Jolt (2021)
Directed by Tanya Wexler
A bouncer with an anger management problem goes on a furious and resentful rampage after the murder of a friend.
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However, finding amusement in this John Wick rip-off is a tall order for most audiences.
Ever since Keanu Reeves turned John Wick into a box office phenomenon, we've gotten a succession of movies in which big stars go on stylishly-photographed sprees of violent mayhem.
Too bad Wexler is neither Chad Stahelski nor David Leitch to pull off the kind of a female John Wick or Atomic Blonde-style kickass, all-hell-breaks-loose action film.
Everyone’s chasing their own John Wick vehicle these days, and Kate Beckinsale is certainly an alluring pick to receive her own neon-splashed gonzo action-thriller franchise.
Whereas John Wick and The Purge existed as self-contained entities that possessed the mythology necessary to expand, Wascha has written Lindy’s life in a way that’s trying to buy more time than it already has.
Lindy goes on a rampage of her own after a date she’s smitten with turns up murdered, pursuing his killers with vicious abandon, and what follows is yet another single-minded quest for cutthroat vengeance in the style of “John Wick,” which has already spawned several imitators.
Too bad Wexler is neither Chad Stahelski nor David Leitch to pull off the kind of a female John Wick or Atomic Blonde-style kickass, all-hell-breaks-loose action film.
Instead, it’s a semi-snarky generic-brand Atomic Blonde, replacing Charlize Theron’s tough-as-nails physical abilities and David Leitch’s stunt experience with empty promises of excess.
But Jolt, which was acquired by Amazon Studios earlier this summer after collecting dust on a studio shelf for almost two years, is a woefully unimaginative, mirth-deficient mishmash of John Wick, Atomic Blonde, and Crank.
Boys and girls, hold on to your socks, for the Aldi Atomic Blonde has arrived!
Think Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde , Jennifer Garner in Peppermint , and Bob Odenkirk in Nobody .
What follows is a post- Atomic Blonde thriller that has just enough style that my mom and my sister will find it thrilling without being put off by anything too extreme.
But the movie is even funnier if you recall that Wexler directed “Hysteria,” a 2012 comedy that dealt with, among other things, the invention of the vibrator.
Jolt is the latest film from director Tanya Wexler, whose previous films Hysteria (about the invention of the vibrator) and Buffaloed (about an unscrupulous debt collector) tell snarky stories about women kicking ass in a man’s world.
Director Tanya Wexler ( Hysteria , Buffaloed ) gives ample time to explaining Lindy's condition, but is too rote in her action choreography.
The action proper starts with Lindy having good sex and feeling cured — Wexler directed 2011’s Hysteria, so orgasms as psychological cure is nearly an auteurist stamp — before her very nice new man (Jai Courtney) turns up dead, bullets in his dome.
Think Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde , Jennifer Garner in Peppermint , and Bob Odenkirk in Nobody .