“Protégé”–Who’s the Student? Who’s the Teacher?

The Protege (2021) is a  throwback to the 90s action thrillers with one exception: a badass, beautiful assassin in the Nikita genre.  (Maggie Q, who has played Nikita in a television series.)

Anna Dutton (Maggie Q) is rescued as a little girl from the savagery of the Vietnam War by the legendary assassin Moody (Samuel Jackson). Raised by him as her surrogate father, she is now an antiquity book store owner in London.   Anna–in her secret life– is  a  fierce, highly skilled  assassin who can find people who are hard to find–just as she can locate rare books.  Her personal life gets turned upside down, however, when Moody gets assassinated and she seeks revenge.

One day a prospective customer, Rembrandt (Michael Keaton), comes into her store to by a rare book as a gift.  This is only a pretext.  Soon Anna becomes professionally and romantically entangled with Rembrandt, who is her match as a highly experienced assassin.  Their  cat-and-mouse dance turns deadly as their experience as seasoned murderers raises the stakes and instinctual drive for survival.

If you like revenge thrillers with a dynamic female protagonist,  you will enjoy The Protege’s stunning action scenes, an excellent cast, and an incredibly fast-paced drama with some surprising twists. Some scenes involve intense violence, bloody knife fights and martial arts elements similar to the  latest James Bond movie (“No Time to Die”) but so much better.

 It is entertaining to see Michael Keaton as an action figure after his Batman role.  Maggie Q is the real star here, however.  She  would make an excellent female replacement for James Bond and certainly is a super-hero to watch going forward!

Availability: Netflix DVD