Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Ava’ on Netflix, a Generic Action-Thriller That Makes Poor Use of Jessica Chastain’s Talent

After a theatrical and VOD release, Ava arrives on Netflix with a collective shrug by the universe, belying its considerable star power. Jessica Chastain headlines this killer-for-hire action flick, reteaming her with The Help director Tate Taylor, with a supporting cast that includes John Malkovich, Common, Colin Farrell and Geena Davis. Hmm, odd, goes the Thinky Guy Emoji; will the movie offer us a few stimulating thrills, or, as with too many recent black-ops/assassin yarns, will it be content to exist in John Wick’s shadow?

AVA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Ava (Chastain) has been asking her clients what naughty deeds they’ve been up to again. This is a no-no in the globetrotting assassin trade — she’s supposed to just cut a throat or fire a bullet and not ask questions. But for some reason, she’s craving a little context. Maybe she wants to know how bad the bad guys are — or know if they’re not so bad and maybe she’s the bad guy. Her handler-slash-father-figure Duke (Malkovich) can tell by the tone of her voice that’s she’s not quite as cold and hard and ruthless and steely and lethal as usual and then the opening credits kick in and we learn, beneath the DIRECTED BY and the TOO MANY PRODUCERS and the driving electro-techno soundtrack and whatnot, that she was her class valedictorian but there was a drunk-driving incident and she joined the military and now she’s a kickass machine.

The electro-techno continues even during the quiet moments. BOSTON: Ava checks into a hotel and slides a knife into her anklet before she goes for a jog. This is the life she leads, a life her family knows nothing about, or would rather know nothing about. Eight years have passed since she saw her mother and sister, and now that she’s in a bit of a mood, probably since she skipped her dad’s funeral, she reaches out. Sis Judy (Jess Weixler) is engaged to Ava’s ex, Michael (Common), and her mom, Bobbi (Davis), is just on the other side of a heart attack. Where’s Ava been? Oh, here and there, doing this and that.

Ava then packs her baggage and a high-slit, low-cut, blood-red evening gown for a gig in Riyadh, which goes awry before it goes south, but not until after she asks the mark about his moral failings. She survives the ordeal, of course; she’s unkillable because she’s tough as ironsides, but also because it’s only like 25 minutes into the movie that’s named after her. Next stop Normandy, to see Duke and ask why that last mission went all FUBAR on her, then back to Boston, where she hits an AA meeting for an exposition dump. Duke zips to British Colombia to drop in on Simon (Farrell), once his student and now his superior at Amalgamated Assassinations Inc., who may believe Ava is a liability because of her improprieties. Has he just effed with the wrong lady? ERMAGERD, NER SPERLERS.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Ava is La Femme Nikita meets John Wick (or Atomic Blonde). But it’s more like middle-of-the-pack Luc Besson (I’m thinking Lucy), and even more like a script Besson would’ve hard-passed.

Performance Worth Watching: It doesn’t take much to will ourselves to like everything Chastain does (except maybe The Help) — she’s one of the best actresses in the game right now. But her character here is written a few microns short of nonexistence.

Memorable Dialogue: As Ava’s prickly mother, Davis delivers the complicated truth when she reveals she doesn’t know her daughter’s business, but “I can see it’s giving you strength.”

Sex and Skin: One little suggestive moment before Ava slaughters the dude.

Our Take: Y’know, maybe it would be interesting to know what kind of slugabeds and flim-flammers Ava was offing, but that would require the writer to actually WRITE something instead of leaving us and the characters to drown in a thematic vagueness and hope we’ll be distracted by all the fighting and shooting and fighting and fighting. She’s good, she’s evil, she’s at best half-realized, just like the family drama that unfolds around her, and the skulldug-plot cribbed from dozens of other movies. Cliches are abundant — the check-out-what-she-does-in-THAT-dress sequence, the big punchity-kickity-chase-ity final confrontation, the inevitable shot of Ava dispassionately shoving around al-dente green beans on her plate with a fork while she eats all alone all alone all alone again.

Action-thrillers like this can endure such cliches as long as they have some style, but Taylor’s direction is pedestrian, with too many assembled-in-the-editing-room fight sequences and not enough convincing choreography. Farrell — with a dopey mustache and a diamond-wedge haircut and speaking like he’s IN FOOKIN’ BROOGE — and Malkovich can do this B-movie stuff in their sleep. There’s a decent scene where Chastain and Davis’ characters open up, but it’s a lonely colorful moment among a bunch of stuff that comes nowhere close to having any Atomic Wick moxie. Oh, and P.S., enough with the digga-digga-DAHGGA-dahgga electro-techno scores. They all need to be thrown into a deep hole and covered with E.T. Atari 2600 cartridges and remaindered copies of The Art of the Deal, please and thank you.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Ava is a violent, boilerplate Bourne-y thriller without a single original bone in its body. File under waste of talent.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Watch Ava on Netflix