Filming a screenplay that completely lacks a second act might be considered a bold act of avant-garde multiplex filmmaking, if the result didn’t eliminate everything about the story that might be remotely interesting. Jennifer Garner plays Riley North, a wife and mother in suburban Southern California whose husband and daughter are murdered by members of a Mexican gang; five years after the incident, she appears as a badass avenging angel bent on justice. How did mild-mannered Riley become a killing machine? Your guess is as good as mine, as director Pierre Morel (Taken), working from a script by Chad St. John, jumps directly into the killings without providing any framework for Riley’s psychological and physical transformation. All that’s left is pure exploitation thriller, as a steely, fully-committed Garner provides visceral satisfaction as she racks up her body count, and cops utter goofy hard-boiled lines like “he wound up on the wrong side of the grass.” Movies like this are supposed to be cathartic, as audience surrogates do the things a broken system can’t do, but Peppermint erases the reality that the decision to turn into The Punisher comes at a cost. By Scott Renshaw