Ava (Jessica Chastain) is an assassin working for a shadowy business. However when her latest job goes wrong she is forced to fight for her life.

It is very obvious what is trying to be achieved with this new action thriller. Over the last few years we have seen Liam Neeson turn into an action hero and the likes of John Wick and Atomic Blonde provide incredibly exciting entries into the action genre with kick-ass assassins. Ava is an attempt to set up a character who could feature across multiple films and make decent returns in reasonably budgeted movies. The issue though is that it is so rote it is a wonder that it has so many big stars involved.

The story is the same one we have seen many times before. Although kudos should be given to the way the film cuts through so much exposition in the opening credits which explain Ava’s background. Ava was an honour student who became an alcoholic and caused a car crash before fleeing to the military where she moved into black ops and then an assassin. Her handler Duke (John Malkovich) is the father figure she so desperately needed in her earlier years and he will staunchly defend her despite his years. When Simon (Colin Farrell), the owner of the shadowy assassin business becomes sceptical of her curious manner of asking her targets what they did to deserve their deaths he decides that she is a danger and sets the wheels in motion for a big showdown. There is also an estranged family that Ava left behind that has all sorts of soap opera obstacles to manage between Ava’s sister Judy (Jess Weixler), ex-boyfriend Michael (Common) and mother Bobbi (Geena Davis).

For the first hour of this relatively short ninety-six minute film everything runs reasonably smoothly. Albeit in an unsurprising, unchallenging manner. Chastain and Malkovich add reasonable weight to paper thin ciphers and the action is passable. But in the final third the entire film falls apart thanks to the completely unbelievable motives and actions of Simon and Ava’s entire family. Some of the things that happen resulted in audible groans of exasperation leaving my mouth they were that frustrating.

Jessica Chastain deserves better because she clearly has the acting and physical abilities required to make this type of vehicle work. Unfortunately she has picked the wrong one here.