movie review the mother 2023

The “movie star,” that mysterious creature whose blinding charisma pulls everyone into its irresistible orbit, is becoming an endangered species. That makes Jennifer Lopez —a movie star par excellence —the onscreen equivalent of a majestic snow leopard. Lopez can easily carry a film on her own, and her latest project, “The Mother,” is lucky to have her. 

That’s not to say that the latest film from director Niki Caro (“Mulan”) and a screenwriting team led by “Underground” creator Misha Green would totally sink without its star. Like most Netflix movies, “The Mother” would be a perfectly serviceable thing to have on in the background while you tidied the living room or answered emails on your phone. The spy-movie setup is generic enough to follow while doing something else, and the villains’ motivations are only as specific as the plot needs them to be, which is to say, not very specific at all. 

“The Mother” was screened for critics in theaters, where the immersive setup makes the paint-by-numbers portions of the plot really stick out. A handful of odd stylistic choices also attract attention in this format: A recurring visual motif of wide-angle shots with blurred edges; odd, jumpy edits seem to compensate for a lack of coverage on set. 

But the big screen also provides a bigger canvas for the film’s picturesque locations, like wild Tlingit Bay, Alaska, the sweltering streets of Havana—and, uh, Cincinnati, Ohio. (Every spy needs a place to hide out.) More importantly, it’s also more real estate for Lopez’s face.

For the most part, that billion-dollar mug is set into an expression of grim determination in “The Mother,” which opens with an unnamed FBI informant (Lopez) and her handler Cruise ( Omari Hardwick ) barely escaping from a bloody attack on an FBI safe house in suburban Indiana. The informant soon becomes The Mother, as the pregnant ex-spy gives birth to a baby girl while in the hospital recovering from her wounds. She has two options: Either escape with the infant and stay on the run forever or sign over her parental rights so her daughter can have a normal life. She chooses the latter.

She never signs away her emotional commitment, however. And she continues to watch expectantly from the sidelines, waiting for the day when her past will also shape young Zoe’s ( Lucy Paez ) life. And indeed, just after Zoe’s 12th birthday, The Mother’s friend and confidant, Jons ( Paul Raci ), comes by her isolated Alaskan lakeside cabin with a message: Zoe is in danger. It’s go time. 

As with her celebrated turn as a pole dancer in “ Hustlers ,” much of the excitement in “The Mother” is watching Lopez in motion. She swings a knife in hand-to-hand combat. She jumps across the roofs of cars in an urban foot chase. Even the subtle movement of loading and cocking a sniper rifle while lying belly-down on a rooftop is thrilling when she does it. Lopez translates her background as a dancer into gritty action choreography with the ease of a seasoned professional. 

The film shifts gears about halfway in, as Zoe and her mother retreat to Mom’s cabin for a hybrid bonding session and wilderness survival course leading up to the fiery action finale. “The Mother” is arguably too long at 115 minutes, but it’s difficult to say which scenes, in particular, could have been cut; in its quieter moments, both Lopez and her young co-star Paez give convincing performances as the gruff mentor and pouty student.

If anything, the film could have used more of these moments, which feel real and tangible compared to the cardboard cut-out bad guys played by Joseph Fiennes and Gael Garcia Bernal. Either of these men, we’re told, could be Zoe’s father, and it’s their obsession with The Mother that drives the rest of the narrative. Get in line, fellas. 

On Netflix now.

Katie Rife is a freelance writer and critic based in Chicago with a speciality in genre cinema. She worked as the News Editor of  The A.V. Club  from 2014-2019, and as Senior Editor of that site from 2019-2022. She currently writes about film for outlets like  Vulture, Rolling Stone, Indiewire, Polygon , and  RogerEbert.com.

• Jennifer Lopez as Mother
• Joseph Fiennes as Adrian
• Omari Hardwick as Cruise
• Gael García Bernal as Hector
• Paul Raci as Jons
• Lucy Paez as Zoe
• Andrea Berloff
• Misha Green
• Peter Craig

Cinematographer

• Ben Seresin
• David Coulson
• Germaine Franco

Writer (story)

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The Mother Reviews

Niki Caro’s tale of an assassin coming out of retirement to keep her daughter out of the crosshairs of some nasty people is the best kind of lean, mean fighting machine

Full Review | Aug 27, 2023

Jennifer Lopez makes, I think, a pretty good action star... This is sort of a generic action-flick that you may watch and forget about it about three minutes after seeing it.

