La Protégée

Initially I was thrilled about getting to sit down to watch "The Protége" from writer Richard Wenk and director Martin Campbell, but someone had mentioned that the movie wasn't really all that great. So it was with a bit of doubt that I sat down to watch "The Protége". Regardless of how it was playing out, then I would watch it, as the movie had a rather nice cast ensemble.

And I must say that I am glad that I opted to watch the movie, because I happened to enjoy the movie. This was a good old fashioned action crime thriller, for better or worse. Sure, the storyline and plot may have been predictable and somewhat generic, but who cares? It made for good wholesome entertainment.

The storyline is easily followed and doesn't really require all that much in the intellectual department, so you just switch off the old gray and lean back and enjoy the movie. And yeah, that was actually a good thing about the movie, because it is a munch-on-the-popcorn-and-enjoy-the-action kind of movie.

"The Protége" has a good cast ensemble. And truth be told, of course I had to watch "The Protége" given the fact that Maggie Q was starring in it, as she tends to make some pretty decent action movies. And she was nicely cast for "The Protége", I will say that much. And it certainly was nice to have the likes of Michael Keaton and Samuel L. Jackson in a movie such as this as well.

There is a good amount of action and fight scenes throughout the course of "The Protége", which definitely help bring the movie up and into a good pacing.

I was adequately entertained by "The Protége", and it is a movie well-worth watching if you like action crime thrillers.

My rating of "The Protége" lands on a six out of ten stars.

The Protégé attempts to make a played out genre its own by adding awkward banter and misfired quips. The action, while fair, is the clear focus of this production because the plot is clunky and uninteresting. This is exacerbated by Maggie Q's bland acting. She tries to achieve the assured demeanor that the script is hoping for but she comes across wooden and forced. This isn't solely her fault since the dialogue wishes it was much cooler than it actually is. But Maggie does not elevate the role in any meaningful way.

From a technical perspective, The Protégé is decent enough. The action is the film's redeeming quality because the shot choices, choreography, and special effects are all adequate. Once, the music even enhances a fight scene to highlight juxtaposing emotions at hand. Yet, this is outweighed by the contrived and cringe writing. In almost every way, the script fails the audience because the story is unoriginal, the conversations lack wit, and the characters are flat. Often, The Protégé outright tells us how to feel instead of giving us real reasons to care, leaving viewers to groan at a marginally subpar piece of work.

Writing: 2/10 Direction: 4/10 Cinematography: 5/10 Acting: 4/10 Editing: 5/10 Sound: 6/10 Score/Soundtrack: 6/10 Production Design: 4/10 Casting: 5/10 Effects: 6/10

Overall Score: 4.7/10.

You've seen most of this before, brutality, revenge, rich people. I liked the cat and mouse chemistry between Keaton and Q despite the age difference. A good throwback feel.

It's a pretty decent assassin seeking revenge story, we all know the drill as we've all seen a million of them.

Maggie Q is who she is in everything, and is always good at it.

Michael Keaton was surprisingly good, but I'm always surprised he can act, despite his long and varied career.

The story was the weak point, but as it was a bog-standard revenge story with an extremely obvious twist at the end, that isn't surprising or even a particular detriment.

While the Protege is a somewhat forgettable, typical action thriller movie, it's two leads do a great job. Maggie and Michael are both very charismatic in the movie, and do not phone in their performances. Samuel L Jackson is also good, but his performance is a little more phoned in than our other leads. The action is very good, with realistic hand to hand combat and decent gun play. While it's not the best action in a movie, it's definitely choreographed well and shot competently. I would mainly recommend this movie for Maggie and Michaels performances alone, along with the action scenes. However, if you're not interested in that you can probably skip this movie and not miss anything.