Film ● Mini-Review: Protector

Title: Protector

Director(s): Adrian Grünberg

Screenwriter(s): Mun Bong-seob

Released: 2025

Runtime: 1h 31m

● It is about time Milla Jovovich gets her Taken clone even if the premise is too much of a clone.

● Jovovich plays veteran Nikki Halsted who was too absent during her daughter Chloe’s childhood. When her husband passed away, she came home for good.

● The opening tries to avoid the cliché of Chloe resenting her mother, which is refreshing. But one night, mother and daughter have an argument and it crosses into that territory anyway. That’s understandable but it doesn’t need to go that far for it to work. So, Chloe sneaks out to a bar and gets picked up by a spotter who works for human traffickers known as “The Syndicate”.

● The plot follows Halsted as she tries to find Chloe by directly engaging the human traffickers.

● Halsted knows that she only has 72 hours so there is a countdown which, thankfully, is not abused. The film does not attempt to replicate 24.

● Structurally, the film tries to be a little unconventional. For example, most films would run through the hero’s first move, which in this case would be Halsted hitting low-hanging fruit to get leads. However, the film skips that, avoiding what is typically done in order to emphasize the time constraint, amongst other things.

● Whilst the above works well enough, the narrative rushes through other plot points. For example, Halsted gets to higher levels of the Syndicate quickly. There are reasons for it, including keeping the pacing decent, but it arguably skips too much.

● The narrative also uses Halsted as the narrator, whether it is voiceover or monologue style (breaking the fourth wall). There is also the use of tight one-shots and cross-fade transitions to convey her psychological state. Whilst there is nothing wrong with these techniques, they are clumsily executed and therefore come across as cheesy. If one is going to stylize it, then one might as well stylize it more strongly. For example, staccato cuts arguably work better and, either way, play more with the lighting and color saturation.

● As expected, there is the corrupt cop element. This is realistic and whilst it is appreciated that the narrative doesn’t dwell on this point, it is presented in a tacky B-grade manner. The bad cop is overtly shifty and the good cops overtly naïve.

● Given the surveillance available today, one expects law enforcement to catch up to her quickly but they conveniently do not. One scene that displays her evasion skills is sufficient to address that point.

● On balance, the film has some good ideas and tries to be unconventional in a few ways, and the action is cool, which Jovovich sells pretty well. However, it is still the clichéd overpowered veteran with too much cheese. This would be partly mitigated if there are more and/or longer gunfights.

---

Be sure to subscribe to our mailing list so you get each new Opinyun that comes out!

---