Jolt | 2021 | R | – 7.7.10

Why is “Jolt” rated R? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “strong violence, sexual content, and language throughout.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes a few sex scenes with partial nudity, a couple of kissing scenes, a couple of flirting scenes, many scenes of a woman being zapped with a device to control her episodes of rage, several fight scenes with bloody wounds shown, a death by gunshot to the head with blood shown, a few scenes of a child attacking people, a few chases on foot and in cars, a woman fights several people at one time and leaves them injured, many threats of violence, and over 50 F-words and other strong language. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.

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A former soldier (Kate Beckinsale) with a hormone imbalance that makes her go berserk when she becomes angry, uses an electrode-lined vest to jolt herself back to normalcy. However, when she finds out that a man (Jai Courtney) she really liked is murdered, she allows herself to go on a rampage against those she deems guilty. Also with Stanley Tucci, Bobby Cannavale, Laverne Cox, Constantine Gregory, Ori Pfeffer, David Bradley and Susan Sarandon. Directed by Tanya Wexler. [Running Time: 1:31]

Jolt SEX/NUDITY 7

 – A man and woman kiss in her apartment and he takes off her top to reveal a vest with electrodes attached to her skin; he kisses her neck and they move to a bed where they have sex in several positions (we see the man’s fully nude back, buttocks and legs) and we see him performing oral sex on her (his head is shown between her thighs); she then straddles him and thrusts and we see her bare shoulders.
► A man and a woman kiss and she imagines hurting him in a number of ways including snapping his neck, and wrapping her legs around his head in a headlock. A man propositions a woman while they are arguing. A woman says while straddling a man’s neck that if he had a larger Adam’s apple, “This would be working for me.” A man asks a woman on a date and she says, “Maybe.” A man lists a number of sexually transmitted infections that a woman on their first date told him she had. A man on a street remarks to a woman as she walks by that she is a “fine little piece” (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details). A woman refers to photographing “naked accountants.”
► A woman removes her dress and we see cleavage and bare abdomen along with many electrodes attached to her skin. A man is shown shirtless and we see his bare chest, back and abdomen.

