2020 has been a year with many movies either delayed to later in the year or postponed entirely until 2021. Films considered for Oscar awards for the year are receiving an extension for when they need to be released. That extra time could be extended even longer, depending on events later this year because of the 2020 pandemic. Many movies have skipped theaters and gone straight to OnDemand. One of those movies that will need to worry about Oscar consideration this year is Tate Taylor’s (The Help, The Girl on the Train) Ava.
This Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty, Molly’s Game) driven vehicle is an admirable attempt to put a spin on the familiar assassin-for-hire genre. Ava attempts to separate itself from other similar movies by making its lead character, Ava (Chastain), three-dimensional, something movies in the Jason Bourne series and even the James Bond series don’t have. Unfortunately, though it does try hard, this part of the film fails in its attempts to be something more memorable than it ultimately is.
This is not to say Ava is a bad movie because it is not. It moves very quickly, and while it might not keep you on the edge of your seat, you are engrossed with the cat-and-mouse games, even though you’ll be able to predict how it ends within the first hour. This film is loaded with talent, too, making it even more disappointing than otherwise. John Malkovich (In the Line of Fire, Bird Box), Geena Davis (A League of Their Own, Thelma & Louise), Common (The Tale, The Hate You Give), and Colin Farrell (In Bruges, The Lobster) are all superbly cast. Looking at this cast alone, you would assume lofty expectations for this movie. While it does collapse at times, it certainly is by no fault of these actors. Completely outmatched in this movie is Judy (Jess Weixler – IT: Chapter 2, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby), who plays Ava’s sister. Judy’s terrible acting ruined every scene she was in (far too many). The dialogue that she worked with was atrocious (not her fault), but her delivery was way worse (which was her fault). Weixler couldn’t get out of her way with this movie and ruined every scene she was in, which was far too many. Not even Chastain could save the scenes with her strained sister.
Ava is a gifted but distraught woman. Before escaping from Judy, Judy’s fiance, Michael (Common), and mother, Bobbi (Davis), as a young adult to join the military, Ava suffered from substance abuse issues that continue to haunt her to the present day. We learn that two years before her most current assignment at her secret government agency (she tells her family that she works for the United Nations), she had a personal setback that affected her with her current organization. While estranged from her family for years, her handler, Duke (Malkovich), has taken her under his wing and becomes her father figure. While others in the organization believe that she is a liability, Duke defends her, even though he will be the first to admit that her conscience often gets the best of her. Instead of just handling the missions as assigned, Ava tries to learn what terrible things her targets have done, perhaps to justify if their misdeed is worth an assassination. Though she carries out her missions, the fact that she is even talking to her targets is not something that sets well with the organization.
Though he has never met Ava, her tactics incorrectly rub Management Chief Simon (Farrell). Though Duke’s former protege, he feels he no longer needs to listen to his mentor and disagrees with keeping the killer star Ava on the force if she is going to break protocol and make things personal. While Duke puts Ava on leave to get her to refocus, Simon secretively puts a kill order on her while she has returned to her native Boston to piece together the broken parts of her life. How her questioning her targets requires her to revisit her home after many years away isn’t made clear. And is it pure coincidence that her mother happens to have suffered a heart attack days before Ava’s surprise visit, or did we need something to fuel the story and bring up issues of her past? In either case, there was no smooth transition, leaving us to feel unaffected and uninterested in Ava’s backstory.
The action scenes in this movie are excellent. We get many of the same spots we are accustomed to seeing. We get an incredible ending sequence as two characters square off against each other in a highly well-choreographed hand-to-hand combat. Chastain is believable as an agent, tormented by events earlier in her life while trying to overcome her demons. As she usually does in her movies, she plays a powerful character. However, there is a vulnerability that some of her more recent characters (Miss Sloan, Molly’s Game, Interstellar, Woman Walks Ahead) didn’t have. It may have worked with a different script or a change in director. Instead, it felt both forced and rushed. Judy’s character should have been left on the cutting room floor. While I understand that a character like hers may have been needed, Judy didn’t advance the movie. Weixler made her scenes laughable with her inability to match Chastain. Her terrible acting, uneven script, and lack of a cohesive story brought this movie down from a B- to a C/C-. It failed to capitalize on the handful of individual pieces it had going for.
Plot 7.5/10
Character Development 6/10
Character Chemistry 6/10
Acting 7.5/10
Screenplay 6/10
Directing 7/10
Cinematography 8/10
Sound 9/10
Hook and Reel 9/10
Universal Relevance 7/10
71%
Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie
- Red Sparrow
- Atomic Blonde
- Salt
- Mr. and Mrs. Smith
- Wanted