RogerEbert.com — The Rhythm Section
Blake Lively gives it her all in “The Rhythm Section,” but the movie only meets her halfway. The glamorous star gets grungy to play an ordinary young woman who transforms herself into an international assassin to avenge the killing of her family, but the film feels rushed and frustratingly empty. My mixed RogerEbert.com review.
I haven’t seen this film yet but I read the book years ago and liked it.
My guess is that the film suffers from the “Dune problem”. “Dune” is a seminal book but it has far too much going on to fit into a single movie, even a long movie. Herbert, the author of the book, was deeply involved with the original film version. And, other than a ground breaking special effect (the “armor”), which was quickly copied all over the place, it is notable for being a mess that no one except true fans of the book could follow.
There is a 6 hour syndicated version of Dune (“Frank Herbert’s Dune”, originally aired on SyFy in the U. S., if you care to hunt it down, which I recommend you do) that was made for a tiny fraction of the money but is a much better movie There, they had the time needed to tell the story in a coherent manner.
From what I remember of “The Rhythm Section” it is telegenic enough and action packed enough to make a good foundation for a successful movie. But you have to throw a lot away (or make it as a six hour miniseries) to skinny things down enough to have a story you can tell well in two hours. It sounds like the author was unwilling to kill enough of his darlings to allow that to happen and no one was in a position to say “no” to him.
It turns out some authors can do a good job of adapting their books into good scripts. But too often adaptations done by the original author fall victim to the “Dune problem”.
This is not a great tragedy. Rather than being my favorite books (I liked all three books in the series) of all time the books fell into that “fun to read” category. So it’s a loss but not a great loss.