Jolt VIOLENCE/GORE 7

 – Several scenes show a woman being zapped by many electrodes attached to her back and chest and a few of the scenes show her being zapped until her system is overloaded and they no longer have any effect; when the zaps are initiated we see sparks flash in her eyes.
► A man is shown chained to the open hood of a car with his legs spread apart and seemingly without pants (we see his bare knees briefly) as a woman holds jumper cables in her hands and touches them together causing a spark and she refers to the color of his testicles; the scene cuts away and she moves toward him, he screams and we hear electricity crackling. A woman offers to fight three men in a fight club (we see blood on the floor from previous fights) and the man in charge accepts; she kicks one man in the crotch, spits in the face of another and they fight with punching, kicking and slamming each other to the floor; she pulls out a man’s nipple piercing (we see blood) and navel piercing, and she straddles one man on the floor and punches him in the face repeatedly until the man in charge calls a stop to it. A police detective shoots at a woman twice and holds her at gunpoint; the woman takes the gun away from the detective knocking her to the floor and runs out of the apartment. A man hits a woman in the head with his gun and she falls unconscious; she wakes up strapped into a chair surrounded by surgical instruments and the man threatens her; he flips a switch and we see blood moving through tubes attached to her as the man explains that he is removing her blood; she cuts herself free, pulls a tube out, sprays the man in the face with blood and fights with him; he wraps her with a chain and suspends her off the floor where he punches her in the ribs a couple of times, she kicks him and then kicks him repeatedly while he lies on the floor and we hear a metallic slashing sound as the man screams off-screen. A woman fights several security guards with punches, kicks and throws and we see a couple of the men with bloody faces as they roll on the floor; the woman finds a private security entrance and uses a man’s severed and bloody thumb to access the area. A man is given a bag filled with explosives and they are detonated blowing him and a building up. A woman is shot in the leg (we see blood) and a man attends to her until she says, “Take your fingers out of my leg hole.”
► Two men fight in a fight club and we see their bloody faces. A woman slams another woman’s head against a wall in a bathroom stall several times; we hear her skull cracking and a streak of blood is shown on her forehead. A woman in the backseat of a car tells the driver to pull over and let her out and wraps a cord around his neck causing him to swerve the car and crash into a wall (we do not see his injuries); the woman runs away. A woman attacks a man in his office and he injects her with a sedative. A girl hits a boy with a baseball bat and when he is on the ground hits him several more times (off-screen). A young girl becomes angry when a boy takes her piece of cake and she slams his head into the plate. A teenage girl carrying a metal bar chases two boys in an alley (we do not see her catch up with them). A pre-teen girl in a hospital is restrained with plastic cuffs and an orderly shoves her into a chair; the girl rips the cuffs off and kicks the orderly in the crotch. A teen girl is injected with a sedative while she lies on an exam table and she slams a medical staff person in the head with a metal tray, wraps her legs around his head and the scene cuts away. A woman in a spar session slams her opponent to the mat and pounds on him with a padded sparring pole. A man hits a woman in the head and she collapses unconscious. A woman punches a man in a meditation class when he hums. A woman kicks a man in the crotch in a yoga class. A police detective hits her partner in the shoulder and yells at him. A woman slaps a police detective in the face and runs out of a room, charging through hospital hallways and knocking people and carts over, she hides in a nursery and when the detective finds her and says, “I will shoot you,” the woman throws sleeping newborns toward her to make her drop her gun (the infants are unharmed). A man tells a woman, “I kill a lot of people.” A man is shown suspended by cables attached to a ceiling. A man pushes a button and zaps a woman several times; she falls to the floor and moans, she raises a gun to his face and pulls the trigger (it is not loaded).
► A woman imagines attacking people in several scenes but does not; she imagines slamming a man’s leg in his car door a few times and the man screams, a man sits on a train with his legs spread wide apart crowding a woman seated next to him and she imagines attacking him. A woman imagines breaking a police detective’s thumb after her touches her knee and then shooting another detective in the head with her own gun (blood sprays).
► A woman climbs up the outside of a hi-rise building and is confronted by a man with a gun when she reaches the top. A woman steals a car and speeds through streets chased by police, they swerve between cars and through a tunnel until the police crash head on into a truck (we see the driver in the hospital later recovering). A woman barges into a man’s office and he pulls a gun out of his desk drawer; she handcuffs herself to a pipe, sits across the room from him, and imagines stabbing the man in the neck with a screwdriver and when the man removes the screwdriver blood spurts out of the wound and onto the screen. A woman holds a gun on a man and then hands it to him. A woman’s apartment door is rigged with explosives and she disconnects them and rewires them to use elsewhere. A woman turns on the gas in her apartment stove, puts a ball of aluminum foil in her microwave and leaves the building; it later blows up and flames blow out the windows and glass falls to the street below.
► We see a man slumped over a table with a bloody bullet hole in his head. A woman tells another woman that a man’s body was found in a dumpster with two gunshot wounds to the head. A woman tells a man, “I wanna crush your skull with my bare hands.” A man describes the use of Kamikaze K-9s and that dogs would be strapped with explosives to blow up enemy targets. A man says that a boy was sent home from school for setting the class pet free. A woman says that she wants to snap people’s fingers off. A woman tells a man that she wants to avoid the “face stomping and bone breaking.” A woman refers to another woman saying they’d lock her up and throw away the key. A child’s behavior is labeled a disorder and it is described as uncontrollable rage; we see her in several stages of youth and adolescence being locked in hospitals, restrained and drugged. A voice-over refers to a child’s mother’s pills making her so sleepy and that her father drank too much, which led to the child not getting enough love. A treatment is referred to as “brutal.” A woman says, “I hate people.” A woman says, “I hurt people.” A woman refers to having too much cortisol in her system. A man lists ineffective treatment options like putting leeches on a woman’s’ skin, drawing out the demons, or having her drink her own urine. A man accuses a woman of robbery after stealing items from the police evidence room. A woman cries in a cemetery at a graveside. A woman reads a man’s medical chart in a hospital and remarks about his “impressive urine output.” A man compares cockroaches and lobsters while he is eating lobster and smacking his lips while he eats.

Jolt LANGUAGE 10

 – About 51 F-words and its derivatives, 10 sexual references, 26 scatological terms, 17 anatomical terms, 8 mild obscenities, name-calling (extremely volatile, lame, what’s wrong with you, cute, sleaze ball, lunatic, backstabbing, lamb to the slaughter, freak, narcissistic low-life, dumb, bat [scatological term deleted] crazy, horrible, awkward, zombie apocalypse, desperate broken princess, spunky, psychotic, geek, bad guy, stupid, weird, boring, disgusting, brutal, idiot, epic, creepy, rude, shady arms dealer, dumb, moron, pathetic, gross old man, gross), exclamations (ugh, wow, shhh, are you [F-word deleted] kidding me, relax, oh boy, amazing, ow, oh duh), 8 religious exclamations (e.g. Oh My God, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Holy [scatological term deleted]). | profanity glossary |

Jolt SUBSTANCE USE

 – A voiceover talks about a child’s mother’s pills making her sleepy and that the father drank too much. A man smokes a cigarette in a club.

Jolt DISCUSSION TOPICS

 – Anger management, being normal, betrayal, doing the right thing, using people, following the rules.

Jolt MESSAGE

 – Not managing your anger response can be useful if you’re out for revenge.