Jennifer Lopez anchors the action pic ‘The Mother’

The most interesting part of " The Mother," a decent if forgettable action pic starring Jennifer Lopez, is the one that is left largely unexplored. The movie is a high-concept thriller that boils down to just a few words: She's a mother and an assassin. OK, you're probably thinking, fine.

Misha Green's script was a hot commodity in 2017, around the time "Wonder Woman" opened, which had left some studios scrambling for action movies fronted by women. There were condescending headlines propping it up as a "female empowerment" script. And, eventually, with Niki Caro signed on to direct and a movie star like Lopez on board to star and produce, it was enough for greenlight and a Netflix budget. The final film also credits Peter Craig and Andrea Berloff for the script.

But history has unfortunately taught us to be suspect of a Mother's Day rollout. The greeting card holiday is where studios always seem to dump mediocre material that happen to have women at the center. If the movies were better, you start to suspect, maybe they wouldn't need the lame hook. Happy Mother's Day! Here's a woman doing... something!
This is a bit unfair to "The Mother," which at worst is just what you expect it to be - a mostly generic action trifle that's very self-serious and wants to be a lot of different kinds of films. Lopez's character is basically Jason Bourne, James Bond, John Wick and Nikita rolled into one, at least when it comes to her skills which are vast and seemingly just the product of her tours in Afghanistan She's. Just. That. Good.

After her military service, she's left with few job prospects so she becomes a guard in Guantanamo and gets entangled, professionally and personally, with a few handsome arms dealers, Adrian (Joseph Fiennes) and Hector ...