It’s fair to say not too many people saw The Rhythm Section, the film that now carries the unwanted honor of having the worst opening weekend ever for a film playing in over 3,000 theaters in America. And it’s not hard to see why.

Reed Morano’s action thriller following a grieving woman who gets turned to a path of revenge after discovering that her parent’s death in a plane crash was actually the work of a terrorist doesn’t have a huge amount going for it. Starring Blake Lively as Stephanie Patrick, the woman in question, we’ve seen this kind of story pop up numerous times over the past few years in films like Red Sparrow or Anna. Like both of those films The Rhythm Section suffers from a poor script, in this case one that meshes a confused plot with an inconsistent and frankly incompetant lead character.

But even more than these aforementioned films the one strength of The Rhythm Section is its star. Blake Lively is fantastic both as a grieving woman who has hit rock bottom, and then into Stephanie’s transformation. It’s a shame that the character herself isn’t great, but Lively’s performance deserves something better. She is consistently the only thing that is holding the film and manages to turn this into a forgettable film, rather than an awful one.

Obviously we’ve seen a few films like The Rhythm Section recently, and much like them the film tries to push a mystery as some thrilling end goal. But in the end the journey to get to the finale is slow paced, and the actual outcome uninspired that it winds up being dull rather than thrilling.

4/10