In Adrian Grunberg's Protector, Milla Jovovich crafts an interestingly troubled and sympathetic character in this action-thriller, but her work is in service of a flawed and confusing script that leaves off with a bewildered "what?"
Nikki Halsted (Jovovich) is a career soldier who, while stationed overseas, missed out on raising her daughter Chloe (Isabel Myers). When her husband dies, she finds herself in over her head looking after the teen girl. On her 18th birthday, Chloe sneaks out to party with friends, but she's drugged and taken as part of a human trafficking ring.
Nikki's extensive training kicks in and she begins trying to track her daughter, willing to eliminate anyone who gets in her way. As she climbs further up the chain toward the leader of the evil organization known as "The Syndicate," and with the police on her trail, Nikki is in for the fight of her life.
Starting off, Protector feels like the Taken movies and most other movies about a) a highly-trained parent rescuing a kidnapped child, and b) evil human trafficking rings. So, to differentiate itself, it tries to add a new wrinkle to the formula, and it doesn't work. When the chase begins, Nikki sets a timer on her wrist for 72 hours, explaining that, after that time has elapsed, there's little to no chance of finding the missing person. Suddenly her timer has dropped to 44 hours. She's hanging upside down in a warehouse, taunted by someone called "the butcher."
What happened? Why are we missing this time? The blanks are eventually filled in with a few flashbacks and a lot of dialogue. (Maybe this sequence was too expensive to film?) Things get going again, and it becomes apparent that the supporting characters are all very thinly drawn, especially the villains. Matthew Modine is basically here to deliver explanatory dialogue, and poor D.B. Sweeney as a police captain has lines like "she's obviously a trained killer of some sort."
Finally, there comes a reveal that attempts to explain everything, but only leaves us dumbfounded. It's not a terrible idea, but saving it as a surprise twist for the end was probably not the way to go with a movie about such a serious subject. Protector is a missed opportunity that should have been protected from itself.
Magenta Light's bare-bones Blu-ray release comes only with optional English subtitles, but the transfer and audio are solid enough.
