Review: 'The Rhythm Section' (2020) Dir. Reed Morano

Blake Lively, Jude Law, Sterling K. Brown, Max Casella, Daniel Mays, Raza Jaffrey and Tawfeek Barhom

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The production team behind the James Bond franchise present a new adaptation of a spy thriller...

Londoner Stephanie Patrick (Lively) flees her broken life to follow a trail that may lead to the terrorist cell that bombed a commercial airliner years before, killing her family.

With the help of ex-MI6 agent Iain Boyd (Law), Stephanie will discover what lies within as she turns her life around to learn the tricks of espionage in order to hunt down the ones responsible...

Sadly, coming from EON Productions, this espionage thriller offers little thrills for the most part and is instead a slow moving character drama. The majority of time is spent with Lively, a real broken woman with no immediate signs of redemption, and Law, ex-MI6 and as moody as they come.

From nobody, Lively becomes somebody with his help and embarks on a hunt around Europe for a terrorist cell. Sadly, keeping it as real as possible makes it more incomprehensible that a former prostitute with nothing to live for can soon become an expert fighter, shooter and driver as incompetent as she is. For the sake of the story, she just wings it each time and each time she survives it just doesn't thrill or excite.

Where the action does impress a little, especially the well shot and executed Tangiers car chase, Lively doesn't make for engrossing viewing and even co-star Jude Law, who is entertaining enough, isn't given much to do to help move things along.

The production effort is decent, but there is little substance here to make this an engaging spy thriller when there are better ones out there.

'The Rhythm Section' is an EON Productions production