Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Jolt’ on Amazon Prime, in Which Kate Beckinsale Dusts Off Her Badass Action-Star Boots

Amazon Prime would surely love to see Jolt launch a Kate Beckinsale-anchored action franchise, possibly made possible by two things: The Underworld series pooping out, and the John Wick series pooping in (or should that be unpooping out?). If Keanu can enjoy a late(ish)-career boom, why can’t there be a BECKINSALAISSANCE? Tanya Wexler directs, following up wiseass comedy gem Buffaloed with a similarly wiseass but definitely more kickass romp, with plenty of violence and just enough Laverne Cox, Stanley Tucci and Bobby Cannavale to make it tasty — on paper at least.

JOLT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Lindy (Beckinsale) has “intermittent explosive disorder.” I don’t think that’s a real medical thing, but a movie thing, because it makes her a sort of sub-superhero — slightly stronger and faster than your average human, enough for a big hulking dude to underestimate her and get his heinie walloped. Problem is, her “powers” are paired with a hair-trigger violent streak. She’s had it her whole life. Flashback to a kid taking her stuffie lambykins and she responds by bashing his skull with a baseball bat. Growing up, she was committed and given drugs and isolated, and it all messed her up; cue a scene of teenage Lindy nut-shotting a poor orderly. She tried the military, but that didn’t help either. Thank Jebus for Dr. Munchin (Tucci), a psychologist who designed her a vest of electrodes connected to a button so she can self-administer an electrical [INSERT MOVIE TITLE HERE] every time she feels that violent impulse. It’s “barbaric but effective,” explains the Susan Sarandon voiceover.

We see Lindy on the street braining and throat-punching various a-holes, but that’s just fantasy. In reality, she envisions it and zaps herself into submission, which is how the movie can be violent without being violent, kind of? She walks into a restaurant for a date, but is soured by everyone around her. “I hate people,” she says, trying to back out, but he’s persistently charming. Would YOU ditch Sam Worthington wearing dorky glasses because of your psychodamage? No, probably not, and it’s then that I realized it wasn’t Sam Worthington, but Jai Courtney, a mistake anyone could make. Anyway, Jai Courtney plays Justin, a very nice guy. An accountant. Sensitive. Smart. Lindy reluctantly sits down and they deal with a snobby waitress and she goes to the restroom and overhears the same waitress ragging on her and Justin so she presses the button and it doesn’t work and she therefore introduces the waitress’ head to the tile seven or eight times.

She goes back to the Tucci-doc to get the zapper fixed, and he says she should try again with Justin because a little human contact would do her good. “A penis won’t heal me,” she snaps, but she gives it a go again. And hey, guess what, Justin’s penis kinda heals her. He says all the right things about her condition and her electrode vest, and he delicately removes it before they murk lurve, and somehow, she gets through the night without losing her cool and perforating his spleen with a butter knife. Maybe all she needed was The Big O. (And maybe another.) (Surely another.) (ABSOLUTELY another.) The next day, he promises to make dinner for her and she’s head over heels. On cloud nine. The apple of a smitten bird bug. There’s a spring in her step. But he doesn’t call, and that’s when she finds out he was murdered. Welp. So much for anger management.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Jolt is Salt or Lucy channeled through Wick, and it’s too bad it arrives a week after Netflix debuted Gunpowder Milkshake, or Gunpy Milks if you please. I also counted multiple Fight Clubisms, from the snarky voiceover to the exploding apartment to a scene set in an actual underground bareknuckle boxing joint.

Performance Worth Watching: I love Beckinsale’s screen presence. She’s certainly overqualified to play the secretly wounded badass who hides her emotional vulnerability beneath violent impulses and wisecracks. But the character is ever so slightly underwritten, and she doesn’t quite use her charisma to push the project out of mediocrity.

Memorable Dialogue: Lindy warns Cannavale’s cop character to not even try to arrest her: “Oh, don’t bother. I’ll run away and you’ll get yourself all emasculated trying to catch me.”

Sex and Skin: Some stylized neon-drenched nookums, a face in a crotch just out of frame, a quick shot of Courtney’s butt double.

Our Take: So I guess the question is whether Lindy will turn the corner to a newly restrained version of herself that will allow room for grief, or if she’ll just indulge the wildly aggressively violent nature she knows so well. And it’s not much of a question, because Jolt really isn’t in the business of delivering too many surprises, and all that sass ‘n’ attitude and raging style up front lets us know this is going to be a violent revenge picture. Or maybe it’s a satire of a violent revenge thriller, or a bit of a comic book movie, coursing with the blood of a broken heart, like poor John Wick, understandably upset about his dog. That’s an entirely reasonable tonal blend that works in fits and starts, the film never fully squeezing the juicy genre pulp from the rind.

The good: Jolt is a crisp 82 minutes, not counting the end credits, and Beckinsale gustos her way through a functional running joke about how Justin wasn’t REALLY her boyfriend because it was too early in the relationship to imply such a level of commitment. The bad: It skimps on character development and doesn’t make the most out of casting Cannavale as the good cop and Fox as the bad cop; they’re supposed to be the color here, and their banter is clunky and undercooked. (Meanwhile, Tucci absolutely Tuccis his way through the movie, as he always does.) But I guess it’s somewhat refreshing in the wake of Gunpy Milks, which does too much and bloats to nearly two hours.

So what’s the happy medium between 82 and 122 minutes? John Wick at 101 minutes, and its commitment to single-minded brutality via visual dexterity. Wexler gins up Jolt with some bracing fight choreography and a crazy virtuoso shot as Lindy escapes from the fuzz by darting through crowded hospital corridors. But there’s also a contrived and klutzy baby-tossing bit in the hospital nursery, and a big hand-to-hand showdown between a bevy of baddies and Beckinsale’s all-too-obvious bewigged stunt double. Also, the plot really flubs the ball down the stretch, and not just because it very presumptuously sets up a sequel. The film is so very much a mixed bag, with moments to like and moments to dislike, but nothing to truly love or truly hate.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Imperfect as it can be, Jolt has plenty of pep and very little flab, and is preferable to the overloaded Gunpy Milks, if you’re in the market for a femme-sparkplug clobberathon.

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.

Stream Jolt on Amazon Prime