Full Review | Original Score: 5.5/10 | Jul 24, 2023

Lopez is fit enough to handle the action scenes, but she just can’t sell the ruthlessness of the character. Apparently, it took no less than three writers to come up with this clichéd drivel.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 6, 2023

An exceptionally strong, emotionally-driven action-thriller...Directed at a cracking pace and with exceptional action-movie instincts by Niki Caro (Whale Rider; Mulan) [it's] a way-above-average thriller, with J.Lo at her finest.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 3, 2023

Maybe it is the repetitive middle or the structure of the movie, but it feels like it could have been paced more quickly and amped up the energy a little bit. I enjoyed this and would not be opposed to seeing Jennifer Lopez take on more roles like this.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 2, 2023

The Mother boasts an impressively weighty emotional core that ensures it hits hard when it needs to.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 1, 2023

With way too many flaws, a predictable plot, and generic and poorly developed villains, The Mother is an emotionless story and a waste of an action film. Unless you're a huge fan of J-Lo, I'd highly recommend skipping this one.

Full Review | May 26, 2023

The utterly predictable script suffers from a total lack of character development; the execution is ludicrous since JLo's hair and makeup are always flawless, perhaps because her expressionless face looks perpetually frozen.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | May 26, 2023

[This] over-familiar actioner is forgettable.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | May 24, 2023

What’s really depressing is the name behind the camera. “The Mother” was directed by Niki Caro, whose earliest efforts (Whale Rider, North Country) suggested a major talent in humanist cinema.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | May 24, 2023

The no-nonsense Lopez holds the standard issue together and the action, as directed by Niki Caro, clicks by with the rapid-fire confidence of Lopez’s mom on the trigger.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 24, 2023

The best modern iterations of this kind of movie are The Long Kiss Goodnight and Aliens. I wonder if my overall fatigue with the genre isn't a product of my searching for those highs again in the intervening, largely disappointing decades.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | May 24, 2023

...a decidedly erratic piece of work that fares best in its exciting, action-packed opening stretch...

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | May 23, 2023

But even her fierce prowess -- and unfailing good looks while fighting, chasing, and slaughtering -- can't quite save The Mother from feeling like an amalgam of existing action films.

Full Review | May 23, 2023

The Mother nearly works but there are gaps in the story, as though long sequences are missing, making for a movie that is as emotionally distant as its lead.

Full Review | May 22, 2023

This forgettable action thriller is thoroughly derivative.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | May 22, 2023

A textbook example of a star vehicle, The Mother is competently executed and intermittently engaging, but is elevated only by Lopez’s presence.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 22, 2023

Lopez has more than earned the right to be the star, to put great men in supporting roles, and tell a story that unapologetically centers her.

Full Review | May 21, 2023

Despite well-choreographed action and a gritty performance from Jennifer Lopez, The Mother is not the Mother’s Day vehicle Netflix had hoped it would be.

Full Review | May 20, 2023

Lopez easily has the goods to do a late career segue into action hero mode, but would appear to need a new agent and/or manager to help arrest the piling-up of bad movie vehicles that waste her prodigious talent.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 20, 2023

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

While fleeing from dangerous assailants, an assassin comes out of hiding to protect the daughter she left earlier in life. While fleeing from dangerous assailants, an assassin comes out of hiding to protect the daughter she left earlier in life. While fleeing from dangerous assailants, an assassin comes out of hiding to protect the daughter she left earlier in life.

• Misha Green
• Andrea Berloff
• Peter Craig
• Jennifer Lopez
• Omari Hardwick
• 437 User reviews
• 103 Critic reviews
• 45 Metascore
• 1 win & 1 nomination total

Top cast 29

• SAIC Eleanor Williams

• Zoe's Adopted Dad

• Marcus Stone

• C-Section Nurse

• Fed at Zoe's House
• (as Yadier Fernandez)

• Medical Clinic Nurse
• Arms Dealer
• Exam Room Doctor
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Jennifer Lopez character has no name.
• Goofs J Lo said Joseph Fiennes' character, "Lovell" , was S.A.S training the unit she was serving with. If that was true, why was he wearing a Parachute Regiment beret? Did they not have a military advisor on set either? I'm ex UK military and that is NOT how you wear a beret! He looked more like Frank Spencer.

