We’ve entered a rather surreal time in human history in which art is being created to appease certain agenda – that’s nothing new, although I will point out most of the countries in which art is created specifically to promote a political agenda find that art … terrible. Just miserable. Those giant banners of trump on public buildings? Good thing or bad thing? I think the answer is obvious, especially when the agenda is both self-serving and amoral.
No, the surprise here is that the political agenda has been abandoned almost as quickly as it was championed. Hence, there have now been two (2) anti-human trafficking, sex-slavery pictures to come out recently … and both have been swept under the rug like lazy housekeeping. You see, the Right no longer gives a shit about sex-trafficking ever since everybody in the country collectively realized Trump was guilty of pedophilia.
Weird, that.
How long ago was it that the Right clambered so hard against trafficking that they assumed anybody who didn’t feel as strongly was for it? That wasn’t true, of course, but RW mouths have made entire careers out of shouting things loudly and pretending that nuance is dissention. In fact, you could say it’s their thing.
Indulge me here – let me re-create this brief history. In 2023, the film Sound of Freedom is released. The semi-biographical picture about one man taking down a network of human traffickers galvanizes conservative bluster. RW politicians realize this issue is a winner for them (attacking the robust “Pro Human Trafficking” lobby) and do what they do best: get wealthy conservative morons to pour $$$$$ into making more of these films in an effort to win hearts and minds. God forbid, you guys should ever, I dunno, ask the people what they want. Hand-in-hand with this sentiment, Donald Trump has a successful presidential campaign in 2024, running on -among other things- the release of the Epstein files, which Joe Biden left, as he should, in the hands of the justice branch of the government. 2025: America sloooooowly realizes these are the Trump-Epstein files. Trump’s previous bluster on the subject was all a confession. With this realization, the American RW suddenly no longer cares about human trafficking or sex slavery or pedophilia. Unfortunately, several motion pictures intended to marshal MAGA assholery have already been completed. Now, these pictures have to sink or swim entirely on their merits. Uh oh.
Nikki (Milla Jovovich) is a mother. She is also a badass US Army Ranger. For whatever reason, she has chosen an army life and knows her daughter not at all. This changes when she becomes a widow. And in a fairly ham-handed scene, she alienates her estranged daughter on the kid’s 16th birthday. Oh, but she knows exactly how to be just late for her daughter’s abduction. A scene ending with her crashing out a second story window to land on the fast moving abduction vehicle falls flat for me not when she stabs the driver in the eye with her keys, but when she flies off the vehicle and her daughter continues to be abducted.
Child abduction is a crime of opportunity. It doesn’t take a law degree to know this one. The object is to steal the child before anyone who might want to do something about it can. It’s best when there is nobody who wants to do anything about it. Here you have a concerned mother knowing exactly who has taken her child and when – and, what? Are we to
assume here that the police and/or FBI will really do nothing about this? Really?
Yadda yadda yadda, Nikki is cut and hanging upside-down in a meat-packing plant. And the trey-yadda is necessary because the film chose not to show us how it got from Nikki curbside to Nikki, potential side of beef. Oh, plenty happened in the interim; Nikki killed some more guys and set fire to a brothel. The film chose not to show us that. Personal guess? Those scenes existed, got lost in a cutting room fire, and the production crew was too cheap to film them anew. Protector only runs 91 minutes, so there was certainly time to show what happened in greater detail. The film simply chose otherwise.
Protector wasn’t a winner before that happened, so cheating us of 15 minutes of Mikki vengeful badassery is the chocolate frosting on a shit cake. I’m glad Milla can still pass for an action hero, but she should not have signed on for this project. And, yes, most of us still don’t like human trafficking, sex slavery, pedophilia, or anything in between. But people like me think these things should be completely a-political and the fact that the RW of the USA milked this territory for political power and then dropped it when that power is threatened is beyond evil. Do you assholes stand for anything? Well, in case you ever find a backbone, your children, like Protector and Still Hope are now orphans. You abandoned them.
There once was a badass named Nikki
Plenty good at the pain she inflicti
When her kid was taken
It was her turn for makin’
One ginormous enflamed bloody sticky
Rated R, 91 Minutes
Director: Adrian Grunberg
Writer: Bong-Seob Mun
Genre: Films that might have been a hit three years ago
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: MAGA, in 2023
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: MAGA, in 2026
