The Mother

Considering a plot as generic as its title and some transparent star-vehicle pretenses, The Mother takes itself too seriously.

This formulaic vigilante thriller enables Jennifer Lopez to flex both her action muscles and her maternal instincts, but it generates only mild suspense and sympathy for the eponymous protagonist.

Lopez’s character doesn’t have a name, although we gradually learn the circumstances that leave her fighting for survival alongside her teenage daughter, Zoe (Lucy Paez) in rural Ohio.

Her background as a military sharpshooter helped develop her toughness, fortitude, and distrust of authority. Eventually she was lured into the life of an assassin and FBI informant and became a target for some bad men in her life, from an arms dealer (Joseph Fiennes) to his associate (Gael Garcia Bernal) and others.

In between, the child was born, leading an FBI agent (Edie Falco) to suggest the baby be given a new identity and a new family for her safety. Our heroine barks back: “You underestimate my ability to protect my child.”

Nevertheless, they are separated, and mom retreats to a cabin in the Alaskan wilderness to escape trouble. She remains reluctant to disclose the identity of the father. But when Zoe is abducted years later, the mother returns along with a loyal ally (Omari Hardwick) to track the perpetrators across borders and perilously exact revenge.

Is she a brave or irresponsible parent? As she grows more desperate, her resilience and resourcefulness tend to outweigh her common sense.

The same can be said of the film itself, as Kiwi director Niki Caro (Mulan) unspools an intense yet stylish string of chase scenes and confrontations while trying to patch the plot holes with progressively more elaborate set pieces.

Meanwhile, the screenplay struggles to build character depth and moral complexity while providing a tacked-on commentary about the plight of migrant orphans amid some far-fetched twists.

One pivotal early sequence in which Lopez’s character takes a sniper position and begins firing at villains adjacent to a crowded playground — while Caro intersperses slow-motion closeups of bullets discharging from the chamber to glorify the weapon’s power — is reckless and unsettling for the wrong reasons.

It also compromises the rooting interest from that point forward, rendering The Mother as a mostly shallow exercise in spectacle over substance.

Rated R, 115 minutes.