Peppermint (2018)

PEPPERMINT  (2018)  ¢ 1/2
    D: Pierre Morel
    Jenifer Garner, John Gallagher Jr., John Ortiz,
    Juan Pablo Raba, Annie Ilonzeh, Jeff Hephner
When some drug thugs gun down Jennifer Garner's family in a drive-by, and shoot Jennifer Garner in the head for good measure, you can assume they're not expecting Jennifer Garner to recover and go all Michelle Rodriguez on them. But she does. Sometimes these "Death Wish" knockoffs can be done really well, like Jodie Foster in "The Brave One". And sometimes your interest in what's going on just stalls out and dies, in an inverse ratio to the casualty count, which is what you get with "Peppermint". The conclusion leaves the potential for a sequel wide open, but it takes most action franchises three or four episodes to get as dull and perfunctory as this. When the original is dead on arrival, the prospect of a followup is almost too depressing to think about.