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Every adopted kid has their birth parent fantasy. I’m not saying they are longing to be found and taken away from their actual family but you just can’t help but wonder what the woman who gave birth to you is out there doing and generally your imagination has it being something really cool. Mine was that my mother was a rich Hollywood actress (of course it was, but little did I know at the time that this would also be Tracy Beaker’s thing).

This new Netflix film appears to be someone else’s idea around this and I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that writer Micha Green is in fact herself adopted. In this story twelve year old Zoe’s birth mother is a kick ass sniper and assassin who rescues her from being kidnapped by drug lords and gun runners.

This isn’t to say that she enjoys this adventure. Parts of this film are as OTT as you might expect from this set up but actually the way the relationships play out are quite realistic. Young Zoe does not immediately connect with her erstwhile mum and is always keen to return to her real parents (which is something else that makes me thing this has been authored by someone who is sensitive to this situation). The story is not entirely devoid of cliche, Zoe does learns from this women and can defend herself better by the end of a training montage as the two hide out in the wilderness taking on survival skills and hunting, but much of it has an authenticity that you might not expect from a movie of this type. I did actually wonder if the toughening up stuff was actually the elaborate plan of the men that were chasing this reconnecting couple as they leave them alone for long enough to go through this process. I thought maybe the bad guy’s revenge on the mother was to make her turn her daughter into a cold psycho like her, so that the kid would suffer anxiety for the rest of her life and always struggle to connect to other people. That was giving the film more credit that it merits though.

The title character is played by Jennifer Lopez and it has to be said that she is really good in the role, especially considering that the last time she was seen on screen was when she was slapsticking her way through a zany jungle adventure in Shotgun Wedding. This is one of those occasional alternate reality Jennifer Lopez movies where she carried on in a straight trajectory from Out of Sight and didn’t go off and become a pop star and make a load of cheesy rom coms. She is impressively versatile but has ended up with a lot of forgettable stuff in her filmography that she might have avoided.

The Mother is better than most of these but probably won’t stay long in the memory either. It is entertaining enough while you are watching it though and under Micha Green and director Niki Caro, who last gave us Mulan, it is lifted above the predictable and pat fare that it could easily have been. It also works effectively as a feminist piece, and here I am sure the gender of the creative forces behind it are as relevant as their possible family backgrounds. There are various versions of this where one or the both of the main characters were male but while the nature of their relationship is specific to a mother and a daughter, the fact that they are engaging in activities; hunting, fighting, shooting, motor biking, that are so often the habits of men on screen, and they are doing so with no pretence is a bit of a step forward. It is also good to see Lopez, whose career has been been built to some considerable extent around her beauty as well as her talent, play a role where this is less a part of the character. She looks great of course, the whole incognito thing she has going doesn’t mean she she isn’t wearing the hell out of the aviators and the pulled down cap, but this is a part more akin to other actors in their fifties like Reeves, Pitt and Johnson than other actors in their fifties like Berry, Hayak and Roberts.