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    ‘Absolution’ Review: Brain Drain

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    Liam Neeson plays a regretful gangster with a serious medical condition in this drab, downbeat action movie.In 2019, Liam Neeson teamed up with the Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland to make the action thriller “Cold Pursuit.” It did not go well.Nevertheless, the two are back in harness for “Absolution,” a dreary gangster tale as depressing as Neeson’s repeat portrayals of aging tough guys-turned-reluctant avengers. This time, he’s a rumpled, rueful alcoholic and an enforcer for a Boston crime boss played by Ron Perlman. (Tony Gayton’s script is so lazy it declines to even name most of its characters.) The hook here is that Neeson’s leg-breaking character, let’s call him Punchy, is starting to forget important details like where he lives and the names of his criminal cohort. If he hurries, he’ll have just enough time to reconnect with his long-estranged daughter (Frankie Shaw), bed a feisty barfly (Yolonda Ross) and maybe rescue a sex-trafficking victim or two before succumbing to his disease. Or an associate’s bullet.Wrapped in drab visuals and a doomy atmosphere, “Absolution” paints a world where lowlifes rule and neither doctors nor priests can be trusted. Yet there are moments when the beatdowns pause and a misty melancholy shines through: Punchy, hands shaking, writing reminders in a little notebook, or having hallucinatory chats in a fishing boat with his long-dead, abusive father. The movie seeps sentimentality; but Neeson’s scenes with Shaw, who created and starred in the scrappy Showtime series “SMILF” (2017-19), have a touching authenticity, and Ross’s character is so spiky and warm she offers relief from Punchy’s soggy self-centeredness.Watching “Absolution,” I was reminded that Neeson is now 72 and his possible weariness with this kind of role might be lending credence to his character’s frailties. The problem with movies about declining antiheroes is that their arcs can only bend in one direction.AbsolutionRated R for violent men and damaged women.. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Retribution’ Review: Stay Out of the Car Pool Lane

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      What mastermind keeps convincing Liam Neeson to make these tough-daddy thrillers?For 25 minutes, Nimrod Antal’s “Retribution” is a malevolently fun movie. A workaholic banker named Matt Turner (Liam Neeson) is chauffeuring his malcontent children to school when he answers a ring from an unknown caller who says the family’s luxury S.U.V. is rigged with a bomb. The villain demands obedience — or else.The first command: confiscate the kids’ phones. Talk about an impossible mission. “Are you psycho?” Matt’s teenage son (Jack Champion) snipes, barely looking up from the screen. Alas, as soon as the tykes behave, the tension evaporates.We’re left to wonder what mastermind keeps convincing Neeson to make these tough-daddy thrillers — and when will this genre escape its own tropes of sepia-tinted skies, italicized poster fonts and titles seemingly chosen by plopping a finger onto a page of the Old Testament?Antal and the screenwriter Chris Salmanpour have adapted the 2015 Spanish flick “El Desconocido” with a script that feels rewritten in all caps. In Neeson’s opening sequence — the only instance where we see him standing up — he squeezes in an impressive boxing workout before his boss (Matthew Modine) interrupts to call him both a “credit to capitalism” and something unprintable here. (Matt’s estranged wife, played by Embeth Davidtz, would agree with the latter.)It’s clear why these films need Neeson: He commits to every line like his life actually does depend on it. But gravitas alone can’t salvage the frustrating plot contrivances and ridiculous dialogue that make the characters sound dumber and dumber the more they explain their motivations. If you endure the shenanigans long enough to see the baddie reveal their identity with a preening taunt — “Surprise?” — you might, as I did, holler back, “No!”RetributionRated R for language and violence. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Memory’ Review: Getting Too Old for This

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      In this action thriller, Liam Neeson plays an assassin struggling with Alzheimer’s disease. It’s not as interesting as it sounds.The premise of “Memory,” the latest action thriller from the “Casino Royale” director Martin Campbell, is fascinating: Liam Neeson plays Alex Lewis, an aging assassin struggling with Alzheimer’s disease. As Alex seeks vengeance against a child trafficking operation in El Paso, he becomes increasingly unpredictable to the F.B.I. team tracking him, led by the contemplative agent Vincent Serra (Guy Pearce). Unique premise aside, “Memory” is an absurd slog. Its plot clichés and wooden performances are far more enduring than its narrative.This is a remake of the 2005 Belgian film “The Memory of a Killer,” which was a critical success. “Memory,” then, is yet another embarrassing American adaptation. It plays as if the worst episodes of “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” have all been processed in a blender and then stretched to nearly two hours long. The script, by Dario Scardapane, is threadbare in some parts and redundant in others. Its treatment of female characters is, at best, bleak. There are multiple pauses for eye roll-inducing genre fare, like a violent police interrogation or a shot of the grizzled Agent Serra staring out a window and drinking scotch. The American characters are performed almost entirely by British or Australian actors, a choice that might be less noticeable in a film not set in Texas.Neeson is fine and gets to hit his standard action movie beats, like growling out threats and bedding a much younger woman. But he’s also surprisingly underutilized — the film shifts focus to Agent Serra early on, leaving Alex and his disability to languish in the shadows. Whatever appeal this film had in its original iteration has been sapped out, leaving a story that, when not completely vexing, is either mind-numbing or hilarious by accident.MemoryRated R for bullets in brains and damsels in distress. Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Blacklight’ Review: He’s Off the Books (But You’ve Read This One Before)

