The Rhythm Section on Sky Cinema

REVIEW BY: ROBERT CHANDLER

THE RHYTHM SECTION is a more interesting "spy" film from Eon than the two recent James Bond ventures (Spectre and Skyfall.) 

Blake Lively pitches herself into the role of a woman whose family has been killed in an airliner crash and who then seeks retribution. First she has to be rescued from her despair by a series of men.

A journalist finds her at her lowest, hooked on drugs and working as a prostitute (really?) in London, seemingly not caring about anything. He provides a spark of information that leads her to clean up and track down Jude Law as "B", hiding out in the Scottish highlands. B trains Blake and turns her into a... Nikita-esque hitwoman.

 (It would be good at some point in a movie to see a woman turning a man into a killing machine. Maybe that has already happened?)

Actually, the scenes between Blake and Jude are the most rewarding in the film. There's a moment where he finally gets her to shoot straight; two bullets into a man-sized, torso-shaped target in the distance. He tells her "that was the easy part." She asks what the hard part is. He replies "living with it."

It's a good exchange and is the key to the movie. This is a film about what you can live with and how hard it might be to kill somebody, no matter how much - in theory - you want them dead.

Blake is very good in her role, she often messes things up, getting out of a series of predicaments by the skin of her teeth, until, finally, she becomes coldly-centred and action-ready by the end of the film, setting herself up for the franchise.

 Let's talk about the wigs, though. Too frequently, Blake is throwing on another hairpiece to get into a new hitgirl character, making her a kind of female Fletch. It becomes a bit daft, distracting, and feels indulgent... see how good Blake looks with spiky black hair; here she is with a Jessica Chastain; and here the Bridget Fonda. Did the character really need to wear the wigs? It reduces her to a child dressing up to play pretend, and undermines the heart of the film.

 Reed Murano directs well, pulling off an excellent car-chase sequence, all shot from within the car as Lively attempts to outrun some gunmen. She is a good director (established the style and tone of THE HANDMAID'S TALE by directing the first three or four eps) and might be handy with a BOND movie. Perhaps this was her try-out.