About the film (courtesy of Paramount Pictures):
Blake Lively stars as Stephanie Patrick, an ordinary woman on a path of self-destruction after her family is tragically killed in a plane crash. When Stephanie discovers that the crash was not an accident, she enters a dark, complex world to seek revenge on those responsible and find her own redemption.
The Rhythm Section often feels as though it’s missing a key component as it trudges ever so slowly towards its finish line. While parts, small parts are interesting and entertaining, the majority of the story feels oddly disconnected while trying to keep an air of mystery. The issue becomes that the plot, and its shallow characters, becomes quickly uninteresting without much of a payoff. Part of this is possibly due to the fact that it’s an adaptation of a novel by Mark Burnell. Books are sometimes tricky to bring to the screen because you have to inherently leave some parts out due to runtime constraints while embellishing in other areas in order to smooth things out.
Choppy might be a better way to describe The Rhythm Section. Any momentum briefly gained is lost soon thereafter. Even though director Reed Morano is from the Heartland of the United States, the action drama has a European feel to it in terms of the style in which it chooses to operate. The cinematography, in particular, reminds me some of those lower budget features that tries to seduce you with up close action and tightly filmed car chases that are popular overseas.
For lead actress Blake Lively, The Rhythm Section is a big drop-off from her performance in A Simple Favor (2018) where moviegoers just craved her screen time. There’s just not a lot to like and I don’t think that audiences will grasp onto her journey and transformation to become something stronger. The same can be said for the complementary cast of Jude Law and Sterling K. Brown. They’re big names but their impact in adding depth of character wasn’t.
Yes, there’s mystery but it’s not compelling enough to look past the faults found throughout this disappointing offering. The Rhythm Section is out of sorts from the beginning and never really gets going enough to make audience want to invest themselves fully into the story itself. Being that the novel is part of a series of books about the mysterious Stephanie Patrick, it’ll be a shame for Paramount Pictures to realize that any chance of bringing a sequel to light will have died a quick death on the operating table. If, for whatever reason, you’re wanting to get out theaters catch this one, you had better do it quickly because it won’t be in the rotation for very long.
