At minimum, Bill Condom’s Breaking Dawn - Part 2 is a
competent action thriller. The thriller
plot proceeds from the recognition of the Volturis’ threat to the assembling of
a team to resist them and then culminates in the confrontation in the
field. Getting to this faceoff, we get
to meet different vampires from different areas of the world and we ponder what’s
happened to Alice and Jasper.
But it’s the other things that we watch while getting to the
climax that are more interesting.
Bella becomes the central female action hero as she tosses Edward and
Jacob about and out arm wrestles the powerful Emmett. She has superior self-control in resisting
the urge to feed, and she develops her own super power quickly. She even takes the lead in love.
Such dominance is standard fare in the new genre of
female-empowerment action heroes, but as the film builds to its final confrontation, we see that there is more to Bella than simply being stronger than the guys. She is a loving mother whose primary
concern to protecting her daughter, Renesmee.
She’s also a loving wife who wants to protect her husband and a loving
daughter who wants to protect her father.
And Breaking Dawn, Part 2 pauses for more tenderness than the bulk of
today’s action films. Bella’s early love
scene with Edward has more soft-focus and lingering than do similar scenes in
other action films, and Condon brings poignancy and tenderness into his film
far more than other action film directors do.
Breaking Dawn Part 2 gives us a tough action hero but also one infused
with more traditional feminine characteristics.
This film has its faults.
It can be saccharine, trite, clumsy and obvious, and everyone in the
cast clearly isn’t as accomplished as many of the prominent actors here are. But an action thriller that can spend so much
time on love and tenderness is a unique contribution to the genre and makes
Breaking Dawn Part 2 worthwhile.
