother, in the past Ava had caught her father cheating on her mother, and instead of admitting his guilt, her father chose to discredit Ava and basically kick her out of the family.  By the time seen in the film, Ava has reconciled with her mother, but hearing the interplay between mother and daughter, the typical Boston mother who finds fault with everything, I think I understand why Ava started drinking in the first place...

Also starring John Malkovich (last seen in "Unlocked"), Common (last seen in "Hunter Killer"), Geena Davis (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Jess Weixler (last heard in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye"), Ioan Gruffudd (last seen in "The Professor and the Madman"), Diana Silvers (last seen in "Booksmart"), Joan Chen (last seen in "Hemingway & Gellhorn"), Efka Kvaraciejus (last seen in "An American Pickle"), Christopher J. Domig, Michel Muller, Dieter Riesle, Aramis Merlin, Martin Lee, Simonne Stern, Steve Gagliastro (last seen in "American Hustle"), Nadezhda Russo (last seen in "Love, Weddings & Other Disasters"), Joe Sobalo Jr.

RATING: 5 out of 10 fake port-a-potties