That was a fun time. It suffers imo from the problem that many long movies suffer from. Which is to say they can't pace well so they add on another movie. At first I thought this movie was going to be a worse version of Extraction (2020). But then the movie kept going unexpectedly. Over all I'm glad I watched it and would gladly watch it again.

Jennifer Lopez had an excellent hot girl turned action girl turn. Almost as good as Megan Fox in Rogue (2020). Fox gets way more marks for difficulty having to play the same type of character in a much smaller more model-ish body even though Lopez gets the nod in verisimilitude. Lopez has done fisticuffs before and I actually think Enough (2002) was a better movie over all but this isn't the role you expect Jennifer Lopez to be in. But she does well enough. She's not a seasoned action star but she's putting in the effort. There are edits that show she isn't doing the running and jumping and gunning like her character but there's enough facetime that you can see she isn't stepping back and letting her stunt double do a movie.

Young Lucy Paez surprised me. I kinda thought she was a throwaway character in the first half that's how awkwardly shot things were. She developed. She's still an annoying tween but not nearly as annoying as others (looking at you The Adam Project with your surprisingly solid acting but just awful awful writing).

But this is two movies smushed together. One okay and one rather decent. It's Django Unchained all over again in that respect. It's in part the length that gives some of the best parts of the movie time to mature. The problem is the tension isn't even in the movie. It doesn't ratchet up to bigger more serious stakes. It can't because it has to squeeze in another movie to it just feels empty in parts. I'd have liked to see this redited or rewritten to smooth out what they no doubt term Act 2 and Act 3 but in actuality are just Movie 1 and Movie 2 and craft a single well paced movie even if it was long. Of course I could hear editors grumbling about how you could do the same thing by just trimming the fat with some minor reshoots. The estranged mother-daughter relationship works. It's one of the more interesting parts of the movie and it's the part I thought wasn't going to get enough attention at first. The other relationships don't. The hint that Mother and Cruise might have been into each other felt gratuitous. In another movie I would have wanted it sure but here it felt like someone said "We have Jennifer Lopez we can't have like NO sex appeal anywhere." which after some very tasteful shot selections earlier in the movie felt like what they were going to do which was kinda awesome. Still it never got too bad.

All my problems with this movie tend to be with the people behind the camera rather than in front of it which I suppose might say something. The last act takes place in the winter in a wooded area and honestly there are just so many odd choices made it's like they were only made to setup cool set pieces. If they're sneaking in on foot why do they have individual snowbikes? It's for cool snowbike shots. We have a character who has proven herself to be willing to fight and soon as she gets kidnapped she's like a bird in a hood. Stops doing anything while they drive her away... why? So there can be a sick takedown shot.