Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Rhythm Section’ on Hulu and Amazon Prime, in Which Blake Lively Tries on an Action Movie for Size

Blake Lively action-thriller The Rhythm Section — now streaming for Amazon Prime and Hulu subscribers — hails from the pre-neo-historic time before the COVID pandemic, a time when a movie could still be a theatrical flop. Perhaps there will be such things again, films that open on 3,000 screens and tank like a panzer dropped in the Adriatic Sea from 5,000 feet. But crazy enough, I’m here to say that The Rhythm Section, when viewed for free on your television in this new and evolving high-consumption world of streaming, maybe didn’t deserve such a horribly wretched fate, and possibly merely a mildly wretched one.

THE RHYTHM SECTION: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Stephanie Patrick (Lively) has hit rock stinking bottom. In one way, that statement is somewhat literal — she huffs crack fumes off hot tinfoil between turning tricks for a pimp. Her destitute-prostitute existence is a reflection of her inconsolable depression, a product of her family dying when a terrorist’s bomb killed all passengers aboard a domestic flight. Was she supposed to be on the flight? Of course she was supposed to be on the flight. Movies like this don’t just illustrate intense grief, but they have to pile on survivor’s guilt, addiction and self-abuse to make the subsequent extremity of her life more believable, although frankly, none of it is particularly believable. Anyway, she thinks Keith Proctor (Raza Jaffrey) is her next punter when he reveals he’s a journalist researching the tragedy. And guess what, the perpetrator of the bombing is still out there on the streets, walking free. So add some fresh layers of rage to poor Steph’s situation.

Keith is a freelance writer, and I’m curious who contracted him to spend months and months and months doing that thing obsessive researchers in the movies do, namely, covering his walls with clippings and photos and sticky notes in an attempt to piece the story together. (We don’t get an answer, although we later learn he quite conveniently comes from a very wealthy family. Son. Of. A. Bitch!) I digress. Not far into the picture, Keith is killed, so I apologize for spending too much time discussing an ancillary character. To each their own hang-ups, right? I digress again: Keith treated Stephanie nice despite the fact that she was such a raggedy human being, eyes sunken, dotted with bruises, jonesing for a score, hair a rodent’s scraggle, etc. Did I mention Blake Lively is anti-glammed to within an inch of all our lives in this movie? Maybe less than an inch, even. It is extreme. Extreme to the point of distraction.

Distraction: right. Stephanie tracks down the late Keith’s secret source, Iain Boyd (Jude Law), in the hills o’ Scotland. Wait — there’s a scene before that where she steals money from Keith and buys a gun and almost kills the walking-free bad guy in broad daylight but doesn’t and loses her bag which had everything in it except, thankfully, the gun and the cell phone. She can’t pull the trigger, which will be important later. Anyhow, she uses her GPS to find Iain despite the fact that the charger was probably in the bag? How did her battery not drain in all the time it takes her to get to the highlands? The miracle of fate, I assume, because Iain is a former MI6 agent who trains her to be a rootin’-tootin’ mean-as-hell cold-blooded damn killer so she can navigate the shadowy international sub-government underground and exact revenge against the pieces of human garbage who murdered her family. For the first step of her training, Iain slams her face in her porridge; for the next step, he makes her swim home through the freezing cold loch. That’ll toughen her beef jerky. Nobody said it’d be easy.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Sorry, but this type of formula badass-killing-machine thriller inevitably exists in the shadow of the Bournes and Wicks and, if we want to draw a lady-assassin parallel, add Atomic Blonde and Ava to the list as well.

Performance Worth Watching: In recent years, Lively has made a habit out of elevating middle-tier stuff into slightly-above-middle-tier stuff — The Shallows, A Simple Favor and The Age of Adaline significantly benefited from her charismatic presence. In the case of The Rhythm Section, she may be only elevating slightly-above-lower-tier stuff to slightly-lower-than-middle-tier stuff, but there’s no doubt she’s giving it the ol’ college try here.

Memorable Dialogue: Iain gets harsh on Stephanie and also reviews the movie for me: “Drugs, prostitution — it’s not a tragedy. It’s a cliche. A cliche!”

Sex and Skin: We don’t see much of anything in a scene where full-blown assassin Stephanie dons some yowzers light-dominatrix gear in order to off one of her marks, but Lively’s definitely wearing some yowzers light-dominatrix gear exclamation point!

Our Take: The Rhythm Section is too silly to take seriously. But boy, does it take itself deadly serious, which tolls its death knell for this boilerplate death-of-a-woman/birth-of-an-assassin story. Just as Jude Law — giving a who-cares performance for a who-cares role — says the thing about cliches, we get the scene in which she’s baptized in the loch, reborn again as a warrior who survives a f—ing series of scenes in which she learns how to fight with her fists and shoot straight and use a knife. Thankfully, Iain has the means to do such crap — some remote property, a coupla Jeeps, bowl after miserable bowl of porridge, firearms, a bulletproof vest for him to strap on so he can order her to shoot him, which is the ultimate test of her “rhythm section,” her heartbeat and breathing, her control which is key to killing an evil person dead with a bullet. Thankfully, she doesn’t flinch and shoot him in the face. Anyway, maybe Iain comes from a rich family too? Who knows?

Subsequent scenes find Stephanie donning increasingly ludicrous-slash-hilarious wigs and disguises as she ventures into the world of killin’ folks for money and vengeance. Director Reed Morano stages two or three nicely choreographed action sequences, including a car chase notable for its single-take intensity (although there’s likely a cut or two hidden in there). But the director also leans on multiple instances of the stale, wheezy scene in which people struggling in hand-to-hand combat grit… their… teeth… and… reach… intently… for… a…. weapon… or… plot… device — a scene that needs to be retired forever. Casting Lively and her kind, gentle eyes against type is inspired, and there’s a hint or two of world- and character-building indicating a desire to build this into a franchise. Lively might be up for it, but considering the end result here, that chance seems at best fat, and at worse, gluttonously obese.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Maybe The Rhythm Section is worth firing up for the action sequences, and to see Lively act the crap out of a character that doesn’t deserve it. But it lacks the pull of repeat-viewing of the many, many better films of its ilk.

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 The Rhythm Section on Amazon Prime

Watch The Rhythm Section on Hulu