Ava(2020)

Plot Summary

• Ava Faulkner (Jessica Chastain) is a recovering addict and former soldier turned assassin. In France, she kidnaps her new target, an English businessman Peter Hamilton (Ioan Gruffudd), a financial advisor to the International Monetary Fund. Ava picks up Hamilton from the airport, pretending to be his chauffeur. Ava drives him to the countryside and appears to seduce him. She parks the car in the wilderness and climbs in the back seat with Hamilton.Before she kills him, she questions him on why someone wants him dead. Unbeknownst to her, another woman had been following Ava through her entire missing and electronically eavesdrops on the conversation. It is later revealed that Peter had stolen funds from the IMF, money laundering and election tampering. Ava reports her kill to her handler Duke and informs him that she is going to Boston for a few days.Afterwards, Ava flies to Boston where she visits with her estranged sister Judy (Jess Weixler) and her mother Bobbi (Geena Davis) who is hospitalized for angina pain. Ava has not seen them in eight years. Unknown to Ava, she is being tracked during her visit to Boston. Ava was a straight A student, who had an accident in which she lost her will to live. She took to drugs. She served in the army, where she met her handler, Duke. She got an honorable discharge from the army, had difficulty adjusting to civilian life and finally joined Duke's private assassins' company.Ava's handler and former Army superior, Duke (John Malkovich), sends her to Saudi Arabia to kill a German general. Duke had insisted that this is a sensitive operation, and that the death had to look like from natural causes. General is suspected of selling arms on the black market, and since Western nation is involved, the whole operation has to be handled discreetly.Ava lures the general into a trap and injects him with a poison to make it appear he died of a heart attack. She is interrupted by the general's security guards (Ava had used the general's close friend's family name to get close to him. But the intel got the name wrong. It was O'Sullivan and not Sullivan). A gunfight ensues, leaving all the men dead. She escapes the hotel, but her picture is captured on CCTV. She has to fight through the streets of Riyadh to get away.Ava escapes and travels to Barneville-Carteret (Normandy coast) where Duke apologizes for the botched operation, insisting that the bad intel was a simple mistake. Duke reminds Ava not to ask her targets what they did and indicates that when she did this previously, it did not end well. Duke warns that they would not survive another episode of that and that he will not be able to protect her a second time.He gives her time off to decompress and she returns to Boston and meets Michael (Common), her former fiance who is now in a relationship with her sister Judy. Ava tells her AA group that 10 years ago Ava was addicted to drugs and alcohol. She caught her father having an affair and asked him to come clean to her mom. Instead, the father told her mom that he caught Ava stealing $1000 and if he said anything she would make up a story about him having an affair. Ava's mother believed her husband, and not her daughter.In British Columbia, Duke meets with his superior, Simon (Colin Farrell). Simon's daughter Camille (Diana Silvers) is the woman who had earlier eavesdropped on Ava's hit. Simon believes Ava is a liability and that her questioning of targets demonstrates insufficient commitment to their operation. After Duke leaves, Simon reaffirms the hit on Ava. He also confirms to Camille that he made the intel mistake deliberately in Riyadh, so Ava would get killed and Duke would never suspect him.Ava kills her attacker and then confronts Duke who insists that it was a random drug addict attack. He also convinces Ava that the Company had nothing to do with the attack on her. That night, Ava goes to dinner with Judy and Michael, as recommended by Ava's mother to reconcile and patch up their differences. But their conversation does not go well (Judy feels that Michael is still interested in Ava and is ignoring her). Judy abruptly leaves the table when witty banter between Ava and Michael ensues. Michael and Ava are left to chat for a while until Michael leaves as well, still visibly upset at Ava for being gone the past 8 years with no contact.At 5 o'clock in the morning, Ava is startled awake by knocking at her hotel door. Judy meets Ava and tells her Michael is missing. Realizing he has started gambling again, Ava rescues him from a gambling den run by a woman, Toni (Joan Chen), to whom Michael is indebted (for $75K). A fight ensues with Toni's guards after Ava tries to leave with Michael. Ava asks Toni to give her 36 hours to clear Michael's debt and Toni, seeing her guards injured on the floor, begrudgingly agrees.Duke revisits Simon and reveals he knew Ava was set up. A fight ensues between the two men, resulting in Simon killing Duke. He sends a video of Duke's death to Ava. A heartbroken Ava goes to Judy's house, where she invites Michael to run away with her, but he declines, revealing that Judy is pregnant. Ava heads to Toni's den where she kills some of her men before giving Toni a bag of money to pay off Michael's debt. Ava starts to strangle Toni, and is about to break her neck, but then changes her mind, letting her live while warning her to stay away from Michael.Back at her hotel, Ava is attacked by Simon. They fight, with both sustaining serious injuries. Exhausted, Simon flees when the fire alarm goes off, warning Ava that he will kill her if he sees her again. Ava pursues Simon, cornering and killing him under the Zakim Bridge. Ava goes to her sister's house, warning Judy to leave the country and giving her the number to a Swiss bank account filled with Ava's earnings. Before she leaves, Michael gives her a letter from Duke, who says that he is happy with how his life turned out. As she walks down the street, Ava is stalked by Simon's daughter, Camille.

Storyline

• Lethally beautiful and incredibly efficient in her dangerous line of work, Ava, a taciturn lone wolf and cold-blooded assassin, is starting to develop a conscience. Having beaten her alcohol and substance dependence with the help of Duke, her grizzled mentor of death and father figure, more and more, unstable Ava lets guilt get in the way of closing her "deals", attracting unwanted attention by breaking protocol. As a result, after a botched attempt to liquidate a high-profile target, Ava reunites with her estranged family after eight long years of absence, unaware that she has just signed her death warrant. Now, as Ava tries to settle old scores and reconnect with her loved ones, every killer in the business is after her. Can Ava rely on Duke to have her back? — Nick Riganas