Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
Jessica Chastain here plays Ava Falconer, an ex-army highly trained assassin that’s started to question her orders and her life decisions, much to her handler, John Malkovchs’ Duke’s displeasure, but more importantly, the displeasure of the boss of this particular outfit, Colin Farrell’s Simon.
After a particularly botched operation, Simon decides that Ava’s a liability that must be disposed of, while Ava attempts to reconnect with her family and ex-fiance back home. Hence, conflict.
While Ava has an impressive cast, they are entirely wasted in a script that is composed almost completely of cliches, and for all of Chastain’s talents, she’s not an action star and all of fights she’s involved with look exceedingly unconvincing.
As such, it’s very difficult to get into Ava, and so it comes as no surprise that I didn’t get into it. I’d checked out of this very early on, and so didn’t appreciate the moments that of character building that this sort of cast should be knocking out the park.
This is very much “Checking My Phone Consistently: The Movie”, and while it’s not abysmal it’s certainly unremarkable enough to recommend avoiding it.