But we're supposed to think that Riley's anger speaks for Los Angeles' fed-up, disenfranchised residents, as we see based on a flurry of tweets (showcased during the cops' official investigation of Riley's crimes) and one wall mural that's erected in the "Skid Row" part of town (identified as such by a Google Maps-like search, also during a police investigation). She's not as rich as Peg ( Pell James), a snobby rival mother who, during a flashback, tells off Riley and her daughter Carly ( Cailey Fleming) by saying that they aren't real Girl Scout material. Riley's actions are supposedly justified by her self-image as a working class martyr. Just look at all the ways that Riley's creators excuse their decision to use racist caricatures as straw men antagonists. You don't even need evidence to support your counter-claim.
The producers of "Peppermint" may be French and Chinese, but the film's heroine still (unintentionally) exemplifies an ugly strain of contemporary American thought that insists that you are the one who is really being bullied if somebody tells you that you are bullying them. How is this not a black comedy about our troubled times? She's just a white woman whose sole purpose is railing against a broken justice system and slaughtering a group of stereotypically ruthless Latino gangsters who literally work in a piñata store (as is announced three times during a news report within the film). But again: "Peppermint" isn't a critique of Riley's privilege. Still, moviegoers are supposed to root for Riley because her husband and daughter's killers-a bunch of joint-smoking, booze-drinking, gun-toting monsters-are still on the loose, and the system is rigged, and other complaints that were made before (though not necessarily better) in the 1980s by lackluster sequels and ripoffs to "Death Wish." Somebody's got to pay, even if Riley's PTSD-like breakdowns suggest that she probably shouldn't be venting her spleen by murdering every complicit and therefore ostensibly deserving person she can.
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