The Stream: Light on the action and close to boring.

The Big Screen: Okay fights …. when they occur.

The Final Bill: A slow and drama filled action movie that lacks originality.

– S2S: Movie Review
Director: Tate Taylor
Writer: Matthew Newton
Stars: Jessica Chastain, John Malkovich, Common, Colin Farrell | See full cast & crew »
Genre: Action, Crime, Drama
Rating: R (violence, blood, language)
Runtime: 1 hour 33 minutes
Platform: Netflix and other streaming sites for rent/buy

Streamers, I’ve been decking the Halls-Mark movies too hard. Completely forgot there might be actually good movies that have nothing to do with Christmas to stream. So, I ventured onto old faithful, Netflix. As a big action fan, the trailer for Ava caught my eye. Check out the trailer on Netflix or below our rating! Either way, Ava is a deadly assassin who works for a mercenary organization, traveling the globe for monetary gain, redemption and high profile hits. When a job goes dangerously wrong, she is forced to fight for her own survival. This sounds good to me, but let’s see what’s going on.

I’m going to be frank – the movie basically is the trailer with some extended fight scenes. That’s never a good sign for a movie review. The action sequences while solid are just mediocre comparatively to the more recent movies that have come out. I mean this movie is basically a mixture of Atomic Blonde, Anna, and John Wick, except she needs some therapy. Well, I guess they all need some therapy sessions, now that I think about it. Anyway, Jessica Chastain is pretty solid in the role but this isn’t her best, and the fight scenes don’t feel natural for her. That’s says a lot when Halle Berry made shooting a gun look so seamless in John Wick 3. The other stars in the movie like Colin Farrell and John Malkovich do their regular solid portrayals. Colin is really enjoying these diverse roles he’s had – look at The Gentleman from earlier this year, but this isn’t his best either. Nevertheless, the stars of the film try to save what is an overly sappy movie that really can’t be saved. I mean they even brought down Common in this film, and he’s usually very solid. For a trained assassin, Ava has way too much going on in her personal life that takes way too long to explain in this movie. In fact, she probably should never hold a gun again. Now, while I’m actually glad they gave the character a flawed and human element on top of her superpower of being beaten up and fighting, no action fan is coming for all this drama. And, this is heavy on drama and light on fight.

When push comes to shove, Ava was boring. For a action, crime, drama it was a little action, boring crime, and way too much drama. They even tried to set up a sequel and I have no interest in going down that path. For my action fans out there, you’ll be underwhelmed by this single popped popcorn film on a boring afternoon.