Trailers for this troubled Blake Lively action drama debuted a year ago and the release has twice been pushed back. We open on a portrait of a happy family waiting to combust. Three years earlier — before she was forced to groom her locks with a patented K-Tel Hair Magician — finds Stephanie (Blake Lively) skipping out on the ill-fated family vacation flight that claimed the lives of those closest to her. In no time, she’s prostituting herself to support a heroin addiction. Cue a crusading journalist, seemingly seeking her services as a hustler, when in truth, he has a story to write. News that the crash wasn’t an accident is enough to sober Stephanie, who, with the help of a former MI-6 agent (Jude Law), trains to track down the bomb-maker. The process of “doing something over and over again until you feel nothing at all” opens new doors, making Stephanie the perfect candidate for a career in contract killing. The same can be said of screenwriter Mark Burnell’s “repetition is the key to learning” method of telling a story. This might have worked had Reed Morano’s snail-paced direction not taken itself so seriously. (2020) — Scott Marks
This movie is not currently in theaters.