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      Liam Neeson plays a top-secret operative in an action movie that teeters between subverting the genre and obeying convention.Liam Neeson is an action star with a particular set of skills: he can drive fast, punch hard and emote with a depth that makes his shenanigans seem inspired by Ingmar Bergman. In “Blacklight,” Mark Williams’s quirky yet middling thriller, Neeson plays an off-the-books operative who takes secret orders directly from the director of the F.B.I. (Aidan Quinn), a power-mad, old-guard bureaucrat irritated that he can’t profess his love for J. Edgar Hoover without triggering “politically correct puppets.”“Blacklight” opens with the assassination of a charismatic, Twitter-hooked politician (Mel Jarnson) seemingly (and uncomfortably) cloned from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, then trots out familiar action-movie characters. A plucky reporter (Emmy Raver-Lampman) smells conspiracy. A heroic G-man (Tim Draxl) runs away from cronies who suspect that he’s flipped. The twist in the screenplay (written by Nick May and Williams, the director) is that the story sticks with the point of view of Neeson’s naïve brute, who in an ordinary film would be a no-name heavy offed in the third act. “Am I the good guy?” he asks. Not really, even to his estranged daughter (Claire van der Boom), who is aghast that her father arrives at his wee granddaughter’s birthday party with a gift-wrapped stun gun — a comic gag that gets tripped up by a treacly piano score and Neeson’s adamant gravitas. After that muddled early scene, the film teeters between subverting the genre and obeying convention. At least Williams displays a bit of inventive flair with novel booby traps and a chase scene that features a lurching garbage truck.BlacklightRated PG-13 for bland swearing and bland shooting. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Ice Road’ Review: The Mighty Trucks

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      Liam Neeson fights for traction as a big-rig driver in this mildly entertaining thriller.“Now I’m angry!” Mike McCann (Liam Neeson) hisses halfway through “The Ice Road,” signaling the moment we’ve been waiting for. As any Neeson watcher will tell you, you don’t mess with his action characters once their dander is up.Sadly, Neeson’s dander is no match for a hackneyed plot, poorly visualized stunts and characters whose behavior can defy common sense. They have plenty of opportunity in a setup that sends three eighteen-wheelers charging across a thawing Lake Winnipeg, bound for a diamond mine in Northern Manitoba. A methane explosion has trapped the miners, they’re running out of oxygen and the equipment needed to effect a rescue weighs more than 30 tons.Driving identical payloads (to ensure action-movie redundancy), Mike and his fellow big-riggers — played by Laurence Fishburne and the delightful Amber Midthunder, whose character can barely see over the steering wheel — endure storm and avalanche, cracking ice and saboteurs. Cuts to the lolling miners deflate the film’s momentum, as does a sappy subplot involving Mike’s brother (Marcus Thomas), a veteran struggling with P.T.S.D.Written and directed by Jonathan Hensleigh, “The Ice Road” musters more tension than credibility. Despite the valorous efforts of all involved — the movie was filmed without the use of a green screen — the action is at times incomprehensible. In one scene, two trucks capsize and are righted, seemingly in minutes, with barely a glimpse of a winch or a traction pad. And in another, lives are risked in an insane attempt to retrieve a sinking truck that, we have already been informed, is expendable. The poor souls gasping their last in that mine would have been better off waiting for the cast of “Ice Road Truckers.”The Ice RoadRated PG-13 for attack by gun, snowmobile, vegetation and frozen water. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘The Marksman’ Review: In Need of a Mission

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘The Marksman’ Review: In Need of a MissionLiam Neeson plays the reluctant protector of an undocumented Mexican boy in this dusty drama.Liam Neeson in “The Marksman.”Credit…Open Road Films/Briarcliff EntertainmentJan. 14, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETThe MarksmanDirected by Robert LorenzAction, ThrillerPG-131h 48mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.The plot of “The Marksman,” a melancholy road movie starring Liam Neeson, could fit on a bullet casing, but a list of its clichés would require substantially more space.As would a tally of its improbabilities. Neeson plays Jim Hanson, a widowed Arizona rancher whose cattle are being eaten by coyotes and whose property is being devoured by the bank. All the usual good-guy signifiers are present: the U.S. Marines tattoo on his forearm, the Silver Star in his drawer, the American flag flapping on his porch. Gazing wistfully at the hill where his dead wife’s ashes have been scattered, Jim is a lonely warrior in need of nothing so much as a mission.[embedded content]Along it comes in the diminutive form of Miguel (Jacob Perez), 11, and his dying mother (Teresa Ruiz), undocumented immigrants fleeing Mexico with money stolen from a drug cartel. One reluctant promise and several rounds of gunfire later, Jim and his rickety pickup truck are transporting Miguel to his Chicago relatives, a posse of deadeyed cartel goons on their tail. Luckily, Jim’s repeated use of a credit card — despite a bag full of cash under his dash — is making their pursuit much easier.Slow and simple and minimally violent, “The Marksman,” directed by Robert Lorenz, cares more about bonding than brutality. Predictable to a fault, the movie coasts pleasurably on Neeson’s seasoned, sad-sweet charisma — an asset that’s been tragically imprisoned in mopey-loner roles and generic action thrillers. That melted-caramel brogue should be flirting with Diane Lane or Debra Winger, not teaching children how to use guns.The MarksmanRated PG-13 for the shooting of several bad men and one very good dog. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More