The Protégé (3 Stars)

Sometimes I'm too impatient for my own good.

At last year's Fantasy Film Festival there were trailers for this film every day. Probably three trailers a day. The trailer interested me, because the film stars Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton and Maggie Q, three of my favourite actors. I searched for the film after the festival. It wasn't available on streaming, and the price on Amazon was too high. So I left it on the list of items to buy later. Month after month went by. The price slowly dropped until it was something I was willing to pay. Only 6.50 Euros. One last check to see if it was available on streaming. No, so I clicked Purchase. It arrived yesterday.

Later yesterday I received an email from Amazon telling me there was a new film available with Prime Video. You guessed it: "The Protégé". Annoying. I'm contributing to Jeff Bezos' wealth.

Samuel L. Jackson plays Moody, a contract killer. In 1991 he's paid to assassinate someone in Vietnam. After finishing the job he hears shooting nearby. He finds a room full of dead bodies and a small girl holding a gun. They'd broken into the apartment and killed her mother, so she picked up a gun that one of the men foolishly put down. Moody recognises the girl's potential, so he adopts her and trains her to be a killer.

30 years later Moody and Anna are an unstoppable team. Moody is secretively trying to locate someone, not even telling Anna who it is. Assassins kill Moody and everyone associated with him. Only Anna survives. She realises that the attack has something to do with the person Moody was hunting, so she finds the name and carries on the search.

The search takes her back to Vietnam. She meets a man called Michael Rembrandt who works with the men who killed Moody, although he says he never approved of the killing. In theory they're enemies, but there's too much raw chemistry for them to kill one another, and they end up in bed together.

Great acting by the main cast, but the story itself is lacking magic.

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