The Mother : [the bowl of meat is in front of Zoe] Eat.

Zoe : I can't.

The Mother : Yes, you can.

Zoe : [eyes filled with tears, she shakes her head] Not eating Bambi's mom.

The Mother : That's isn't venison. The deer is to hang for the meat to tenderize. Besides, that was a stag, so... it would be Bambi's dad.

Zoe : What is this, then?

The Mother : Rabbit. Thumper.

Zoe : I'm not eating a rabbit either.

The Mother : [sighs] Listen to me. That rabbit had a better life than any cheeseburger you ever ate.

Zoe : It had a beautiful life until you shot it.

The Mother : I trapped it.

Zoe : [sarcastically] Much better.

The Mother : Let me tell you something, kid. There's nothing you ever ate your whole life that didn't come from violence.

Zoe : Tofu.

The Mother : Half of Paraguay was burned and deforested for soy plantations.

Zoe : Cheese.

The Mother : Those cows are impregnated just so they can be pulled on all day.

Zoe : Gross.

The Mother : Gmph.

Zoe : Cashew cheese.

The Mother : I knew a mercenary in the Ivory Coast. He said they fought a civil war over cashews.

Zoe : [tearfully] I wanna go home.

• Connections Referenced in Toxic Femininity: Netflix' Cleopatra worst ever on Rotten Tomatoes, "Hold my beer" says Miller (2023)
• Soundtracks Mala Mia Written by Miky La Sensa (as Stiven Rojas Escobar), Chan El Genio (as Bryan Chaverra), Edgar Barrera , Nyal Beats (as Johany Alejandro Correa Moreno), Maluma (as Juan Luis Londono Arias), Kevin Adg (as Kevin Mauricio Jimenez Londono) Performed by Maluma Courtesy of Sony Music Entertainment US Latin, LLC

User reviews 437

B grade film.

• TrentSammedia
• May 11, 2023
• How long is The Mother? Powered by Alexa
• May 12, 2023 (United States)
• United States
• Official Netflix
• Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain (Havana)
• Nuyorican Productions
• Vertigo Entertainment
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $43,000,000 (estimated)
• Runtime 1 hour 55 minutes
• Dolby Atmos

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‘The Mother’ Review: Are You My Sniper?

At the heart of this action-thriller, an expert killer, played by Jennifer Lopez, must rescue her daughter at all costs.

• Share full article

By Lisa Kennedy

A movie called “The Mother” is sure to have a lot of symbolism and this action-thriller, starring Jennifer Lopez as a trained killer who must protect the daughter she gave up, has plenty.

In the opening scenes, Lopez’s character, known only as the Mother, is interrogated by F.B.I. agents who are trying to get information on two arms dealers she has worked, and slept, with. Agent Cruise (Omari Hardwick) is respectful. The other agent (Link Baker), not so much — and tells her so with a hectoring monologue. (One of the film’s guilty pleasures becomes anticipating when a mansplainer will get hushed.)

In Niki Caro’s fast-paced film, Agent Cruise assures the Mother she’s safe. “No I’m not,” she says. Guess who’s right? Mayhem ensues and, in an act, stunning for its swift violence, we learn the Mother is pregnant. The newborn, Zoe, is placed with a loving family, and the Mother retreats to Alaska where the fellow soldier Jons (Paul Raci) has her back.

This arrangement has kept the Mother and child safe for 12 years when Agent Cruise reaches out with news that Zoe (Lucy Paez) has been found by the Mother’s former partners: Adrian Lovell (Joseph Fiennes) and Hector Alvarez (Gael García Bernal). Lovell is a nasty-smooth piece of work. As Alvarez, Bernal basks in some candlelit cruelty when the action shifts to Cuba.

What kind of resistance will the men encounter? Lovell trained the Mother as a sniper in Afghanistan. She also knows how to twist a blade.

They shouldn’t fool with the Mother’s nature. Apart from some deadpan exchanges between the Mother and Zoe, Lopez plays the role fierce. Even so, it isn’t always clear which gestures in the film should be taken seriously, and which make sport of the genre’s masculine posturing while offering an allegory about a birth mother’s sacrifice.

