Femmes Fatales

So the wife was out for an evening, so I thought I'd watch one of those female assassin movies. I picked Ava (2020). It stars Jessica Chastain in the title role, an elite assassin, mentored by John Malkovich, in a role that the older Donald Sutherland might have played. Chastain has started asking her targets if they know what they've done wrong before she kills them, so Malkovich's boss, Colin Farrell, decides to have her taken out, while telling Malkovich he won't.

But Chastain has other problems. She started out as a hard-drinking party girl and junky, with a sharp-tongued fading beauty for mother, a sister following in partying footsteps, and Common for an ex-, now engagrd to said sister. Chastain just wants to try to connect to her family, but they are more fucked up than she is, and she's a hired killer. SPOILER - she finally gives in and gets drunk, just when Farrell comes after her. It hurts her accuracy, but increases her pain threshold. 

Really, this seemed like a weird family drama smushed together with an action film. I preferred the action.

I wouldn't have chosen it for my next movie, but Netflix decided to deliver The Protégé (2021). This stars Maggie Q as the assassin, with Samuel L. Jackson as her mentor. There isn't really a Farrell counterpart - her bosses are trying to kill her, but are sort of forgettable. I can only remember the one called Vohl ("We must feed Vohl!"). But Michael Keaton shows up as a fellow assassin, and there's a cute scene where they start fighting and end up fucking. 

Jackson found Q in Vietnam as a child. She had murdered four crooks who killed her parents and kidnapped her. Jackson raised her up, and lets face it, he makes a better mentor than Malkovich, always laughing and living it up in an English manor, playing blues riffs on rare guitars. That's part of what makes this a better movie: the quality of the leads, or possibly their roles. The locations and situations are all very high-class - Maggie works in a rare bookshop, and so on. Also, Maggie Q makes a great action star - very sexy in a black body suit. 

Still, I wonder if I've seen enough of these. There's another on my Netflix list, Kate, with Mary Elizabeth Winstead. But maybe I should wait awhile before watching that one.