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Bob Hoose

Movie Review

They died because of her.

At least that’s how Stephanie Patrick sees it. After all, her family members had changed their flight to accommodate Stephanie and to allow her to go with them on vacation. She, however, didn’t even show up at the airport.

But the plane her mom, dad, sister and brother boarded without her? Well, a terrorist bomb would soon take it down in a fiery ball of death. Two hundred thirty-nine souls, dead in an instant.

Stephanie Patrick lives on.

Of course, you couldn’t exactly say she lives well. After the crash, agony and guilt consumed her life. Then came the drugs. And pretty soon it all collapsed in on itself to the point where Stephanie now goes by Leesa. Or Pam. Or really anybody you want her to be. If you pony up the cash, she’ll strip off her tattered clothes and attend to your sexual needs wearing the name of your choice.

Then she’ll take her next hit of heroin and drift away.

That’s when a reporter shows up, whispering about conspiracies and the fact that the Islamic bombmaker who allegedly murdered her parents is actually alive and living right there in London. Stephanie is so numb and dead-eyed that she has the man thrown out.

But the man’s words drift down into what’s left of Stephanie-Leesa-Pam’s brain, planting a seed. When she pauses, an idea takes root. And it begins to grow into something like a gnarled weed of emotion, a grassy knot of something like need: If no one else will do anything about these fiendish killers, she will.

Yeah, Stephanie can barely stand, she’s so weak and wretched. But she’ll have her revenge. She’ll sell her soul for vengence, if necessary.

And in fact, that’s exactly what it takes.

Positive Elements

Driven by that desire for revenge, Stephanie soon meets an ex-MI6 agent named “B.” He helps transform her from a drug-addicted prostitute into a fearsome assassin. She confronts—and kills—multiple terrorists. But Stephanie’s battered and pounded along the way—physically and emotionally.

None of that is positive, of course. But it’s possible to look at The Rhythm Section as something of a cautionary message about the dangers of seeking violent retribution. Stephanie’s choice to seek vengeance—and the physical and emotional pain she must go through to get it—is an agonizing one. In fact, B tells her, and us, quite frankly, “It’s not worth it!” When Stephanie later wonders what the worst part of killing someone could possibly be, B retorts: “Living with it.” He doesn’t flinch from making his views abundantly clear in cold and excruciating ways.

In fact, when Stephanie begins to find the deadly vengeance she so desperately seeks, she’s forced to realize that murder is, in fact, a soul-killing choice.

Spiritual Elements

We’re told early on that the terrorist attack on the plane was sanctioned by a radical Muslim cleric who wanted to send a clear message to Islamic reformers by killing one of their number on the plane. Elsewhere, we hear that one terrorist kills people “for profit, not the prophet.”

Sexual Content

We see Stephanie in various states of undress. She exposes some cleavage in T-shirts, and several scenes show her in skimpy underwear. She also steps naked out of a robe, and we see her bare back.

In one scene she wears just a T-shirt and walks around with bare legs and backside visible. She tosses a condom on her bed (though she and her male customer never have sex). These drug-addicted prostitution scenes aren’t necessarily played for titilation, however, since Stephanie looks sickly and is badly bruised on her legs, thighs and back. In fact, she tells one man, “You can’t have sex with me.” He retorts, “Thank goodness for that.”

In another scene, a much more healthy Stephanie kisses a man passionately in a hallway. The two of them (both fully clothed) lean up against the wall, embracing and caressing each other, and then apparently beginning to have sex. In underwear and garters, Stephanie straddles a man before trying to kill him.

Stephanie walks into someone else’s shadowy appartment that has a stylized, full-sized, cardboard cutout of a naked woman.

Violent Content

Stephanie’s pursuit of vengeance includes bloody murder and thrashing asphyxiation. Bodies are left in pools of blood. A man’s throat is slowly slashed from ear to ear. Another man has his face slammed into a door jam, leaving his nose and face cut. Someone gets punched violently in the crotch. A man is stabbed in the leg, a woman shot in the knee, and another woman’s speeding car is riddled with automatic gunfire. A guy has a syringe full of snake venom jammed into his back, and he slowly dies in writhing agony.

A vehicle occupied by several adults and two children blows up in a fiery eruption, and a bus and its occupants detonate in the huge devastating explosion caused by a young woman’s explosive vest. A car chase involves one automobile being crushed by a speeding truck and a woman being pushed off a cliff in a car sliding sideways. We see pictures of a ravaged passenger plane after a terrorist’s bomb obliterates it, as well as individual photos of its hundreds of victims.

But perhaps the most viscerally disturbing aspect of this film’s violence involves Stephanie herself. She is tall but somewhat frail-looking and gets battered around ruthlessly. She’s bloodied and choked, slammed into walls and floors and forced to strip down and swim a long distance in freezing water. Stephanie is punched hard in the stomach, face, back and chest by men her size or bigger. During one such pounding fight, her hand is smashed repeatedly on broken glass, and she has to pull large bloody chunks of glass out, leaving long slashes and gory gaps behind.

Crude or Profane Language

We hear about 25 f-words and a handful of s-words.

Drug and Alcohol Content

As mentioned above, we see Stephanie smoking heroin and (elsewhere) a cigarette.

Stephanie guzzles glasses of vodka. And we see her and her family members opening a bottle of wine. Another man drinks wine, too.

Someone tries to inject Stephanie with a syringe full of deadly venom. Later Stephanie drives that syringe into someone’s back.

Other Negative Elements

Stephanie wretches and vomits as she dries out from her drug addiction and goes into hard physical training. Early on, she steals from an innocent man, taking his money, clothes and other items. And she carelessly leads killers back to the man’s door.

Conclusion

Actress Blake Lively certainly appears to give her all in this graphic and miserable movie. She’s battered, pummeled and bruised while vividly portraying a woman who transitions from broken survivor to brutal assassin. In fact, it was reported that Lively was so devoted to doing her own stunt work that she shattered her hand in one scene, and filming had to be shut down for six months while she healed up.

Apart from Lively’s gritty, shaken-but-not-stirred determination (both in character and as an actress), however, there’s not much in The Rhythm Section you can speak of with any kind of positive tilt.

Story-wise, this “revenge thriller” tale is so one-dimensional and flat that you’ll almost think that the movie’s big twist must have been left out by accident. So, no, you shouldn’t go in expecting a female version of Bond or Bourne.

What you can expect from this very R-rated pic, however, is rancid language, grisly death scenes, shaky-cam car chases and, seemingly, yards of badly bruised female flesh.

Not exactly feel-good, date-night fare … on any level.

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Bob Hoose

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.