Plot summary

It's suburban Pennsylvania at Christmastime, and '90s mom Samantha Caine is living the life with her wholesome boyfriend and cute kid. She's even in the Christmas parade on TV! But this picturesque life is fairly recent; just 8 years ago, she was found washed ashore nearly dead on a beach in New Jersey, 2 months pregnant with no memories of who she was. Since then, she's made a good life for herself as a schoolteacher, but never stopped trying to find out what happened, hiring a string of PIs to dig into her origins.The latest is Samuel L. Jackson, a.k.a. Mitch Henessey, who's at the lower end of the pay scale. He's checking things out for her and finds a suitcase of her old stuff, but something happens before he can get it to her.Driving an old man home from a Christmas party, Samantha is distracted by his drunken antics and hits a deer, throwing her through the windshield and knocking her out. When she wakes up in the snow, something has clicked - she calmly walks barefoot through a freezing stream and snaps the deer's neck to put it out of its misery, then lays down beside it, leaving the man in the car to burn to death.Back at home, while her sweet boyfriend cooks, she helps him prep veggies by slowly and very badly chopping a carrot. Again, something clicks - and suddenly her knife skills are super badass.This skill comes in handy before long, because an old enemy happened to catch the Christmas parade on prison TV and escaped to take revenge. When he breaks into her house, Samantha shows off her new-found fighting skills and kills him, but not before he blasts a hole in the side of her house. To protect her family, Sam heads off with Mitch to figure out what the hell is going on.The suitcase Mitch found contains a note to a Dr. Nathan Waldman, so they track him down and arrange to meet up, unaware that the government is tapping his phone. On the way to meet Dr. Waldman, Sam discovers that the suitcase has a false bottom, and under it is a disassembled sniper rifle. Muscle memory kicks in, and she easily reassembles it.At the station, they are attacked by a team of agents with no regard for bystanders, but they escape with Dr. Waldman. He fills her in: she's actually a CIA assassin named Charly Baltimore, and everyone thought she was dead until her lil' Christmas parade appearance.Sam and Mitch leave Waldman behind and head out alone to follow up on another lead from the briefcase, a guy named Luke. They spy on Luke and Sam remembers personal details about him, so she thinks they were in a relationship - but that turns out to be a very big mistake. Waldman catches up to warn them, but Luke kills him and WHOOPS they realize that he was a target she'd been surveilling.Newly revealed Evil Luke tortures Sam for info by tying her to a water wheel and repeatedly dunking her in freezing cold water. This shock treatment jolts the final pieces into place, and her Charly persona fully emerges. She frees herself, kills Luke, and she and Mitch get away. Back in a hotel room, she cuts and bleaches her hair, busts out an aggressive smoky eye, and gets some new clothes. Turns out, Samantha Caine was a cover identity to get close to Luke 8 years ago.Meanwhile, another old enemy re-emerges: Timothy, a psy-ops specialist and former lover. Looking for leverage, he kidnaps her daughter Caitlin and takes her to Niagara Falls.Sam, now fully in Charly Mode, uncover more details about the case that led to her near-death - she had unknowingly disrupted a CIA false flag operation designed to secure more funding by detonating a chemical bomb in the city of Niagara Falls and blaming it on Islamist terrorists, down to using the corpse of an innocent middle-eastern man. But there are people within the CIA trying to resurrect the operation, including Timothy.Mitch and Charly head to Niagara Falls, but Timothy catches them and dumps Charly in an industrial freezer with her daughter. She tries to save them by telling Timothy that Caitlin is his kid, but he doesn't care and locks them in. Charly manages to break them out with just kerosene and a baby doll, then frees Mitch. Together they go after the trucks getting ready for the attack, forcing Timothy to launch things early - but a scared Caitlin has hidden in one of the trucks.In a last-ditch effort to stop the attack and save Caitlin, Charly chases down the truck and overpowers the driver, diverting it from town and finally overturning it on the bridge to Canada. Timothy pops up and they fight, but she knocks him into the falls.He may be out of the way, but the bomb is still about to explode and Caitlin is still stuck in the truck. To complicate things, more baddies are coming in a helicopter. She shoots the guys and one of them falls out and gets tangled up in some Christmas lights on the bridge.She gets to Caitlin with 7:30 left on the bomb timer and gets her free. Charly is beaten all to hell and resigned to dying, so she tries to send Caitlin away, but that brave little toaster won't leave. Charly musters her strength just as the helicopter picks up a very not-dead Timothy for a final showdown.Time is running out for Charly to get Caitlin off the bridge, so she uses a ham radio to make a hail-mary call - and a profoundly injured Mitch hears it and comes running. They get Caitlin into the car and Charly tries to cover them from the gunfire coming from the helicopter. She grabs a gun and, using a corpse as a counterweight, rides a string of Christmas lights up so she can shoot Timothy out of the helicopter.She makes it back to the ground and Mitch comes to the rescue at the last moment. They all speed away and into Canada just in time to avoid the explosion, which kills Timothy & Co. and destroys the bridge.Now that she and Caitlin are safe, Charly gets to decide who she wants to be - and she wants to like mostly like Samantha but throw knives like Charly on a cute farm her boyfriend, daughter, and some goats. Emily Winsauer - Adventurelings: The Adventure Movie Podcast