The Mother Rated R for gun and knife violence, some language and brief drug use. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. Watch on Netflix.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Mother’ on Netflix, a Jennifer Lopez Action Vehicle That Skids Too Far Off the Road

Where to stream:.

• The Mother (2023)
• Jennifer Lopez

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In the true spirit of Mother’s Day, this weekend we get Jennifer Lopez gunning down a bunch of faceless bad guys in The Mother (now on Netflix). She also has A Moment with a mother wolf, you know, one of those moments where you lock eyes with a four-legged snarling anxious dangerous predator, and you both nod in unspoken acknowledgment of your shared instinct to protect your offspring at any cost. J-Lo is a credited producer of this ridiculous and violent genre outing, and teams up with director Niki Caro, who you’ll recall broke through with 2002’s Whale Rider and most recently showed some rock-solid action-movie chops via the battle sequences in 2020’s live-action Mulan remake. The Mother is the type of movie Stallone would’ve headlined in 1989, save for the feminine angle, which, fingers crossed, hopefully gives it a bit of depth. Let’s find out.  

THE MOTHER : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: DAWN. AN FBI SAFEHOUSE IN INDIANA. A character only known as The Mother (J-Lo) is an informant on an arms deal and she’s telling the living shit out of the FBI agents that the bad guys know where they are and they’re coming and some of them are gonna die and that’s exactly what happens. This nasty-nasty named Lovell (Joseph Fiennes) backs her into a shower stall and this is when there’s a very highly dramatic reveal: She’s pregnant. Oh man. And how nasty-nasty is Lovell? He whips out a knife and stabs her right in the abdomen. But he can’t finish the job because her improvised explosive goes WHOOMP and burns half of Lovell’s face off. 

Now, I’ve already tipped my hand with regards to what kind of movie this is, but this is the turning point, the tone-setting stretch of film that determines where it lands on the absurd-o-meter. The Mother awakens in the hospital. She’s OK. Her baby daughter is OK. And Lovell – well, he’s going to return with a mottled eye and really cool spiderweb of scars on his mug. Absurd-o-meter: we’re at about an 8. Edie Falco walks into the hospital room and informs The Mother that she’s far too wanted by the bad guys to keep the child, and here’s what she’s gonna do. She’s gonna sign the paperwork giving the girl up for adoption and then she’s gonna disappear and her days as a mercenary sniper assassin cold-blooded damn killer are over, and that’s that. She’s not happy about it but she takes one last look at the baby through the nursery window and we cut to her getting off a boat in Moosescat, Alaska. She holes up in a cabin and a subtitle reads 12 YEARS LATER and she’s still there.

Per the agreement, The Mother has been getting photos and updates on the girl. She’s been palling around with her pal and fellow war vet Jons (Paul Raci of The Sound of Metal ) and also killing her own food, so we know her shooting skills haven’t waned. Might she need them for any reason beyond hunting? Hmm. And wouldn’t you know it, just when she thought she was out, you know the rest. The bad guys are planning a heist, and The Mother’s daughter Zoe (Lucy Paez), who’s very happy with her adopted parents and sneakers with the skates in the heels, is the haul. The Mother and FBI guy Cruise (Omari Hardwick) get to work, chasing the villains – Gael Garcia Bernal turns up as one of them – all over hell and yonder to get Zoe back. The Mother shows what’s inside her when she tries to get the girl’s location by pummeling a thug with barbed wire wrapped around her fist. Donald Rumsfeld would be thrilled to learn that her controversial interrogation technique works, and she extracts Zoe and takes her to Alaska, where she trains the kid to shoot and stab and appreciate her fresh rabbit stew. Meanwhile, the girl shows a remarkable ability to not freak out about the fact that her birth mother is an utterly humorless badass slayer of men. There’s no time for psychotrauma when there’s several more action sequences to work your way through! 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Mother is Taken meets the snowmobile chase in xXx meets the awesome lady action of Salt or Haywire .

Performance Worth Watching: Lopez hasn’t been this feisty since Enough . (She was even more feisty in Hustlers , but that movie is on an entirely different level than this genre fare.) Too bad the screenplay here is so thin and disinterested in character nuance, because she does her damnedest to give The Mother some depth when she has the rare opportunity to do so.

