Directed By: Martin Campbell
Starring: Maggie Q, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton
Keaton is pushing 70 and you put him in a roll involving lots of martial arts elements!
You must be lost when it comes to casting. Really. It cannot be worse.
And what are Keaton’s reasons (except little bit more cash in the end of his career) for taking an action roll?
He’s probably saying: “If Brosnan and Willis can do it, why shouldn’t I?”
The rest of his part is ok, but the fighting scenes are just horrible.
The other two are good. Jackson is in the role of a sick and almost retired contract killer. Maggie Q wants to switch hers and Bruce Willis’ spots in “Live Free and Die Hard.” She is beaten and shot in the “Protégé”, as much as-if not more- than John McClain in aforementioned Die Hard movie, where she played the role of martial arts fighting villain.
The action is the movie starts in Vietnam 30 years ago. A very active and at that time, of course, much younger contract killer (Jackson) finds a little girl in her home where somebody else executed whole her family. He saves her, gets her out of Vietnam and through the years he’s made her his best protégé in the killing for money business.
Eventually, after one very effective “job done” executing some mafia bosses in Romania, they get themselves on a black list of a powerful business-mob-international crime organization. They have very pro oriented head of operations (Keaton). Meeting his young and sexy opponent he asks her; ”Kill me or sleep with me!”. But only Bond is “powerful” enough to sleep with his female villains and then win in the end. This is not the case in the Protégé. It will be a tough fight but she will be the winner in the end.
This movie has solid production design. It doesn’t look cheap at all. Apparently the executive producers and production names behind the project spent quite a bit of money.
Will they get their investment back with some profit? That is one big question.
