Mother’s Day is a Netflix-produced Polish action film in the John Wick style. It features an ex-soldier who had to give up her child and go into hiding. Years later, the boy has been kidnapped and she must re-emerge to fight all the baddies and get him back. Yes, this is the same plot as Jennifer Lopez’s recent The Mother… though this is more of a dedicated action film (and also not very good).

The action scenes are often pretty good but also pretty uneven. Sometimes they are energetic and filmed in long takes… and sometimes they are amateurish with choreography that feels off or a little too slow. But as soon as I would get done rolling my eyes, a dude would get stabbed in both ears with carrots and I’d grin. There is something amusing and cheeky about the film that sometimes worked. Plus the camera is very mobile, flipping and spinning with the actors… it’s cool but also aping the style of other, better movies.

All of this is decent enough… until the final act. Apparently after a pretty solid hour of punching and kicking gutterpunks, they thought it was time to engage us with the character and plot. It was a disaster. News alert: the plot and characters do not matter. Does she save her son? Yeah fine sure… but lets not pretend that’s why we’re here. And yet the movie insists on slowing down and trying to make us care. It fails.

So the uneven action would have resulted in an ok movie if they hadn’t dropped a bore bomb in the third act. It becomes borderline unwatchable. So what do you do with this movie? Probably just not watch it.

Score: 64