Movie Breakdown: The Rhythm Section

Pre-Screening Ramble:

The January release date tells me that I shouldn’t have any reason to be interested in The Rhythm Section, but its parts are pretty interesting.  Director Reed Morano has done some solid stuff (Handmaid’s Tale, I Think We’re Alone Now and more), it’s produced by Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson (the folks behind the James Bond franchise), and Blake Lively, Jude Law and Sterling K. Brown are good actors.  This could work.

Post-Screening Ramble:

The Rhythm Section is dark, sad and very boring.  Blake Lively plays Stephanie Patrick, a woman who has turned to drugs and prostitution in the wake of her family being killed in a plane crash.  You’d think she would have become some kind of conspiracy theorist or at least an airline safety crusader, but this isn’t that kind of film, this is meant to be SUPER SERIOUS, and boy is it.  Stephanie mopes throughout the entirety of this dull, dense movie, and even with such a tragic event strapped to her back, she is wholly unrelatable or likeable.  Weirdly, I actually think her eternal sadness may have played if the action pieces were good or the twists interesting, but they’re not, so here we are with a film that doesn’t work at all.

I didn’t like a single thing about The Rhythm Section.  You shouldn’t bother.  I’m honestly not sure you should even give it a shot whenever it eventually ends up buried on some random streaming service.

One Last Thought:

This is going to come off as so petty, but because I just couldn’t move past it at any point throughout the movie, I have to mention it – Blake Lively’s hair here is absolutely awful.  I think the goal was to make her look kind of ragged, but somehow it ended up more muppet than anything else.  Two thumbs all the way down.