Peppermint Review — It’s refreshing to see a butt kicking boot on the other foot for a change. Jennifer Garner’s got glorious and gritty game.

The word ‘peppermint’ connotes a sweet, pink, fresh-flavored treat, which is exactly what Jennifer Garner’s suburban mother Riley North is before a vicious L.A. gang brutally guns down her husband and daughter.

After that, the film title is mostly ironic, as Riley goes on a revenge rampage, slicing, dicing and shooting those responsible for killing her family, and those involved with the corrupt legal system who failed to bring the baddies to justice. Oh yes, and the snotty housewife who lives “south of the boulevard” (an insider San Fernando Valley joke) who snubs Riley and her daughter for selling scout cookies in front of the wrong store.

Yes, it’s like that. There’s a bit of gallows humor thrown into this dark, vigilante fantasy, an intentional daughter of Death Wish for a new generation. with equally bad mustaches.

It’s refreshing to see a butt kicking boot on the other foot for a change. Instead of being the damsel in distress who trips and falls just as the villain is gaining on her, Riley is the relentless pursuer, and the bad guys are her hapless prey. Sure they wield fists, guns and knives, but no one is as good a shot as Riley, and that’s exactly how it should be in this violent and visceral, yet somehow fun film.

And Garner is the perfect choice for the lead. She’s equally believable sashaying across a parking lot in kitten heals and a flowing skirt as she is in the back of a beat-up van, closing her bloody wounds with a staple gun and duct tape.

The rest of the characters are mostly cardboard cutouts of cops who speak in cliches, and snarling, tattooed gangbangers. I wish a few of them were a bit more developed, especially Riley. She disappears for five years and has allegedly gone through some sort of badass metamorphosis, but details are frustratingly sketchy.

Perhaps we’ll learn more about that in the future. Knowing that Peppermint is the work of director Pierre Monet, who also helmed Taken, there just might be a sequel.

If this Peppermint review intrigues you, get times and tickets to the film on Fandango.com.

Rated R

1 Hour 42 Minutes

Peppermint Review —It’s refreshing to see a butt kicking boot on the other foot for a change. Jennifer Garner’s got glorious and gritty game.