Memorable Dialogue: Jons sums up The Mother: “A woman like that – you gotta pay attention to what she does , not what she says .”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: The Mother shows no ambition beyond being a collection of action set pieces strung together by a sloppy plot that really wants to be about the Protective Power of Momhood, but is far more invested in shootouts and chases. The lock-eyes-with-the-mama-wolf stuff is played dead-serious, and it ends up being deadly unintentionally funny. Same goes for the sequence in which The Mother apparently read ahead in the script so she’d know exactly when the bad guys would re-snatch Zoe, allowing her to skid into the frame on a Harley Fat Boy just in the nick. Style trumps sense every time – and although Caro’s muscular style exhibits moments of flair and vibrancy, it’s not savvy enough to distract us from this murky, slapped-together story. 

So what we’ve got here is a boilerplate action saga starring J-Lo as a tanktop-ballcap-and-aviators asskicker who never smiles ever and is capable of gritting her teeth and slamming her shoulder into a rock to pop it back into the socket. What, they couldn’t fit in a scene where she cauterizes her own bullet wound with a hot knife or some gunpowder and a lighter? This movie is uncompromisingly silly, unbelievable and incredible in the sense that you won’t believe a second of it and none of it is credible, from the psychological contents of its characters to its abdication of the laws of physics. 

The screenplay introduces and disregards supporting characters with abandon, gives Fiennes very little to do as the villain and renders our protagonist a boilerplate cliche of an action hero with one dangling thread of vulnerability to tug on. She kills and kills and kills and shows no remorse, no inner conflict. But because she’s The Mother, and so fiercely devoted to being that, we’re essentially asked to ignore the fact that she’s a sociopath. In that sense, the film is a throwback to simpler times, when action heroes just did what they had to do and put their mental health in a jar and hid it in the darkest corner of the pantry. Granted, not every piece of entertainment needs to be a grandiose statement about the tragedy of the human condition, but I like to think we’ve elevated our standards for thematic content in movies – or at least enough visual wizardry and storytelling finesse to be an adequately entertaining diversion, which The Mother doesn’t quite achieve.

Our Call: And on top of that, The Mother just isn’t as fun as it wants or needs to be. SKIP IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 

• Stream It Or Skip It

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The Mother Review

Jennifer Lopez reminded us that she’s pretty handy with a weapon in  Shotgun Wedding  earlier this year. She gets multiple opportunities to showcase that once again in  The Mother , a movie which sees her join the likes of Liam Neeson , Denzel Washington , and Bob Odenkirk in the annals of late-career action herodom. Directed by Niki Caro , it’s a slick if slight Netflix outing that doesn’t reinvent the wheel but does just enough to entertain.

Lopez easily convinces as a formidable woman who’s an expert in combat. And while the action scenes are not revolutionary, they do have a crispness about them. The punches feel impactful. The high point comes when Lopez's character (she is credited simply as 'The Mother') heads to Cuba to dispatch a house full of bad men with speed and decisiveness. The low point comes in a chase scene so over-edited that for a brief second, it feels as though you’re watching  Taken 2 .

This is a film that’s first and foremost a showcase for its star.

For much of the film, Lopez cuts an intense and stoic figure. But inevitably, that hardened exterior is slowly pierced to reveal a beating heart as she spends more time with her daughter. Misha Green’s script leans a little too hard into a mother-wolf metaphor that would’ve been more effective as visual storytelling rather than being explicitly spelled out. But it also gives ample opportunity to Lopez and Lucy Paez to generate decent chemistry with one another.

As for the men, there’s not much meat on the bone for anyone here. There’s a hint that there might be something more than respect between Omari Hardwick ’s FBI agent and Lopez’s Mother, but it’s not explored enough for certain moments to hit as hard as they should. Meanwhile, Paul Raci’s Jons – a weapons specialist who served with Mother in Afghanistan – is little more than an exposition machine. Villains-wise, Gael García Bernal ’s Hector Alvarez is criminally underused, and Joseph Fiennes ’ scarred former SAS arms dealer remains one note throughout.

But this is a film that’s first and foremost a showcase for its star, and on that front it – and Lopez – deliver.  The Mother marks her first significant action drama since 1998’s  Out Of Sight , a career high point. Hopefully, it won’t be her last.