Director Pierre Morel of Taken fame goes down the road of Death Wish – a revenge spree for a mother. Morel takes us where badly written and directed movie go – a place where no audience want to go.

Peppermint opens in Riley North’s (Jennifer Garner) calm suburban life. Her husband (Jeff Hephner) and daughter (Cailey Fleming) live happy normal live, until they are gunned down by a Mexican cartel (Trump, happy much?). Riley survives, after catching a bullet in the head, and later identifies the gunmen. However, when the judiciary’s verdict lets the killers go, Riley goes under the radar to trains herself to exact revenge.

Peppermint revenge movie premise sounds and read okay, however, the direction, cinematography and script lets the movie down, even when one has a stellar performer like Garner.

Garner, who is mostly relegated to grunting out syllables, can’t help a movie that looks like a B-grade, grim-looking actioner.

This is Garner’s return to the action genre after her hit serial Alias and the movie Elektra. However, she looks like an unconvincing mindless killing machine out of any bad B-movie. Although she looks the part, with the contrite way the film is presented, one feels that she can’t act with the menace or grit the role demanded.

Peppermint is a complete miss for movie that could a launched a line of movies with a butt-kicking female version of Taken’s Liam Neeson or Death Wish’s Bruce Willis. It seems that we would yet have to wait for that day to happen.•