Sunday, March 6, 2022

Jolt - An Interesting Action Comedy with Unique Lead Character

I was looking forward to this movie when I first saw it in the Coming Soon section of HBO Go as the premise seemed interesting. So once it was released on Saturday, I immediately watch it on its premier day. Well let us get to it then.

Brief Story Line

Lindy (Kate Beckinsale - Underworld: Blood Wars and its predecessors, Click etc) was a woman who suffered from intermittent explosive disorder which made her easily irritated and became violent on other people. Her psychiatrist Dr. Munchin (Stanley Tucci - The Witches 2020 version, The Terminal etc) put on a vest which could give Lindy electric jolt whenever she wanted to hurt other people. He also advised Lindy to start having personal relationship that might make her better.

Taking her advice, Lindy started seeing a man who worked as an accountant named Justin (Jai Courtney - The Suicide Squad, A Good Day to Die Hard etc) and things seemed to be better for her. Until a shocking incident made Lindy worse and led her to cross path with the police detectives Vicars (Bobby Cannavale - SuperintelligenceSing 2 etc) and his partner Nevin (Laverne Cox - Orange is the New Black TV series etc).

So how would the story conclude? Find them all in this unique action comedy movie.

End of Brief Story Line

This movie started off brightly with the narrative on the disorder Lindy was suffering and the violence she did while growing up. The introduction was done nicely and made me immediately feel the premise to be very interesting, especially whenever she tend to be homicidal and briefly imagined what she would do to the people who irritated her. 

The film felt fast paced with the story developing swiftly to the interesting part where Lindy started to "put down her gloves" and wreaking havoc to find out the reason for the incident and the persons responsible for it. The short 91 minutes duration was just nice and did not make it feel draggy for unimportant parts. To me there was no boring moment as there was always excitement whether from Lindy's imagination or the actual violence she did. There was a very brief and amusing mid end credit scene but no post end credit scene.

Kate Beckinsale was perfect for this role with her agility in hand to hand combat (should be easy for her considering her past experience in playing in various action movies) and she certainly seemed to enjoy herself. She was able to do the fight scenes amazingly although there was one scene when she had to fight several people and her face was never properly shown, so might be her stunt double doing it. The fight sequence here were mostly awesome but I personally felt it lacked a spectacular climax fight scene which I was looking forward to. 

The rest of the cast performed their roles adequately with Bobby Cannavale in particular who totally fit in his character. Laverne Cox also provided some nice moments with her constant bantering with her partner. Aside from those cast mentioned, there was a brief appearance of David Bradley (Harry Potter movies, Game of Thrones TV series etc) and Susan Sarandon (A Bad Moms Christmas, Lorenzo's Oil etc). Looking through the opening and closing credits, I did not see reference to any books and after looking in the internet, it was not a remake or anything. The film was directed by Tanya Wexler (Hysteria, Finding North etc) and written by Scott Wascha and rated 18+ due to its violence, brief nudity and coarse language.

Overall to me this film was entertaining. I liked the fast pace and the action, plus I liked looking at the homicidal tendency the lead character had which was fun to see. Even though the whole plot was not that original and quite predictable, but it has a unique premise of the lead character. It has an intriguing ending as it seemed to open for a possible sequel, although I doubt it would happen seeing that critics were not that impressed by this film. So if you are interested in watching a simple enough story, with cool action and unique lead character, then this one should be enjoyable. 

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

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