Jennifer Lopez brings the action in new film The Mother, playing an assassin who comes out of hiding in the remote wilderness to protect the daughter she was forced to leave as a newborn baby from vengeful criminals.
The Netflix movie, which begins streaming on Friday, features plenty of high-speed car and motorbike chases, fight scenes and gruelling training for Lopez’s character, simply called “The Mother”.
In an interview with Reuters, Lopez, co-stars Lucy Paez and Omari Hardwick, who play her daughter and an FBI agent respectively, and director Niki Caro spoke about the film’s themes and mixing action and emotion.
Below are excerpts edited for length and clarity.
Q: What is the film’s main theme?
Paez: “I would say the relationship of a mother and a daughter and how she’d protect her child.”
When you have somebody on the set who’s so exuberant every single day and so excited to be there, it’s like ‘yeah, let’s do it’ ... It reminds you how lucky you are.
— Jennifer Lopez describes her co-star Lucy Paez
Lopez: “How she would do anything to protect her child. I also think ... there’s an underlying theme of what it is to be a mother and what the idea of the perfect mom is and how that really doesn’t exist.”
Q: How would you describe the film?
Paez: “Powerful, emotional ... Motherly.”
Lopez: “Emotional, action packed.”
Caro: “Badass, because she [the title character] is and mothers are.”
Hardwick: “It’s a movie of heart ... It really is The Mother for a reason, cause mommas bring a different thing to life.”
Q: What are the challenges of directing an action film?
Caro: “There are many challenges but it’s also tremendously fun for me. I love telling stories that way and on that scale. I love emotion through action, which this movie does.”
Q: Jennifer, what did you learn from Lucy?
Lopez: “Whenever you work with somebody like (Paez) who’s talented and young, you remember to enjoy and ... how exciting it is ... I always feel like I’m pretty grateful ... but you just can’t help kind of fall into the routine of like ‘oh, I got to get up another day, I got to do this’ and when you have somebody on the set who’s so exuberant every single day and so excited to be there, it’s like ‘yeah, let’s do it’ ... It reminds you how lucky you are.”
— Reuters
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