The Baker, the review of the film with Ron Perlman on Prime Video

The review of The Baker, a film where Ron Perlman plays the role of an elderly baker – or maybe not – who must protect his granddaughter, who has ended up in the sights of cruel criminals.

Pappi is an elderly baker who has led a solitary life for some time, having isolated himself completely from the rest of the world and above all from his family. He no longer has relations with his only son Peter for years and is unaware that he has become a grandfather to little Delfi, a little girl – motherless – suffering from mutism, following a trauma that shook her deeply.

As we tell you in review of The Baker, the little girl will have the opportunity to finally meet her grandfather very soon. In fact, Peter has come into possession of a large quantity of drugs following a showdown between criminal gangs and decides to hide it, hoping to get away with it; He thus temporarily entrusts the little girl to Pappi, who reluctantly agrees to take care of her for a day. Too bad that Peter is soon captured by the powerful gangster’s right-hand man and the old baker will have nothing left to do protect her granddaughter at all coststhus revealing that imaginable secret about his mysterious past.

Everything as expected

To an admittedly classic production like The Baker originality certainly cannot be required, especially by further contextualizing thatb-movie approach established from the outset. Small budget and a cast of faces recognizable by the general public, with Ron Perlman to take on the role of the grandfather with a heart of gold but balls of steel up to the gangster / man of honor of Harvey Keitelwith Elias Koteas to play the role of sneaky third wheel. The umpteenth revival of the giant and the little girl brought together by the circumstances of destiny is at the center of a story without any real twistsbut pleasant precisely in its sense of familiarity: we are in fact faced with an operation that is well aware of its limits, which is not afraid to rely on overused solutions to fill the hour and forty minutes of viewing.

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Inspirational models

Director Jonathan Sobol had already attracted attention in the past for his debut Beginner’s Guide to Death (2010) and for the heist movie with Kurt Russell The Art of the Steal – The art of theft (2013) and here he manages to make a virtue of necessity, exploiting the means available with a certain inventiveness and guaranteeing a decent mix of tension and action sequences, until that epilogue which hypothetically opens the doors to a potential sequel. Naturally the twist on the protagonist’s identity, reminiscent of great recent classics such as A history of violence (2005), is more obvious and intuitive than expected, as is the bond between the grandfather and his granddaughter, which summarily recalls the iconic Natalie Portman / Jean Reno couple in Leon (1994), but as already underlined the script deliberately flirts with that derivative axis at the base, rehashing for the umpteenth occasion the standard dynamics of the trend.

A known fragrance

An operation as genuine as homemade bread by the tormented protagonist, ready to put back together the pieces of an existence shattered through his own fault, hiding secrets and unexpected identities. The Baker manages to entertain the main target audience with a mix of action and good feelings, limiting the violence to the bare minimum and proceeding step by step without rushing too much until the end credits. Ron Perlman it seems now subscribed to this type of role – he had also worn a similar one just as recently My father is a hitman (2023) alongside Nicolas Cage – and that now iconic face is in its own way reassuring in the management of a story that goes exactly as it should go.