One of my favorite thought experiments is to replay a famous movie with genders flipped and wonder how the movie would have been received. For example, take a movie like Chinna Veedu. Flip the gender of the lead characters. Or movies like Sindhu Bairavi or Mudhal Mariadhai? All these 3 famous Tamil movies are about a guy falling in love with other women while being married. Now that you get the context, flip the gender, and play the game 😀 Received with high acclaim as the originals or shock the audience, get trolled, there will be a cry for a ban!! A great way to unlock your prejudices and tightly held beliefs 😄 We aren’t going to get those stories any time in near future. But what we have now is though Lou and The Mother.  Take a Liam Neeson or Denzel Washington movie, Taken or Equalizer. Flip the gender. Get Allison Janney or Jennifer Lopez to play the tough, kick-ass, shoot them up lead role. We get a gritty and entertaining Lou. The Mother has interesting moments but misses the mark.

Lou: World’s not a playground. Teach your kid to look out for herself

Lou has all the ingredients of a movie of this genre. A young girl gets kidnapped. Her mother seeks the help of the recluse neighbor, Allison Jonney, to find the girl. They go on a journey that leads to close combats, bones getting cracked, explosions, chases, and few dead people. Plus, the buried ghosts from the past pop up. I enjoyed the grit, the performances, and this is as good as watching Taken or Equalizer. All the more fun when you see men’s ass getting kicked by a woman 👏

The Mother

The Mother starts with an interesting premise. We know her only as The Mother in the movie. She is a lady assassin cum operative in the US army. Due to circumstances she has to hand over her daughter, Zoe, to foster care from birth itself. She lives in hiding for safety, for her and the child. Years pass by. Circumstances change and the assassins come to know of Zoe’s whereabouts. Whether The Mother is able to protect and safeguard Zoe from the assassins form the rest of the story. Climax works but for the in between actions, the build-up is missing or didn’t work as expected. Supporting characters don’t have much to work on with limited materials given to them. Interesting premise buts ends up as a cliched generic movie.