The Baker

• Directed by Jonathan Sobol
• October 31, 2022 (Austin) / July 28, 2023 (US)

An old baker with secrets must fight drug dealers to protect his estranged granddaughter.

There is a subgenre of action movies these days with an old man with a secret former life that can really kick ass. They don’t like it but watch out! I’m 90% sure this was a genre ushered in by Liam Neeson in films like the Taken series though when he first started doing it he didn’t look that old. Anywho…

The Baker is one more in this long line of these films. Ron Perlman stars as Pappi Sabinski who is a baker with a mysterious past that never gets too illuminated. That is my first issue with this movie. My knowledge of his past comes from extraneous stories and is not hinted at by any in film presentation. That is kind of annoying to a degree. I don’t need every question answered but just exactly why Pappi is a badass needs to be hinted at and the best they can do is a redacted birth certificate involving his estranged son.

I don’t require detailed explanations but something alluding to his proficiency in violence or general past is necessary. Especially since he can identify a gun by its sound and knows by name the movie’s overarching villain the Merchant (Harvey Keitel). We get no hint. Did he work for the government or did he work for the criminals? Did he cut some kind of deal that allowed him a quiet life away from his violent past? We never know.

As usual for this subgenre a strange child shows up in the picture and forces our featured senior citizen to reach into his long-buried skillset in order to preserve the life of that grandchild (Emma Ho) he doesn’t really know or didn’t know at all until they bond during events of the movie. Slaughtering others brings family together!

In this case her daddy (Joel David Moore) was present for a drug deal gone bad and decided it was a good idea to steal the drugs, which were pricey narcotics, rather than try to get them back to the guy who wanted them or just scram. That puts him in the crosshairs of some very violent people headed up by the Merchant who employs Vic (Elias Koteas). And that’s also a bit of a flaw. At least when it comes to Elias Koteas. He’s a fine actor but two old men in the villainy role pushes credibility. I can buy Harvey Keitel as a leader of a criminal organization. I can buy Elias Koteas as involved in a criminal organization. But both not so much. An old or elderly staff is hard to buy.

If this movie is about anything it’s about an old man who was a terrible father getting a second chance to do it right with his son’s child. As is obligatory over the course of the movie, the granddaughter and the grandpa bond with the implication being that new kid is left with bad dad like a replacement gift for one that got busted in shipping.

Perlman is a great character actor. Massive talent. Unfortunately because he’s not a pretty man he was never going to be a huge star, but he has managed to be a guy always in demand. With a combination of expression and intonation he manages to make his character of Pappi threatening as well as sympathetic.

And kudos to Emma Ho that plays his granddaughter. She has but one line at the end of the film with the rest of the time having to create a character with absolutely no words. In the film her mother died while she was in the car with her so it traumatized her. You get a real feel for where she comes from and we get a substantive character. Ho manages to hold her own and not fade away when silently performing against the experienced Perlman.

This wasn’t nearly as violent as I thought it would be. Perlman doesn’t kick as much butt as I wanted. Perlman had an imposing physique but often comes out a bit roughed up when he does what he does. He is more an investigator that goes violent than he is a dude busting heads. I enjoyed myself but because of the limited action it wasn’t quite what I was looking for. A heart condition of Pappi’s helps to explain that, but that explanation does not aid the overall film.

There are some beautifully filmed scenes in here. The director manages some visually pleasing stuff in a film that should be more action oriented than it is. There are sensitive shots of Pappi and his granddaughter bonding. That’s in conjunction with loving and tenderly done flashbacks to when before he became a baker.

The Baker is just under as good as it could have been. It just misses the mark. Don’t seek it out but if it’s offered up then it’s not a bad choice.